Open letter to Bay Area Activists from Bay Area
United Against War (BAUAW):

Dear friends who organized, participated, and/or spoke in the demonstrations
sponsored by Not in Our Name and ANSWER on Nov. 3 and Nov. 9.

At the concluding rally of the emergency demonstration ANSWER called to
protest the U.S. assault on Fallujah, Jahahara, of AFSC and N'COBRA, issued
a kind of challenge to all the major antiwar organizations to make a unified
response to the U.S. government's war against Iraq. He called on the
national organizations, of which we are all affiliated to one or
more-ANSWER, UFPJ, NION-to unify in building a massive antiwar movement.

This call is so timely because the war and occupation continue unabated, the
consequences for the Iraqis are devastating (over 100,000 civilians killed
by U.S. actions) and over 1,110 U.S. troops are dead and tens of thousands
injured.

Those of us who are old enough to have participated in the movement against
the U.S. war on Vietnam know that the most effective mass actions against
that war that called for bringing all U.S. troops home now [Out Now!] were
unified actions where people of different ideologies were able to come
together for
Out Now despite their divergent opinions on other topics. The mass movement
that was built on the streets of the U.S. created a supportive environment
for
U.S. soldiers to resist the war in multiple ways eventually becoming an
unreliable fighting force for U.S. imperialism.

Now, it is very clear from all who spoke at the last two demonstrations,
including you, that we have wide areas of agreement. We all spoke about the
need for the movement to get back into the streets to protest the war in
massive demonstrations. We all spoke about the need for unity. We all spoke
about the way to bring peace and end the war was for the U.S. government to
get out of
Iraq.

The next step is for all our organizations to meet together and concretely
plan how this unity will be carried out.

Bay Area United Against War is willing to host such a meeting, or
participate in such a meeting called by others. Let's make it happen.

Bring the Troops Home Now!
Carole Seligman, Bay Area United Against War (BAUAW)

COME TO THE NEXT BAUAW MEETING AND BRING YOUR IDEAS ON HOW TO
ACHIEVE UNITY IN THE MOVEMENT:

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 15TH, 7:00 p.m.
1380 Valencia Street
(Between 24th & 25th Streets, SF)
BAUAW: 415-824-8730

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Special point of personal privilege from Bonnie Weinstein:

I received the following Email message today
addressed to me:

--- "xx.xx" wrote:

> Judenrat

The brave sole did not leave his or her name.

Of course, this is not the first time I have had an anti-Semitic slur
thrown at me.

In the neighborhood I grew up in during the McCarthey erea, our
family was routinely referred to as, "those dirty, commie,
Jew bastards."

Not only was I a "Jew," but my parents were "commies" also.
It was a time when the picture of Krushchev that appeared in the
"Catholic Monitor" was kept hidden from the eyes of the children.
Good Catholic parents were advised that it wasn't safe for their
children to look upon this "face of Satan." It was hidden
under the couch cushion at my childhood friend's house.
I dared to take a peek! My friend thought I would for sure
go to hell.

And when a Black couple and their two children, friends
of our family, tried to visit us, they were stopped outside of our
building by the local cop on the beat. The cop demanded to know
where they thought they were going. They said they were
visiting us, so the cop went up to our door and asked if, indeed, these
"n---ers" were invited.

My father had to go downstairs and escort them into our apartment.
Rumors abounded for weeks after in our little apartment building.
"A white family just didn't sit at the same table with Blacks!"
This horrified our neighbors.

Even though my immediate family was not religious at all, we were
atheists, our name was enough to categorize us and place that
star on our chests. Anti-Semitism is a dead-wrong racist philosophy
that can't be tolerated. Just as the theft of Palestinian land and the
systematic extermination of the people of Palestine cannot
be tolerated in a free and democratic society. This "Jew" supports
the unconditional right of return of the Palestinian people. And
this "Jew" demands that all U.S. aid to Israel be stopped
immediately--NOT ONE MORE DIME! And this "Jew" says
BRING ALL THE TROOPS HOME NOW! U.S. OUT OF THE MIDDLE EAST!

Racism is about "divide and concur." It's purpose is to deflect us from
our common interests to live in a free and democratic society with
equal opportunity for all. Where all human needs are rights that
belong to all people--the equal right to life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness, free healthcare, food, clothing, housing, education, happy
and productive work--all the things necessary to make everyone "the best
they can be" from birth to the grave.

These are the inalienable rights of all of us on Earth.

And, what is most important of all to recognize, is that our needs stand
diametrically opposed to the needs of the wealthiest 1% of humanity.

Racism and bigotry ultimately benefits the tiny minority in control
of wealth of the world. It is their most powerful tool for the
imprisonment of the mind that makes ordinary, good people blame
their brother for their plight in life while the rich get richer and throw
an occasional bare bone to the ravenous masses--the old "trickle
down" theory.

The only thing that can plow asunder racism and bigotry is human
solidarity for freedom, justice and equality for all.

It is a world only the masses acting in unity and solidarity can create.


When do we start?

Bonnie Weinstein

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1) ALL OUT IN SUPPORT OF THE LOCAL 2 HOTEL WORKERS!
SOLIDARITY RALLY
Saturday, November 20 at 11 a.m.
Union Square, Downtown San Francisco

2) Iraqi Insurgents Shoot Down U.S. Army Helicopter
By ROBERT F. WORTH and JAMES GLANZ
FALLUJA, Iraq, Nov. 12
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/12/international/middleeast/12cnd-iraq.html?h
p&ex=1100322000&en=82063e5b6cd40c73&ei=5094&partner=homepage

3) Falluja a 'Big Disaster,' Aid Needed - Red Crescent
By Omar Anwar
BAGHDAD (Reuters)
Fri Nov 12, 2004 07:37 AM ET
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6798438&src=eD
ialog/GetContent§ion=news

4) Falluja Battle Erupts, Unrest Spreads Elsewhere
By Michael Georgy and Fadel al-Badrani
FALLUJA (Reuters)
Fri Nov 12, 2004 09:34 AM ET
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6799628&src=eD
ialog/GetContent§ion=news

5) Subject: Mordechai released again!
From: Jeanie Shaterian
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 17:42:10 -0800

6) Bush and Blair Meet to Discuss Mideast Peace
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:41 p.m. ET
November 12, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bush-Blair.html?hp&ex=1100322000
&en=a8a52044c77f3a90&ei=5094&partner=homepage

7) Subject: In Memory of Yasser Arafat
From: "fpa-news"
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 19:45:58 -0500
To: fpa-newslist@freepalestinealliance.org
Resent-From: fpa-newslist@freepalestinealliance.org
Resent-Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 20:11:50 -0500

8) Ever Upward: At Nearly 1.5 Million,
US Prison Population at New High
11/12/04
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/362/upward.shtml

9) New College of California
Center for Education and Social Action (CESA)
Listing of Peace and Social Justice Events, November 12 - 15, 2004

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

1) ALL OUT IN SUPPORT OF THE LOCAL 2 HOTEL WORKERS!
SOLIDARITY RALLY
Saturday, November 20 at 11 a.m.
Union Square, Downtown San Francisco

Initiated by: Million Worker March Committee
Co-sponsored by:
San Francisco Labor Council
UNITE-HERE Local 2
ILWU Local 10 Executive Board

Four thousand San Francisco hotel workers have been locked out for
more than a month. The hotel owners -- representing Hilton, Hyatt,
Holiday Inn, Sheraton and the other major chains -- have flown in
hundreds of strikebreakers from around the country to smash the
San Francisco hotel workers and their union. It is a defining struggle
that will set the stage for broader attacks on wages, pensions,
full-time work and the very existence of health coverage for
working Americans.

The global multinationals that own the major hotels and other
industries, make profits in the billions, but 61% of U.S. corporations
and 71% of corporations that have offices overseas pay no taxes
at all while their profits soar. The bosses are demanding that hotel
workers pay the escalating cost of healthcare. They seek to prevent
workers from having a unified expiration date on contracts precisely
to prevent workers from carrying out a united defense of their
interests and, by fragmenting workers, to undermine the union.

We call on workers everywhere to unite and to support the locked-out
hotel workers on their picket lines. Their fight is our fight. As the
motto of the International Longshore and Warehouse Workers
proclaims: "An Injury to One Is An Injury to All."

Join us at this "Stand By The Hotel Workers and Their Pickets" rally
in Union Square in San Francisco, followed by a March to join the
pickets at key hotels.

ALSO:

SOLIDARITY NEEDED WITH UFCW GROCERY WORKERS

UFCW Grocery Workers are mobilzing on Nov. 19 at Oakland,
San Francisco, Berkeley and San Jose grocery stores and
supermarkets.

For information about the UFCW actions and the Locked-Out Local 2
Hotel Workers solidarity actions, contact these web sites:

* www.millionworkermarch.org

* www.unitehere.org

* www.bayareacoaliton.org

Million Worker March Committee,
c/o ILWU Local 10,
400 North Point St., San Francisco, CA 94133
Tel. 415-771-2028

Solidarity Statement from the Million Worker March Committee
with the Local 2 Locked-Out Hotel Workers

Four thousand San Francisco hotel workers have been locked out for
more than a month. Hotel workers in Los Angeles and Washington D.C.
are fighting as well for a contract with a common expiration date.
These are workers who do the most difficult jobs from room cleaners
to cooks to front desk staff. The low wages they receive are designed
to keep them in permanent poverty.

Most of these workers -- many of whom are African-American as
well as Latino and Asian immigrants -- work two jobs to survive
and provide for their families. They are fighting to protect their
health care, pensions, wages and the right to contracts that expire
at the same time as do other hotel contracts around the country so
the bosses cannot fragment the struggle for decent working conditions.

They need our support and the support of workers across America.
By targeting the most vulnerable of workers, the hotel owners are
setting the stage for a generalized assault upon for the healthcare
benefits of all workers in the United States, union and non-union.
Millions of other workers are threatened with contracts that deprive
them of their health care -- from airline to grocery workers.

This is a coordinated corporate offensive. Let there be no mistake
about it. The Hotel owners, representing Hilton, Hyatt, Holiday Inn
and Sheraton and the other major chains, have flown in hundreds
of strikebreakers from around the country to smash the San Francisco
hotel workers and their union. This is a class war on behalf of
corporate and banking America.

The global multinationals, that own the major hotels and other
industries, make profits in the billions, but 61% of U.S. corporations
and 71% of corporations that have offices overseas pay no taxes
at all while their profits soar. These are the stakes.

The Million Worker March Organizing Committee and the Million
Worker Movement (contact www.millionworkermarch.org) call upon
workers to forge their own agenda and to unite in exposing and
resisting the national epidemic of union busting and the all out
attacks on our healthcare, wages, pensions, social services and the
vital infrastructure of our society.

We call on workers everywhere to unite and to support the locked-out
hotel workers on their picket lines. Their fight is our fight. As the
motto of the International Longshore and Warehouse Workers Union
proclaims: "An Injury to One Is An Injury to All."

The defense of the locked-out hotel workers today is a fight to alert
and mobilize workers in America who face give-back contracts that
jeopardize decent healthcare. We call upon rank and file workers
to urge your union to stand with our brothers and sisters:

* Adopt a hotel and join in informational picketing.

* Join us November 20, 2004 at 11:00 a.m. for a "Stand By The
Hotel Workers and Their Pickets" rally in Union Square in San
Francisco followed by a March to join the pickets at key hotels.

* Organize a telephone campaign flooding hotel chain owners with
calls demanding that the bosses pay for healthcare benefits and
open the books on their billion dollar profits.

Keep the struggle alive: defend the right of hotel workers to healthcare,
decent wages and full benefits. In San Francisco the hotels that have
locked out workers include:

Crown Plaza, San Francisco Hilton, Grand Hyatt, Holiday Inn/Civic
Center Holiday Inn/Express @ Wharf, Holiday Inn/Fisherman's
Wharf, Hyatt Regency, OMNI, Palace Hotel, St. Francis Hotel,
Mark Hopkins.

* Toll-free phone numbers for these hotels are:

(866) 655-4669 Holiday Inns

(888) 625-4988 Starwood-St. Francis

(800) 228-3360 Hyatt Hotels

(800) 445-8667 HILTON Hotels

(800) 819-5053 Four Seasons

(800) 465-4329 Intercontinental Hotels-Mark Hopkins

(800) 843-6664 Omni Hotels

* * *


ERS

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

2) Iraqi Insurgents Shoot Down U.S. Army Helicopter
By ROBERT F. WORTH and JAMES GLANZ
FALLUJA, Iraq, Nov. 12
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/12/international/middleeast/12cnd-iraq.html?h
p&ex=1100322000&en=82063e5b6cd40c73&ei=5094&partner=homepage

FALLUJA, Iraq, Nov. 12 - Insurgents shot down an Army helicopter
north of Baghdad today, wounding its three crew members, military
officials in Baghdad said.

Earlier today, insurgents attacked an American patrol in southern
Baghdad, killing one American and wounding three others, the
miiltary said.

The UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter was hit by anti-aircraft fire in
Taji, 12 miles north of the capital, the military said. The crew
members injured in the attack were rescued and are expected
to recover. The helicopter was recovered.

This was the third time an American helicopter was shot down
this week. On Thursday, in separate incidents to the north and
southeast of Falluja, two Super Cobra helicopters were brought
down after being fired on from the ground, military officials said.
Both Marine pilots and their two-man crews escaped after being
picked up by American troops in the area, and one of the pilots
was injured, officials said.

In Falluja, on the fifth day of an American campaign against
insurgents, a battle erupted near a mosque in northwest part
of the city today just hours after the Marines said insurgents were
now trapped in the south of the city, Reuters reported.

"They can't go north because that's where we are,'' Master Sgt. Roy
Meek told Reuters. "They can't go west because of the Euphrates
River and they can't go east because we have a huge presence there.
So they are cornered in the south." The news agency reported that
relief agencies were calling on the interim Iraqi government and
American forces to grant relief workers and medics access to the
city, saying more than a hundred families were in desperate need
of help and describing the situation as a "big disaster."

A military spokeswoman, Capt. Angela Bowman, told Reuters that
Mosul was calm overnight, after insurgents appeared to have opened
up a second front in the fighting by overruning police stations and
laying siege on the provincial headquarters there.

The insurgents in Mosul stormed a half-dozen police stations and
looted the buildings of weapons, ammunition and body armor,
police officials and witnesses said. By the afternoon, they had
seized five bridges running across the Tigris River, which splits
the city in half.

The American military said it had mounted a major counteroffensive
in Mosul hoping to control the violence before guerrillas could seize
the government center. But at nightfall, carloads of guerrillas
continued to roam the streets freely, melting away at the approach
of American troops.

"It's very fluid," Lt. Col. Paul Hastings, an Army spokesman, said in
a telephone interview near midnight. "It's been going on for much
of the day, and it's still going on."

Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, the commander of American forces in
northern Iraq, said in an e-mail message early today from his
headquarters in Mosul that there had been "some tough fighting"
on Thursday, but that the city was "quite calm" at the moment.
"I do expect more attacks on Friday," General Ham said, adding that
it was "hard to say if the enemy includes some who may have left
Falluja, but clearly they are responding to operations there."

Violence surged throughout the Sunni triangle west of Baghdad, with
ambushes, bombings and mortar attacks jolting Tikrit, Kirkuk,
Hawija, Samarra and the provincial capital of Ramadi, just 30 miles
west of Falluja. Iraqi officials have imposed curfews on Baghdad,
Mosul, Baiji, Ramadi and Falluja. A curfew has been in place in
Samarra since last month.

American military officials have said in recent days that insurgent
leaders probably fled Falluja before the assault on the city began
and could be organizing the counter offensive now unfolding
across the country.

The invasion of Falluja, now in its fifth day, is seen by military
planners as a way to smash the largest safe haven for the insurgency
in Iraq. Since the assault began on Monday, about 600 rebels have
been killed, along with at least 19 American and 5 Iraqi soldiers,
military officials said.

American marines and soldiers seem to be carrying out a pincer
movement in Falluja, pressing insurgents ever farther south in intense
fighting. But the military has been forced to detach an armored
battalion from its cordon operation around Falluja to help quell
violence in Mosul, about 200 miles to the north, siphoning off about
a third of the forces that had been put in place to catch insurgents
attempting to flee the fighting here.

In downtown Baghdad, a powerful suicide car bomb exploded on
a busy commercial street Thursday morning, killing at least 17 people
and wounding at least 30 others. In the evening, explosions rattled
across the capital with a frequency not seen here since August, when
American soldiers fought a Shiite uprising in the south.

In Falluja, the Second Battalion of the Seventh Cavalry pressed south
and east from Highway 10, which runs across the middle of the city,
sparking heavy fighting in the neighborhoods of Resala, Nazal and
Jebail. Another unit, the Second Battalion of the Second Infantry,
swung south and west through an industrial area, seemingly
trapping the insurgents in a pincer.

But in the center of the movement, heading due south, a Marine
battalion ran into ambushes, stiff counterattacks and at least one
booby-trapped house, all of which slowed their advance. This
advance moved through Sinai, a neighborhood known both for
car garages and hidden weapons caches, and Shuhada, a relatively
modern residential area at Falluja's southernmost edge.

"They're all over the place," a Marine officer, Lt. Christopher Wilkens,
said. "They're very well trained."

Still, some insurgents have tried to escape across the Euphrates
River to the south and west of the city by boat or swimming. On
Thursday, Apache gunship helicopters destroyed five rowboats and
a motorboat as insurgents prepared to board them.

Insurgents in the towns and rural areas to the north of Falluja have
become more sophisticated in their bomb and mortar attacks,
military officials said. In one apparently coordinated attack on
Thursday near Karma, one group fired mortars at an American
position. As an armored vehicle began moving on the only road
leading to the mortar's point of origin, another group detonated
a roadside bomb and began firing mortars at the vehicle. No one
was injured in the attack.

Military commanders had hoped to take time in the next few days
to clear out insurgents thought to be congregating in Karma, north
of Falluja, and Amariya, to the south. But with the armored battalion,
called a Stryker group, headed up to Mosul, that operation could
become much more difficult.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, arriving Thursday in El Salvador
at the start of official visits across Central and South America, said
the American and Iraqi offensive in Falluja was going well and that
hundreds of adversary fighters had already been killed.

"They are well along in that task and they'll finish it successfully,"
Mr. Rumsfeld said. "It will end, and it will end successfully, and it
will no longer be a safe haven for terrorists or extremists."

Mr. Rumsfeld acknowledged that an unknown number of insurgent
leaders and fighters had fled Falluja before the offensive began.
"I have no doubt but that some people did leave before it started,"
he said. "We also know that there are a number of hundreds that
didn't and have been killed. Others have been captured."

As American forces continued their advance through Falluja, support
troops were filtering into more secure parts of the city to begin what
officials called an ambitious relief and reconstruction effort. "The
marines and Iraqis are working to bring humanitarian assistance
right behind tactical units once areas are clear and secure," one
senior American officer in Iraq said in an e-mail message.
"There is, for example, already food and water going in to
certain areas, and Iraqi medical assistance/supplies going
into the hospital."

One of the Super Cobra helicopters came down just west of Falluja
after being struck by a shoulder-fired missile. The pilot and crew
were rescued by the Third Light Armored Regiment, which is posted
nearby. The other helicopter was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade
10 miles north of the city. The pilot was rescued but the burning
helicopter was destroyed.

On Thursday afternoon, the Muslim Scholars Association, a powerful
group of Sunni clerics that says it represents 3,000 mosques, held
a news conference in Baghdad at which it condemned the offensive
in Falluja and renewed its call for a boycott of elections scheduled
for January. The clerics have been uncompromising in their stand
against the Americans and the interim Iraqi government, and it is
unclear how much impact their protest will have on the elections.
A spokesman for the group said American-led forces conducted
dawn raids on the homes of Harith al-Dhari, the group's director,
and Abdul Salam al-Kubaisi, a senior official, in the capital.

If a widespread Sunni boycott of the elections were to ensue, it could
jeopardize the legitimacy of the vote. Sunnis make up a fifth of Iraq
and are still embittered after having been ousted from power during
the initial American invasion.

American and Iraqi officials have also said they need to dampen the
insurgency in Ramadi. The Marines still control the government center
and police headquarters, and maintain bases on the edge of downtown,
but are fending off daily assaults.

In the northern oil city of Kirkuk, a car bomb aimed at a convoy
carrying the Kurdish provincial governor, Abdul-Rahman Mustafa,
exploded in the city center, wounding 16 people, news agencies
reported. In Baquba, about 30 men attacked an Iraqi National Guard
post at dawn, killing one guardsman and injuring three others.
A mortar attack on a national guard compound in Hawija wounded
eight people, and a car bomb at a petrol station in Hilla injured four.

No word emerged of the fate of three relatives of the Iraqi prime
minister, Ayad Allawi , who were kidnapped on Tuesday night.
A group called Ansar al-Jihad posted an Internet message on
Wednesday saying it would behead the hostages within 48 hours
unless Dr. Allawi halted the invasion of Falluja and released all
prisoners in Iraq. Those kidnapped were Ghazi Majeed Allawi,
a 75-year-old first cousin, his wife and their daughter-in-law.

A Lebanese satellite channel broadcast a tape showing weeping
relatives of one of the women begging for her release, Reuters
reported. The relatives said the captive, Wasnaa Muhammad Jaafar
Husseini, was nine months pregnant. "She's pregnant, and she can't
hold up to this," said a sobbing woman who identified herself as
Ms. Husseini's sister.

Robert Worth reported from Falluja and James Glanz from Baghdad.

Ed Wong and Khalid al-Ansary contributed reporting from Baghdad,
Dexter Filkins from Falluja, an Iraqi employee of The New York
Times from Mosul, Eric Schmitt from Washington, Thom Shanker
from El Salvador and Maria Newman from New York.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times

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

3) Falluja a 'Big Disaster,' Aid Needed - Red Crescent
By Omar Anwar
BAGHDAD (Reuters)
Fri Nov 12, 2004 07:37 AM ET
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6798438&src=eD
ialog/GetContent§ion=news

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Aid agencies called on U.S. forces and the Iraqi
government to allow them to deliver food, medicine and water
to Falluja on Friday and said four days of intense fighting had turned
the city into a "big disaster."

The Iraqi Red Crescent Society, which receives support from foreign
agencies including the Red Cross and UNICEF, said it had asked
U.S. forces and Iraq's interim government to let them deliver relief
goods to Falluja and establish medics there.

But it said it had received no reply.

"We call on the Iraqi government and U.S. forces to allow us to do
our humanitarian duty to the innocent people," said Firdoos al-Ubadi,
Red Crescent spokeswoman.

"This is their responsibility," she said, adding that judging by reports
received from refugees and pictures broadcast on television, Falluja
was a "big disaster."

A U.S. military spokesman said the Red Crescent had permission
to help refugees in towns around Falluja, but could not say if it had
been granted access to the city itself.

The Red Crescent has seven teams of doctors and relief workers,
backed by trucks of food and other aid ready to go into each
of Falluja's districts when the word is given.

About 10,000 U.S. soldiers and Marines, backed by heavy artillery
and war planes, surged into Falluja from several directions on
Monday night, launching an offensive on rebels.

The U.S. military estimates that 600 militants have been killed in
four days of street fighting.

Scores of buildings in Falluja have been completely destroyed, with
TV footage showing some districts all but leveled. There has been
no water and electricity for days and food shops have been closed,
residents say. The stench of dead bodies is hanging over some areas
of the city, the say.

HIT BY SHRAPNEL

U.S. commanders say civilian casualties have been low, but residents
dispute that, describing incidents in which non-combatants, including
women and children, have been killed by shrapnel or hit by bombs.

In one case earlier this week, a 9-year-old boy died after being hit
in the stomach by shrapnel. Unable to reach a hospital, he died hours
later of blood loss.

"Anyone who gets injured is likely to die because there's no medicine
and they can't get to doctors," said Abdul-Hameed Salim, a volunteer
with the Iraqi Red Crescent. "There are snipers everywhere. Go outside
and you're going to get shot."

Rasoul Ibrahim, a father of three, fled Falluja on Thursday morning and
arrived with his wife and children in Habbaniya, about 12 miles to the
west, on Thursday night.

He said families left in the city were in desperate need.

"There's no water. People are drinking dirty water. Children are dying.
People are eating flour because there's no proper food," he told aid
workers in Habbaniya, which has become a refugee camp, with around 2,000
families sheltering there.

Ubadi said many families taking refuge in Habbaniya and other villages
nearby were suffering from diarrhea and malnutrition and needed medicine as
well as basic necessities such as lentils, sugar, bread, tea and candles.

An aid convoy reached Habbinya on Thursday to help hundreds of families
living in schools, shops and tents on the streets, but the biggest concern
is now Falluja, where the Red Crescent has identified at least 150 families
in desperate need.

She said a convoy of aid, including drinking water, food and medicine, was
ready to leave for Falluja from Amiriya, a town to the south, but needed
permission from U.S. forces.

(c) Copyright Reuters 2004.

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

4) Falluja Battle Erupts, Unrest Spreads Elsewhere
By Michael Georgy and Fadel al-Badrani
FALLUJA (Reuters)
Fri Nov 12, 2004 09:34 AM ET
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6799628&src=eD
ialog/GetContent§ion=news

FALLUJA (Reuters) - A battle erupted near a mosque in northwest Falluja
Friday just hours after U.S. Marines said insurgents were now trapped in
the south of the city.

Insurgents determined to show they are undeterred by the four-day-old
offensive in Iraq's most rebellious city have hit back hard with attacks
and bombings elsewhere, causing two days of bloody chaos in the northern
city of Mosul.

Iraqi authorities struggling to contain the unrest roiling Sunni Muslim
cities have imposed curfews on Baghdad, Mosul, Baiji, Ramadi and Falluja
this week. A curfew has been in force in Samarra since U.S.-led forces
stormed it last month.

U.S. Captain Angela Bowman described Mosul as calm overnight, with its
three million residents under a dusk-to-dawn curfew, after Thursday's
attacks on nine police stations.

An American soldier was killed in the Mosul fighting, the military said,
and Bowman said U.S. planes staged air strikes on Thursday as U.S. and
Iraqi forces sought to restore order.

"Iraqi National Guard and multinational forces are restoring security to
those areas of the city where terrorists are attacking from, primarily in
the southwestern area," she said.

Machinegun fire and grenade blasts echoed across northern Baghdad's Sunni
Adhamiya district Friday as rebels fought national guards, witnesses said.
The clashes subsided later.

Heavy fighting resumed in Falluja's northwestern Jolan district, where
resistance had dwindled in the previous 24 hours, a Reuters correspondent
with Marines in the area said.

Gunmen emerged on a rooftop beside a mosque as Marine tanks headed for the
area. Troops evacuated two U.S. casualties.

Smoke rose from an ice factory on the edge of Jolan after rebels fired
three rockets at U.S. forces there, residents said. A huge explosion shook
Jolan later, but its cause was not clear.

The U.S. military acknowledges that insurgent leaders and foreign militants
may have fled Falluja before the attack began Monday night, but says those
who remain are bottled up.

"They can't go north because that's where we are. They can't go west
because of the Euphrates river and they can't go east because we have a
huge presence there. So they are cornered in the south," Marine Master
Sergeant Roy Meek told Reuters.

"BIG DISASTER"

Tank crews said they had driven rebels through a "ghost town" to a southern
area the Americans say is a stronghold for foreign militants led by al
Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

The U.S. military says 18 U.S. and at least 5 Iraqi troops have been killed
and 178 American soldiers wounded in Falluja.

The Iraqi Red Crescent Society urged U.S. forces and the Iraqi government
to let it deliver food, medicine and water to Falluja, describing
conditions there as a "big disaster."

"We call on the Iraqi government and U.S. forces to allow us to do our
humanitarian duty to the innocent people," said Red Crescent spokeswoman
Firdoos al-Ubadi.

A U.S. military spokesman said the Red Crescent had permission to help the
many civilians who have fled Falluja, but could not say if it had been
granted access to the city itself.

Rasoul Ibrahim, a father of three, fled Falluja on foot on Thursday morning
and arrived with his wife and children in Habbaniya, about 12 miles to the
west, at night.

He said families left in the city were in desperate need.

"There's no water. People are drinking dirty water. Children are dying.
People are eating flour because there's no proper food," he told aid
workers in Habbaniya, which has become a refugee camp, with around 2,000
families sheltering there.

Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, writing in Britain's Sun newspaper,
said the Falluja offensive would improve security across Iraq and pave the
way for elections due in January.

Violence in Falluja and elsewhere in Iraq has taken a toll on U.S. forces.
Two planes ferried 102 seriously wounded soldiers from Iraq to the main
U.S. military hospital in Germany Thursday, joining 125 who arrived earlier
in the week.

Marie Shaw, spokeswoman at Landstuhl hospital, said 11 more soldiers
wounded in combat were due to arrive Friday.

U.S. spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Steve Boylan said in Baghdad an estimated
600 rebels had died in Falluja so far.

Insurgents have kidnapped Dean Sadek, an American of Lebanese origin who
works at Baghdad airport, Al Jazeera television said. It showed Sadek and
his identity papers in a video issued by a group called the 1920 Revolution
Brigades. (Additional reporting by Omar Anwar, Luke Baker and Lin
Noueihed in Baghdad, Sabah al-Bazee in Samarra and Dubai bureau)

(c) Copyright Reuters 2004.

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

5) Subject: Mordechai released again!
From: Jeanie Shaterian
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 17:42:10 -0800


Mordechai is released and back at St. George's, his things returned.
Ha'aretz said the release was to discourage him from speaking to the press.
He said this afternoon on Israeli TV in English, "One, two, three times, how
many times do they need to arrest me for the same thing?" He is under house
arrest, the conditions to be announced. He is exhausted but otherwise okay.

The Presiding Bishop made a strong statement to Israeli and US authorities.

Hope you are well!

Jeanie
"Your imagination is your preview of life's coming attractions." - Albert
Einstein
Jacqueline Cabasso, Executive Director
Western States Legal Foundation
1504 Franklin Street, Suite #202
Oakland, California USA 94612
Tel: (510) 839-5877 Fax: (510) 839-5397
E-mail: wslf@earthlink.net
Web site: www.wslfweb.org
part of the Abolition 2000 Global Network to
Eliminate Nuclear Weapons

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

6) Bush and Blair Meet to Discuss Mideast Peace
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:41 p.m. ET
November 12, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bush-Blair.html?hp&ex=1100322000
&en=a8a52044c77f3a90&ei=5094&partner=homepage

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush said Friday the death of Yasser Arafat
provides ``a great chance to establish a Palestinian state'' and a broader
Middle East peace.

At a joint White House news conference, Bush and British Prime Minister Tony
Blair pledged their support for a fresh stab at peace. The president said it
was up to Palestinians to elect a democratic government and Arafat's
successors to allow freedoms to take root.

``We'll hold their feet to the fire to make sure that democracy prevails,''
he said.

Bush, whose policy in Iraq frayed relations with France, Germany and other
traditional allies, also said he intends to travel to Europe as soon as
possible after his second inaugural, on Jan. 20.

He said he looked forward to using the ``combined strength of Europe and
America'' to advance freedom.

The leaders spoke from the stately East Room shortly after the Palestinian
leader was laid to rest in a chaotic scene in Ramallah. The Bush and Blair
governments hope a change in Palestinian leadership might open new avenues
toward peace.

There was fresh news, too, in Iraq, a chilling reminder of the perilous life
of the Middle East: Insurgents downed a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter
north of Baghdad, wounding three crew members. In their two days of
meetings, Blair had hoped to shift Bush's attention from Iraq to the stalled
Mideast peace process.

While the president coupled his call for a Palestinian state with his
unwavering support of Israeli security, Blair stressed the need to bolster
Palestinians.

``If we want a viable Palestinian state, we want to make sure the political,
the economic and the security infrastructure of that state is shaped and
comes into being,'' the British prime minister said.

``We've got the chance over the next few months, with the election of a new
Palestinian president, to put the first marker down,'' Blair said.

Bush didn't commit to a Mideast conference or sending a U.S. envoy to the
region -- two items sought by Europeans. But he did talk more optimistically
than usual about the prospects for a Palestinian state.

``I intend to use the next four years to spend the capital of the United
States on such a state,'' Bush said. ``I believe it is in the interests of
the world that such a truly free state develop. I know it is in the interest
of the Palestinian people.''

He said there was a ``new opportunity'' for resolving the decades-old
stalemate and put the onus on the new Palestinian leadership.

The United States is ``looking forward to working with Palestinian leaders
who are committed to fighting terrorism and committed to democratic
reform,'' Bush said.

Arafat was viewed as a hero by Palestinians, a terrorist by Israel. Bush
refused to deal with the Palestinian leader in his final years.

The president sounded cool about the prospects of attending an international
conference on Middle East peace. ``I'm all for conferences,'' he said,
``just as long as a conference produces something.''

Blair lost political ground at home for being Bush's steadfast comrade in
the U.S.-led war in Iraq that was unpopular in Europe.

Bush dismissed critics of Blair who call the British prime minister a lackey
of the United States. ``He's plenty capable of making up his own mind'' on
Iraq and other issues, Bush said. ``When times get tough, he doesn't wilt.''

Bush and Blair said the prime minister's motives are pure -- protecting the
British people.

``We are not fighting the war against terrorism because we are an ally of
the United States,'' Blair said. ``We are an ally of the United States
because we believe in fighting this war on terrorism. ... We share the same
objectives, we share the same values.''

Bush opened the news conference by calling Blair ``a statesman and a
friend'' and said U.S.-British relations have never been stronger. He listed
accomplishments by the nations' forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.

He warned that with upcoming Iraqi elections, ``the desperation of the
killers will grow and the violence could escalate.'' But he said victory in
Iraq would be a blow to terrorists everywhere.

Bush and Blair both said they oppose any attempt by Iran to develop nuclear
weapons. ``There's an agreement in the international community'' on that,
said the British leader.

Copyright 2004 The Associated Press

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

7) Subject: In Memory of Yasser Arafat
From: "fpa-news"
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 19:45:58 -0500
To: fpa-newslist@freepalestinealliance.org
Resent-From: fpa-newslist@freepalestinealliance.org
Resent-Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 20:11:50 -0500

In Memory of a Fallen Leader

In honor and remembrance of the passing of the Chairman of the Executive
Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization and President of the
Palestine National Authority, Yasser Arafat, the Free Palestine Alliance -
USA, joins our people in Palestine and throughout exile in calling on the
Palestinian and Arab community and all peace and justice loving people in
the United States to observe 3 full days of national mourning, remembrance,
and a steadfast of reciprocal solidarity and unity.

We call on all to display on their homes, institutions and property
Palestinian flags, scarfs, or other symbols of the Palestinian national
movement for liberation and justice.

The life and passing of Abu Ammar embodies the very struggle of our people
in their totality, in all of its opposing complexities, critical junctures,
endless pain, and stubborn victories. Like him, many have passed before,
either as a result of curfews, confinement, and imprisonment, or by rockets,
bullets, tanks and fighter planes. In all, the target has always been
Palestine, yet the victor will always be Palestine. With every fallen
leader, we inch forward in our journey home - be it in a coffin through
France and Egypt, or on the shoulders of our embattled youth, we are
destined to go home free and liberated of Israeli Apartheid and colonial
bigotry.

The legacy of Yasser Arafat is inextricable from that of the entirety of not
only the Palestinian people, but all those struggling for freedom. Through
the confinement of Yasser Arafat during the assault on Janin Camp, the
attempt was to imprison Palestine. Today, and during the assault on Falluja
and the people of Iraq, the Arab people bid farewell to a sea of victims
from the hills of Palestine to the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates, as
the attempt to imprison Iraq intensifies.

As we hold our tears back for those who have fallen in the camps of exile
and Palestine and the streets of Iraq, and as we salute in struggle convoys
of passing leadership, we know too well that ours is inevitably the future.

Let every flag and kuffiyya fly high in honor of all those who have passed -
from Falluja to Rafah and from Baghdad to Jerusalem.

The Free Palestine Alliance - USA
November 11, 2004

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

8) Ever Upward: At Nearly 1.5 Million,
US Prison Population at New High
11/12/04
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/362/upward.shtml

The number of people in prison in the United States increased again last
year, according to a report released Sunday by the Justice Department's
Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). According to the annual report,
American prisons held 1,470,045 inmates as of December 31, 2003, an increase
of 2.1% over the previous year. (For those wondering about the oft-cited
figure of 2.2 million prisoners in the US, the discrepancy lies in the fact
that Sunday's report does not count people imprisoned in jails.)

Southern Correctional Institution, Troy, NC
The drug war continues to play a significant role in the expansion of the
prison population. According to BJS, 20% of all prison inmates are serving
time for drug charges. "Drug-related" crimes, such as property theft by
addicts or violent conflict-resolution in unregulated drug markets, and to a
much lesser degree, drug-induced violence, create an unknown number of
additional drug war-related inmates.

Despite sentencing reforms that began taking hold in various states
beginning in the late 1990s, the number of state prisoners continues to
increase, rising by 1.6% last year. In California, for instance, where
voters passed the "treatment not prison" Proposition 36 in 2002, the state
prison population increased by more than 3,000 people last year. Similarly,
in Texas, where authorities have moved to ease parole revocations in a move
to keep inmate numbers down, the inmate population actually increased by
nearly 5,000.

But once again, the federal prison system and the federal war on drugs are
the prime factor pushing the numbers higher. The federal prison population
grew by 5.8%, nearly four times the rate of growth in the states. While
only slightly more than one-tenth the size of the combined state prison
systems, federal prisons accounted for fully one-third of the growth in
prisoners, accounting for 9,500 of the nearly 30,000-prisoner increase in
the overall prison population last year. With drug offenders making up 55%
of all federal prisoners (only 13% are doing time for violent crimes), the
federal drug war is the driving force not only in the increase in federal
prisoners but in the overall increase in prisoners nationwide.

Given the long-term decrease in overall crime rates since 1991, BJS noted
that the government's version of "sentencing reform," as the report called
it, had actually increased both prison admissions and average sentence
length in the period since 1995, with annual admissions jumping from 522,000
that year to 615,000 in 2003. Similar, sentence lengths increased from an
average of 23 months to 30 months during the same period.

"This increase is largely due to policy changes that have increased the
amount of time offenders are serving in prison," said the sentencing reform
group The Sentencing Project in a statement greeting the BJS report. "These
include such measures as 'three-strikes,' mandatory sentencing, and 'truth
in sentencing,'" the group noted.

In one landmark, again largely a function of the drug war, the number of
women prison inmates has passed the 100,000 mark for the first time. As The
Sentencing Project noted, "The rapid growth in the rate of women's
incarceration -- at nearly double the rate for men over the past two decades
-- is disproportionately due to the war on drugs. Women in prison are more
likely than men (30% vs. 20%) to be serving a sentence for a drug charge."

The US also retains its status as the world's greatest jailer nation. With
an imprisonment rate of 714 per 100,000 population, the US easily outpaced
second-place Russia with its rate of 584 per 100,000. The US imprisonment
rate is nearly four times that of neighboring Mexico (169) and more than
five times that of Great Britain (141).

As a result of the imprisonment binge, American prisons are stuffed past
capacity, with all that implies for the quality of life behind bars.
According to BJS, state prisons were operating at as much as 116% of
capacity, while the federal prison system is operating at 39% above
capacity.

Last but not least, blacks continued to be the largest group of prisoners,
making up 44% of all inmates, compared to 35% white and 19% Hispanic, with
2% "other." These proportions have gone almost unchanged in the past
decade, BJS noted.

Read the BJS report, "Prisoners in 2003," at
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/p03.htm online.

-- END --

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Issue #362, 11/12/04 Editorial: The Spirit of Lawfulness |Ever Upward: At
Nearly 1.5 Million, US Prison Population at New High |In an Hour of
Conservative Ascendancy: Prospects for Drug Reform at the Federal Level
During the Next Four Years |Syracuse Reconsiders Drug Policy |Newsbrief:
Congressional Drug Warrior Threatens Canada Over Marijuana Legislation
|Newsbrief: In New Twist in Thai Drug War, Police Detain and Drug Test Club
Goers |Newsbrief: Ann Arbor Officials to Ignore Voters' Will on Medical
Marijuana |Newsbrief: Georgia Supreme Court Says Wife Can't Consent to
Search of Home Against Husband's Will |Newsbrief: Austin, Texas, Cop Killed
Enforcing Marijuana Possession Law |Newsbrief: Supreme Court to Look at Drug
Dogs in Traffic Stops |This Week in History |The DARE Generation Returns to
DC: Students for Sensible Drug Policy 2004 National Conference Next Month
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---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

9) New College of California
Center for Education and Social Action (CESA)
Listing of Peace and Social Justice Events, November 12 - 15, 2004


Nov 12 at New College - Yael Berda: Defending Political Dissent in Israel
and Palestine

Nov 13 at Castro Theater; Nov 14 at Roxie Cinema - 3rdI's Second Annual
International South Asian Film Festival

Nov 15 at New College - Media Technology and Democracy Post-Election 2004:
Where Do We Go from Here?

Yael Berda:
Defending Political Dissent in Israel and Palestine

Friday, November 12th; 5:30 pm: reception; 7:00 pm: Yael Berda will speak
New College Cultural Center, 766 Valencia Street, San Francisco

Visiting Israeli human rights attorney and community organizer, Yael Berda
will speak on the current struggle to defend political dissent in both
Israel and occupied Palestine. Drawing on her experience as both a community
organizer and a defense attorney for various political prisoners, Yael Berda
will give an overview of the state of dissent within Israel and the rising
voices to bring an end to social, economic and cultural oppression, as well
as the occupation. She will address how people both inside Israel and in the
United States can act as solidarity allies to Israelis and Palestinians in
building solutions through a non-violent struggle.

Please join us in an evening of discussion and organizing to protect
democratic dissent and the fight for social justice!

Donations of $5-20 accepted at the door. Proceeds to go towards the
International Solidarity Movement, the NLG and legal aid projects in
Palestine and Israel. No one turned away for lack of funds.

Sponsored by Northern California Support Group of the International
Solidarity Movement, Bay Area Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild and New
College Center for Education and Social Action. For more information about
this event, please contact jon@newcollege.edu or call 415-437-3425.

New College's Women's Spirituality Program and the Activism and Social
Change Emphases are co-sponsoring some of the films at
3rd I's Second Annual South Asian film Festival

Saturday, November 13 at the The Castro Theater, S.F.
Sunday, November 14 at the Roxie Cinema, S.F.

3rdI's Second Annual International South Asian Film Festival will be held
Saturday, November 13 at the Castro Theater and Sunday, November 14 at the
Roxie Cinema. This is a great opportunity to see films showcasing diverse
images of Indians and other South Asians through art house classics to
documentary films, from innovative and experimental visions to classic
Bollywood.

We will be screening Ritwak Ghatak's film, "Jukti Takko Aar Gappo" (Reason,
Argument & Story) -- this is a choice opportunity to see this rarely
screened gem. "Second Generation" about second generation South Asian youth
living their lives in sync with the pulse of their London, on Saturday
11/13 at the Castro with actress Parminder Nagra from Bend it Llike Beckham
and ER (Nagra will be here for a Q&A post screening) . Naturally we have a
tribute to Bollywood with Shah Rukh Khan's latest "Main Hoon Na" (8:00pm
11/13) at the Castro which isn't all campy fun and frivolity -- it does
attempt to address the conflict with India & Pakistan -- and works for the
whole family as well.

Sunday's schedule includes a film in Marathi "Eternity" (Anahaat) adapted
from the original play in Hindi by Surendra Verma "Surya Ki Antim Kiran Se
Pehli Kiran Tak.'; the documentary "Starkiss: Circus Girls in India" about
the Great Rayman Circus and the harrowing life the Nepalese girls who are
recruited for the circus go through
(http://www.thirdi.org/festival/film/starkiss.htm); and"Laatoo", a
documentary about the Pakistani dance world. We have two great shorts
programs: a selection of South Asian women's short films (from the Bay Area
to Bangladesh) with the award winning A Certain Liberation
http://www.thirdi.org/festival/film/womenshorts.htm; and lastly a collection
of South Asian British shorts.

Last year most shows soled out so we suggest you purchase your tickets
online in advance. For film program and to purchase tickets in advance,
please visit: http://www.thirdi.org/festival/index.htm or call 415
835.4781.

Media Technology and Democracy Post-Election 2004:
Where Do We Go from Here?

Monday, November 15th, 7- 9 pm
New College Cultural Center, 766 Valencia Street, San Francisco

What are the lessons of the 2004 elections regarding media, new technology
and politics? What is on the horizon for the media democracy and media
justice movements? Media technology has the capacity for both liberation and
oppression; it can enlighten and obfuscate; serve the interests of progress
or reaction. From the perspective of the recent elections, an outstanding
panel talks about the future of media technology and democracy.

Panelists:

Dan Coughlin, Executive Director of Pacifica Radio. He was appointed the
Executive Director of Pacifica Radio in January 2002. Under his stewardship,
the network pulled itself back from the brink of bankruptcy following a
debilitating 2-year internal struggle. Pacifica has since undergone the
largest financial and audience expansion in the network's 55-year history
while transforming itself into a membership organization with national
elections for its board of directors. Coughlin previously served as the
network's news director and as a producer of Democracy Now! He came to
Pacifica from Inter Press Service (IPS) Third World News Agency, a wire
service specializing in the Global South, where he worked as a senior editor

Jan Frel, Political Editor of AlterNet - the highly acclaimed Internet
information source that provides readers with crucial facts and passionate
opinions. He recently worked on the Dean for America campaign in Vermont,
and before that he worked for the public interest journal TomPaine.com. Jan
graduated from St. Andrews University Scotland with a degree in Geography.
He says he could have been a better student.

Art McGee, communications, media, and technology consultant with Online
Policy Group. Art McGee has over 15 years of experience in the corporate and
non-profit arenas. He has worked with organizations such as Project Change
(AntiRacismNet), Media Alliance (San Francisco), TAO Communications (now
known as the Organization for Autonomous Communications), the Center for
Third World Organizing (CTWO), the Black Radical Congress (BRC), and the
Institute for Global Communications (The World's First Non-Profit Internet
Service Provider), among many others.

Thenmozhi Soundararjan, Co-founder and Executive Director, Third World
Majority. She is a filmmaker, singer, and grassroots media activist. As a
second generation Tamil Untouchable woman, she strives to connect grassroots
organizers in developing countries with media resources that can widen their
base of resistance. She was the director and founder of the Center for
Digital Storytelling's national community programs in which she developed
the framework for community based digital storytelling. In that capacity she
has worked with over 200 communities around the country developing grounded
new media practices for their work. Further she is in residence at the MIT
Center for Reflective Community Practice writing about her experiences with
community based digital storytelling. She is also a 2001-2002 Eureka
foundation fellow.

Donation: $5 - 10 (sliding scale; no one turned away for lack of funds)

This event is sponsored by New College Center for Education and Social
Action. For more information about this event, please contact
jon@newcollege.edu or call 415-437-3425.

New College Center for Education & Social Action (CESA)
Listing of peace and social justice events emailed weekly.
To subscribe or unsubscribe: jon@newcollege.edu
For information: Jon Garfield: (415) 437-3425.
New College CESA: http://www.newcollege.edu/cesa
New College of California: http://www.newcollege.edu

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

PEACE!

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distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and
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posted 1:01 PM  0 comments

Dear friends who organized, participated, and/or spoke in the
demonstrations sponsored by Not in Our Name and ANSWER
on Nov. 3 and Nov. 9.

At the concluding rally of the emergency demonstration ANSWER
called to protest the U.S. assault on Fallujah, Jahahara, of AFSC
and N'COBRA, issued a kind of challenge to all the major antiwar
organizations to make a unified response to the U.S. government's
war against Iraq. He called on the national organizations, of which
we are all affiliated to one or more-ANSWER, UFPJ, NION-to unify
in building a massive antiwar movement.

This call is so timely because the war and occupation continue
unabated, the consequences for the Iraqis are devastating (over
100,000 civilians killed by U.S. actions) and over 1,110 U.S. troops
are dead and tens of thousands injured.

Those of us who are old enough to have participated in the
movement against the U.S. war on Vietnam know that the most
effective mass actions against that war that called for bringing all
U.S. troops home now [Out Now!] were unified actions where
people of different ideologies were able to come together for
Out Now despite their divergent opinions on other topics. The
mass movement that was built on the streets of the U.S. created
a supportive environment for U.S. soldiers to resist the war in
multiple ways eventually becoming an unreliable fighting force
for U.S. imperialism.

Now, it is very clear from all who spoke at the last two
demonstrations, that we have wide areas of agreement. We all
agree about the need for the movement to get back into the streets
to protest the war in massive demonstrations. We all spoke
about the need for unity. We all spoke about the way to bring
peace and end the war, was for the U.S. government to get out of
Iraq.

The next step is for all our organizations to meet together and
concretely plan how this unity will be carried out.

Bay Area United Against War is willing to host such a meeting,
or participate in such a meeting called by others.

Let's make it happen.

Bring the Troops Home Now!
Carole Seligman, Bay Area United Against War (BAUAW)

COME TO THE NEXT BAUAW MEETING AND BRING YOUR IDEAS ON HOW TO
ACHIEVE UNITY IN THE MOVEMENT:

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 15TH, 7:00 p.m.
1380 Valencia Street
(Between 24th & 25th Streets, SF)
BAUAW: 415-824-8730

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

1) U.S. Troops Comb Falluja;
Baghdad Bomb Kills 17
By Michael Georgy and Fadel al-Badrani
FALLUJA, Iraq (Reuters)
Thu Nov 11, 2004 08:10 AM ET
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6786158&src=eD
ialog/GetContent§ion=news

2) US troops are reportedly using chemical weapons and poisonous
gas in its large-scale offensive on the Iraqi resistance bastion
of Fallujah
http://www.islamonline.org/English/News/2004-11/10/article05.shtml

3) US Assault Leaves Fallujah in Ruins
and Unknown Numbers Dead
By James Cogan
11 November 2004
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/nov2004/fall-n11.shtml

4) Arafat: Israel seals West Bank and Gaza
11 November 2004
http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=581644&host=3&dir=75

5) Alberto Gonzales: A Record of Injustice

6) TANKS APPEAR AT ANTI-WAR PROTEST IN WESTWOOD, CA

7) Iraqi democrats against ocupation IDAO site
published this news: 9 November, Iraqi Railway workers
boycott supplies to US troops
www.idao.org

8) Companies Sue Union Retirees
To Cut Promised Health Benefits
Firms Claim Right to Change
Coverage, Attempt to Pick
Sympathetic Jurisdictions
The Process Server Pays a Call
By ELLEN E. SCHULTZ
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
November 10, 2004; Page A1

9) Mordechai Vannunu arrested
Call the Israeli Consulate 415-844-7500 in SF lets flood them with
phone calls demanding the release of Mordechai. also anyone intersted
in doing an action in the Israeli Consulate in regards to this let
Me Know off line i would be up for doing that.
peace
keith
Mordechai Vanunu:
An Interview
By Johannes Wahlstrom, Jerusalem

10) Hard Lesson in Battle: 150
Marines Meet 1 Sniper
THE INSURGENTS
By DEXTER FILKINS
FALLUJA, Iraq
November 11, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/11/international/middleeast/11snipers.html?hp
&ex=1100235600&en=0879c52c261dfe9b&ei=5094&partner=homepage

11) As U.S. Advances in Falluja,
New Fighting Erupts in Northern Iraq
By JAMES GLANZ and MARIA NEWMAN
BAGHDAD
November 11, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/11/international/middleeast/11cnd-iraq.html?
hp&ex=1100235600&en=b76e3d2520471f73&ei=5094&partner=homepage

12) Europe Must Adapt to U.S. View on
Terror, NATO Chief Says
By WARREN HOGE
UNITED NATIONS
November 11, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/11/international/europe/11cnd-nato.html?hp&ex
=1100235600&en=95c8c80a284ba55a&ei=5094&partner=homepage

13) The Things They Wrote
VETERANS DAY
November 11, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/11/opinion/11intro.html

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

1) U.S. Troops Comb Falluja;
Baghdad Bomb Kills 17
By Michael Georgy and Fadel al-Badrani
FALLUJA, Iraq (Reuters)
Thu Nov 11, 2004 08:10 AM ET
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6786158&src=eD
ialog/GetContent§ion=news

FALLUJA, Iraq (Reuters) - U.S. troops hunted rebels in the battered Iraqi
city of Falluja on Thursday, but rebels hit back with an armed rampage
in Mosul and a powerful car bomb that killed 17 people in a crowded
Baghdad street.

The late morning car bomb in the heart of the Iraqi capital also wounded
at least 20, a police source said.

A Reuters reporter saw four bodies in burned-out cars after the blast
near a police patrol in a busy street just off Nasr Square. The bomb
devastated a nearby building and littered the street with twisted metal
and glass from shattered shop windows.

The Falluja assault has provoked an upsurge in violence elsewhere
in Iraq, as happened in April during an earlier failed U.S. attempt
to subdue the country's most rebellious city.

Marines fired mortar barrages against elusive guerrillas in Falluja's Jolan
district as tanks squeezed down alleys to eliminate resistance on the
third full day of the offensive.

Impacts from relentless mortar blasts and sporadic artillery fire blanketed
parts of the city with black smoke as rebels responded with occasional
mortar rounds and sniper fire.

U.S. officers said Marine Corps and army units had gained a large
presence throughout Falluja but were still taking some fire from
Saddam Hussein loyalists and foreign militants.

Tanks punched through Jolan to the Euphrates river and were
chasing down remaining rebels to consolidate control over the
city 32 miles west of Baghdad.

"Things are going, I think, as planned. We've got about 70
percent of the city under control," U.S. General Richard Myers,
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told CBS television.

"There have been hundreds and hundreds of insurgents who
have been either killed or captured," he said.

But while U.S.-led troops fought for the upper hand in
Falluja, insurgents in the northern city of Mosul set police
stations ablaze, stole weapons and roamed the streets.

Residents said Iraq's third largest city seemed to slide
out of control as grenade blasts and gunfire rang through empty
streets and smoke billowed from two burning police stations.

Rebels attacked Iraqi national guards controlling a bridge
in the city center, killing five of them, witnesses said.

"REALLY CRAZY"

A cameraman for Reuters filmed gunmen raiding weapons and
flak jackets from a police station before setting it on fire.

"It's crazy, really, really crazy," said Abdallah Fathi,
a resident who witnessed the police station attack.

A photographer working for Reuters was shot in the leg and
taken to hospital. Doctors said one civilian had been killed
and at least 25 wounded in the past two days of fighting.

Violence has worsened in Mosul, a strongly nationalist city
of three million people, over the past year, but residents said
the chaos of the past two days had broken new ground.

"Yesterday, the city felt like hell, today it could be the
same or worse," Fathi said.

Apparently responding to the Falluja offensive, insurgents
have staged attacks this week in the Sunni towns and cities of
Samarra, Baiji, Baquba, Tikrit, Ramadi and parts of Baghdad.

Six national guards were killed near Tikrit, Saddam's home
town, by a roadside bomb on Wednesday night, witnesses said.

Kirkuk's provincial governor escaped unhurt when a car bomb
blew up near his convoy in the northern city, wounding 16
people, police and hospital officials said.

In Falluja, residents said the stench of decomposing bodies
hung over the battered city, power and water supplies had been
cut for five days and food was running out for thousands of
civilians trapped in their homes by the fighting.

About 10,000 U.S. troops, backed by 2,000 Iraqi government
troops, are engaged in the battle for Falluja.

Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, who ordered the
assault, has come under personal pressure from Islamist
militants who kidnapped three of his relatives on Tuesday.

The militants have threatened to behead Allawi's
75-year-old cousin Ghazi and two women relatives unless he
calls off the assault. The government has said its policy will
not change.

The Iraqi military governor in Falluja said his men had
found "slaughterhouses" where militants had held and killed
hostages, along with records of victims.

But Major-General Abdul-Qader Jassim told reporters he
could not say if the evidence offered any clues to the fate of
at least nine foreign hostages still missing.

Allawi and his U.S. backers have vowed to pacify Falluja
and the rest of the country before elections due in January.
(Additional reporting by Maher al-Thanoon in Mosul, Aref
Mohammed in Kirkuk and Waleed Ibrahim in Baghdad)

(c) Copyright Reuters 2004

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

2) US troops are reportedly using chemical weapons and poisonous
gas in its large-scale offensive on the Iraqi resistance bastion
of Fallujah
http://www.islamonline.org/English/News/2004-11/10/article05.shtml

FALLUJAH, November 10 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - US troops are
reportedly using chemical weapons and poisonous gas in its large-scale
offensive on the Iraqi resistance bastion of Fallujah, a grim reminder
of Saddam Hussein's alleged gassing of the Kurds in 1988.

"The US occupation troops are gassing resistance fighters and confronting
them with internationally-banned chemical weapons," resistance sources
told Al-Quds Press Wednesday, November 10.

The fatal weapons led to the deaths of tens of innocent civilians, whose
bodies litter sidewalks and streets, they added.

"They use chemical weapons out of despair and helplessness in the face of
the steadfast and fierce resistance put up by Fallujah people, who
drove US troops out of several districts, hoisting proudly Iraqi flags
on them. Resistance has also managed to destroy and set fire to
a large number of US tanks and vehicles.

"The US troops have sprayed chemical and nerve gases on resistance
fighters, turning them hysteric in a heartbreaking scene," an Iraqi
doctor, who requested anonymity, told Al-Quds Press.

"Some Fallujah residents have been further burnt beyond treatment by
poisonous gases," added resistance fighters, who took part in Golan
battles, northwest of Fallujah.

In August last year, the United States admitted dropping the
internationally-banned incendiary weapon of napalm on Iraq,
despite earlier denials by the Pentagon that the "horrible" weapon
had not been used in the three-week invasion of Iraq.

After the offensive on Iraq ended on April 9 last year, Iraqis began
to complain about unexploded cluster bombs that still litter
cities.

Media Blackout

A US tank pushing its way in Fallujah streets

The sources said that the media blackout, the banning of Al-Jazeera
satellite channel and subjective embedded journalists played well into
the hands of the US military.

"Therefore, US troops opted for using internationally banned weapons
to soften the praiseworthy resistance of Fallujah people.

"More and more, the US military edits and censors reports sent by
journalists to their respective newspapers and news agencies," the
sources added.

Iraqi Defense Minister Hazem Al-Shaalan had said Tuesday,
November 9, would be decisive.

"Al-Shaalan declaration meant nothing but the use of chemical
weapons and poisonous gases to down Fallujah fighters,"
observers told Al-Quds Press.

The reported gassing stands as a grim reminder of Saddam
Hussein's alleged gassing of the Kurdish community in the
northern city of Halbja in 1988.

While the West insisted that Saddam was the one behind
the heinous attack, the ousted president pointed fingers at
the then Iranian regime.

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

3) US Assault Leaves Fallujah in Ruins
and Unknown Numbers Dead
By James Cogan
11 November 2004
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/nov2004/fall-n11.shtml


The US assault on Fallujah is a criminal and barbaric operation.
The descriptions of the thrust through Fallujah's northern suburbs
make clear the city is being destroyed, and its poorly-armed defenders
slaughtered, by 10,000 American soldiers over whom all moral
constraints have been lifted.

AChristian Science Monitor journalist embedded with a marine unit
wrote Wednesday: "Every vehicle is treated as a potential car bomb
and every person as a possible enemy. Approval even came over the
radio to shoot dogs with shotguns, to prevent them carrying explosives."

As the American forces advanced into the city, a Chicago Tribune
journalist reported that a psychological operations unit trailed behind,
blaring out Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries"-the music used by film
director Francis Ford Coppola to accompany the scene in Apocalypse
Now in which US troops massacre civilians in a Vietnamese village.

Iraqi fighters in Fallujah's north were overwhelmed by the firepower
and the murderous tactics of the US military. While American infantry
waited a safe distance away, jets, helicopters, tanks and other armoured
vehicles pounded the buildings ahead of them with rockets, shells and
heavy-calibre machine-guns to clear them of any defenders. Explosive
coil designed to clear mine-fields was fired down city streets and
detonated. Artillery bombarded residential areas with phosphorous
rounds, which explode into a fireball that cannot be put out with
water. No attempt has been made by the US military to avoid civilian
casualties.

Iraqi journalist Fadil al-Badrani, reporting for Reuters from Fallujah,
recounted on Tuesday: "Every minute, hundreds of bombs and shells
are exploding... The north of the city is in flames. I can see fire and
smoke. Fallujah has become like hell...

"Electricity is cut off because of damage to the main power station
from the bombardment. The water supply has been cut off too. People,
particularly children and women, tend to stay at home, fearing being
mistaken for a military target."

On Wednesday, Badrani reported to Al Jazeerah that "almost half" of
the city's 120 mosques "have been destroyed after being targeted by
US air and tank strikes".

According to the New York Times' correspondents, more than half
the houses in the northern suburbs of Jolan and Askeri have been
destroyed. They reported Wednesday: "Dead bodies were scattered
on the streets and narrow alleys of Jolan, one of Fallujah's oldest
neighborhoods. Blood and flesh were splattered on the walls of
some of the houses, witnesses said, and the streets were full of
holes."

Other reports by journalists embedded with US units include references
to five-storey apartment complexes and hospitals being raked with
tank fire and heavy machine-guns, after Iraqi fighters engaged
US troops from them. Women and boys as young as 12 are among
those who have taken up arms to defend their city against the
invasion force.

The contrast between the firepower being unleashed by the US
military and the capacity of the Iraqis to fight back was graphically
contained in a report by the Los Angeles Times on the capture of
the Al Hadra al-Muhammadiya mosque, the focus of the popular
resistance in Fallujah to the US occupation of Iraq.

A marine captain told the newspaper: "This is the nerve centre of
the resistance-and we're here." The weapons found in the "nerve
centre" consisted of only rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), AK-47s,
obsolete rifles, materials for homemade bombs and improvised
blasting caps.

How many people in Fallujah have been killed in the inferno of
bombs, bullets, collapsing buildings and fire is not known, and
may not be known for weeks or months. By the US military's own
estimate though, between 100,000 and 150,000 civilians were still
in the city before it began its rampage.

A Marine Corp spokesman declared on Wednesday that the US military
has "no information of anyone [civilians] being hurt". The only
conclusion that can be drawn is that they are not looking for such
information. A Fallujah resident told the British Guardian by phone:
"People cannot reach the clinics or the hospital and there are many
wounded people. Most people are staying in their houses... There
are a lot of people dead who I saw with my own eyes."

As the assault progresses and it is clear that the US military is treating
the entire population as a target, the Bush administration has
abandoned its cynical propaganda that the city was being attacked
to "liberate" it from foreign terrorists headed by Abu Musaab
al-Zarqawi before elections are held in January.

An unnamed military official in Washington told the New York Times :
"The important idea to consider is that this is not an operation against
Zarqawi and his network. It is just one of the many steps that need
to be taken in order to defeat a complex and diverse insurgency, in
which the Zarqawi network is but one element." US generals and
officials are now stating it is likely Zarqawi and the "foreign terrorists"
have left Fallujah-without providing any evidence to refute the claims
of the Fallujah resistance leaders that they were never in the city
in the first place.

The US media, which dutifully reported every airstrike on Fallujah
over the past five months as a "precision strike" on Zarqawi safehouses,
has barely commented on the shifting rationale for the attack on the
city. It can be predicted with virtual certainty, however, that it will
prominently report US military claims that Zarqawi has "surfaced"
in Ramadi, Samarra, Baquaba or whichever is the next Iraqi city
slated for destruction.

The savagery in Fallujah is the real face of the US occupation of Iraq.
The claim by the Bush administration that the slaughter taking place
in the city will facilitate "democratic elections" in January is obscene.
Fallujah is being razed to the ground as part of a perspective of killing
or driving underground every voice of opposition to the US presence
in the country. The only participants in any elections will be the venal
pro-occupation organisations that joined the puppet Iraqi interim
government headed by Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.

The occupation of Iraq will not give rise to "democracy", but a pro-US
police-state that sanctions the indefinite presence of American troops
and the looting of the country's oil resources by American corporations.
Allawi, the intended head of such a regime, is earning the nickname
that Iraqis have given him-"Saddam without the moustache". Already
accused of personally murdering prisoners, he has invoked martial
law across most of the entire country and requested that the US
military conduct bloody offensives against the resistance in as many
as 21 other Iraqi cities and towns. On Tuesday night, Allawi rejected
outright an appeal for a four- or five-hour truce in Fallujah so that
the injured and noncombatants could be evacuated from the city.

The fighting in Fallujah is continuing in the southern suburbs and
is likely to rage for days to come. The conquest of the city, however,
will have the opposite effect to that intended by the Bush administration
and the US military. Far from weakening or intimidating the opposition
to the occupation, resistance groups have already stepped up their
attacks throughout the predominantly Sunni Muslim regions of
central and northern Iraq. Clashes between US troops and guerillas
have taken place over the past 48 hours in Baghdad, Mosul, Ramadi,
and other smaller towns.

The reports of occupation casualties are climbing as a result, even
without accurate figures on the number of American dead and
wounded in Fallujah. So far in November, 30 US troops have been
confirmed killed in action, as well as four members of the British
Black Watch regiment that the Blair government made available
to the US military for the Fallujah operation.

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

4) Arafat: Israel seals West Bank and Gaza
11 November 2004
http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=581644&host=3&dir=75

Israel sealed the West Bank and Gaza Strip and sent troop
reinforcements to the areas today, in response to Yasser
Arafat's death, the military said.

Israel also increased security at Jewish settlements, fearing
widespread Palestinian riots in the coming days.

"The Israeli Defence Forces are deploying to allow a dignified
funeral ceremony for chairman Arafat," an army statement said.

The military said it would restrict access to the funeral, set for
Saturday in the West Bank city of Ramallah, and only allow
Palestinians with the necessary permits to attend.

The military will allow symbolic funeral processions to be
held in towns and refugee camps across the West Bank and
Gaza, officials said.

In the past four years of Israeli-Palestinian fighting, Israel has
imposed strict travel restrictions on the Palestinians and severely
limited their access to Israel.

Today's blanket closure means no Palestinians will be able
to enter Israel.

The military also sent troop reinforcements to the West Bank
and Gaza.

In the UK, the Foreign Office today revised its travel advice
for Israel and the Occupied Territories in response to
Mr Arafat's death.

British travellers were already advised against travelling
to certain parts of Israel and large parts of the territories,
which are made up of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The advice now includes: "Following the death of Yasser
Arafat, the security situation remains unclear throughout
the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

"You should be aware that staff from the British Embassy
and Consulate-General are not entering either the West
Bank or the Gaza Strip until further notice.

"Because of current travel and other restrictions, there are
limits to the level of consular assistance we can provide in
the West Bank and Gaza Strip."

The Foreign Office said that the amendment reflected "the
potential for deterioration in the security situation in the
Occupied Territories following Mr Arafat's death".

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

5) Alberto Gonzales: A Record of Injustice

As White House Counsel

GONZALES APPROVED MEMO AUTHORIZING TORTURE: An August 2002 Justice
Department memo "was vetted by a larger number of officials,
including...the White House counsel's office and Vice President
Cheney's office." According to Newsweek, the memo "was drafted after
White House meetings convened by George W. Bush's chief counsel,
Alberto Gonzales, along with Defense Department general counsel
William Haynes and [Cheney counsel] David Addington." The memo
included the opinion that laws prohibiting torture do "not apply to
the President's detention and interrogation of enemy combatants."
Further, the memo puts forth the opinion that the pain caused by an
interrogation must include "injury such as death, organ failure, or
serious impairment of body functions—in order to constitute torture."
The methods outlined in the memo "provoked concerns within the CIA
about possible violation of the federal torture law [and] also raised
concerns at the FBI, where some agents knew of the techniques being
used" overseas on high-level al Qaeda officials. [Gonzales 8/1/02
memo; WP, 6/27/04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8534-2004Jun26.html;
Newsweek, 6/21/04 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5197853/site/newsweek;
NYT, 6/27/04
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60E14FB3C5C0C748EDDAF0894DC4
04482]

GONZALES BELIEVES MANY GENEVA CONVENTIONS PROVISIONS ARE OBSOLETE: A
1/25/02 memo written by White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales said "the
war against terrorism is a new kind of war" and "this new paradigm
renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy
prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions." The memo pushes
to make al Qaeda and Taliban detainees exempt from the Geneva
Conventions' provisions on the proper, legal treatment of prisoners.
The administration has been adamant that prisoners at Guantanamo are
not protected by the Geneva Conventions. [Gonzales 1/25/02 memo;
Newsweek, 5/24/04 http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4989481/]

GONZALES ADMITTED HIS VIEWS 'COULD UNDERMINE U.S. MILITARY CULTURE':
The 1/25/02 memo shows Alberto Gonzales was aware of the risk that
ignoring the Geneva Conventions could create for the military. One
concern expressed is that failing to apply the Geneva Conventions
"could undermine U.S. military culture which emphasizes maintaining
the highest standards of conduct in combat, and could introduce an
element of uncertainty in the status of adversaries," which is what
happened at Abu Ghraib. Secretary of State Colin Powell strongly
warned against taking this decision, as did lawyers from the Judge
Advocate General's Corps, or JAG. This week, a federal judge ruled
that "President Bush had both overstepped his constitutional bounds
and improperly brushed aside the Geneva Conventions" when he
established military tribunals in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to try
detainees as war criminals. [Gonzales 1/25/02 memo; Bloomberg, 6/14/04
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000039&refer=columnist_woolner&si
d=aJEp1ExaMybo;
New York Times, 11/9/04]

GONZALES BLOCKS INFORMATION FROM CONGRESS: Historically, senators have
been allowed to review some memoranda by judicial nominees. But, in a
letter [about nominee Miguel Estrada], Gonzales told the Democrats
that the administration would not produce the memos, because to do so
would chill free expression among administration lawyers and violate
the principle of executive privilege, which protects the internal
deliberations of the president's aides. [New Yorker, 5/19/03
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?030526fa_fact]

As Texas Chief Legal Counsel

DEATH PENALTY MEMOS: GONZALES'S NEGLIGENT COUNSEL: As chief legal
counsel for then-Gov. Bush in Texas, Gonzales was responsible for
writing a memo on the facts of each death penalty case – Bush decided
whether a defendant should live or die based on the memos. An
examination of the Gonzales memoranda by the Atlantic Monthly
concluded, "Gonzales repeatedly failed to apprise the governor of
crucial issues in the cases at hand: ineffective counsel, conflict of
interest, mitigating evidence, even actual evidence of innocence." His
memos caused Bush frequently to approve executions based on "only the
most cursory briefings on the issues in dispute." Rather than
informing the governor of the conflicting circumstances in a case,
"The memoranda seem attuned to a radically different posture, assumed
by Bush from the earliest days of his administration—one in which he
sought to minimize his sense of legal and moral responsibility for
executions." [Atlantic Monthly, July/August, 2003
http://www.fdp.dk/act/030928_texas_clemency.php]

MEMORANDUM ON TERRY WASHINGTON: A CASE STUDY IN INCOMPETENCE: In his
briefing on death-row defendant Terry Washington – a mentally retarded
33-year-old man with the communication skills of a seven-year-old –
Gonzales devoted nearly a third of his three-page report to the
gruesome details of the crime, but referred "only fleetingly to the
central issue in Washington's clemency appeal—his limited mental
capacity, which was never disputed by the State of Texas—and
present[ed] it as part of a discussion of 'conflicting information'
about the condemned man's childhood." In addition, Gonzales "failed to
mention that Washington's mental limitations, and the fact that he and
his ten siblings were regularly beaten with whips, water hoses,
extension cords, wire hangers, and fan belts, were never made known to
the jury, although both the district attorney and Washington's trial
lawyer knew of this potentially mitigating evidence." Nor did he
mention that Washington's lawyer had "failed to enlist a mental-health
expert" to testify on Washington's behalf, even though "ineffective
counsel and mental retardation were in fact the central issues raised
in the thirty-page clemency petition" it was Gonzales's job to review.
This all came at a time when "demand was growing nationwide to ban
executions of the retarded." [Atlantic Monthly, July/August, 2003
http://www.fdp.dk/act/030928_texas_clemency.php]

GONZALES TOLD GOV. BUSH HE COULD IGNORE INTERNATIONAL LAW: In 1997,
Alberto Gonzales wrote a memo for then Gov. Bush to justify
non-compliance with the Vienna Convention. The Vienna Convention,
ratified by the Senate in 1969, was "designed to ensure that foreign
nationals accused of a crime are given access to legal counsel by a
representative from their home country." Gonzales sent a letter to the
U.S. State Department in which he argued that the treaty didn't apply
to the State of Texas, as Texas was not a signatory to the Vienna
Convention. Two days later, Texas executed Mexican citizen Irineo
Tristan Montoya, despite Mexico's protestations that Texas had
violated Tristan's rights under the Vienna Convention by failing to
inform the Mexican consulate at the time of his arrest. (Slate,
6/15/04 http://slate.msn.com/id/2102416)

GONZALES GETS BUSH OUT OF JURY DUTY TO KEEP DUI SECRET: In 1996, as
counsel to Gov. Bush, Gonzales helped to get him excused from jury
duty, "a situation that could have required the governor to disclose
his then-secret 1976 conviction for drunken driving in Maine."
Gonzales argued "that if Bush served, he would not, as governor, be
able to pardon the defendant in the future." [USA Today, 3/18/02
http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20020318/3948380s.htm]

As Texas Supreme Court Justice

GONZALES DOES ENRON'S BIDDING: As an elected member of the Texas
Supreme Court, "Enron and Enron's law firm were Gonzales's biggest
contributors," giving him $35,450 in 2000. Overall, Gonzales raked in
$100,000 from the energy industry. In May 2000, "Gonzales was author
of a state Supreme Court opinion that handed the energy industry one
of its biggest Texas legal victories in recent history." Since Bush
brought him into the White House, Gonzales has worked doggedly to keep
secret the details of energy task force meetings held by Vice
President Cheney. [New York Daily News, 2/2/02 ]

ACCEPTING DONATIONS FROM LITIGANTS: In the weeks between hearing oral
arguments and making a decision in Henson v. Texas Farm Bureau Mutual
Insurance, Justice Alberto Gonzales collected a $2,000 contribution
premium from the Texas Farm Bureau (which runs the defendant insurance
company in this case). In another case, Gonzales pocketed a $2,500
contribution from a law firm defending the Royal Insurance company
just before hearing oral arguments in Embrey v. Royal Insurance.
[Texas for Public Justice
http://www.tpj.org/page_view.jsp?pageid=117&pubid=60]


http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=246536

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

6) TANKS APPEAR AT ANTI-WAR PROTEST IN WESTWOOD, CA

LOS ANGELES, November 9, 2004 - At 7:50 PM armored tanks showed
up at an anti-war protest in front of the federal building in Westwood.

The tanks circled the block twice, the second time parking themselves
in the street and directly in front of the area where most of the
protesters were gathered.

Enraged, some of the people attempted to block the tanks, but police
quickly cleared the street.

The people continued to protest the presence of the tanks, but after
about ten minutes the tanks drove off. It is unclear as to why the
tanks were deployed to this location.

http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=04/11/10/0844742

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

7) Iraqi democrats against ocupation IDAO site
published this news: 9 November, Iraqi Railway workers
boycott supplies to US troops
www.idao.org

9 November, Iraqi Railway workers boycott supplies to US troops or
forces belonging to US-appointed Allawi government. Employees of
the National Iraqi Railways Company also declared that they will only
agree to carry food supplies to the Iraqi people as part of the UN for
food programme, and threatened national strike if forced to do
otherwise. The Allawi government reacted by accusing the railway
works of carrying civil disobedience. Meanwhile more than 40 Muslim
clerics of the Shia and Sunni faiths have urged Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani
to publically declare his opposition for Iraqi troops taking part in the
attack on the people of Falluja.

8 November, Al-Sadr movement, in a statement today, declared that
the attack on Falluja is an attack on the whole of Iraq and called on
members of the US-trained National Guard not to participate in the
US occupiers assault on Falluja.

U.S. Labor Against War (USLAW)
www.uslaboragainstwar.org
info@uslaboragainstwar.org
PMB 153
1718 "M" Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20036
Gene Bruskin and Bob Muehlenkamp, Co-convenors Amy Newell,
National Organizer Michael Eisenscher, Organizer & Web Coordinator
Adrienne Nicosia, Administrative Staff

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

8) Companies Sue Union Retirees
To Cut Promised Health Benefits
Firms Claim Right to Change
Coverage, Attempt to Pick
Sympathetic Jurisdictions
The Process Server Pays a Call
By ELLEN E. SCHULTZ
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
November 10, 2004; Page A1

When a deputy sheriff came to his door with a court summons, George Kneifel,
a retiree in Union Mills, Ind., was mystified. His former employer was suing
him.

The employer, beverage-can maker Rexam Inc., had agreed in labor contracts
to provide retirees with health-care coverage. But now the company was
asking a federal judge to rule that it could reduce or eliminate the
benefit.

Many companies have already cut back company-paid health-care coverage for
retirees from their salaried staffs. But until recently, employers generally
were barred from touching unionized retirees' benefits because they are
spelled out in labor contracts. Now, some are taking aggressive steps to
pare those benefits as well, including going to court.

In the past two years, employers have sued union retirees across the
country. In the suits, they ask judges to rule that no matter what labor
contracts say, they have a right to change the benefits. Some companies also
argue that contract references to "lifetime" coverage don't mean the
lifetime of the retirees, but the life of the labor contract. Since the
contracts expired many years ago, the promises, they say, have expired too.

The companies taking such steps remain a minority. Most big employers
continue to provide the retiree health coverage spelled out in labor
contracts. But the number of employers using the courts to attempt to reduce
benefits for union retirees is rising, and some have been successful.
"There's absolutely no doubt that there's been an increasing number of cases
over the past three years," says Richard Brean, associate general counsel of
the United Steelworkers of America.

They have little to lose by trying. Typically, as such legal cases drag on,
the employers save money as some of the retirees, who have to pay growing
portions of their health-care costs, forgo costly care, drop out of the
plans or die. If companies lose in court, the worst that happens is they
have to resume paying benefits. They don't face punitive damages or
penalties. And they may not have to resume benefits for those retirees who
dropped out of the health plans.

What's more, their earnings get a pop. That's because at the same time as
they sue, employers typically announce reductions in the retirees' benefits.
Doing so entitles them to lessen the liabilities carried on their books.
Lower liabilities translate to higher earnings.

The retirees, by contrast, often find themselves in a bind -- unsure of
their recourse and facing, as they age, the court system's typical long
waits for legal resolution. The U.S. Labor Department is of little help.
Retired workers "aren't our constituents anymore," says a spokeswoman for
the department.

Unions often do go to bat for retirees. The United Auto Workers and the
Steelworkers have been the most active in filing suits to protect retirees
whose benefits a company has unilaterally changed. But unions aren't allowed
to strike or file unfair-labor-practice complaints on behalf of retirees.

Employers that want to cut union retirees' health coverage or make retirees
pay a larger portion could just impose changes and wait to be sued. But by
suing first, they stand a chance of choosing the jurisdiction. This is
important, because federal circuits' appellate courts tend to take differing
positions in these disputes. Indeed, the unsettled nature of the law on
these issues -- with employers' arguments sometimes succeeding and sometimes
not -- may be a factor prompting some companies to have a go at gaining the
legal right to change benefits.

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9) Mordechai Vannunu arrested
Call the Israeli Consulate 415-844-7500 in SF lets flood them with
phone calls demanding the release of Mordechai. also anyone intersted
in doing an action in the Israeli Consulate in regards to this let
Me Know off line i would be up for doing that.
peace
keith
Mordechai Vanunu:
An Interview
By Johannes Wahlstrom, Jerusalem


Ten minutes stroll northward from the lively alleyways of the Old City
and its renowned Golden Dome lays one of the Holy Land's smallest
parishes; the Anglican Church, with its neo-gothic St George Cathedral.
The massive towers and defence-walls give the impression of an
impregnable bastion, while inside one finds a green oasis of tranquillity.
In the inner yard, surrounded by grapes, almonds, olives, pomegranates,
sage, narcissus, cypress, oleander, roses and all other imaginable and
unimaginable biblical plants, lays a Guesthouse. Here, weary Jerusalem
pilgrims rest their sore feet after a long day in the Holy City. And here
for the past four months, a fellow-Anglican, the nuclear whistleblower
Mordechai Vanunu has taken his refuge.


Despite of Israel's nuclear capacity, Vanunu believes the bombs are
useless.

"It's not an issue of UN resolutions; the world would intervene if Israel
used its holocaust weapons." When it comes to having them as
a deterrent," Vanunu explains. "The problem isn't Iran, Iraq or
North Korea; it's Israeli aggression.
A technician at the Dimona nuclear weapons production plant, he blew
the whistle, and revealed the Israeli nuclear arms program to the nation
and the world; a revelation that would cost him dearly. After being
kidnapped Israeli Mossad agents in Rome, Vanunu was sentenced at
a secret trial to 18 years of jail, 12 years out of them he served in
solitary confinement. In the solitude of the jail, he wrote:

I am your Spy. I am the clerk, the technician, the mechanic, the driver.
They said: Do this, do that, don't look left or right, don't read the text.
Don't look at the whole machine. You are only responsible for this
one bolt. For this one rubber-stamp. This is your only concern.
Don't bother with what is above you. Don't try to think for us.
Go on, drive. Keep going. On, on.

"I refused to be a bolt in the deadly machinery", Vanunu says after his r
elease in an exclusive interview. After receiving death threats from
Jewish extremists and being placed under surveillance and travel
restrictions by the Israeli government, Vanunu has taken refuge at
St George Cathedral in East Jerusalem. Here Vanunu attends services,
rings the bells, and dreams to leave the unyielding clutches of the
Jewish state - for England or elsewhere.

He is suntanned, his handshake is firm, and his stare is fixed. The
only mark bearing witness to the 18 years of torment and isolation
is his stern face. What makes a man follow his heart and beliefs and
to pay so dearly for his convictions?

Vanunu pours a bottle of local Palestinian beer into his glass. The
golden label reads Taibeh, or 'tasty' in Arabic. "Ever since I was a child
I have learned to be open to other views", he says, "to criticize, to be
independent, and most importantly to be faithful to the truth. This is
why I have always tried to serve mankind, by contributing to peace
and foremost to justice for the much-suffering Palestinians."

Vanunu has however paid the price of refusing conformity, of being
independent. In the 70's he supported the Palestinian cause, and lost
his job. In the 80's he entered the Anglican Church and was ostracized
by his Jewish family. When he revealed the Israeli nuclear program in
order to avert a nuclear holocaust, he was imprisoned. Now again he
refuses to be subdued as he rejects the restrictions placed upon him
by the Israeli government.

"I'm being punished for no crime," Vanunu says while cautiously
squeezing the beer cap in his hand. "I'm not allowed to leave the
country for a year; I have to report to the police of my whereabouts,
and even if I want to overnight elsewhere I have to get their permission."
Vanunu is not allowed to talk to foreign press, to pass in the vicinities
of embassies, borders or airports, write e-mails or chat by internet.
He is well aware that by defying the restrictions in giving this
interview, he can once again be incarcerated.

The Israeli court regards Vanunu as a 'security threat'. And although
he has served his sentence, emergency regulations from the time of
the British Mandate have been enforced upon him. These laws have
become part of Israeli legal practise and can revoke the fundamental
democratic rights of a citizen if an army general regards him as a
"security threat".

What kind of security threat is Vanunu? Is he biding his time to
reveal more nuclear secrets? "I have no secrets that I haven't already
revealed." Besides, he points out, "I live among Palestinians, the
'enemy'. So why can't I speak to foreigners?"

Vanunu speaks his mind without weighing his words; maybe this
is what they are afraid of? "I repeat all the things that Israel wants
to be kept silent; I remind of Israel's nuclear weapons program,
I speak of the barbaric treatment in Israeli prison, and I express
my political views of the conflict," he sums up.

One of the most astounding revelations that Vanunu gave
concerned the size of Israel's n