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Thursday, January 06, 2005
BAUAW NEWSLETTER-THURSDAY, JAN. 6, 2005 - PART 2
---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* 19) The Pentagon says that more than 10,000 US military personnel have been wounded in Iraq since the conflict began in March 2003. Story from BBC NEWS: Published: 2005/01/05 10:33:34 GMT http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4147705.stm 20) Ramsey Clark: Why I'm Taking Saddam's Case By Lizzy Ratner http://www.nyobserver.com/pages/frontpage1.asp# 21) Iraqi Resistance speech on videotape December 13 2004 GISpecial 3A5 ThomasFBarton@earthlink.net 22) The victims of the tsunami pay the price of war on Iraq US and British aid is dwarfed by the billions both spend on slaughter George Monbiot Guardian Tuesday January 4, 2005 23) National Task Force for Mumia Abu-Jamal Legal Update - December 11, 2004 meeting in New York City (Reviewed by Attorney Robert R. Bryan) 24) U.S. Copters Speed Pace of Aid for Indonesia Refugees By ROBERT D. McFADDEN http://nytimes.com/2005/01/02/international/worldspecial4/ 02quake.html?ei=5094 &en=92dbe740aaf891ca&hp=&ex=1104642000&partner=homepage&pagewanted= print&posit ion= 25) IRAQ: Death in Fallujah rising, doctors say 04 Jan 2005 14:56:16 GMT Source: Integrated Regional Information Networks http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/ 121b671d950efc3ac031b54b55118d85.htm 26) The best kept media secret of the week is that the greatest devastation and death occurred and is occurring in Indonesia's Aceh province. 27) War Resisters Go North By Alisa Solomon, The Nation Posted on December 22, 2004, Printed on January 3, 2005 http://www.alternet.org/story/20826/ 28) War Resisters Go North By Alisa Solomon, The Nation Posted on December 22, 2004, Printed on January 3, 2005 http://www.alternet.org/story/20826/ 29) Iraq War is Bad for Business By Jim Lobe Peace and Justice News from FPIF http://www.fpif.org/ January 4, 2005 Introducing a new commentary from Foreign Policy In Focus 30) The Numbers Beyond the Bling In the streets of America, people are worse off, and more of them are in jail By Ward Harkavy January 4th, 2005 3:26 PM Village Voice.com 31) Powell declares tsunami aid part of global war on terror Imperialism in Samaritan's clothing By Bill Van Auken World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org 6 January 2005 http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/jan2005/powl-j061.shtml 32) Israel's "Days of Penitence" Drown Gaza In a Sea Of Blood By Mohammed Omer Washington Report , December 2004, pages 10-12 http://www.washington-report.org/archives/December_2004/0412010.html ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* 19) US Wounded in Iraq Reaches 10,000 The Pentagon says that more than 10,000 US military personnel have been wounded in Iraq since the conflict began in March 2003. Story from BBC NEWS: Published: 2005/01/05 10:33:34 GMT http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4147705.stm Newly published figures show that more than 5,000 of the wounded have been unable to return to duty. Many have been left with serious injuries such as lost limbs and sight, mostly as a result of the blast effects of roadside bombs. More than 1,300 US troops have been killed. The latest figures underline that an equally telling price is being paid in the number of US soldiers being wounded there, says the BBC's Pentagon correspondent Nick Childs. Advances in military medicine and body armour mean that many have survived wounds that they would not have done in previous conflicts. In Iraq on Wednesday, a car bomb killed two Iraqi civilians and wounded 10 others in Baghdad. Police say the bomb exploded near a petrol station in the western district of Amiriyah. The explosion came a day after gunmen assassinated the governor of Baghdad province, and in a separate attack killed at least 10 people outside the headquarters of the Iraqi National Guard. (c) BBC MMV ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* 21) Ramsey Clark: Why I'm Taking Saddam's Case By Lizzy Ratner http://www.nyobserver.com/pages/frontpage1.asp# "You can't be sure of how the trial will go," said longtime Manhattan civil-rights attorney Ramsey Clark, wagging a long, slender forefinger. "But you could say that if it's properly done, it will be the biggest trial of this century." Mr. Clark was talking about the trial of Saddam Hussein, whom he recently signed on to represent before a special tribunal in Baghdad. For the man who has represented Leonard Peltier, the Harrisburg Seven and the Attica Brothers, but also prosecuted war resisters in the Johnson administration-indeed, for the man who, as a young Marine Corps courier, witnessed the Nuremberg trials after World War II-calling it the "trial of the century" was no small thing. Ramsey Clark was in his office, in a loft on East 12th Street in the East Village, speaking like a law professor across a large slab of a wooden table. He'd just returned a few days before from a visit to Jordan, where he met with other members of Mr. Hussein's legal team as well as the families of both Mr. Hussein and former Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz. In the room hung an Salvadoran solidarity poster and a painting by Mr. Peltier. The painting is of an old Native American woman with a single tear running down her cheek; it's called Big Lady Mountain . By Mr. Clark's own telling, his interest in representing the deposed Iraqi leader was inflamed when media reports started coming in of Mr. Hussein's arrest in a spider-hole hideout in the desert. He said he was "shocked" by the images he saw. "The savage presentation of [Mr. Hussein], disheveled, with his mouth open, people probing in his mouth, the dehumanization," he said. "I represented Indian peoples for many years, and I can't tell you how many Indians I've worked with called after they saw the picture and said, 'That's exactly the way they treated us.' And this is hardly the road to peace if you want respect for human dignity. "I wrote to him a year ago in December, shortly after he was arrested," he continued. "I'd also written to Tariq Aziz right after he turned himself in April of '03, because I thought it was essential that they have independent contact immediately to assure their proper treatment. And I was repeatedly turned down as to both. "I did it because, obviously, these cases are extremely important in terms of history and in terms of reconciliation of peoples, and in terms of belief in truth and justice as a priority over force and violence," Mr. Clark said. "It's about addressing the concept of victor's justice, which is only the exercise of power. If you really want peace, you have to satisfy people about the honor of your purpose." Mr. Clark has not been able to meet with Mr. Hussein since he sent his letter. "There has not been anything approaching adequate contact with him," he said. "None of his family has seen him; only one lawyer has seen him, and that was in the first half of December- a full year after his arrest. It was by a single person, with soldiers standing by, hearing, with whatever other type of surveillance there might have been. "And there's not adequate contact with that lawyer, who's an Iraqi. So for a defense to be developed, there has to be extensive communication with the principal person whose life it involves. "He is a decisive, knowledgeable person," Mr. Clark said, "and has to play a major role in every aspect of choosing a defense team and preparing a defense. The lack of access to him is a major violation. Our Supreme Court has thrown cases out where a person wasn't given access to independent non-police parties within 48 hours of arrest, within less than 12 hours. Here you've got 12 months. That sounds technical, but it's not technical at all-it's the essential beginning." It's not that he's never met Mr. Hussein. Mr. Clark's history with the former Iraqi leader dates back to the first Gulf War, when Mr. Clark traveled to Iraq to protest the U.S .-led coalition's bombing campaign. He spent 14 days chronicling the destruction and later defied sanctions by returning on dozens of aid missions. He met with Mr. Hussein on at least four of these occasions, including a month-long visit just before the March 2003 invasion. "I've met with him I think four times, probably averaged two to three hours at a time," he said. "In presence he is reserved, quiet, thoughtful-dignified, you might say, in the old-fashioned sense. I'm not a big fan of dignity in the old-fashioned sense of stuffiness or posture." Could he see how that might be praising with faint damnation a man who is said to have ordered the deaths of some 300,000 of his own citizens? "I have long believed that one of the greatest barriers to peace is demonization," Mr. Clark said. "It has always been necessary in war for soldiers to demonize the enemy. Now, with the mass media saturating the public with perceptions that come from very slim contact with actuality and are heavily influenced by desire and prejudice, we demonize." And if other lawyers might blanch at the argument that it was the American media who demonized Saddam-wasn't he something of a demon to begin with? If it were a simple referendum on Mr. Hussein's treatment of the Kurds or political dissidents, who could possibly represent him in good faith? But what if the trial of Saddam Hussein is really a referendum on the American campaign in Iraq? "Demonization is the most dangerous form of prejudice," Mr. Clark continued. "Once you call something evil, it's easy to justify anything you might do to harm that evil. Evil has no rights, it has no human dignity, it has to be destroyed. That's how you get your Fallujas, your Abu Ghraibs, your shock- and-awes." And, like many civil-rights lawyers, Mr. Clark believes he's representing a client in a court that is fundamentally flawed. "A tribunal that doesn't meet the standards of international law can do enormous harm. International law requires first that a tribunal be created by legal authority, by pre-existing legal authority," he argued. "That's referred to as competence. After competence comes independence-it can't be subject to political power. And finally, it has to be impartial. If it's not impartial, what's the point? Why don't you just go ahead and say 'Hang him' instead of this ruse? "Now, the present Iraqi court meets none of those standards. It was a creation of the U.S. military occupation, the so-called governing council, which was appointed by the U.S. And who becomes the first judge of the court? Chalabi's nephew. I mean, suppose he's the most honorable person in the world, this nephew? Is it really conceivable that that's the person that ought to be judge in a world as big as this? So you don't have independence, because everything depends on what the U.S. does for the court: financing, training, selection and everything else. You don't have competence, because it's not legal. And you don't have impartiality, as far as can be told from the appearance. "The only existing court that is competent and independent and impartial is the International Criminal Court, which came into existence July 1, 2002. It's a court the U.S. opposed. It's a court the U.S. tragically weakened, but it's been approved by more than 120 countries. "The judges were appointed not by the U.S., but the Iraqis, and after the new government comes to power, they will have to be reconfirmed," said Michael Scharf, a human-rights lawyer at Case Western Reserve who has helped train Iraqi judges, when Mr. Clark's claims were put before him. "Not only that: The judges who I work with are extremely independent people. They have no particular love for the United States. These are people who were chosen for their expertise and independence." Mr. Clark is 77 years old, stooped and slender. He was wearing New Balance sneakers and a worn blue button-down shirt tucked into a pair of wool or polyester pants that might have dated from his early political career. He has wide-set eyes, a bit like a crawfish. And to many, his movements are just as mysterious-sideways, quirky, puzzling. "Ramsey is a mystery," said Melvin Wulf, an old colleague who shared a law practice with Mr. Clark during the late 1970's and early 1980's, in an earlier interview. "I saw him every day, but I didn't know him any better at the end of five years than I knew him on the first day. He plays himself very close to the vest, consults with no one except for himself." Outside the room, the office manager, Ben Cheney, brother of the slain civil-rights activist, typed at a keyboard. A few unlikely magazines- The New Yorker ,Gourmet ,Opera News -sat in a stack in the waiting room for visitors. Like some small-town doctor's office, there were no visitors and the office was quiet-nothing that would suggest that this was the home away from home of one of the most controversial attorneys in the United States. It all started in the last hoary week of 2004, when Mr. Clark jetted over to Jordan for a conference with 20 or so other attorneys on Dec. 28 to start forming their strategy. Reaction to Mr. Clark's trip was swift and certain across the political spectrum. On the right, bloggers for Web sites like RightNation declared that he should be "tried for sedition and treason." The New York Sun accused him of losing all "credibility when it comes to claiming to be for peace." Even some of his left-wing comrades rolled their eyes when they heard that he'd signed on to represent a man who had allegedly ordered 300,000 political killings. "I do think that Saddam, like anybody else, does have a right to a fair trial and a competent lawyer. I'm just not sure why Ramsey Clark needs to do that," said Leslie Cagan, a longtime peace and justice activist. "Personally, I wish he didn't do some of those things, because he is one of the few public well-known leftists in this country, and it does make our work harder sometimes." Conservatives loathe Mr. Clark, but even staunch progressives don't always know what to make of him, and some of his closest friends say he can't be easily defined: Is he a valiant "dissenter" in the tradition of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, as his friend Victor Navasky suggested? Or is he an old ideologue, as others have charged, who is driven above all by his ties to a Communist splinter group called the Workers World Party? Is he a profile in courage, or a study in eccentricity? Perhaps predictably, Mr. Clark presents himself as neither. A rangy Texan with a down-home Southern drawl, he seems to move to his own unapologetic drumbeat. He is not without supporters, including some colleagues who argued that Mr. Clark will provide Mr. Hussein with a competent defense, a necessary component of a fair trial. "[Mr. Clark] has a very good point: The international legal issues are compelling in some ways," said Alan Dershowitz, who has worked both with and against Mr. Clark on a number of cases. "I think it has to be perceived as a fair trial, and Ramsey's being involved increases the chances that it will be perceived as a fair trial, because he is a very good lawyer-very smart and very tough." Mr. Clark is used to being in the center of the storm. Over the years, he has become a fixture of national and international crime scenes, taking on the kind of thorny cases that have earned him comparisons to the crusading civil-liberties lawyer Clarence Darrow on the one hand-and to Benedict Arnold on the other. "I think he seems to have some kind of inner compass that tells him that this situation is unfair, and because of that we have to get involved in it," said Abdeen Jabara, an old friend and lawyer who formerly ran the Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. "I don't think I've ever met anybody who is as principled in his beliefs to fight for the underdog." Long before he joined Saddam Hussein's defense team, before he became the mascot of the anti-Establishment, Ramsey Clark was himself a pedigreed member of the political elite. Born into an influential Texas family, he came from a long line of lawyers who moved effortlessly within the highest levels of law and government. His maternal grandfather was a member of the Texas Supreme Court; his paternal grandfather was president of the Texas Bar Association. His father, Tom C. Clark, was a law- and-order lawyer with close ties to Lyndon B. Johnson. At Mr. Johnson's urging, President Harry S. Truman named the elder Mr. Clark his Attorney General in 1945. Four years later, Mr. Truman appointed him to the U.S. Supreme Court. Early in his life, the young Ramsey rebelled at least twice against these Clark family precedents. He tried to join the Marines when he was 13, on Dec. 8, 1941, "and it probably would have been pretty dangerous," he laughed. "As far as I can tell, I've always had a fierce opposition to violence," he said. "I can remember when I was in fifth or sixth grade, the subject of capital punishment came up. And I was shy and quiet and rarely said much, but I really got upset and I just was passionately against it." But when he was 17, he did drop out of high school-against his father's wishes-to join the Marine Corps and fight in World War II. Several years later, he defied his father again when he chose to go to the more progressive-minded University of Chicago Law School rather than Harvard Law. Following law school, Mr. Clark headed back to Texas and appeared, at least on the surface, to return to the path his father and grandfathers had carved out before him. He married his college sweetheart, Georgia Welch, and went to work for the family's Dallas law firm. He stayed there for 10 years, specializing in antitrust work, until, in 1961, President John F. Kennedy made him an Assistant Attorney General in brother Robert Kennedy's Justice Department. Mr. Clark arrived in Washington as the Justice Department was taking on a bigger role in enforcing civil rights. He roved the South as part of Robert Kennedy's "riot squad" and ultimately helped to draft the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. "I went in '61, and because I was from Texas I could pass, so I was used extensively in the South," he said. "I was in charge of supervising the desegregation of all public schools in '62 in the South. There were only five, but it was a big job-doing just one of them was a big job. You had to worry about children being beat up, their homes being firebombed. It seemed incredibly important, exciting and a privilege to be involved in that." His outspokenness and sharp positions-from his support of civil rights to his opposition to wire-tapping and the death penalty-ultimately earned him the nickname "the Preacher" among his Justice Department colleagues. "[Ramsey Clark] was liberal, though he was much more restrained than he is today," recalled Nicholas Katzenbach, who worked alongside Mr. Clark for some six years, first as Deputy Attorney General and then as Attorney General. "Still, I think he was far more liberal than his dad." Indeed, Mr. Clark bumped squarely against his father's own, more conservative legal judgments several times during his years in the Justice Department. Most notably, when Johnson appointed him Attorney General in 1967, one of his first steps was to drop the case against Judith Coplon, a Justice Department clerk who had been charged during the early McCarthy days with passing secrets to her Soviet lover. Mr. Clark's father had brought the case when he was Attorney General. "It seemed to me a quite fascinating thing to do," said Mr. Navasky, who became close friends with Mr. Clark in the late 1960's while writing the book Kennedy Justice . "Ramsey was appointed under the cloud that he got the job [of Attorney General] because his family was Texas buddies of the Johnson family. But I came to the conclusion, both from my interviews and what he did in the Justice Department, that he was a kind of civil-libertarian Attorney General, which is very unusual." This civil-libertarian streak didn't always go over well in the Johnson cabinet, however. During his two years as Attorney General, Mr. Clark found himself at odds with the administration over everything from wire-tapping to prison reform to the Vietnam War. "President Johnson knew I [opposed the war in Vietnam] before he appointed me Attorney General," Mr. Clark said. "And he didn't put me on the National Security Council, which every Attorney General before me had been on and every Attorney General since me had been on. He would call me over once in a while to some meeting on the war when he wanted an extreme position, and I remember one breakfast, the question was whether to bomb north of a famous parallel, I can't remember which one. And the guys were arguing "yes-no-yes-no" as to whether you could bomb north of the line, and when it came to me I said, 'I don't think you can bomb on either side of the line.' Because bombing is just killing people, and you didn't know who the hell you were killing-you were killing civilians. It was just a shameful, sick thing." When Richard Nixon denounced Mr. Clark in a campaign speech in 1968, Johnson reportedly deadpanned, "I had to sit on my hands so I wouldn't cheer it." But Mr. Clark said his relationship with Johnson was friendly. "I never had any real conflict with him. But he [did] say to me one time, 'Some people think you're destroying the Democratic Party.' And I said, 'I'm not even in politics, I'm just doing the law.'" Mr. Clark never spoke out publicly against the administration, and he never resigned, despite his apparent misgivings about Vietnam. "You know, I had a choice of resigning," Mr. Clark recalled, "and it's something I considered-it's something I thought was important and respected. But I also thought what I was doing was important-was more important in the sense of its direct impact on lives. And I saw an environment around me in which everything I had been trying to do would be swept away. I already felt that the civil-rights movement after the Watts riots in '65 was in deep trouble. So I couldn't see giving up on that. And I had no role in the Vietnam business, because I wasn't even on the Security Council." Some of Mr. Clark's colleagues have suggested that he is still doing penance for this period of his life-in particular, for prosecuting war resisters like Dr. Benjamin Spock, the Reverend William Sloane Coffin and boxing legend Muhammad Ali. "Standing by, being Attorney General during the Vietnam War without resigning, is not a particularly heroic position to have taken," said his old colleague, Mr. Wulf. "I sometimes speculate- and this is absolute speculation-that what he's doing is a kind of atonement for having been Attorney General for Lyndon Johnson at the time of the Vietnam War, and for having in fact initiated the indictment against Dr. Spock and the others." As in most cases, Mr. Clark was as unapologetic about his indictment of Spock as he has since become about his Johnson administration apostasy. "I personally authorized the case against William Sloane Coffin, who came down to marry our son a few years later. I visited him and stayed in his home in '69, at Yale. Dr. Spock I became very close friends with. And I really haven't had regrets about the case. I think the government has the duty to protect laws that it believes are constitutional, and I believe the Selective Service Act was constitutional." Still, there's no question that Mr. Clark veered sharply leftward after his Johnson years. Beginning in the early 1970's, Mr. Clark took a string of headline-grabbing "movement" cases, amassing a docket that read like a Who's Who of the decade's radicals and revolutionaries. In 1973, he defended the Harrisburg Seven, a group of peace activists who were accused, among other things, of plotting to kidnap Henry Kissinger. One year later, he joined famed radical lawyer William Kunstler in representing two of the Attica Brothers who had been accused of killing a prison guard. Around the same time, he also launched an upstart campaign for U.S. Senate against New York Republican Jacob Javits. (At the state Democratic convention in 1974, Frank Serpico nominated him and Attica Brother Herbert X. Blyden seconded it.) Running as a Democrat, he argued for a 50 percent cut in the defense budget and refused to take contributions above $100. Mr. Navasky managed the operation. During the next two decades, Mr. Clark began taking on clients who hovered further and further on the political fringes, clients who were not merely controversial but downright incendiary. He often framed these cases in the old language of civil rights, but these clients were hardly left-wing "cause" clients in the traditional sense (though there were some of those as well). For instance, he took on the case of Karl Linnas, an alleged former Nazi. And he defended-and supposedly befriended- Lyndon LaRouche, the political-cult guru. In the early 1990's, Mr. Clark represented Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb general who was indicted on war crimes. More recently, he gave legal advice to Slobodon Milosevic, the former Yugoslavian president who was also charged with war crimes. Now, of course, there's Saddam Hussein. Taken together, these clients make up quite a rogues' gallery, and some of Mr. Clark's friends and colleagues have been almost as confounded by his legal choices as his critics. To help explain, they have dreamed up a raft of different theories. On the one side are those who believe that Mr. Clark is, above all, a civil libertarian in the Clarence Darrow tradition. To these friends, he is a hero, albeit at times an eccentric one. "He's represented a lot of bad guys. I would say bad guys are entitled to a lawyer. Dracula should have a lawyer, but it's not going to be me," said Michael Steven Smith, a New York City attorney and author. "It's probably not a position taken by most movement lawyers, but it's still a principled position." But other friends and colleagues have said they suspect he is driven primarily by ideology, and not just the standard lefty ideology. "I support many of the causes he supports, but I also vehemently disagree with some of the choices he's made, because I perceive him as thinking that any enemy of the United States is a friend of his, and I think that leads him into representing people he should not," said Beth Stevens, an attorney who represented a group of Bosnian Muslim women who sued Mr. Karadzic in 1993. And yet for a man who sticks to certain basic principles of justice, even when the circumstances of the world seem to be pressing their defense to the point of absurdity, Mr. Clark had a deceptively simple answer for the choices he's made. "You know, we tend to demean here the idea that you're innocent until proven guilty, and most people are going to chuckle when you say that in connection with a case like Saddam Hussein," said Mr. Clark, responding to his critics. "But the main meaning is that truth is hard to find. You don't really know, you have to search for it-you have to inquire diligently, be very skeptical." You may reach Lizzy Ratner via email at: lratner@observer.com . ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* 21) Iraqi Resistance speech on videotape December 13 2004 GISpecial 3A5 ThomasFBarton@earthlink.net A Message From The Iraq Resistance Islamic Jihad Army - A message in English "We are simple people who chose principles over fear." Propaganda or disinformation? You decide. Iraqi Resistance speech on videotape December 13 2004 Title: Communiqué Number 6 The media platoon of the Islamic Jihad Army. On the 27th of Shawal 1425h. 10 December 2004 People of the world! These words come to you from those who up to the day of the invasion were struggling to survive under the sanctions imposed by the criminal regimes of the U.S. and Britain . We are simple people who chose principles over fear. We have suffered crimes and sanctions, which we consider the true weapons of mass destruction. Years and years of agony and despair, while the condemned UN traded with our oil revenues in the name of world stability and peace. Over two million innocents died waiting for a light at the end of a tunnel that only ended with the occupation of our country and the theft of our resources. After the crimes of the administrations of the U.S. and Britain in Iraq , we have chosen our future. The future of every resistance struggle ever in the history of man. It is our duty, as well as our right, to fight back the occupying forces, which their nations will be held morally and economically responsible; for what their elected governments have destroyed and stolen from our land. We have not crossed the oceans and seas to occupy Britain or the U.S. nor are we responsible for 9/11. These are only a few of the lies that these criminals present to cover their true plans for the control of the energy resources of the world, in face of a growing China and a strong unified Europe . It is Ironic that the Iraqi's are to bear the full face of this large and growing conflict on behalf of the rest of this sleeping world. We thank all those, including those of Britain and the U.S. , who took to the streets in protest against this war and against Globalism. We also thank France , Germany and other states for their position, which least to say are considered wise and balanced, til now. Today, we call on you again. We do not require arms or fighters, for we have plenty. We ask you to form a world wide front against war and sanctions. A front that is governed by the wise and knowing. A front that will bring reform and order. New institutions that would replace the now corrupt. Stop using the U.S. dollar, use the Euro or a basket of currencies. Reduce or halt your consumption of British and U.S. products. Put an end to Zionism before it ends the world. Educate those in doubt of the true nature of this conflict and do not believe their media for their casualties are far higher than they admit. We only wish we had more cameras to show the world their true defeat. The enemy is on the run. They are in fear of a resistance movement they can not see nor predict. We, now choose when, where, and how to strike. And as our ancestors drew the first sparks of civilization, we will redefine the word Âconquest. Today we write a new chapter in the arts of urban warfare. Know that by helping the Iraqi people you are helping yourselves, for tomorrow may bring the same destruction to you. In helping the Iraqi people does not mean dealing for the Americans for a few contracts here and there. You must continue to isolate their strategy. This conflict is no longer considered a localized war. Nor can the world remain hostage to the never-ending and regenerated fear that the American people suffer from in general. We will pin them here in Iraq to drain their resources, manpower, and their will to fight. We will make them spend as much as they steal, if not more. We will disrupt, then halt the flow of our stolen oil, thus, rendering their plans useless. And the earlier a movement is born, the earlier their fall will be. And to the American soldiers we say, you can also choose to fight tyranny with us. Lay down your weapons, and seek refuge in our mosques, churches and homes. We will protect you. And we will get you out of Iraq , as we have done with a few others before you. Go back to your homes, families, and loved ones. This is not your war. Nor are you fighting for a true cause in Iraq . And to George W. Bush, we say, ÂYou have asked us to ÂBring it onÂ, and so have we. Like never expected. Have you another challenge? Marxism mailing list Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* 22) The victims of the tsunami pay the price of war on Iraq US and British aid is dwarfed by the billions both spend on slaughter George Monbiot Guardian Tuesday January 4, 2005 http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1382857,00.html There has never been a moment like it on British television. The Vicar of Dibley, one of our gentler sitcoms, was bouncing along with its usual bonhomie on New Year's Day when it suddenly hit us with a scene from another world. Two young African children were sobbing and trying to comfort each other after their mother had died of Aids. How on earth, I wondered, would the show make us laugh after that? It made no attempt to do so. One by one the characters, famous for their parochial boorishness, stood in front of the camera wearing the white armbands which signalled their support for the Make Poverty History campaign. You would have to have been hewn from stone not to cry. The timing was perfect. In my local Oxfam shop last week, people were queueing to the door to pledge money for the tsunami fund. A pub on the other side of town raised £1,000 on Saturday night. In the pot on the counter of the local newsagent's there must be nearly £100. The woman who runs the bakery told me about the homeless man she had seen, who emptied his pockets in the bank, saying "I just want to do my bit", while the whole queue tried not to cry. Over the past few months, reviewing the complete lack of public interest in what is happening in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the failure, in the west, to mobilise effective protests against the continuing atrocities in Iraq, I had begun to wonder whether we had lost our ability to stand in other people's shoes. I have now stopped wondering. The response to the tsunami shows that, however we might seek to suppress it, we cannot destroy our capacity for empathy. But one obvious question recurs. Why must the relief of suffering, in this unprecedentedly prosperous world, rely on the whims of citizens and the appeals of pop stars and comedians? Why, when extreme poverty could be made history with a minor redeployment of public finances, must the poor world still wait for homeless people in the rich world to empty their pockets? The obvious answer is that governments have other priorities. And the one that leaps to mind is war. If the money they have promised to the victims of the tsunami still falls far short of the amounts required, it is partly because the contingency fund upon which they draw in times of crisis has been spent on blowing people to bits in Iraq. The US government has so far pledged $350m to the victims of the tsunami, and the UK government £50m ($96m). The US has spent $148 billion on the Iraq war and the UK £6bn ($11.5bn). The war has been running for 656 days. This means that the money pledged for the tsunami disaster by the United States is the equivalent of one and a half day's spending in Iraq. The money the UK has given equates to five and a half days of our involvement in the war. It looks still worse when you compare the cost of the war to the total foreign aid budget. The UK has spent almost twice as much on creating suffering in Iraq as it spends annually on relieving it elsewhere. The United States gives just over $16bn in foreign aid: less than one ninth of the money it has burnt so far in Iraq. The figures for war and aid are worth comparing because, when all the other excuses for the invasion of Iraq were stripped away, both governments explained that it was being waged for the good of the Iraqis. Let us, for a moment, take this claim at face value. Let us suppose that the invasion and occupation of Iraq had nothing to do with power, domestic politics or oil, but were, in fact, components of a monumental aid programme. And let us, with reckless generosity, assume that more people in Iraq have gained as a result of this aid programme than lost. To justify the war, even under these wildly unsafe assumptions, George Bush and Tony Blair would have to show that the money they spent was a cost-efficient means of relieving human suffering. As it was sufficient to have made a measurable improvement in the lives of all the 2.8 billion people living in absolute poverty, and as there are only 25 million people in Iraq, this is simply not possible. Even if you ignore every other issue - such as the trifling matter of mass killing - the opportunity costs of the Iraq war categorise it as a humanitarian disaster. Indeed, such calculations suggest that, on cost grounds alone, a humanitarian war is a contradiction in terms. But our leaders appear to have lost the ability to distinguish between helping people and killing them. The tone of Blair's New Year message was almost identical to that of his tear-jerking insistence that we understand the Iraqi people must be bombed for their own good. The US marines who have now been dispatched to Sri Lanka to help the rescue operation were, just a few weeks ago, murdering the civilians (for this, remember, is an illegal war), smashing the homes and evicting the entire population of the Iraqi city of Falluja. Even within the official aid budgets the two aims are confused: $8.9bn of the aid money the US spends is used for military assistance, anti-drugs operations, counter-terrorism and the Iraq relief and reconstruction fund (otherwise known as the Halliburton benevolent trust). For Bush and Blair, the tsunami relief operation and the Iraq war are both episodes in the same narrative of salvation. The civilised world rides out to rescue foreigners from their darkness. While they spend the money we gave them to relieve suffering on slaughtering the poor, the world must rely for disaster relief on the homeless man emptying his pockets. If our leaders were as generous in helping people as they are in killing them, no one would ever go hungry. ·You can join the campaign against global poverty at: www.makepovertyhistory.org www.monbiot.com Guardian Unlimited (c) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005 ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* 23) National Task Force for Mumia Abu-Jamal Legal Update - December 11, 2004 meeting in New York City (Reviewed by Attorney Robert R. Bryan) LEGAL UPDATE: Mumia's case is simultaneously being heard in two different courts presently: the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (appellate court) and the Pennsylvania State Court of Common Pleas (trial court), both of which sit in Philadelphia. The Third Circuit (the appellate court) Procedure In July 2004, both Robert Bryan and the state of Pennsylvania submitted briefs on the effect of the 06-24-04 United States Supreme Court decision in Beard v. Banks on Mumia's case. On 07-29-04, Robert filed a memorandum of law on the affect of Banks for Mumia, and requested a stay of the proceedings in this matter pending the outcome of the issues simultaneously being litigated in the Pennsylvania trial court before Judge Pamela Dembe. On 10-19-04, the appellate court entered an order denying the 07-29-04 request from Robert Bryan for a stay of the proceedings. What this means is that the issues currently pending before the appellate court are moving forward. The next step involves putting these issues on what is called a "briefing schedule," which has yet to be done by the appellate court. In other words, Robert has yet to receive notice from the appellate court as to when briefs will be due on the issues currently before it. Robert initially filed for a stay of these proceedings because of the active litigation pending before Judge Dembe in the trial court in Philadelphia, and argued against having to litigate one case in two courts at the same time. The matters before Judge Dembe cannot be resolved by the Third Circuit, but must first be addressed at the trial level in the state system. Additionally, Robert Bryan is currently working on a brief to be filed with this court requesting that additional issues be certified for appeal from district court Judge Yohn's 2001 habeas decision, which certified only one claim for relief: racial bias in jury selection, also known as the Batson claim. Mumia's former attorneys filed the original motion on this issue, which Robert plans to supplement, requesting that additional issues be certified on appeal to the appellate court. What are the possible outcomes? There are four possibilities: the Third Circuit could (1) deny this request outright, (2) only allow a few of the 29 issues raised by Mumia's writ for habeas corpus, (3) send the case back to Judge William Yohn to apply the standard set out in Miller-El (see below), or (4) wait for Mumia's Batson issue to be resolved before moving forward on this one. More immediately, Robert plans to file a motion for remand back down to the district court on the issues raised by Terri Maurer-Carter's affidavit. Terri Maurer-Carter is the court reporter who overheard trial judge Albert Sabo-who presided over Mumia's 1982 "trial," and 1995, 1996, and 1997 Post-Conviction Relief Act (PCRA) appellate hearings in Philadelphia-say: "Yeah, and I'm going to help 'em [the prosecution] fry the n****r." Issues There are two issues before the appellate court, which will be explained below. First, what did the United States Supreme Court decide in Beard v. Banks, and how does that affect Mumia? In July 2004, the appellate court allowed both Robert Bryan and the state of Pennsylvania to submit briefs on the affect of Banks on Mumia's case. The issue was whether Mumia's case was affected by the recent United States Supreme Court decision in Beard v. Banks. George Banks was sentenced to death in 1982. After his state appeals were exhausted, he sought habeas relief in federal district court and was denied. On appeal to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, Banks' death sentence was found to be unconstitutional, and the decision of the district court was reversed. The appellate court held that jury instructions during Banks' sentencing led jurors to believe they could not vote against the death penalty unless they all agreed on mitigating evidence-evidence that would have inclined them not to vote for a death sentence. The appellate court reasoned that these jury instructions violated the United States Supreme Court's 1988 ruling in Mills v. Maryland. However, the Third Circuit did not decide whether the rule of Mills was retroactive. In other words, could Banks benefit from the United States Supreme Court's 1988 decision in Mills where his conviction became final in 1987? Thus, when Banks' case was next brought before the United States Supreme Court on appeal, the Court sent the case back down to the Third Circuit to decide this issue. The appellate court then decided that the rule created by the Supreme Court in Mills was retroactive and that Banks could benefit. The case was again appealed to the Supreme Court and on 06-24-04, the United States Supreme Court reversed the decision of the Third Circuit and declared that the rule of law created in Mills was not retroactive. In a 5-to-4 decision written by Justice Clarence Thomas, the Court found that the rule announced in Mills-that sentencing schemes could not prevent jurors from considering mitigating evidence that had not been accepted unanimously when deciding whether to apply the death penalty-was a new rule of law that was not a "watershed rule of criminal procedure implicating the fundamental fairness and accuracy of the criminal proceeding." Finding that the rule of Mills was not a "watershed rule," the United States Supreme Court said that Mills could not be applied retroactively and that Banks' conviction was constitutional. What does this mean? Basically, it means that a "Mills challenge" to a death sentence is only applicable where the sentencing relief sought is for a person whose conviction became final after the rule of Mills was decided in 1988. Seemingly, the Court has said that relief is available to those whose convictions post-date Mills, creating what is called in the law a "bright line rule." Robert Bryan argued in his brief that Mumia benefits from the rule of Mills because his conviction became final in 1990. The state of Pennsylvania has argued that Mumia should not get the benefit of Mills, despite this seemingly bright line rule, and there have been several exchanges back and forth (one as recent as 10-31-04) through the filing of papers with the appellate court on this issue. This matter is still pending. If Mumia wins on this issue, that he does get the benefit of Mills, his case will go back to the trial level in the Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas. The state of Pennsylvania will have two choices, either (1) sentence Mumia to life imprisonment, or (2) grant Mumia a full jury trial on the issue of whether he should be sentenced to life imprisonment or death. A full jury trial, or penalty-phase hearing, means that Mumia is back to 1982 in terms of the issue of sentencing. The state of Pennsylvania will put on evidence of guilt and aggravation to argue for a death sentence. Robert Bryan will then be able to put on evidence of innocence and mitigation. However, the only decision the jury can make should there be a new penalty-phase hearing is life imprisonment or death. If Mumia loses, then the state of Pennsylvania can sign another death warrant, side-stepping Yohn's 2001 habeas decision. However, there still remains another issue pending before the appellate court: the issue of jury selection, Mumia's Batson claim. Second, what is Mumia's Batson claim? The issue of racial bias in jury selection, Mumia's Batson claim, is also still pending before the appellate court. This issue was the only issue Judge Yohn allowed to be appealed to the Third Circuit. In other words, this is the only guilt-phase appellate issue Yohn certified to go before the appellate court. Recently, the United State Supreme Court heard arguments in the case of Thomas Miller-El. A summary of that case from an article in the 12-05-04 NYT is as follows: "In an 8-to-1 decision last year, the Supreme Court instructed the appeals court to rethink its "dismissive and strained interpretation" of the proof in the case, and to consider more seriously the substantial evidence suggesting that prosecutors had systematically excluded blacks from Mr. Miller-El's jury. Prosecutors used peremptory strikes to eliminate 10 out of 11 eligible black jurors, and they twice used a local procedure called a jury shuffle to move blacks lower on the list of potential jurors, the decision said. The jury ultimately selected, which had one black member, convicted Mr. Miller-El, a black man who is now 53, of killing a clerk at a Holiday Inn in Dallas in 1985. Instead of considering much of the evidence recited by the Supreme Court majority, the appeals court engaged in something akin to plagiarism. In February, it again rejected Mr. Miller-El's claims, in a decision that reproduced, virtually verbatim and without attribution, several paragraphs from the sole dissenting opinion in last year's Supreme Court decision, written by Justice Clarence Thomas." According to Attorney Bryan, Miller-El deals with two issues: (1) racism in jury selection and (2) the certification of appellate issues by federal district courts. Regarding racial bias in jury selection, should the United States Supreme Court decide in favor of Miller-El on this issue, Mumia's position will be strengthened. Furthermore, there is also good case law in the Third Circuit on this issue that should also support Mumia's case. As for the certification of issues for appeal by the lower federal courts, the Supreme Court appears to be saying that these courts have too high a standard. In other words, they have made it such that unless a petitioner can prove a certain win on appeal, then that issue will not move forward. But if a certain win was apparent, then there would be no need for an appeal because the district court would have granted relief in the first instance, right? If Miller-El succeeds on this issue, then Robert will be in a better position to argue that Judge Yohn violated the proper standard and set the bar to high for his certificates of appealability. If Mumia wins his Batson claim, there will be a completely new trial, meaning there will be a new trial to decide guilt or innocence. If there is an acquittal, Mumia will be released. If Mumia is found guilty, there will be a penalty-phase hearing. The Pennsylvania State Court of Common Pleas (trial court) Procedure With regards to the newly discovered evidence presented to this court through the affidavits of William Pate and Yvette Williams, Robert Bryan has requested a hearing on the issues this evidence raises in relation to Mumia's conviction. Currently pending before Judge Dembe is a motion to dismiss that was filed by the state of Pennsylvania. This new evidence has not been presented in federal court because the issues it raises have not yet been resolved by Dembe in the state court system. Robert Bryan has replied to this motion, and was forced by Dembe in September 2004 to qualify himself to handle a capital case, despite his years of experience in these matters. Robert has handled hundreds of capital cases. Interestingly, there is a new state law in Pennsylvania that requires defense attorneys handling capital litigation to demonstrate that they are qualified to handle such matters, but that law was not in effect when Dembe challenged Robert's ability to handle Mumia's case. If Judge Dembe decides in Mumia's favor, then he would get a new trial. If Dembe denies relief, then Robert will appeal that decision through to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. It should be noted that if Dembe or the Pennsylvania appellate courts grants Mumia relief, there will be no need to remain in federal court-another reason why Robert has argued against the lifting of the stay by the Third Circuit. Issues There are two issues before the trial court: the fabricated confession of Pricilla Durham and that the false testimony the state of Pennsylvania put on during the trial through their key witness Cynthia White. William Pate is the half-brother of Pricilla Durham. In his affidavit, he says that Durham lied about the confession she claimed Mumia made at the hospital on the night he was shot and Faulkner died. Yvette Williams said in her affidavit that Cynthia White was not present during the shooting, but appeared sometime thereafter. HEARING SET FOR MUMIA ON FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2005 Dear Friends: Today official notification was received that on Friday, February 11, 2005, there will be a hearing concerning Mumia Abu-Jamal in the Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas, Philadelphia before Judge Pamela Pryor Dembe. The hearing will be pursuant to the Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus we filed December 8, 2003 on Mumia's behalf. Next month the court will issue a memorandum that is to include preliminary rulings on the petition. At that time she will direct counsel as to how she wishes to proceed. The hearing will be in the Criminal Justice Center, Philadelphia, but to date no courtroom has been assigned. The issues raised in our habeas corpus petition are: 1. The State Manipulated A Purported Eyewitness To Falsely Identify Petitioner As The Shooter, In Violation Of His Rights Under The Fifth, Sixth Eighth, And Fourteenth Amendments To The United States Constitution. 2. Petitioner Was Found Guilty And Sentenced To Death Through The Use Of A Fabricated Confession, In Violation Of The Fifth, Eighth And Fourteenth Amendments. We will advise when more is known about the upcoming hearing. With best wishes, Robert ======= Law Offices of Robert R. Bryan 2088 Union Street, Suite 4 San Francisco, California 94123-4124 Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal Black legislators support Mumia's release On Dec. 3, the National Black Caucus of State Legislators (NBCSL) passed a resolution during its conference in Philadelphia calling for the freedom of African American political prisoner and death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal. This comes on the heels of another important resolution passed at the NAACP national convention on July 15 that demanded a new trial for Abu-Jamal and condemned the racist application of the death penalty by the criminal justice system. The state legislators' resolution reads: WHEREAS Mumia Abu-Jamal's 1982 trial in Phila delphia was characterized by illegal suppression of evidence, police coercion, illegal exclusion of Black jurors, and grotesquely unfair and unconstitutional rulings by the judge; and WHEREAS the trial judge, Albert Sabo, has been quoted in a sworn statement to have vowed at the time of the trial to help the prosecution 'fry the n--'; and WHEREAS subsequent appellate rulings have bent the law out of shape to sustain the guilty verdict of that trial; and WHEREAS the appellate courts have also refused to consider strong evidence of Mumia Abu-Jamal's innocence, most notably a confession by Arnold Beverly to the crime; and WHEREAS Mumia Abu-Jamal still is incarcerated on Death Row and still faces a death sentence; and WHEREAS Mumia Abu-Jamal's case is now on appeal before the federal Third Circuit and the state court system; and WHEREAS Mumia Abu-Jamal has for decades as a journalist fought courage ously against racism and for the human rights of all people; and WHEREAS the continued unjust incarceration of Mumia Abu-Jamal represents a threat to the civil rights of all people, THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the National Caucus of Black State Legislators demands that the courts consider the evidence of innocence of Mumia Abu-Jamal and that he be released from prison; and THEREFORE BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the NCBSL demands that Pennsylvania Gov. Edward Rendell instruct his Attorney General to take over the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal from the Philadelphia County District Attorney's office and actually pursue justice; namely, go to court, make a legal confession of error, and stipulate that the conviction be vacated; THEREFORE BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the NCBSL will communicate its views on this matter to Gov. Rendell, 225 Main Capitol Bldg., Harris burg, PA 17120, and to the appropriate courts in consultation with the legal defense team of Mumia Abu-Jamal; and THEREFORE BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the NCBSL will work with the legal defense team of Mumia Abu-Jamal to petition the courts to file any necessary friend of the court brief on behalf of Mumia Abu-Jamal. ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* 24) U.S. Copters Speed Pace of Aid for Indonesia Refugees By ROBERT D. McFADDEN http://nytimes.com/2005/01/02/international/worldspecial4/ 02quake.html?ei=5094 &en=92dbe740aaf891ca&hp=&ex=1104642000&partner=homepage&pagewanted= print&posit ion= The Times article below presents more evidence for the need to divert all US forces from Iraq (where of course they had no business being in the first place) to tsunami disaster areas. Especially right now with the lack of transport equipment and infrastructure and the need to reach isolated victims quickly, every last US helicopter should leave Iraq immediately, be used to ferry aid to victims and to ferry injured out -- and then when their job is done, to come home. And it's the job of the antiwar movement to get back out in the streets to fight for this! January 2, 2005 AID U.S. Copters Speed Pace of Aid for Indonesia Refugees By ROBERT D. McFADDEN Substantial aid finally began reaching desperate refugees in devastated areas of northern Sumatra yesterday as American warships, led by the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, arrived offshore and a fleet of helicopters airlifted critical supplies to stricken towns in Aceh Province. Flying through pounding rains, a dozen Sea Hawk helicopters from the Lincoln ferried food, water, medicines, tents and other supplies from warehouses at Banda Aceh airport to refugees in decimated Indonesian coastal towns and inland villages that had been virtually cut off when the tsunami destroyed roads, bridges and communications a week ago. It was the beginning of what was expected to become a steady stream of international aid for Indonesia and a dozen other countries on the rim of the Indian Ocean, where estimates of the dead hovered between 140,000 and 150,000. Serious injuries were believed to exceed 500,000, and the likelihood of epidemics of cholera and other diseases threatened to send the totals much higher. As the first trickle of supplies broke through, the global relief effort to save an estimated five million homeless survivors of last weekend's undersea earthquake and tsunami was reinforced yesterday when Japan raised its pledge of aid from $30 million to $500 million, the largest contribution so far. Combined with a $350 million pledge by the United States on Friday, this brought the total contributions of more than 40 nations to $2 billion, according to the United Nations. [Page 9.] The United Nations will begin a new world appeal for money in New York this week, and Secretary General Kofi Annan will arrive in Jakarta on Thursday to convene a meeting of major donor nations to map strategy for the relief campaign. Private donations, which have flooded charitable organizations around the world, are expected to add hundreds of millions to the relief programs. Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, in his first comments on the disaster, said the world faced a long-term relief commitment. "At first it seemed a terrible disaster, a terrible tragedy," he said. "But I think as the days have gone on, people have recognized it as a global catastrophe. There will be months, if not years, of work ahead of us." President Bush too spoke of a long commitment. "We offer our love and compassion, and our assurance that America will be there to help," he said in his weekly radio address from his ranch in Crawford, Tex. He cited a host of problems - communications, roads and medical facilities damaged or washed out - but promised that help was coming, and, indeed, had already begun to arrive. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, the president's brother, were expected to arrive in the region today with a team of experts to tour some stricken areas and to assess the needs. Their schedule was still being worked out, officials said. The need is indeed enormous, especially in Aceh Province, where towns and villages were destroyed. Meulaboh, on Aceh's west coast, was flattened, and as many as 40,000 of the 120,000 residents were killed. It lay buried under mountains of mud and debris yesterday as Indonesia's president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, flew in to see the devastation. Other firsthand reports of the devastation in Aceh were provided by the pilots and crew members of the helicopters that, from dawn to sunset on New Year's Day, shuttled 25,000 pounds of supplies to refugees. "There is nothing left to speak of at these coastal communities," Lt. Cmdr. Jeff Vorce, a pilot from San Diego, told The Associated Press. He told of a swath of destruction two miles deep from the coasts, with trees mowed down, roads washed away and only foundations where buildings once stood. Besides airdrops by the American helicopters, fleets of cargo planes from Australia, New Zealand and other nations continued to land at Banda Aceh and Medan, ferrying in tons of supplies. But bad roads, destroyed bridges, a lack of fuel and trucks, and other problems continued to hamper the distribution. While the Abraham Lincoln and four accompanying ships represented the vanguard of American emergency aid to Indonesia, American officials said seven more vessels led by the amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard were steaming west from the South China Sea with more supplies and were expected to be off the coast of Sri Lanka in the coming week, a Pentagon spokesman said. Military officials said that yet another convoy, six slower-moving ships loaded with food, water, blankets and a 500-bed portable hospital, was en route from Guam, but was not expected to reach the stricken region for about two weeks. Capt. Rodger Welch of the Navy, representing the operations directorate of the military's Pacific Command, said late Saturday that the American relief mission likely was the largest in the region in at least 50 years. "And we are only beginning this effort," he added. About 10,000 to 12,000 American military personnel were now involved, mostly aboard the Lincoln and Bonhomme Richard groups. In Sri Lanka, flash floods yesterday forced the evacuation of thousands of people from low-lying areas hard hit by the tsunami, which killed more than 28,700 there. At least 15 camps where 30,000 refugees had been sheltering were evacuated after storms dumped 13 inches of rain over the eastern coastal region. Weeklong efforts to bury the dead in Sri Lanka and coastal areas of India were winding down, and government and private aid workers said they were turning their attention increasingly to sheltering the survivors in more sanitary refugee camps, while the homes of an estimated one million displaced persons are rebuilt. "This is where we are going to see a rise in communicable diseases, diarrhea, measles, upper respiratory infections," said David Overlack, a health care specialist surveying camps in Sri Lanka for the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. World Health Organization workers have noted "a slight increase in the reporting of diarrheal illness" in areas of Sri Lanka and Indonesia affected by the tsunami, David Nabarro, an official of the United Nations agency, said in an interview yesterday. But the increase does not mean an epidemic, he said. There have been no outbreaks of cholera or other diseases, he said, adding that it is too early for such outbreaks to occur. Aid workers praised Sri Lankan officials and volunteers for their efforts to bury the dead quickly and to place 600,000 homeless people in schools, temples and mosques. An outpouring of donations from Sri Lankans has prevented shortages of food and clothing, officials said. Jeffrey J. Lunstead, the American ambassador to Sri Lanka and the Maldives, said the first planeload of American relief supplies had arrived in Sri Lanka - plastic sheeting to house 3,600 people and 5,400 cans of fresh water. He said most of the American aid would be aimed at reconstruction, rather than emergency food and medicines. To that end, American military officials said 1,500 marines and 20 helicopters would be deployed in the next few days to clear debris and aid survivors in devastated areas of Sri Lanka. The first contingent of 200 was expected to arrive today. Reporting for this article was contributed by Ian Fisher in Sri Lanka, Raymond Bonner and Jane Perlez in Indonesia,Thom Shanker in Washington and Lawrence K. Altman in New York. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* 25) IRAQ: Death in Fallujah rising, doctors say 04 Jan 2005 14:56:16 GMT Source: Integrated Regional Information Networks http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/ 121b671d950efc3ac031b54b55118d85.htm FALLUJAH, 4 January (IRIN) - "It was really distressing picking up dead bodies from destroyed homes, especially children. It is the most depressing situation I have ever been in since the war started," Dr Rafa'ah al-Iyssaue, director of the main hospital in Fallujah city, some 60 km west of Baghdad, told IRIN. According to al-Iyssaue, the hospital emergency team has recovered more than 700 bodies from rubble where houses and shops once stood, adding that more than 550 were women and children. He said a very small number of men were found in these places and most were elderly. Doctors at the hospital claim that many bodies had been found in a mutilated condition, some without legs or arms. Two babies were found at their homes, who are believed to have died from malnutrition, according to a specialist at the hospital. Al-Iyssaue added these numbers were only from nine neighbourhoods of the city and that 18 others had not yet been reached, as they were waiting for help from the Iraqi Red Crescent Society (IRCS) to make it easier for them to enter. He explained that many of the dead had been already buried by civilians from the Garma and Amirya districts of Fallujah after approval from US-led forces nearly three weeks ago, and those bodies had not been counted. IRCS officials told IRIN they needed more time to give an accurate death toll, adding that the city was completely uninhabitable. Marxism mailing list Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* 26) The best kept media secret of the week is that the greatest devastation and death occurred and is occurring in Indonesia's Aceh province. Adding to Jim's post: ETAN (many will know Ben Terrall's work with and for ETAN here). Marc Sapir writes that Allan Nairn was Dennis Bernstein's guest on Flashpoints Thurs., Dec. 30 and that: The best kept media secret of the week is that the greatest devastation and death occurred and is occurring in Indonesia's Aceh province. I Just heard the scoop on Indonesia (from Alan Nairn, plus an Indonesian UC Berkeley professor and a fellow with nonviolence international). The Indonesian military yesterday began a new major military campaign in Aceh province (where perhaps 80,000 are dead) attacking villages (that are still standing) in an effort to wipe out the independence movement. They will be sending in another 15,000 troops to complement the 50,000 that have been used to impose martial law the past year. While claiming to be doing relief work they are hampering the relief efforts and will steal as much money as they can from relief work. The U.S. is likely to be asked by Indonesia to put the Aceh popular resistance movement on it's list of terrorist organizations and there is fear that under Condoleeza that will be approved. That will then make most Indonesians in the U.S. and around the world terrorist collaborators as they try to help their families and the independence movement get out from under the terror of the Indonesian military. Please tell people who want to send financial aid to the Tsunami victims of Indonesia to go through the East Timor Action Network not through government channels. They can be contacted at www.ETAN.org Aceh, the region closest to the earthquake, has been almost entirely sealed from foreign presence since the beginning of martial law in May 2003. There are rumors that the Indonesian government is now debating whether to allow foreign organizations access to Aceh. The U.S. government has offered assistance. Every second delayed contributes to needless death, sickness and suffering. This is clearly not the time for politics to supersede dire humanitarian needs. East Timor ACTION Network ALERT Donate to Aceh relief Go to the website for information re: contacting your congressional reps and about how to donate to grassroots efforts in Aceh: http://www.etan.org/action/action2/23alert.htm#Donate%20to%20Aceh%20relief Beware Medecins sans Frontieres: At 11:41 PM -0800 1/3/05, echo wrote: Medecins Sans Frontieres was arrogant and controlling at the Colomoncagua refugee camp. Didn't want to trust the community with the supplies and pharmaceuticals. The survivors at Colomoncagua were organized on an anarchist basis, with every person regardless of age or sex contributing with whatever knowledge or skill he or she possessed. They had lived so long because they were responsible. adding that the US is moving to displace UNICEF in relief work, and use the opportunity to tighten military control. (Again on Flashpoints yesterday, Monday the 3rd, the Acehnese head-of-state-in-exile was interviewed, and reported that Indonesian soldiers are shooting survivors who try to bury the dead, a practice sickeningly familiar from Palestine and Iraq.) more on military repression of Acehnese: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0103-25.htm ''We are now carrying out two duties: humanitarian work and the security operation,'' he told the daily. ''The raids to quell the secessionist movement in Aceh will continue unless the president issues a decree to lift the civil emergency and assign us to merely play a humanitarian role in Aceh.''<< and: Published January 4th, 2005, in The Age, Melbourne, Australia. Kantha Shakti (Strength to Women) is a partner group supported by IWDA. Rapists, abusers prey on disaster victims By Liz Minchin January 5, 2005 First their lives were torn apart by the tsunami; now women and children are being pursued by human predators. With millions left homeless and vulnerable throughout south Asia, some survivors have been further traumatised by shocking acts of violence, including gang rape, kidnapping, child abuse and the mutilation of corpses. Most of the reported violence has been in Sri Lanka, where a national women's group, Kantha Shakti (Strength of Women), has warned that "many, many" children and women are believed to have been abducted, mostly in the chaotic south. "Lots of children are being abducted and taken away for slavery . . . This [i]s happening on a large scale," Kantha Shakti executive director Rohini Weerasinghe told The Age. Even on the day the tsunami struck, women were abducted, she said. There has been no news of those women since. Other reports of abuse have been equally shocking. (I will send the full report to anyone who requests it) In Sri Lanka, non-government groups, including Kantha Shakti, are trying to raise money to send trained locals into the camps to tackle abuse. Donations to Kantha Shakti in Sri Lanka can be made through the International Women's Development Agency at www.iwda.org.au or by calling +(61-3) 9650 5574 during business hours or + (61-425) 712 478 after hours. ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* 28) War Resisters Go North By Alisa Solomon, The Nation Posted on December 22, 2004, Printed on January 3, 2005 http://www.alternet.org/story/20826/ EDITOR'S NOTE: As The Nation was going to press, Canada's willingness to take in Americans resisting the Iraq war became more concrete. In a year-end review with Canada's Global National, Prime Minister Paul Martin said that Canada was prepared to accept U.S. citizens who do not want to serve in the war. According to the report, when reminded that former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau opened Canada's doors to draft dodgers and deserters during the Vietnam War, Martin said: "In terms of immigration, we are a country of immigrants and we will take immigrants from around the world. I'm not going to discriminate." Asked whether Martin was referring to Jeremy Hinzman's request for refugee status, a spokesperson said that Martin "was not commenting on any individual case and certainly was not sending a signal to the immigration board." Still, Hinzman's attorney Jeffry House tells The Nation that the prime minister's remarks represent "a step in the right direction." Protests over the conduct of the Iraq war are mounting from what seems an unlikely place: the ranks of the military. In early December, eight soldiers sued in federal court to overturn the stop-loss policy that has extended their tour of duty indefinitely. At Camp Buehring in the Kuwaiti desert, Army National Guard Specialist Thomas Wilson, cheered on by his fellow soldiers, demanded that Donald Rumsfeld explain why the troops had to rummage through garbage heaps for scraps to armor their vehicles. Meanwhile, the Pentagon has admitted that some 5,500 enlisted soldiers have deserted since the "liberation" of Iraq began. While these disgruntled grunts don't explicitly challenge the validity of the war itself, their decision to complain formally, or even to quit, strongly suggests a dwindling of faith in the mission. Pfc. Jeremy Hinzman, of the 82nd Airborne, has made his second thoughts public. As he told me this past March, "The war is bogus. There weren't any weapons of mass destruction, and Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. The war was not pursued in self-defense, and as such it is illegal. I decided I could not participate in such a criminal enterprise." On December 6-8, while his comrades were filing suit and confronting Rumsfeld, Hinzman was making this argument before Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) in a bid for asylum as a principled deserter from the US Army. In doing so, he was putting the war itself on trial, articulating clearly the doubts that are beginning to tug at the conscience of some US troops. Hinzman enlisted in the Army in 2001, making what he calls a typical "Faustian bargain" - trading service for college - and looking for a way to be part of something "bigger than myself," where he might "live for ideals rather than just to consume." But in basic training, as drills focused on "breaking down the human inhibition to killing," he began to realize he had made the wrong choice. Aghast at finding himself joining in training chants like, "What makes the grass grow? Blood, blood, bright red blood," he filed for conscientious objector status, serving in noncombat duty in Afghanistan while his application was in process. Back at Fort Bragg in late 2003, his CO application denied, Hinzman received word that his unit would be shipping out to Iraq in a few days. He and his wife got into their Chevy with their toddler and drove to Toronto, arriving there January 3 of last year. He is the first of three deserters to ask for refugee protection. A ruling is expected in February. As is typical in a case making a novel claim or with a high public profile, the Canadian government intervened, asserting that Hinzman does not fit the definition of a refugee: someone who is fleeing a well-founded fear of persecution. Canada also argued - and in an interim ruling issued about two weeks before the hearing, the IRB judge agreed - that the question of the war's legality is irrelevant to the case. The government is not revealing its reasoning, but one can imagine a number of competing concerns pulsing beneath it: on the one hand, a reluctance to embarrass its bullying trading partner; on the other, an intense domestic opposition to the Iraq War. At the same time, Canada may be anxious about the possibility of an American draft, despite the Bush Administration's repeated denials that one is coming. Some thirty-five years ago, an estimated 60,000 men and women resisting the Vietnam War surged north. (In those days, they could simply present themselves at the border and apply for landed immigrant status; since then, Canada has instituted a refugee determination procedure.) One of them was Jeffry House, Hinzman's attorney. He regrets losing "our cleanest argument": While refugee law states that prosecution is not persecution, House intended to show that it is indeed persecution to punish someone for refusing to take part in a war that is illegal under international law, which sanctions war only when it is undertaken in self-defense or with authorization of the United Nations Security Council. Still, House explains, even if the illegality of the decision to go to war is off the table, the question of how the war is being waged remains relevant to Hinzman's claim. "What's happening on the ground in Iraq is violating Geneva Conventions and international human rights law," House says. "No one should be forced to participate." From the cells of Abu Ghraib to the living rooms of Falluja, any number of examples can make the case. Marine Sgt. Jimmy Massey, who served in Iraq during the invasion in March 2003, testified on Hinzman's behalf, explaining, he told me, that "it's the system, not the individual soldier, that is the problem. Even atrocities are standard operating procedure." At the hearing, he recounted in graphic and shocking detail how his unit killed more than thirty innocent Iraqi civilians at checkpoints, "lighting them up" with machine gun fire. He also described how Marines shot dead unarmed Iraqi demonstrators who posed no threat. "I was never clear on who was the enemy and who was not," he said. "When you don't know who the enemy is, what are you doing there?" A Marine Corps spokesman has said that none of the acts Massey described violated rules of engagement. If Hinzman is denied at the IRB, there are possibilities for appeal. And then, House notes, "the question of the illegality of the war has to be confronted politically." After all, Prime Minister Paul Martin may have promised to help with Iraq's elections, but his predecessor, Jean Chrétien, declined to join the "coalition" forces without a nod from the UN Security Council. And the current Justice Minister, Irwin Cotler, is on record challenging the war under international law. In answering Specialist Wilson's question at Camp Buehring, Rumsfeld smugly told the 2,000 assembled soldiers, "You go to war with the army you have." In his brave stand, Jeremy Hinzman suggests another option: The army can refuse to go at all. (c) 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved. View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/20826/ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EarthU/ * To visit your group on the web, go to: * http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ufpj-iraq/ * * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: * ufpj-iraq-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com * * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* 29) Iraq War is Bad for Business By Jim Lobe Peace and Justice News from FPIF http://www.fpif.org/ January 4, 2005 Introducing a new commentary from Foreign Policy In Focus On top of the human and financial costs of the war in Iraq, the Bush administration's foreign policy may be costing U.S. corporations business overseas, according to a new survey of 8,000 international consumers released this week by the Seattle-based Global Market Insite (GMI) Inc. Brands closely identified with the U.S., such as Marlboro cigarettes, America Online (AOL), McDonald's, American Airlines, and Exxon-Mobil, are particularly at risk. GMI, an independent market research company, conducted the internet survey with consumers in eight countries from Dec. 10-12. One-third of all consumers in Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, and the United Kingdom said that U.S. foreign policy, particularly the "war on terror" and the occupation of Iraq, constituted their strongest impression of the United States. Twenty percent of respondents in Europe and Canada said they consciously avoided buying U.S. products as a protest against those policies. That finding was consistent with a similar poll carried out by GMI three weeks after Bush's November election victory. Jim Lobe is a political analyst with Foreign Policy In Focus, online at http://www.fpif.org He also writes regularly for Inter Press Service. See new FPIF commentary online at: http://www.presentdanger.org/commentary/2004/0412europoll.html printer-friendly pdf version at: http://www.presentdanger.org/pdf/gac/0412europoll.pdf For More Analysis from Foreign Policy In Focus: Mainstream Media Miss Rumsfeld's "Dirty Wars" Talk By Jim Lobe (December 1, 2004) http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0412rumsfeld.html Neocon Wish List By Jim Lobe (November 11, 2004) http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0411wish.html Security Scholars Say Iraq War Most Misguided Policy Since Vietnam By Jim Lobe (October 13, 2004) http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0410scholars.html Interhemispheric Resource Center is proud to announce that, in conjunction with our 25th anniversary, we have changed our name to International Relations Center. Please visit our website at www.irc-online.org new logo and check back in the coming months as we begin the integration and improvement of all of our program and project websites. As International Relations Center we remain IRC and committed to our mission of: working to make the U.S. a more responsible member of the global community by promoting progressive strategic dialogues that lead to new citizen-based agendas. Produced and distributed by FPIF:ÂA Think Tank Without Walls, a joint program of International Relations Center (IRC) and Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). For more information, visit http://www.fpif.org If you would like to add a name to the ÂWhatÂs New At FPIF specific region or topic list, please email: communications@irc-online.org with Âsubscribe and giving your area of interest. To add your name to this list, send a blank email to: peaceandjustice- subscribe@lists.riseup.net To unsubscribe, send a blank email to: peaceandjustice-unsubscribe@lists.riseup.net. International Relations Center (IRC) (formerly Interhemispheric Resource Center) http://www.irc-online.org/ Outreach Coordinator Email: communications@irc-online.org ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* 30) The Numbers Beyond the Bling In the streets of America, people are worse off, and more of them are in jail By Ward Harkavy January 4th, 2005 3:26 PM Village Voice.com While hiphop's being celebrated, life on the streets during its 30 years of existence has gotten much tougher. Income inequality in the U.S. began climbing 30 years ago, reversing a nearly 50-year trend. And the prison population has soared. Hardest hit have been African Americans, whose folk culture has made cash registers ring. America is now No. 1 in the percentage of its population in prison and No. 1 in income inequality among industrialized nations. Here are a few statistics: Approximately 1 million African American men under 40 are behind bars. Twelve percent of African American men ages 20 to 34 are behind bars, compared with 1.6 percent of white men in the same age group. Thirteen percent of Black male adults, 1.4 million total, are disenfranchised. In a dozen states, 30 to 40 percent of young Black men will permanently lose the right to vote because of being convicted felons. Fifty percent of New York City's Black males are unemployed. Black people are 13 percent of drug users, about the same as their percentage of the U.S. population, but 35 percent of those arrested for drug possession are Black, 55 percent of those convicted of drug charges are Black, and 74 percent of those sent to prison are Black. Sale of five grams of crack means a five-year minimum sentence under federal guidelines; it takes 500 grams of powder cocaine to warrant the same sentence. Crack is the only drug whose sale as a first offense can trigger a federal mandatory minimum sentence. In 1994, 90 percent of those convicted of federal crack offenses were Black, 6 percent were Latino, and fewer than 4 percent were white. Powder cocaine? 30 percent Black, 43 percent Latino, and 26 percent white. In 1986, shortly before federal mandatory minimum sentences were imposed, the average federal crack sentence for African Americans was 11 percent higher than for whites. In 1990, after the guidelines went into effect, the average sentence was 49 percent higher for African Americans than for whites. The average crack defendant is sentenced to 115 months, compared with 77 months for those in powder cocaine cases. The majority of crack users, however, are white. Despite similar or equal rates of illegal drug use during pregnancy, African Americans are 10 times more likely than whites to be reported by social-service agencies for prenatal drug use. People die younger in Harlem than in Bangladesh. The leading causes of death in poor Black neighborhoods are not AIDS, drugs, or homicide. They are "unrelenting stress," "cardiovascular disease," "cancer," and "untreated medical conditions." In the past 25 years, one-third of public hospitals in the U.S. have closed, mainly in rural areas and inner cities. Wealth disparity is even more pronounced than income disparity. The top 1 percent of all U.S. households own 38 percent of all wealth (property, cash, savings, stock value, and insurance policies-minus mortgage payments, credit card debt, and other debts). Wealth inequality generally fell from 1929 to the mid '70s. Since then, it's doubled. Five percent of Americans own 59 percent of all wealth; the top 20 percent own 83 percent of all wealth. The bottom 20 percent have zero wealth. Excluding owner-occupied housing, the inequality is worse: 1 percent of families hold half of all non-home wealth. Ten percent of families own 85 percent of financial securities and 90 percent of all business assets. The average African American family has 60 percent of the income of the average white family. But the average African American family has only 18 percent of the wealth of the average white family. In the U.S., 1 percent of American families own 38 percent of all wealth. In Great Britain, it's 22 or 23 percent. Until the early '70s, we had less wealth inequality than Britain. More than 34 million Americans are officially "poor," a class including nearly 25 percent of all African Americans and more than 20 percent of all Latinos. The minimum wage has fallen by about 35 percent in real terms since its peak in 1968. Overall, American female infants' life expectancy is 19th in the world; male babies' is 31st, tied with Brunei. Of the 13 wealthiest countries, the U.S. is last or near the bottom in terms of infant mortality and birth weight. African Americans are 12.2 percent of the population but account for 37 percent of all AIDS cases. Latinos are 11.9 percent of the population but account for 19.2 percent of all AIDS cases. The fastest-growing population of those infected with the AIDS virus is African American women. Sources include Multinational Monitor, Drug Policy Alliance, Edward N. Wolff (Jerome Levy Economics Institute), New England Journal of Medicine, Economic Policy Institute, United for a Fair Economy, U.S. Bureau of Prisons, Jonah Goldberg (The Philadelphia Inquirer), The Washington Post, The American Prospect, and Gary Fields (The Wall Street Journal) A Chronology of U.S. Military Fatalities Since 'Mission Accomplished,' Part II Marxism mailing list Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* 31) Powell declares tsunami aid part of global war on terror Imperialism in Samaritan's clothing By Bill Van Auken World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org 6 January 2005 http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/jan2005/powl-j061.shtml During his whirlwind tour of the tsunami-devastated nations of South Asia, US Secretary of State Colin Powell let slip that the begrudging and belated funding offered by Washington to the ongoing relief effort is all part of its "global war on terror." Speaking of US aid and the participation of the American military in relief efforts, Powell declared: "It dries up those pools of dissatisfaction that might give rise to terrorist activity. That supports not only our national security interest but the national security interests of the countries involved." Noting that the majority of the victims of the tsunami were Muslims, the US Secretary of State continued: "We'd be doing it regardless of religion, but I think it does give the Muslim world and the rest of the world an opportunity to see American generosity, American values in action." Powell's trip is largely an exercise in damage control. It is aimed at overcoming the well-founded international perception that the government of the most powerful imperialist country in the world- and specifically its president, George W. Bush-reacted with appalling indifference to the worst natural catastrophe in living memory. The US Secretary of State has been accompanied by Florida's Governor Jeb Bush, who seems to be acting as a personal emissary for his older brother, while exploiting the international tragedy to further his own political ambitions by appearing to be grappling with a global crisis. What of the claim that Washington's reaction to the massive destruction and lost of life wrought by the tsunami is an expression of "American generosity, American values in action"? Generosity implies selflessness, hardly a characteristic of US foreign policy. On the contrary, the successive decisions to increase US aid from an obscene $15 million, to $35 million and finally $350 million were taken with a calculated view toward the immense damage that Washington's miserliness was inflicting upon US imperialism's global image. As Powell acknowledges, the aid is part and parcel of a "war on terror" that is directed at furthering US global economic and political hegemony by means of military power and aggression. No doubt, the shock of the tsunami's devastation and the unimaginable loss of human life have led to expressions of what might genuinely be described as "American values," but not from the administration in Washington. The open-heartedness and political naiveté associated with the generosity of the American people has been on display across the United States, with students and youth organizing bake sales and other activities to raise money for the victims, and many thousands donating to fund appeals. It is noteworthy that US television and newspapers have accurately portrayed the scale of the disaster. Once American ruling circles determined that the Bush administration's initial disdain for the suffering caused by the Indian Ocean earthquake was untenable, the corporate media conglomerates swung into action, providing non-stop coverage of the catastrophe. Graphic and chilling images of rows of corpses, parents carrying the bodies of their young children and villages reduced to rubble have been shown nightly to US viewing audiences. One cannot help contrast this coverage to the media's cowardly and complicit silence in response to the human catastrophe created by the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. Images of the dead, of sobbing parents clutching the bodies of children killed by US bombardments and of blocks reduced to rubble are readily available, but rigorously censored by America's vaunted free press. Describing a helicopter flight over Banda Aceh in Indonesia, Powell said he had "never seen anything like it" in his military and government career. "I cannot imagine the horror that went through the families and all of the people who heard this noise coming and then had their lives snuffed out by this wave," he said. "The power of the wave to destroy bridges, to destroy factories, to destroy homes, to destroy crops, to destroy everything in its path is amazing." Perhaps the US Secretary of State would have benefited from a low-flying helicopter ride over the Iraqi city of Fallujah, though continued resistance to the US occupiers there would no doubt have precluded such a tour. Such a flight would have afforded a view of what a man-made tsunami has left of one of Iraq's principal urban centers. The fabled "city of mosques" lies in ruins as the result of a tidal wave of fire and steel unleashed by US warplanes, artillery and tanks. What of the horror of the Iraqi families who heard the roar of ceaseless US aerial bombardment and the thunder of cannon barrages for days before American tanks finished laying waste to their city? Does Colin Powell try to imagine what went through their minds? How many of their lives were snuffed out is something that neither the US government nor the US mass media even bothers to consider. While the Pentagon and the media continuously spoke only of US forces killing "rebels" and "terrorists" in Fallujah, the reports emerging from initial attempts at recovery in the city tell a very different story. The director of Fallujah's main hospital has reported that an emergency team from the facility has thus far recovered more than 700 bodies from the city's rubble. More than 550 were women and children, while the majority of the men were elderly. Babies have been found dead in their homes from malnutrition. The search has thus far only extended to a fraction of the city, with other areas still inaccessible because of fighting. The deaths in Fallujah are not included in the credible estimate made in a study published last October in the British medical journal Lancet of over 100,000 additional violent deaths in Iraq since the US invasion, the majority the result of US bombardments. The figure, which equals two thirds of the current estimated death toll from the tsunami, has received scant attention in the American media. In addition to these violent deaths, there are many thousands more-particularly among young children-caused by the destruction of the country's infrastructure, resulting in a lack of safe drinking water and the unavailability of refrigeration and basic medicines. Taken together, this human toll represents a manmade calamity that is on a par with the natural disaster that has struck South Asia. As for "American values," it is fair to ask whose values were expressed in the vile torture chambers created by the US military and the CIA in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and many lesser-known American detention facilities serving the "war on terror"? Whose values led military interrogators and guards to shock Iraqi prisoners with electrodes, light them on fire and subject them to sexual abuse and humiliation? It is now clear that the orders that gave rise-and continue to sanction -such atrocities came from the White House itself, embraced by Bush and given a pseudo-legal justification by the man he has nominated to serve as US attorney general, Alberto Gonzales. Behind these depraved actions lie the "values" of a predatory and corrupt ruling elite that is prepared to carry out mass murder and torture in order to further enrich itself. It has been able to continue the criminal enterprise in Iraq only by systematically lying to the American people and, with the media's collaboration, covering up the scale of its crimes. The hopes, more or less openly expressed by various leading figures in Washington, that the participation of the US military in relief efforts in South Asia will somehow erase the searing images of torture that emerged from Abu Ghraib or of the mass destruction in Fallujah, will prove vain. Few will be convinced that US imperialism has suddenly become a philanthropic institution. Even after twice raising its aid pledge, Washington's spending on tsunami relief would barely cover two days of its continuing war in Iraq. On the scales of American capitalism, "values" are measured in dollars and cents, and the whole world knows it. A little over a century ago, the great revolutionist Rosa Luxemburg wrote an imperishable essay on the reaction of the great powers to another devastating natural disaster, the volcanic eruption of Mt. Pelee that wiped out 40,000 people, virtually the entire population of the French Caribbean colony of Martinique. [ See "Martinique" http:// www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1902/05/15.htm ] She brilliantly exposed the hypocritical expressions of sorrow over the loss of life and pretensions of humanitarianism emanating from the capitals of France, Britain, the US, Germany and Russia. The governments of each of these countries, she pointed out, were responsible for bloodbaths carried out either against their own working class or in savagely repressing anti-colonial resistance from Africa to the Philippines. Luxemburg wrote: "And now they have all turned to Martinique, all one heart and one mind again; they help, rescue, dry the tears and curse the havoc-wreaking volcano. Mt. Pelee, greathearted giant, you can laugh; you can look down in loathing at these benevolent murderers, at these weeping carnivores, at these beasts in Samaritan's clothing. But a day will come when another volcano lifts its voice of thunder: a volcano that is seething and boiling, whether you need it or not, and will sweep the whole sanctimonious, blood-splattered culture from the face of the earth. And only on its ruins will the nations come together in true humanity, which will know but one deadly foe-blind, dead nature." In the light of recent events, these words remain evergreen. The juxtaposition of massive human suffering and imperialist hypocrisy that has characterized the aftermath of the South Asian tsunami is symptomatic of a society rent by inequality and oppression and ripe for social revolution. Copyright 1998-2004 World Socialist Web Site All rights reserved ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* 32) Israel's "Days of Penitence" Drown Gaza In a Sea Of Blood By Mohammed Omer Washington Report , December 2004, pages 10-12 http://www.washington-report.org/archives/December_2004/0412010.html [Sharon picked his moment well, when America was preoccupied with its presidential campaign and its invasion of Iraq, to decimate the civilian population of Gaza...ds] JABALYA CAMP, Northern Gaza, Oct. 10, 2004--It smells unbelievably bad here. To walk down any street--if you dare to--you skirt, or sometimes unavoidably walk through, pools of blood. There are shreds of human flesh--some of them unrecognizable as human remains--all over, on rooftops, plastered to broken windows, on the street. The stench of rotting blood mixes with the more acrid odor of flesh burned to black char by the rockets fired by the Israeli army's American-made Apache helicopters. The sky is full of black smoke, some from the rocket explosions, but even more, it sometimes seems, from the endless fires of tires and other debris that people keep stoking. The smoke confuses the heat-seeking unmanned drone surveillance planes, so setting fires in any relatively open area may draw fire and let a bomb explode somewhat harmlessly. All this smoke mixed with plaster and cement dust is a blessing and a curse. The stench of burning flesh and rotting blood masks to some extent the smell of raw sewage from broken sewer pipes and the tens of thousands of bodies unwashed for over a week now. Water to drink is a rare and precious commodity here--baths and showers have become impossible luxuries. Your eyes inevitably tear up from all the smoke--but then, that protects you a tiny bit from some of the more harrowing sights: recognizable body parts--a piece of a leg, an obvious part of a torso, and fingers--more scattered, individual, recognizable fingers than anyone should ever have to see. Volunteer crews are gathering these human fragments and bringing them to Jabalya's two hospitals, but the ambulances cannot possibly keep up with the flood of newly dead and injured. Funeral processions are everywhere, as are "houses of mourning" --the tents bereaved families set up in which to receive their families and friends. In fact, however, every house here--whether relatively intact or partly or wholly destroyed by the IDF tanks and bulldozers --is a house of mourning. And nothing protects you from the sounds--the tears and laments of the mothers and fathers, husbands, wives and children of the dead, the screams of the injured, the wail of ambulance sirens, sniper fire, the thud of tank shells and the too-frequent explosions as another Apache shell explodes. Time is distorted here--hours feel like days, days like weeks or months. This is Jabalya Refugee Camp in the northern Gaza Strip, one of the most crowded places on earth, where 106,000 men, women and children, the overwhelming majority of them unarmed civilians, have been under an all-out attack for over a week now. It is only when I sit down to write up my notes made here in the last few days that the cruelty of the IDF name for this attack-- "Days of Penitence"--hits me. They are not just slaughtering unarmed civilians, but language itself. "Penitence," as I understand it, is voluntary remorse for wrongdoing. Is this massacre supposed to induce remorse in its victims? Are they supposed to mourn the deaths of four or five Israeli soldiers and two Israeli children, and accept the death of more than 60 Palestinian civilians as some kind of justice? To those of us trapped in Jabalya, it seems like Days of Revenge. It is unquestionably collective punishment, and illegal under the Geneva Conventions. Perhaps we should not be surprised. Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has announced this attack will last "as long as necessary," that is, until there is "no further danger" from the Palestinian resistance's homemade rockets. Sharon, of course, engineered the massacres of Sabra and Shatila over 20 years ago. Now, he is doing much the same, but with vastly improved weaponry. Of course, the militant factions exist, and have been striking here and there during this last week, but they are vastly outnumbered, not to mention out-gunned, by the Israelis. Hamas, on its side, has distributed leaflets in Gaza City vowing to continue the rocket attacks on | |