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    		• BAUAW NEWSLETTER
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    Saturday, January 15, 2005
     

    BAUAW NEWSLETTER-FRIDAY, JAN. 14, 2005

    1) MANHATTAN: JURY DELIBERATES IN TERROR TRIAL (Lynne Stewart)
    January 13, 2005
    METRO BRIEFING
    NEW YORK
    http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/13/nyregion/13mbrf.html
    (For more information about the case go to: www.lynnestewart.org
    Or call: 212-625-9696)

    2) NEXT BAUAW MEETING:
    SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 11:00 a.m.
    CENTRO DEL PUEBLO
    474 VALENCIA STREET
    (NEAR 16TH ST. IN S.F.)
    HELP GET THE MILITARY OUT OF OUR SCHOOLS!
    KILLING AND BEING KILLED
    IS NOT A CAREER CHOICE!
    BRING ALL THE TROOPS HOME NOW!
    MARCH AND RALLY JANUARY 20, 5 P.M.
    CIVIC CENTER, SAN FRANCISCO

    3) [Alerts] Fw: Antiwar bleachers at 4th & Pennsylvania Ave. (
    north side) for Jan. 20 CounterInaugural
    alerts at lists.iww.org alerts at lists.iww.org
    Wed Jan 12 16:54:34 PST 2005
    -----Forwarded Message-----
    From: "VoteNoWar.org" < Action at VoteNoWar.org >
    Sent: Jan 12, 2005 4:45 PM
    WE HAVE WON THE RIGHT
    TO SET UP ANTIWAR BLEACHERS
    AND HOLD A RALLY ON THE NORTH SIDE OF
    4TH ST. & PENNSYLVANIA AVE. NW!
    http://lists.iww.org/pipermail/alerts/2005-January/001354.html


    4) Let's Hit the Streets
    On the 32nd Anniversary of Roe v. Wade
    To Defend Abortion Rights!
    Saturday, January 22
    * 10 am - Rally at Powell and Market Streets, San Francisco
    (Powell Street BART)
    * 11 am - March up Market Street, along the Embarcadero
    to Aquatic Park
    www.indybay.org/womyn .
    Driving? Need a ride? Visit
    http://drivingvotes.org/rides/sfprochoice.php
    ALSO: Join the Women‚s Rights Contingent in the
    San Francisco Counter-Inaugural Protest on January 20th.
    Meet at 5 pm at the corner of Grove and Polk in
    Civic Center Plaza.

    5) PICTURES OF WAR

    6) You are invited To Celebrate and claim victory on
    James Yee's case and his Honorable Discharge from
    the U.S. Army
    Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday
    JOIN THOUSANDS in the Freedom March
    When: Monday, January 17, 2005
    11:30 A.M. TO 12:30 p.m.
    Where:J4NA members will meet at
    3rd & Mission at 11:30 a.m and join the parade.
    The big march will start at the San Francisco
    Caltrain Station
    (4th St. and Townsend St.,) proceeding to Mission Street @
    Third Street, continuing to the Bill Graham
    Civic Auditorium

    7) ITALIAN.QUEER.DANGEROUS
    a one-man show featuring Tommi Avicolli Mecca
    directed by Francesca Prada, Jan. 14-19, 8:00pm,
    JON SIMS CENTER
    1519 Mission, Between Van Ness and 11th Sts., SF

    8) Kin of Marine Who Shot Policemen Ask if He Is a Casualty of War
    By DEAN E. MURPHY
    CERES, Calif.
    January 14, 2005
    http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/14/national/14marine.html?oref=login

    9) War's 'hidden cost' called heavy
    Billions eyed to replenish forces
    By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff | January 14, 2005
    WASHINGTON
    http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/01/14/wars_hidden
    _cost_called_heavy/

    10) Protesters Plan to Mark Bush Inauguration
    By Andy Sullivan
    WASHINGTON (Reuters)
    Wed Jan 12, 2005 04:06 PM ET
    http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=OTRG3I0BD0I3ECRBAE0CFEY?
    type=domesticNews&storyID=7309119

    11) US military relief operations in Asia far worse than
    the tsunami
    International League of Peoples' Struggle
    Press Statement of the ILPS-Philippines Chapter
    January 11, 2005
    Postbus 1452, NL 3600 BL
    Utrecht, Netherlands
    Email: ilp515@runbox.com
    Website http://www.ilps2001.com

    12) Indonesia Defends Restrictions in Aceh
    By Jeff Franks and Karima Anjani
    BANDA ACEH, Indonesia (Reuters)
    Thu Jan 13, 2005 07:48 AM ET
    http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=7316499&src=eD
    ialog/GetContent§ion=news

    13) U.S. High Court Gives Judges Sentencing Discretion
    By James Vicini
    WASHINGTON (Reuters)
    Wed Jan 12, 2005 11:07 PM ET
    http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=7311683&src=eD
    ialog/GetContent§ion=news

    14) NEWS: Iraq war worth it? -- Bush: 'Oh,
    absolutely' -- 57% of US: 'No'

    15) Fear Stalks Baghdad
    The City Where Even Police Hide Behind Masks
    By ROBERT FISK
    The Independent
    January 12, 2005
    http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2005/01/1708886.php

    16) URGENT Call to Action - January 22!
    NARAL Pro-Choice California

    17) Working Towards Peace
    Forum on Israel/Palestine
    Sponsored by: Mt. Diablo Peace and Justice Center
    Tuesday, January 25, 2005 at 7:00 p.m.
    Mt. Diablo Unitarian Universalist Church,
    55 Eckley Lane, Walnut Creek
    Admission: FREE!

    18) "A Message from the 'Iraq Resistance.'"

    19) U.S. Army Sergeant Defies Order, Refuses Re-Deployment:
    2 Soldiers Attempt Suicide at 2-7 Infantry, 17 Go AWOL
    By Robert S. Finnegan
    http://207.44.245.159/article7659.htm

    20) The Normalization of Horror:
    American Gulags Become Permanent
    By Ted Rall
    January 11, 2004
    http://www.uexpress.com/tedrall/

    21) Abu Ghraib prisoners escape
    Baghdad election center director killed
    BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Iraqi police are on the lookout for 28 Abu
    Ghraib prisoners who escaped while en route to Baghdad for trial.
    http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/01/14/iraq/index.html

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

    1) MANHATTAN: JURY DELIBERATES IN TERROR TRIAL
    January 13, 2005
    METRO BRIEFING
    NEW YORK
    http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/13/nyregion/13mbrf.html
    (For more information about the case go to: www.lynnestewart.org
    Or call: 212-625-9696)

    MANHATTAN: JURY DELIBERATES IN TERROR TRIAL
    The jurors in the trial of Lynne F. Stewart, a lawyer accused of aiding
    terrorism, began to deliberate yesterday [Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2005],
    after the judge cautioned that they could not convict on the basis of
    her political views. The decisions must be unanimous on 16 questions
    concerning Ms. Stewart and two co-defendants, Ahmed Abdel Sattar
    and Mohamed Yousry, who are charged with conspiring to lie to the
    government and to help terrorists in Egypt. Judge John G. Koeltl,
    who read 139 pages of instructions, told them that "expression of
    opinion alone, even an opinion advocating violence, is not a crime
    in this country." Julia Preston (NYT)

    Compiled by Anthony Ramirez

    Copyright 2005 The New York Times

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

    2) NEXT BAUAW MEETING:
    SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 11:00 a.m.
    CENTRO DEL PUEBLO
    474 VALENCIA STREET
    (NEAR 16TH ST. IN S.F.)
    HELP GET THE MILITARY OUT OF OUR SCHOOLS!
    KILLING AND BEING KILLED
    IS NOT A CAREER CHOICE!
    BRING ALL THE TROOPS HOME NOW!
    MARCH AND RALLY JANUARY 20, 5 P.M.
    CIVIC CENTER, SAN FRANCISCO

    Help work on a campaign to get the military off our school
    campuses. The recent passing of Proposition N, to Bring our
    troops home now, by a 63% majority of San Francisco voters,
    mandates that the military should keep their hands off our
    kids. Killing and being killed is not the career choice we
    want for our kids or anyone's kids. We want them to have an
    education so that they can make things better, not training
    in the art of killing. We want our tax dollars to go for
    schools, housing, healthcare and good jobs instead of war.

    Don't forget to protest on Jan. 20th. If you can take a day
    off, Join Not In Our Name's outreach campaign. We want to
    hold banners near freeway on/off ramps, and in other public
    locations to encourage everyone to protest in some way that
    day-even if you can only wear a button on your job or honk
    your horn in solidarity. For more information go to:
    http://www.notinourname.net/~bayarea/

    Jan. 20th is not a happy day for us. It's a day of protest!

    Don't forget to show up at 5 p.m., Jan. 20, at the
    Civic Center for a March and rally.

    Bay Area United Against War

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

    3) [Alerts] Fw: Antiwar bleachers at 4th & Pennsylvania Ave.
    (north side) for Jan. 20 CounterInaugural
    alerts at lists.iww.org alerts at lists.iww.org
    Wed Jan 12 16:54:34 PST 2005
    -----Forwarded Message-----
    From: "VoteNoWar.org" < Action at VoteNoWar.org >
    Sent: Jan 12, 2005 4:45 PM
    WE HAVE WON THE RIGHT
    TO SET UP ANTIWAR BLEACHERS
    AND HOLD A RALLY ON THE NORTH SIDE OF
    4TH ST. & PENNSYLVANIA AVE. NW!
    http://lists.iww.org/pipermail/alerts/2005-January/001354.html

    *Updated Jan. 20 CounterInaugural
    logistics, bus transportation and more*

    Dear VoteNoWar member,

    VoteNoWar members will be able to join together at antiwar
    bleachers and a rally at 4th St. and Pennsylvania Ave. NW (north side)
    on January 20. This is the first time in history that people have won
    the right to establish antiwar bleachers along the presidential
    inaugural parade route.

    The National Park Service has acknowledged the right of the
    A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition to set up antiwar bleachers at 4th St. and
    Pennsylvania Avenue NW (north side). Our movement has obtained a
    permit to hold this large convergence along the Inaugural route.

    George Bush - as he rides in the inaugural motorcade - will be forced
    to pass a large bleacher set up filled with signs demanding "U.S. Out
    of Iraq Now, End the Occupation - Bring the Troops Home Now," "End
    Colonial Domination from Palestine to Haiti, and Everywhere," "Health
    Care, Education, Housing, and a Job at a Living Wage Must be a Right!"
    and more.

    You can bring your own signs or pick up signs, banners and other
    materials at this location. Any sign that is made of cardboard,
    posterboard or cloth and that is no larger than 3 feet by 20 feet and
    1/4 inch in thickness can be brought to the parade route.

    To cover the cost of the bleachers, the sound system, stage,
    transportation, printing placards and other materials, we will need to
    raise $30,000 in the next few days. We can't do it without your help.
    Please make a generous donation. You can make a contribution through a
    secure server, where you can also find information on how to contribute
    by check, by clicking here:

    http://www.pephost.org/site/R?i=7R-E-j-EqAi72suC2Mm5YQ..

    We want to make it clear to everyone that while we have obtained
    permitted space at 4th St. and Pennsylvania Ave. (north side), we are
    continuing to fight the government's attempts to prohibit the general
    public from gaining access to all the areas along the parade route
    while reserving those areas for the exclusive use of Bush
    supporters and donors. Pennsylvania Avenue is not the private
    property of Corporate America and the ultra-right.

    The only way to maintain our right to demonstrate along the route of
    the inaugural parade is to come to Pennsylvania Avenue in large
    numbers as close to 9 am - 10 am as possible on January 20.

    Those organizing bus transportation, vans, car caravans, or planning
    individual transportation should do everything in their power to be at
    4th St. and Pennsylvania Avenue, and along the Pennsylvania Avenue
    parade route, as close to 9 am - 10 am as possible.

    * * * * *

    Click below for UPDATED DOWNLOADABLE MAPS
    of the site of the antiwar bleachers and mass rally

    Color PDF http://www.pephost.org/site/R?i=MUzn9TOqkEC72suC2Mm5YQ.. Black &
    White PDF http://www.pephost.org/site/R?i=3nyMcihbq-G72suC2Mm5YQ.. * *

    FUNDS ARE URGENTLY NEEDED

    Funds are urgently needed for the January 20th mobilization. If you
    cannot personally attend but would like to help cover the costs of
    transportation, printing banners, signs and literature you can make a
    contribution through a secure server, where you can also find information
    on how to contribute by check, by clicking here:

    http://www.pephost.org/site/R?i=RWuhIllZbmC72suC2Mm5YQ..
    Click the link below to change your email preferences:
    http://www.pephost.org/site/R?i=51Db-MEKhTi72suC2Mm5YQ..
    If the method for unsubscribing, above,
    do not work for you, then write us at IWantOff at VoteNoWar.org and
    we'll remove you manually.

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

    4) Let's Hit the Streets
    On the 32nd Anniversary of Roe v. Wade
    To Defend Abortion Rights!
    Saturday, January 22
    * 10 am - Rally at Powell & Market Streets, San Francisco
    (Powell Street BART)
    * 11 am - March up Market Street, along the Embarcadero
    to Aquatic Park

    Jan. 22 is the 32nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court
    decision that established the constitutional right to reproductive freedom.
    On the same day, anti-choice extremists plan to march in San Francisco
    against women‚s health and rights. The anti-choice minority might be
    emboldened by the climate in Washington, DC but they are not
    welcome here!

    Join the San Francisco Area Pro-Choice Coalition to Stand Up for
    Reproductive Freedom and Demonstrate that San Francisco is PRO-CHOICE!

    Sponsored by the San Francisco Area Pro-Choice Coalition. For more
    information or to get involved, visit www.indybay.org/womyn www.indybay.org/womyn> .
    Driving? Need a ride? Visit http://drivingvotes.org/rides/sfprochoice.php

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

    5) PICTURES OF WAR

    PLEASE ACCESS:
    ** Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches **
    ** http://dahrjamailiraq.com **

    I have obtained the originals of the photos I recently posted which were
    taken from inside Fallujah.
    These are of much higher quality.

    Some of the comments have been updated, and there are some additional
    pictures added which I did not have before.

    http://dahrjamailiraq.com/gallery/
    view_album.php?set_albumName=album28&page=1

    More writing, photos and commentary at http://dahrjamailiraq.com

    You can visit http://dahrjamailiraq.com/email_list/ to subscribe or
    unsubscribe to the email list.

    (c)2004 Dahr Jamail.
    All images and text are protected by United States and
    international copyright law. If you would like to reprint Dahr's
    Dispatches on the web, you need to include this copyright notice
    and a prominent link to the DahrJamailIraq.com website. Any
    other use of images and text including, but not limited to,
    reproduction, use on another website, copying and printing
    requires the permission of Dahr Jamail. Of course, feel free
    to forward Dahr's dispatches via email.

    Iraq_Dispatches mailing list
    http://lists.dahrjamailiraq.com/mailman/listinfo/iraq_dispatches

    http://dahrjamailiraq.com/gallery/
    view_album.php?set_albumName=album28&page=1
    view_album.php?set_albumName=album28&page=1>
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/coalitionforfreethoughtinmedia/message/26138
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/coalitionforfreethoughtinmedia/message/26138
    Virginion Pilot via AP - Photos - click here
    http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=79598&ran=187050

    TSUNAMI PHOTOS:
    A Community Labor News E-Zine

    http://homepage.mac.com/demark/tsunami/2.html

    This one has a BUNCH of different sources. I liked the
    CTV site and the maps on the Washington Post site.

    ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/asl/guides/indian-ocean-disaster.html

    Readers may email your article submissions
    or your comments to ListAdmin@CLNews.org

    http://www.clnews.org/MailList/subscribtion.htm
    "Freedom is always and exclusively
    freedom for the one who thinks differently"
    --Rosa Luxemburg

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

    6) You are invited To Celebrate and claim victory on
    James Yee's case and his Honorable Discharge from
    the U.S. Army
    Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday
    JOIN THOUSANDS in the Freedom March
    When: Monday, January 17, 2005
    11:30 A.M. TO 12:30 p.m.
    Where:J4NA members will meet at
    3rd & Mission at 11:30 a.m and join the parade.
    The big march will start at the San Francisco
    Caltrain Station
    (4th St. and Townsend St.,) proceeding to Mission Street @
    Third Street, continuing to the Bill Graham
    Civic Auditorium

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

    7) ITALIAN.QUEER.DANGEROUS
    a one-man show featuring Tommi Avicolli Mecca
    directed by Francesca Prada, Jan. 14-19, 8:00pm,
    JON SIMS CENTER
    1519 Mission, Between Van Ness and 11th Sts., SF

    JANUARY 14-29 (
    Friday and Saturday nights only: 14, 15; 21, 22; 28, 29)

    JON SIMS CENTER, 1519 Mission/between Van Ness and 11th
    8pm, $5-10 sliding scale (no one turned away)
    Seating is limited, for reservations: 415-554-0402
    To volunteer to help with the show, call 415-552-6031

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

    8) Kin of Marine Who Shot Policemen Ask if He Is a Casualty of War
    By DEAN E. MURPHY
    CERES, Calif.
    January 14, 2005
    http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/14/national/14marine.html?oref=login

    CERES, Calif., Jan. 13 - A surveillance camera captured the gun battle
    in this small central California farm town in terrifying detail.

    A marine on weekend leave from Camp Pendleton on Sunday night
    instructed a clerk in George's Liquor Store to call the police. When patrol
    cars arrived, the marine pulled an assault rifle from beneath his poncho
    and began firing. Both Sgt. Howard Stevenson and Officer Sam Ryno
    were hit.

    "He walked over to where Sergeant Stevenson laid suffering from
    several gunshot wounds and shot him in the back of the head," said
    Lt. Bill Heyne, the lead investigator on the case for the Stanislaus
    County sheriff. "It was an execution of that officer."

    The marine, Lance Cpl. Andres Raya, 19, who spent seven months
    in Iraq last year as a motor transportation operator, then walked to
    a muddy alley around the corner, a place where he used to pick
    oranges as a student on his way to Ceres High School. He slipped
    from one backyard to the next, telling some residents they were
    "innocent civilians" and would not be harmed.

    Before the evening ended, as police officers from across the region
    responded to the shootings, more than 200 rounds had been fired,
    both Sergeant Stevenson and Corporal Raya were dead, and "small
    town America," as the police and fire chief here (he has to do both
    jobs) called Ceres, was desperately debating whether the young
    marine had deliberately gotten himself killed to escape possible
    return to Iraq.

    "It is going to take a great deal of work to sort out what happened,"
    Lieutenant Heyne said.

    Some here blame the violence on Corporal Raya's wartime experience,
    which friends and relatives say was so traumatic that he cried during
    his home leave at Christmas about having to report back to Camp
    Pendleton. They suggest Corporal Raya, whose wish throughout high
    school was to be a marine and then a Ceres firefighter, might have
    invited the confrontation with the intention of erasing forever the
    awful images in his head.

    But others say they see a vicious criminal who authorities say had
    a past association with gangs. They see drugs or alcohol as the more
    likely spark of his deadly rage, and they question how he was able
    to get the outlawed assault rifle used in the shooting spree.

    The sharply differing viewpoints have spiked tensions between the
    authorities and many Hispanic residents, some of whom have repeatedly
    tried to erect a shrine to Corporal Raya on a dirt patch in the alley
    where he died only to have it removed by the city. At one point, graffiti
    against the police was splattered on a garage and fence in the alley.
    On Wednesday night, the authorities blocked access to the alley with
    barricades.

    At a meeting about the killings in the high school cafeteria on Tuesday
    night, some angry and tearful Hispanic residents accused the police
    of ignoring their grief. One woman, Hilda Mercado, said after the
    meeting that no matter the circumstances, she was proud that
    Corporal Raya "died like a true Mexican: He died standing on his
    feet." Others said there were rumors that Corporal Raya had been
    trying to surrender, but that the police killed him anyway, something
    the police dismiss as unfounded.

    Law enforcement and other city officials are scheduled to meet with
    some Hispanic community leaders on Friday to try to breach the
    divide. The Rev. Dean McFalls, a priest and former police chaplain
    in Ceres, said that the tensions were not new, but that the Corporal
    Raya he knew several years ago would have disapproved of them.

    "There is a general sentiment among some people against authority
    and against the police," said Father McFalls, who accompanied
    Corporal Raya's parents and a dozen other relatives to the police
    station on Tuesday where they prayed at a memorial to Sergeant
    Stevenson. "This young man in his earlier life would not have
    encouraged any of this anti-police rhetoric."

    Corporal Raya grew up in The Camp, a neighborhood of subsidized
    housing near the high school where Mexican immigrants, including
    his father, found shelter for their families while working in the nearby
    fields. For many teenagers in The Camp, a job fighting in Iraq is
    considered a dream ticket to somewhere better, which has made
    ever more poignant the mystery about why one life from The Camp
    ended so badly.

    "Somewhere along the line, somebody let this young man down,
    and what it did was just domino right back into our neighborhood,"
    said Frankie Haney, who lives near the alley and saw some of the
    shooting. "I feel the government owes us answers."

    An investigation is under way at Camp Pendleton. Art de Werk, the
    Ceres police chief, said military authorities were cooperating with
    the police. "They have asked themselves what might have happened
    that could have contributed to this man's state of mind," Chief de
    Werk said. Whatever they find out, he added, "may be a reason, but
    it is no excuse."

    Corporal Raya's friends and family say they are also looking for
    answers, but they are deeply offended by the presumption among
    some in Ceres that the blame lies solely with him. In an interview
    Thursday, his father, Tomas Raya, said the family was especially
    saddened at the thought that he might not be given special military
    honors at his funeral on Friday. "It is very painful," said Mr. Raya,
    who works in a canning company. "He served his country. He loved
    his country as we do."

    The police said they were investigating one notion that even if
    Corporal Raya had a death wish, his decision to engage in a gun
    battle with police officers in his hometown was an indication that
    he hoped to impress local gang members. Sergeant Stevenson, 39,
    an 18-year veteran and a father of three, is the first Ceres police
    officer to be killed in the line of duty. Officer Ryno, 50, a 22-year
    veteran, was listed in good condition on Thursday.

    "He wanted to take as many cops with him as he could," Lieutenant
    Heyne said.

    Lalo Madrigal, 19, a friend of Corporal Raya since they were small
    children, said the authorities were trying to smear his friend by
    raising the possibility of gang involvement. He said that Corporal
    Raya was not a gang member but a "proud Mexican" and that most
    young people in Ceres had friends in gangs.

    "He shouldn't be known as a cop killer," he said. "No one is saying
    glorify what he did, but it should be understood. The best way to
    look at it was he was a casualty of war."

    Though Corporal Raya had no adult criminal record, Mr. Madrigal
    said the marine had sparred with the police as recently as October
    when several officers stopped him near Ceres High School during
    a home leave, and Corporal Raya insisted the officers show him
    "more respect" now that he was a marine.

    It was about the same time, friends and relatives said, that
    Corporal Raya began acting strangely. A cousin, Rebeca Raya,
    said he visited her in Texas in October and was unable even to
    order food in a restaurant without viewing the waiter fearfully.
    After they went to see the Michael Moore film "Fahrenheit 9/11,"
    Ms. Raya said, her cousin told her: "That is only some of it. There
    are worse things to it."

    Ms. Raya said she was so disturbed by his behavior that she called
    one of her sisters in California. "I said, 'He is just not right,' "
    Ms. Raya recalled. "I grew up with him. He wasn't the same person."

    The police said Corporal Raya had several brushes with the law
    as a juvenile, but those records are sealed. Officials at the Marine
    recruitment station in neighboring Modesto, where Corporal Raya
    enlisted in July 2003, said that it had taken him about eight months
    to pass a qualifying exam but that a background check had raised
    no red flags.

    Representative Dennis Cardoza, a Democrat who represents the
    area and who was briefed by the authorities before attending
    a candlelight vigil for Sergeant Stevenson on Wednesday night,
    said he was convinced that Corporal Raya was not "a poor
    soldier who has post-traumatic syndrome."

    He said, "We have to be very careful in this case not to make
    this out to be something that it isn't."

    On Thursday, family members gathered at the home of one of
    Corporal Raya's relatives in a subdivision that a few years ago was
    planted with strawberries. Final preparations were under way for the
    funeral. A poem the young man wrote in eighth grade with the
    refrain, "I am a person with fears and desires," was faxed to
    the funeral home.

    "I pretend I can never die.

    I feel my heart beating when I am scared.

    I touch the clouds in my dreams.

    I worry how will I die."

    Copyright 2005 The New York Times

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

    9) War's 'hidden cost' called heavy
    Billions eyed to replenish forces
    By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff | January 14, 2005
    WASHINGTON
    http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/01/14/wars_hidden
    _cost_called_heavy/

    WASHINGTON -- A forthcoming request for additional funds to
    continue waging war in Iraq will not begin to address the "hidden
    cost" of the conflict, according to Pentagon officials and other
    government authorities who say that tens of billions of dollars more
    will eventually be needed to repair or replace heavily used equipment
    and to compensate for the wear and tear on members of the armed
    services.

    The Pentagon next month plans to ask Congress for up to
    $100 billion in supplemental funds to pay for the ongoing combat
    in Iraq and Afghanistan, bringing the total budgeted so far to well
    over $200 billion. But military officers say the administration's
    estimates do not include the investment that will be necessary to
    fix what they say they fear is becoming a broken ground force.

    "We're going to be paying for this war for years to come," Representative
    Martin T. Meehan, a Lowell Democrat and member of the House
    Armed Services Committee, said by telephone yesterday from the
    Middle East, where he has been touring US military bases in Iraq.
    "We are not preparing for much of the cost."

    If the war were to end today, according to a preliminary estimate
    by the Congressional Budget Office that was described by officials
    who have been briefed on it, the Army would still need at least
    $20 billion more than budgeted over the next three years just to
    be at the same level of preparedness as before the war.

    All four branches of the military recently completed a "stress study"
    ordered a year ago by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to
    determine the impact the war is having on equipment. "What they
    found was an amazing toll on combat vehicles, generators, just
    about everything," said a defense analyst involved in the study.
    "At some point it doesn't make sense to overhaul the equipment,
    you have to replace it."

    The forthcoming Iraq supplemental request is expected to include
    several billion dollars to replace lost and damaged equipment and
    pay for maintenance in Pentagon equipment depots, according to
    a Pentagon official who spoke on condition that he not be identified.
    However, that money will largely cover current expenses, not the
    long-term costs specialists say will burden the federal budget for
    years to come.

    The Army and Marine Corps, and a growing number of National
    Guard and Reserve units, are burning through trucks and armored
    vehicles at rates between five and 10 times the peacetime average,
    according to a confidential briefing prepared by budget analysts
    and Army officials.

    As a result, tanks, trucks, aircraft, and other equipment are aging
    much more quickly than anticipated. By some estimates, up to 40
    percent of certain classes of ground equipment will have to be
    overhauled or replaced.

    Yet the Bush administration's current practice of only asking Congress
    for money to cover the operating costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan
    wars does not account for the need to fund readiness for future
    missions.

    "We have to account for the overall cost of this war -- not just the
    public cost, but the hidden cost," Meehan said.

    The stress on Army equipment, and growing concerns about the
    impact of the Iraq war on military readiness, has led to calls from
    members of Congress to immediately begin increasing the size of
    the Army and Marine Corps.

    Led by Senator John F. Kerry, who called for adding 40,000 ground
    troops to the ranks during his failed presidential bid last year, 21
    Democratic senators sent a letter to President Bush yesterday urging
    him to set aside money in the fiscal 2006 defense budget -- also
    headed to Congress for review in February -- to increase the Army
    and Marine Corps.

    "The United States military is too small for the missions it faces," the
    lawmakers wrote. "Simply put, success in modern war requires
    sufficient boots on the ground. With nearly 150,000 troops and
    Marines in Iraq, nearly 20,000 in Afghanistan, and tens of thousands
    more in Korea and elsewhere, we are left to conclude that the American
    military is too small, not simply for the challenges we face today,
    but also as an appropriate hedge against future dangers."

    Concerns that the Iraq war will ultimately cost billions more than
    estimated before the end of the decade stem from the grinding
    toll the conflict is taking on the US military machine -- ground
    forces in particular.

    Already the Iraq operation has uncovered funding shortages in the
    Army that will have to be met with funds not included in the
    supplemental spending packages. An estimate by the Army, which
    was obtained by the Globe, paints an even bleaker picture than
    did the Congressional Budget Office analysis. The Army briefing
    estimates that in fiscal years 2005, 2006, and 2007, more than
    $35 billion could be needed to pay for backlogged equipment
    maintenance, battle losses, and to replace dwindling stocks
    prepositioned in the Persian Gulf.

    "The cost of the war will continue for a decade," said Brett Lambert,
    a defense budget specialist at Defense Forecasters International,
    a Washington consulting firm. "The roughly $500 billion we spend
    annually on defense is just the retainer. On top of that you have the
    supplementals, but they pay mostly for operations and maintenance,"
    or what is needed in the short term to keep the war going.

    Steve Kosiak, a defense budget analyst at the Center for Strategic
    and Budgetary Assessments in Washington, believes that equipment
    costs as a result of the Iraq war will not be as great as some others
    predict, noting that much of the equipment being overused would
    have to be replaced anyway because it has already been in service
    for several decades.

    Nevertheless, he said, "the supplemental was designed to replace
    equipment directly destroyed in combat or damaged. It hasn't paid
    for replacing equipment because of the wear and tear."

    Such hidden equipment costs now being estimated will even be larger
    when financial packages to keep soldiers in the ranks and attract new
    recruits, disability and death benefits, and other healthcare costs are
    factored in, specialists said. "That is a cost burden that continues
    for generations," said Lambert.

    Bryan Bender can be reached at bender@globe.com.
    (c)Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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

    10) Protesters Plan to Mark Bush Inauguration
    By Andy Sullivan
    WASHINGTON (Reuters)
    Wed Jan 12, 2005 04:06 PM ET
    http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=OTRG3I0BD0I3ECRBAE0CFEY?
    type=domesticNews&storyID=7309119

    WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Protesters will march through Washington,
    stage a "die in" across from the White House and turn their backs on
    President Bush's limousine during his inaugural celebration next week,
    organizers said on Wednesday.

    As U.S. authorities prepared unprecedented security for the Jan. 20
    event, organizers said thousands of protesters will stage a noisy
    counterpoint to the lavish $40 million celebration.

    One group of anti-war activists said it would carry 1,000 coffins to
    the White House and stage a "die in" to protest the lives lost in Iraq.

    Another group said it had obtained a permit to protest along a
    200-foot (60-meter) section of the parade route but planned to sue
    for more access to the large sections of Pennsylvania Avenue set
    aside for Bush supporters.

    "The Bush administration, in conjunction with the National Park
    Service, is trying to stage-manage democracy," said Mara
    Verheyden-Hilliard, a lawyer for the anti-war group
    International ANSWER.

    A spokeswoman for the U.S. Secret Service, which is overseeing
    security for the event, declined immediate comment.

    U.S. authorities plan to involve thousands of police, troops and
    bomb-sniffing dogs in the first inaugural event since the
    Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Spectators will pass through metal
    detectors before attending any inaugural events or watching
    the parade from the street.

    Organizers said the protests were to express opposition to
    a range of Bush policies, from the war in Iraq to economic
    programs.

    "We're facing a right-wing future that has no sympathy for
    the concerns of black people and the poor in this country,"
    said Shazza Nzingha, founder of the National Alliance of Black
    Panthers.

    One organization called Turn Your Back on Bush wants people
    to stake out spots along the parade route and turn their backs
    on Bush's limousine when it rolls by.

    "There are a lot of people who feel Bush has turned his
    back on them," said field director Sarah Kauffman, who said she
    is expecting busloads of participants from across the country.

    In a separate event, black-clad anarchists will wave
    puppets and beat drums to protest capitalism and organized
    government, said Lila Kaye of Anarchist Resistance.

    Bush's inauguration plans have also drawn protest from the
    District of Columbia government, which says its security costs
    for the event should not come out of its Homeland Security
    budget.

    "We the people of Washington, D.C., rejected Bush by over
    90 percent (in the last election)," said Washington resident
    Nancy Shia. "Maybe this is our punishment."

    (c) Reuters 2005

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

    11) US military relief operations in Asia far worse than
    the tsunami
    International League of Peoples' Struggle
    Press Statement of the ILPS-Philippines Chapter
    January 11, 2005
    Postbus 1452, NL 3600 BL
    Utrecht, Netherlands
    Email: ilp515@runbox.com
    Website http://www.ilps2001.com

    The ILPS Philippines Chapter condemns the US for making political
    capital out of the catastrophic tsunami which engulfed a wide swath
    of Asia, including some parts of Africa, and killed 160,000 people.

    The ILPS Philippines Chapter denounces the crass opportunism
    expressed by US State Secretary Colin Powell when he said that the
    US military relief and aid that it is giving Aceh "should change the
    battered image of the US" around the globe after its arrogant
    disregard of international public opinion against the invasion of
    Iraq. He likewise boasted that this aid is a manifestation of US
    "generosity" and "American values in action".

    Instead of sending skilled civilians, the US seized the opportunity
    to send an array of US warships, planes, helicopters, and more than
    13,000 US military personnel purportedly to help Indonesia, Thailand,
    and Sri Lanka, countries most affected by the December 26 disaster.
    The USS Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft carrier with 6,000 sailors on
    board, is currently stationed about 28 kms or 15 nautical miles off
    Aceh while a fleet of Sea Hawk helicopters from same carrier has
    been flying food, water, and medical supplies in said region where
    there is an armed rebellion against the Indonesian government.
    One thousand and five hundred US troops, meanwhile, are deployed
    in Sri Lanka where there is also an armed rebellion waged by the
    Tamil Tigers which is fighting for self-determination.

    US forces are also using Thailand's Vietnam era air base of Utapao
    as an airlift hub for the so-called "humanitarian" mission,
    strengthening potential US military logistical support through
    Southeast Asia. Conducting the largest operation in Asia since
    the Vietnam War, the US military said that its forces could remain
    in the region for up to six months. Six months can always be
    extended of course until it becomes permanent.

    It is well known that strengthening US military presence in
    Southeast Asia is a major element in the neocons' imperialist
    project of Pax Americana in the 21st century that presupposes
    US imperialism's unchallenged global hegemony.
    Given US imperialism's proven record of economic plunder
    and destructive wars, the US military deployment augurs
    a calamity far worse than the tsunami that devastated
    these Asian countries. ###

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

    12) Indonesia Defends Restrictions in Aceh
    By Jeff Franks and Karima Anjani
    BANDA ACEH, Indonesia (Reuters)
    Thu Jan 13, 2005 07:48 AM ET
    http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=7316499&src=eD
    ialog/GetContent§ion=news

    BANDA ACEH, Indonesia (Reuters) - Indonesia said on Thursday
    restrictions on aid workers in Aceh were for their own safety in a
    province troubled by a decades-old insurgency, and voiced
    readiness to sit down with the rebels to seek a cease-fire.

    As aid agencies and Indonesian government officials put the
    limitations into effect, palpable signs emerged that the
    devastated region was beginning to pull itself together after
    the Dec. 26 earthquake and tsunami.

    In a grim sign of progress, Aceh Vice Governor Azwar
    Abubakar said that by Thursday relief workers had buried 75,500
    bodies from the disaster.

    More markets opened in the provincial capital, Banda Aceh,
    where excavators cleared debris and rubble and more bodies from
    the streets. But public transport was scarce, making it
    difficult for people to begin rebuilding their lives.

    Fishermen in the Sri Lankan coastal town of Beruwela cast
    their nets for the first time since the tsunami, saying they
    had previously been too afraid to go down to the sea shore.

    In Banda Aceh, officials said about 80 foreigners working
    for aid groups and media companies had already sought the
    official approval needed to work beyond the provincial capital
    and the other main city, Meulaboh.

    "If someone is shot from a United Nations agency, the whole
    United Nations agency will withdraw," chief social welfare
    minister and Aceh chief administrator Alwi Shihab told
    reporters.

    "Who will be responsible if a foreigner is kidnapped? The
    responsible party is us."

    Asked if the restrictions would hamper the aid effort as
    the United Nations feared, Information Minister Sofyan Djalil
    said: "I don't think so."

    Djalil said these were security measures and should not be
    regarded "from a political point of view."

    "It's related to the fact that the situation on the ground
    is not normal," Djalil told Reuters. "We're simply trying to
    give a maximum protection for the workers, and for that they
    need restrictions."

    Jakarta has long been edgy about a foreign presence in
    Aceh, where separatists have fought the army for three decades
    for a homeland on Sumatra island's northern tip.

    The disaster has raised the possibility of reconciliation
    between the government and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM).

    CEASE-FIRE POSSIBILITY

    The chief administrator said Indonesia was willing to sit
    down with the rebels to seek a cease-fire.

    "This is the moment of reconciliation. This is the moment
    of establishing peaceful Aceh and prosperous Aceh ... If they
    want to have a cease-fire, reconciliation, we're open to any
    reconciliation term," Alwi Shihab told reporters in Banda Aceh.

    The comments followed an offer by GAM leaders to stop the
    fighting to facilitate the international aid effort.

    Both sides have called repeatedly for a cease-fire since
    the calamity that killed at least 110,000 Indonesians, almost
    all of them in Aceh, but there have been few signs that the
    rhetoric is translating into action.

    Of the 158,000 killed across Asia by the disaster, more
    than 100,000 were in Aceh. More than 30,000 died in Sri Lanka,
    15,000 in India and 5,300 in Thailand.

    In Berlin, Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda told
    a news conference that he welcomed the presence of foreign
    troops helping relief efforts.

    "You can rest assured that we welcome even ... foreign
    troops. Their presence is based on our request," said Wirajuda.

    On Wednesday, the Indonesian government said all foreign
    troops should leave the country by the end of March.

    WELCOME DEBT RELIEF

    Australia, the United States, Singapore, Malaysia, Germany,
    China, Spain, Pakistan, Japan and Switzerland all have forces
    aiding the relief efforts in Aceh.

    Indonesia welcomed an agreement by Western governments for
    an interim freeze of debts owed by Indian Ocean countries
    devastated by the tsunami, but Sri Lanka said it did not go far
    enough.

    The 19 members of the Paris Club of sovereign creditors
    agreed to an initial three-month debt moratorium while the
    World Bank and the International Monetary Fund assess the cost
    of recovery.

    The Paris Club made it clear that debt relief could then be
    extended.

    "The length of the moratorium has not been decided, but if
    we can have it for one year, that's good," Indonesia's chief
    economics minister, Aburizal Bakrie, told reporters.

    Jakarta owes $48 billion to Paris Club creditors and is due
    to pay them $4.5 billion in principal and interest this year.

    Sri Lanka, which has multilateral and bilateral debt
    amounting to $8.82 billion, was less enthusiastic. Colombo had
    hoped for at least a two-year freeze and still hoped for
    outright debt forgiveness, presidential spokesman Harim Peiris
    said.

    "We recognize this is an interim measure and, after the
    assessments, further decisions on debt moratoriums or whatever
    may be taken," he said. "Debt forgiveness, a step beyond a
    moratorium, is certainly one that would be very welcome."

    The Asian Development Bank said nearly two million people
    could fall into poverty as a result of the tsunami.

    The ADB's report said one million people could fall below
    the poverty line in Indonesia alone, mostly in Aceh.

    The number of poor in India could rise by 645,000, and by
    250,000 in Sri Lanka, the ADB report found.

    The global response to the disaster has been unprecedented.
    Governments have promised $5.5 billion in aid, with individuals
    and corporations pledging at least $2 billion more.

    Puerto Rican singer Ricky Martin landed on Thailand's
    Phuket island on Thursday with two film crews and an entourage
    filling four vans to find out what his foundation could do to help.

    "It's all about the most vulnerable, the children of
    Phuket," Martin said. "It's all about learning and seeing which
    ways I can help."

    (c) Reuters 2005

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

    13) U.S. High Court Gives Judges Sentencing Discretion
    By James Vicini
    WASHINGTON (Reuters)
    Wed Jan 12, 2005 11:07 PM ET
    http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=7311683&src=eD
    ialog/GetContent§ion=news

    WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a major criminal law decision, a
    closely divided U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that
    federal judges no longer must follow the long-criticized
    sentencing guidelines in effect since 1987.

    The 5-4 ruling was a defeat for the U.S. Justice
    Department, which had defended as constitutional the federal
    sentencing guidelines that apply to more than 60,000 criminal
    defendants each year.

    Thousands of cases nationwide have been on hold awaiting a
    high court ruling. The decision, which makes the guidelines
    advisory instead of mandatory, was seen as the most important
    criminal law decision of the court's term.

    Legal experts said it would have broad impact. Craig
    Margolis, a former federal prosecutor who now practices law in
    Washington, D.C., said tens of thousands of imprisoned
    defendants will seek to be resentenced and federal courts will
    have to decide if the ruling applied to them.

    The court reaffirmed the principle in its ruling in June,
    striking down a similar state law that any facts necessary to
    support a longer sentence must be admitted by the defendant or
    proven to the jury.

    In the court's main opinion, Justice Stephen Breyer said
    federal judges are no longer required to apply the guidelines,
    and only can consider them, along with certain other sentencing
    criteria, in deciding a defendant's punishment.

    The guidelines, long criticized by criminal justice reform
    advocates for imposing overly harsh sentences on a mandatory
    basis, set rules for judges to calculate punishment and attempt
    to reduce wide disparities in sentences for the same crime.

    Even some judges have criticized the guidelines for taking
    away their sentencing flexibility. The guidelines say which
    factors can lead to a lighter sentence and which ones can
    result in a longer sentence. The experts said the ruling will
    shift power back to judges.

    BREYER: UP TO CONGRESS TO ACT

    Breyer said the U.S. Congress could act next. "Ours, of
    course, is not the last word: The ball now lies in Congress'
    court."

    Sen. Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican and the
    Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, vowed to "thoroughly
    review the ... decision and work to establish a sentencing
    method that will be appropriately tough on career criminals,
    fair, and consistent with constitutional requirements."

    But Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the committee's ranking
    Democrat, said, "Congress should resist the urge to rush in
    with quick fixes that would only generate more uncertainty and
    litigation and do nothing to protect public safety."

    Critics of the guidelines welcomed the ruling and said
    Congress should now reform the sentencing laws.

    "Congress must not react with a 'quick fix' and miss the
    chance to solve a lingering and serious national problem. They
    need to get it right this time," said Barry Scheck, president
    of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

    Breyer said the court removed two provisions that make the
    guidelines mandatory and that provide standards for appellate
    review. The new standard would be whether the sentence was
    "reasonable," he said.

    Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day
    O'Connor, Anthony Kennedy and Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined Breyer
    in the opinion.

    The dissenters complained about making the guidelines
    advisory and warned it will result in a return to sentencing
    disparities. Justice Antonin Scalia said the ruling will "wreak
    havoc" in the courts for the indefinite future.

    Assistant Attorney General Christopher Wray told reporters
    the Justice Department was disappointed in the decision. "In
    the wake of this ruling, judges have greater discretion," he
    said. "Greater discretion tends to mean greater disparity."

    (c) Reuters 2005

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

    14) NEWS: Iraq war worth it? -- Bush: 'Oh,
    absolutely' -- 57% of US: 'No'

    [A pre-inauguration interview of George W. Bush conducted by Barbara Walters
    will be broadcast Friday at 10:00 p.m. -- In it, the president answered
    with
    two words a question about whether the war was worth it despite the
    non-existence of the WMDs that were its chief rhetorical justification:
    "Oh,
    absolutely." -- The majority of the U.S. public disagrees. -- A
    *Washington Post*-ABC News poll (http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/1960/)
    conducted Dec. 16-17 showed that 57% of U.S. adults disagree. -- Here's
    how
    the results broke down: Question: All in all, considering the costs to the
    United States versus the benefits to the United States, do you think the war
    with Iraq was worth fighting, or not? -- Answer #1: "No, not worth
    fighting, STRONGLY": 47% (Male 45% - Female 48% - White 43% - Black 64% -
    Democrats 71% - Republicans 12% - Independents 48% - High School or less 49%
    -
    Some College 43% - College Graduate 45% - 18-30 47% - 31-44 47% - 45-60 42%
    -
    61+ 51% - East 57% - Midwest 41% - South 42% - West 50%). -- Answer #2:
    "No, not worth fighting, SOMEWHAT": 10% (Male 9% - Female 10% - White 10% -
    Black 8% - Democrats 11% - Republicans 7% - Independents 11% - High School
    or
    less 10% - Some College 9% - College Graduate 10% - 18-30 12% - 31-44 12% -
    45-60 6% - 61+ 8% - East 13% - Midwest 17% - South 10% - West 8%). --
    Answer
    #3: "Yes, worth fighting, STRONGLY": 31% (Male 34% - Female 28% - White
    35%
    - Black 10% - Democrats 10% - Republicans 65% - Independents 27% - High
    School
    or less 28% - Some College 34% - College Graduate 34% - 18-30 26% - 31-44
    32%
    - 45-60 36% - 61+ 31% - East 25% - Midwest 29% - South 37% - West 29%) --
    Answer #4: "Yes, worth fighting, SOMEWHAT": 11% (Male 10% - Female 12% -
    White 10% - Black 17% - Democrats 8% - Republicans 13% - Independents 12% -
    High School or less 11% - Some College 13% - College Graduate 10% - 18-30
    12%
    - 31-44 8% - 45-60 15% - 61+ 8% - East 10% - Midwest 13% - South 10% - West
    11%) -- Answer #5: "Don’t know/Undecided": 2% (Male 2% - Female 2% -
    White
    2% - Black 1% - Democrats 0% - Republicans 3% - Independents 2% - High
    School
    or less 2% - Some College 1% - College Graduate 1% - 18-30 3% - 31-44 1% -
    45-60 1% - 61+ 2% - East 5% - Midwest 0% - South 1% - West 2%). --Mark]

    http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/2072/

    ABC News Home

    20/20

    BUSH: IRAQ INVASION WORTH IT DESPITE NO TRACE OF WMD

    ** President Bush Speaks with Barbara Walters **

    ABC News
    January 12, 2005

    http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Inauguration/story?id=406639&page=1

    The invasion of Iraq, which ousted Saddam Hussein and has cost the lives of
    some 1,300 U.S. military personnel and billions of dollars, was "absolutely"
    worth it, despite the absence of any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,
    President Bush told ABC News' Barbara Walters in an exclusive interview that
    will air this Friday.

    Watch Barbara Walters' full interview with President Bush this Friday at 10
    p.m. on "20/20."

    The White House acknowledged today that there is no longer an active search
    for Iraqi weapons. The final report from chief U.S. weapons inspector
    Charles
    Duelfer, due out next month, has concluded that "the former regime had no
    formal written strategy or plan for the revival of WMD."

    The Bush administration does not hold out hopes that any weapons will ever
    be
    found.

    Duelfer's predecessor David Kay reached the same conclusion a year ago.
    "It's
    taken them another year, and in fact we were right a year ago. There were
    no
    weapons there," Kay said in response to Duelfer's announcement.

    Bush told Walters, "I felt like we'd find weapons of mass destruction --
    like
    many here in the United States, many around the world. The United Nations
    thought he had weapons of mass destruction. So, therefore: one, we need to
    find out what went wrong in the intelligence gathering. . . . Saddam was
    dangerous and the world is safer without him in power."

    When asked if the war was worth it even if there were no weapons of mass
    destruction in Iraq, Bush responded, "Oh, absolutely."

    Saddam insisted he had no weapons of mass destruction, and U.N. inspectors
    failed to uncover them. But the Bush administration was adamant that Saddam
    was deceiving the international community. The administration justified its
    decision to wage war on Iraq largely on its contention that Iraq possessed
    weapons of mass destruction.

    Kay estimates that more than $1 billion and countless man hours were spent
    looking for weapons.

    Today House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said, "Now that the
    search is finished, President Bush needs to explain to the American people
    why
    he was so wrong."

    The 1,700-member Iraq Survey Group, a U.S. team responsible for the weapons
    search, is now tasked with what commanders had long wanted them to do --
    gather intelligence about the real threat now in Iraq: the insurgents.


    UNITED FOR PEACE & JUSTICE | 212-868-5545

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    To engage in online discussion of UFPJ matters, join our
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    ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

    15) Fear Stalks Baghdad
    The City Where Even Police Hide Behind Masks
    By ROBERT FISK
    The Independent
    January 12, 2005
    http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2005/01/1708886.php

    Journalism yields a world of clichés but here, for once, the first
    cliché that comes to mind is true. Baghdad is a city of fear. Fearful
    Iraqis, fearful militiamen, fearful American soldiers, fearful
    journalists.

    That day upon which the blessings of democracy will shower upon us, 30
    January, is approaching with all the certainty and speed of doomsday.
    The latest Zarqawi video shows the killing of six Iraqi policemen. Each
    is shot in the back of the head, one by one. A survivor plays dead. Then
    a gunman walks up behind him and blows his head apart with bullets.
    These images haunt everyone.

    At the al-Hurriya intersection yesterday morning, four truckloads of
    Iraqi national guardsmen--the future saviours of Iraq, according to
    George Bush--are passing my car. Their rifles are porcupine quills,
    pointing at every motorist, every Iraqi on the pavement, the Iraqi army
    pointing their weapons at their own people. And they are all wearing
    masks--black hoods or ski-masks or keffiyahs that leave only slits for
    frightened eyes. Just before it collapsed finally into the hands of the
    insurgents last summer, I saw exactly the same scene in the streets of
    Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad. Now I am watching them in the capital.

    At Kamal Jumblatt Square beside the Tigris, two American Humvees
    approach the roundabout. Their machine-gunners are shouting at drivers
    to keep away from them. A big sign in Arabic on the rear of each vehicle
    says: "Forbidden. Do not overtake this convoy. Stay 50 metres away from
    it."

    The drivers behind obey; they know the meaning of the "deadly force"
    which the Americans have written on to their checkpoint signs. But the
    two Humvees drive into a massive traffic jam, the gunners now screaming
    at us to move back.

    When a taxi which does not notice that US troops block their path, the
    American in the lead vehicle hurls a plastic bottle full of water on to
    its roof and the driver mounts the grass traffic circle. A truck
    receives the same treatment from the lead Humvee. "Go back," shouts the
    rear gunner, staring at us through shades. We try desperately to turn
    into the jam.

    Yes, the Russians would probably have chucked hand grenades in Kabul.
    But here were the terrified "liberators" of Baghdad throwing bottles of
    water at the Iraqis who are supposed to enjoy an American-imposed
    democracy on 30 January.

    The rear Humvee has "Specialist Carrol" written on the windscreen.
    Specialist Carrol, I am sure, regards every damn one of us as a
    potential suicide bomber--and I can't blame him. One such bomber had
    just driven up to the police station in Tikrit, north of Baghdad, and
    destroyed himself and the lives of at least six policemen.

    Round the corner, I discover the reason for the jam: Iraqi cops are
    fighting off hundreds of motorists desperate for petrol, the drivers
    refusing to queue any longer for the one thing which Iraq possesses in
    Croesus-like amounts--petrol.

    I drop by the Ramaya restaurant for lunch. Closed. They are building a
    20-floor security wall around the premises. So I drive to the Rif for a
    pizza, occasionally tinkling the restaurant's piano while I watch the
    entrance for people I don't want to see. The waiters are nervous. They
    are happy to bring my pizza in 10 minutes. There is no one else in the
    restaurant, you see, and they watch the road outside like friendly
    rabbits. They are waiting for The Car.

    I call on an old Iraqi friend who used to publish a literary magazine
    during Saddam's reign. "They want me to vote, but they can't protect
    me," he says. "Maybe there will be no suicide bomber at the polling
    station. But I will be watched. And what if I get a hand-grenade in my
    home three days' later? The Americans will say they did their best;
    Allawi's people will say I am a 'martyr for democracy'. So, do you think
    I'm going to vote?"

    At Mustansiriya University--one of Iraq's best--students of English
    literature are to face their end-of-term exam. January marks the end of
    the Iraqi semester. But one of the students tells me that his fellow
    students had told their teacher that--so fraught are the times--they
    were not yet prepared for the examination. Rather than giving them all
    zeros, the teacher meekly postpones the exam.

    I drive back through the al-Hurriya intersection beside the "Green Zone"
    and suddenly there is a big black 4x4, filled with ski-masked gunmen.
    "Get back!" they scream at every motorist as they try to cut across the
    median. I roll the window down. The rear door of the 4x4 whacks open. A
    ski-masked Westerner--blond hair, blue eyes--is pointing a Kalashnikov
    at my car. "Get back!" he shrieks in ghastly Arabic. Then he clears the
    median, followed by three armoured pick-ups, windows blacked, tyres
    skidding on the road surface, carrying the sacred Westerners inside to
    the dubious safety of the "Green Zone", the hermetically-sealed compound
    from which Iraq is supposedly governed. I glance at the Iraqi press.
    Colin Powell is warning of "civil war" in Iraq. Why do we Westerners
    keep threatening civil war in a country whose society is tribal rather
    than sectarian? Of all papers, it is the Kurdish Al Takhri, loyal to
    Mustafa Barzani, which asks the same question. "There has never been a
    civil war in Iraq," the editorial thunders. And it is right.

    So, "full ahead both" for the dreaded 30 January elections and
    democracy. The American generals--with a unique mixture of mendacity and
    hope amid the insurgency--are now saying that only four of Iraq's 18
    provinces may not be able to "fully" participate in the elections.

    Good news. Until you sit down with the population statistics and
    realise--as the generals all know--that those four provinces contain
    more than half of the population of Iraq.

    Robert Fisk is a reporter for The Independent and author of Pity the
    Nation. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's hot new book, The
    Politics of Anti-Semitism.

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

    16) URGENT Call to Action - January 22!
    NARAL Pro-Choice California

    You've been asking for more ways to get involved. You know we have
    another four years of fighting to protect and defend our fundamental
    freedoms against any attacks by the Bush Administration - and you
    are a critical part of that fight. Now you have an opportunity to hit
    the streets to show your support for women's choices, health, and
    reproductive freedom.


    Rally in support of reproductive freedom with NARAL Pro-Choice
    California and the San Francisco Area Pro-Choice Coalition on the
    32nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Anti-choice extremists are going
    to march in San Francisco on Saturday, January 22, and we need to
    show them that their anti-choice, anti-woman agenda is NOT
    welcome in our pro-choice city!


    Saturday, January 22
    10:00 am Rally at Powell and Market Streets
    11:00 am March along the Embarcadero to Aquatic Park


    For more information visit www.prochoiceca.org or to volunteer,
    email Nicole at NYelich@prochoiceamerica.org.


    Need transportation? Let us know!
    We want as many people as possible to stand with us on this
    important day - if you're already driving or if you need a ride,
    visit the Driving Votes website to post on the ride board and
    connect with others traveling to San Francisco on that day!


    Spread the word!
    Click here to tell your friends about this important call to
    action-and help us make this demonstration of our
    pro-choice values a BIG success!


    We look forward to standing with you on January 22.


    Sincerely,
    Amy, Lauren, and Nicole
    NARAL Pro-Choice California Staff

    Visit the web address below to tell your friends about this.
    Tell-a-friend!

    If you received this message from a friend, you can sign up
    for NARAL Pro-Choice America's Choice Action Network.

    If you would like to unsubscribe from NARAL Pro-Choice
    America's Choice Action Network or update your account
    settings, please click here.

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

    17) Working Towards Peace
    Forum on Israel/Palestine
    Sponsored by: Mt. Diablo Peace and Justice Center
    Tuesday, January 25, 2005 at 7:00 p.m.
    Mt. Diablo Unitarian Universalist Church,
    55 Eckley Lane, Walnut Creek
    Admission: FREE!

    Speakers:
    AMIR TERKEL,
    Israeli Defense Force Veteran/Reservist turned Refusenik
    HANAN RASHEED,
    Palestinian-American peace and reconciliation activist

    Learn more about the historical/political
    context of the conflict, current conditions
    in the Occupied Territories, the human
    effects of the Occupation on both the
    Occupied and the Occupier, and what
    steps can be taken toward a just and
    peaceful resolution of the conflict.

    Mt. Diablo Peace and Justice Center,
    55 Eckley Lane, Walnut Creek, CA * 925-933-7850

    PLEASE FORWARD TO INTERESTED PARTIES...

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

    18) "A Message from the 'Iraq Resistance.'"

    Reuters obtained from Iraqi guerrillas "an English-language video
    urging U.S. troops to lay down their weapons and seek refuge in
    mosques and homes" (Michael Georgy, "Iraq Rebels in Video Taunt,"
    January 12, 2005 ), promising protection to soldiers who heed their call.
    The Information Clearing House has made the video and a transcript
    of its content available: "A Message from the 'Iraq Resistance.'"
    http://montages.blogspot.com/2005/01/video-message-from-iraqi-resistance.htm
    l

    The messenger's delivery is clear and effective, and the tone is
    very confident. And the message is politically sophisticated:
    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. ( "A Message from the 'Iraq Resistance'" )
    They value the contribution of anti-war movements abroad and
    ask us to "form a world wide front against war and sanctions":
    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, till 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.
    ( "A Message from the 'Iraq Resistance'" )
    The message is said to come from "the media platoon of the
    Islamic Jihad Army" and dated December 10, 2004.

    If all Iraqi resistance fighters can unite behind a message like
    this one and stick to it in deed as well as rhetoric, it will be
    a political body blow against not only the George W. Bush
    administration but liberal imperialists who, like Lakshmi Chaudhry
    (Senior Editor of AlterNet ), claim to speak for the so-called "silent
    majority" of Iraqis and urge "our European counterparts to reverse
    their resistance and demand that their governments send troops
    to join a multinational force in Iraq" (as Tom Hayden paraphrases
    their position in his surprisingly sharp critical response
    [ January 13, 2005 ] to Chaudhry's article "Rethinking Iraq"
    [ January 6, 2005 ]). At least, the video message gives us hope
    that we may see an emergence of a national liberation front in
    Iraq sooner than many of us thought we would.
    #posted by Yoshie : 7:39 PM : :0 blogger comments :comments(0)

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

    19) U.S. Army Sergeant Defies Order, Refuses Re-Deployment:
    2 Soldiers Attempt Suicide at 2-7 Infantry, 17 Go AWOL
    By Robert S. Finnegan
    http://207.44.245.159/article7659.htm

    (courtesy of Information Clearing House)

    01/11/05 -- On Friday, January 7, 2005 Sergeant Kevin Benderman,
    stationed with the 2-7 Infantry Battalion at Ft. Stewart Georgia,
    refused an order from the Command Sergeant Major of his unit Samuel
    Coston to deploy to Iraq and requested a General Courts-Martial.

    Benderman, 40 is a combat veteran, having served one tour in Iraq in
    2003 during which a Captain in his command ordered soldiers from
    Benderman's outfit to fire on children throwing rocks at unit
    personnel. Having personally witnessed this and other illegal acts by
    military personnel during his tour, Benderman now says that under no
    circumstances will he participate further in the war in Iraq, a war
    Secretary General of the United Nations Kofi Annan has labeled
    "illegal".

    Benderman has applied for Conscientious Objector status. His
    commanders have not yet acted on his request, as required by Army
    regulations.

    In further developments this weekend, it has been confirmed that
    Specialist J.R. Burt and Specialist David Beals, also of 2-7 attempted
    suicide rather than deploy to Iraq, and an additional seventeen
    soldiers in 2-7 Infantry Battalion have gone AWOL for the same reason.
    Army sources who have been granted anonymity because they feared
    retaliation stated that both Burt and Beals are being harassed and
    mistreated on the Psychiatric Ward of Winn Army Hospital by unit
    commanders and a civilian, Dr. Capp who in apparent violation of state
    law is reported as informing them of the harsh punishments they may
    expect should they refuse deployment. In addition, SFC Johnson, 2-7
    platoon sergeant for Spec. Beals reportedly told him recently ".when I
    get you to Iraq, I'm going to get you killed," in the presence of
    several witnesses who say this incident was a catalyst in Beals'
    attempted suicide.

    Winn Army Hospital Public Affairs Officer Laurie Kemp refused to even
    confirm that the two Specialists had been admitted to the hospital.

    The 2-7 Chaplain, Captain Matt Temple in a letter addressed to
    Benderman today stated that: "It is unfortunate that you have chosen
    the course of action you have taken. You should have had the moral
    fortitude to deploy with us and see me here in Kuwait to begin your CO
    application. To expect me to complete an interview with you within 48
    hours of a major deployment was unreasonable and quite inconsiderate of
    my own time. I would have gladly helped you once we got here. As an NCO
    in the US ARMY, I expected a greater display of maturity from you.
    Furthermore, for you to have media personnel contacting me at my
    personal email address without first acquiring my permission was very
    unprofessional of you. You should be ashamed of the way you have
    conducted yourself. I certainly am ashamed of you. I hope you will see
    your misconduct as an opportunity to upgrade your character and moral
    behavior for your own good and the good of your fellowman." Benderman
    said the letter disgusted him, stating "Nothing in my career as a
    professional soldier has prepared me to respond to something like that
    letter from the Chaplain."

    Benderman's congressional representative, Congresswoman Cynthia
    McKinney has written a letter to his Battalion Commander Lt. Col. Todd
    Wood expressing her concern for Benderman's rights and suggesting that
    Wood designate him as non-deployable to Iraq.

    Support for Sergeant Benderman has been overwhelming, says his wife,
    Monica. "We are being swamped for interview requests by the media," she
    said on Monday.

    Benderman has also garnered the support of an American icon and war
    hero, Colonel James "Bo" Gritz, USA (Ret.), who profiled Benderman for
    three days running on his radio show "Freedom Call". Gritz has labeled
    previous charges by the Army in connection with Benderman's refusal to
    deploy and statements to the press "ridiculous," and savaging the
    officers of 2-7, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and President Bush
    on the air while calling Benderman "a hero" and his immediate superiors
    "weenies." Colonel Gritz is one of the most decorated soldiers in U.S.
    Army history, having led the only raid on a prisoner of war camp during
    the Vietnam War at Son Tay, North Vietnam.

    On Monday afternoon, Benderman says he is still in the dark as to what
    the Army plans for him. "I have learned nothing from anyone in my chain
    of command informing me on the disposition of my case, despite my
    attempts to communicate with them. Perhaps tomorrow," he said.

    Telephone calls to 2-7 Public Affairs Officer Lt.Col. Kent and the
    Pentagon requesting comment on Benderman, Burt, Beals and the
    additional 2-7 AWOL cases were unanswered by press time.

    Southeast Asia News Managing Editor Robert S. Finnegan is an
    internationally published investigative reporter and former Marine
    Corps Non-Commissioned Officer. Working most recently as a Senior
    Editor and lead investigator on the Bali Bombings for The Jakarta Post,
    he may be reached at seanews1@yahoo.com.

    (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
    distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest
    in receiving the included information for research and educational
    purposes. Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever with
    the originator of this article nor is Information Clearing House
    endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


    € To subscribe to this group, send an email to:
    govtwatch4-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

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

    20) The Normalization of Horror:
    American Gulags Become Permanent
    By Ted Rall
    January 11, 2004
    http://www.uexpress.com/tedrall/

    New York--A new documentary, "Hitler's Hit Parade," runs 76 minutes without
    narration. Comprised entirely of archival footage, the film prompts its
    reviewers to remark upon Hannah Arendt's famous observation about the
    banality of evil. German troops subjugated Europe and shoved millions of
    people into ovens; German civilians went to the movies, attended concerts,
    and gossiped about their neighbors. People lived mundane, normal lives while
    their government carried out unspeakable monstrosities.

    Sound familiar?

    As Congress prepared to rubberstamp the nomination of torture aficionado
    Alberto Gonzales as the nation's chief prosecutor, the Washington Post broke
    news that would have torn a saner nation apart. The Bush Administration, the
    paper reported January 2, is no longer planning to keep hundreds of Muslim
    prisoners currently rotting away in U.S. concentration camps at Guantánamo,
    Abu Ghraib and Bagram merely "indefinitely." The Defense Department and CIA
    are now planning "a more permanent approach for potentially lifetime
    detentions" for these innocents.

    We're locking them up forever. Without due process.

    Before gangsters like Alberto Gonzales seduced us into abandoning our
    values, a person was considered innocent before being proven guilty. Now
    we're locking people away because "the government does not have enough
    evidence to charge [them] in courts." And everyone, including Democrats, is
    OK with this.

    Untold thousands of people are being held without charges, tortured and
    occasionally murdered in the system of gulags hastily strung together by the
    CIA, FBI, INS and Pentagon. According to the government itself, only a few
    dozen are former Al Qaeda officials. Most of these postmodern misérables
    were farmers, truck drivers, grunt militiamen and political enemies sold
    into bondage by Afghan warlords and similarly trustworthy souls for cash
    bounties on a no questions asked basis. We know they have no ties to
    terrorism, but they've already spent years getting beaten up. Releasing them
    would serve as a tacit admission that we were wrong to describe them as--in
    Dick Cheney's words--"the worst of the worst." They would sue our
    government, and eventually win. Worst of all, they have unpleasant tales to
    tell about systemic sodomy and countless other forms of horrific
    taxpayer-funded abuse. We can never let them out.

    Bush plans to divide U.S. concentration camp victims into two groups. One
    set of "lifers" will end up in U.S.-run stalags like Gitmo's new Camp 6,
    built to hold 200 "detainees who are unlikely to ever go through a military
    tribunal for lack of evidence, according to defense officials." But not to
    worry: Camp 6 would "allow socializing among inmates."

    Others captured in the "war on terrorism" will be outsourced "to third
    countries willing to hold them indefinitely and without proceedings" in
    foreign-run gulags that pledge to make victims available for torture by
    American interrogators. This practice, some claim, is "an effective method
    of disrupting terrorist cells and persuading detainees to reveal
    information."

    "The threat of sending someone to one of these countries [where they are
    likely to be tortured] is very important," said Rohan Gunaratna, author of
    "Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror."

    But the so-called "ticking time bomb" rationale for torture is patently
    fallacious. We've heard the scenario repeatedly: wouldn't it be worth
    torturing someone who knew the location of a nuclear bomb that was
    about to destroy Manhattan? The short answer, to a moral person,
    is obviously no.

    Moreover, its logic is ludicrous.

    Suppose we had captured Osama bin Laden on 9/10 and immediately
    gone to work on him with our Alberto Gonzales-approved
    psychotropic drugs and our AlbertoGonzales-approved "waterboard"
    dunking technique. It wouldn't take long forOsama's pals to notice that
    he'd failed to show up at the Terrorcave. They'd
    assume that we had him and were torturing him. They'd assume
    that he'd tell us everything he knew. So they'd delay 9/11 to 10/11
    or 11/12 or 9/11/02. Or
    go to Plan B. Or develop a Plan C. No one in an underground organization,
    not even its top leader, is indispensable. Arrests are inconvenient, not
    debilitating.

    The information a person possesses at the moment of his capture
    ages like a ripe cheese in hot sun. Even if what he told you at the
    beginning was true, anything you'd get out of him days and weeks
    and months and years later would be completely worthless.

    Wait a minute.

    Look at what we're talking about. Consider the breezy way we
    Americans--Americans!--are debating the pros and cons of torture.
    Marvel at our moral bankruptcy. The liberal argument against torture
    used to be that it was wrong. Now it's that it doesn't work.

    So.

    Read any good books lately?

    Marxism mailing list
    Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu
    http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism

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

    21) Abu Ghraib prisoners escape
    Baghdad election center director killed
    BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Iraqi police are on the lookout for 28 Abu
    Ghraib prisoners who escaped while en route to Baghdad for trial.
    http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/01/14/iraq/index.html

    The detainees, which included several Arabs from other countries, were
    traveling aboard a bus from the prison to the courthouse late Thursday,
    according to a police official.

    But due to a shortage of handcuffs, several had their hands bound with
    rope and were able to loosen the knots before overpowering police and
    security guards in the western Baghdad neighborhood of Sa'alam.

    Iraqi police found handcuffs and rope scattered in the streets.

    One prisoner managed to seize an officer's AK-47 and critically wounded
    him with it.

    Four guards and the bus driver were severely beaten.

    All 38 detainees escaped, but multinational and Iraqi forces were able to
    capture 10 of them shortly afterward.

    The mass escape comes as violence batters Iraq in the run-up to election
    day.

    Three Kurdish Peshmerga fighters died Thursday while fighting alongside
    Iraqi national guard forces against insurgents in the northern Iraqi city
    of Mosul, according to a Kurdish Democratic Party official.

    The incident happened around 7 p.m. (11 a.m. ET) in Mosul's southwest
    district of al-Zira'i.

    The Kurdish Democratic Party, led by Massoud Barzani, is one of two
    main factions of Iraq's Kurdish minority.

    The U.S. military had no comment and said they are investigating the
    incident.

    Two U.S. Marines were killed in action Thursday "while conducting
    security and stability operations" in Iraq's vast al-Anbar province,
    according to a military release.

    The Marines were assigned to the I Marine Expeditionary Force. The
    military, citing security risks, released no other details.

    Also Thursday, a 1st Infantry Division soldier died near the northern
    Iraqi city of Mosul in a non-combat-related death, which is still under
    investigation, according to the 1st ID.

    With the deaths, 1,364 U.S. troops have died in Operation Iraqi
    Freedom. Of those, 1,076 were killed in combat.

    On Thursday morning, around ten gunmen opened fire on a minibus
    in central Baghdad -- killing all six Iraqis on board -- before abducting
    a Turkish businessman waiting for the bus outside a hotel, according
    to police.

    The deputy chief of mission for the Turkish Embassy in Baghdad,
    Aydin Selcen, identified the kidnap victim as Abdulkadir Tanrikulu,
    a crane operator working for a Turkish construction firm in Baghdad.

    Later, a car bomb outside a Shia mosque in the town of Khan Bani
    Saad, south of Baquba, killed four Iraqi policemen and three civilians.
    The blast also wounded 30 other people.

    Meanwhile, gunmen killed the director of a Baghdad election center
    Thursday, another in a series of attacks targeting election officials
    and candidates as the vote set for January 30 approaches.

    Baghdad police, who reported the slaying, did not release the director's
    name. He was in charge of an election center in the al-Khadoumiyah
    neighborhood in the northern part of Baghdad.

    Insurgents also made an apparent assassination attempt on Iraqi
    presidential candidate Mithal al-Alousi, the second bid in two weeks.

    Al-Alousi, who supports normal relations between Iraq and Israel,
    was attacked Tuesday at midnight in western Baghdad.

    On Wednesday, a representative for prominent Shiite cleric Ali
    al-Sistani was shot to death in Salman Pak, east of Baghdad. The
    representative's son and four bodyguards were also shot, police said.

    Al-Sistani is Iraq's most influential Shiite leader and strongly
    supports the general elections. ( Full story )

    Group explains boycott

    In a separate election-related development, an organization claiming
    about 3 million Iraqi tribesmen as members said it expects many of
    them to follow its lead and boycott the elections.

    The organization said it was withdrawing from the elections because
    of security and fairness concerns.

    The Patriotic Front of Iraqi Tribes comprises Sunni and Shiite Muslims
    as well as Turkmen and Kurds, according to the group's spokesman,
    Ibrahim Al-Nahar.

    The majority are Sunni, he said. The group announced Wednesday
    it will withdraw from the elections.

    Formed in April 2004, the group appears on the election list as the
    Patriotic Front of the Unity of Iraq, as the country's election
    commission refused to allow them to register with the word "tribes"
    in the name, Al-Nahar said Thursday.

    It could not be confirmed how many candidates representing the
    group are on the ballot.

    The organization initially submitted 275 names for the ballot,
    Al-Nahar said.

    The group's main goal is to have a united, democratic Iraq,
    Al-Nahar said. While it is opposed to the presence of occupying
    troops, it believes in legal, not armed, resistance, he said.

    The tribal system and allegiances remain important to Iraqis,
    Al-Nahar said, and many tribesmen are expected to follow them
    as far as political and social decisions.

    Quick reaction forces

    A U.S. commander overseeing security in north-central Iraq said
    Iraqi forces will lead security efforts there on election day and U.S.
    troops will lend support.

    Maj. Gen. John R.S. Batiste, commander of the 1st Infantry Division,
    said quick-reaction forces will be on hand to "stomp on the insurgent
    when he raises his ugly head."

    And despite some problems in certain provinces, "the bottom line is,
    north-central Iraq is ready for elections," Batiste said.

    Under no circumstances should the election be delayed, Iraqi national
    security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie told CNN on Thursday.

    "This will send ... the whole country into absolute chaos," he said.
    "We will be in a deep constitutional crisis, because the transitional
    administrative law did not make any permission or allowance [for
    an election delay]."

    Al-Rubaie acknowledged that Iraq's security situation "is not
    100 percent."

    "There are still some trouble pockets here and there, especially in
    the [Sunni] triangle," he said. "But I feel and I believe the overall
    security situation in the country will allow us to carry a fair and free
    election."

    The White House said Iraqis' interest in the elections is strong.

    "In survey after survey, the Iraqi people say, 'We want to choose our
    leaders,'" White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters
    in Washington.

    CNN's Dana Bash, Elise Labott, Nermeen al-Mufti, Barbara Starr,
    Mohammed Tawfeeq, Ayman Mohyeldin and Jennifer Yuille contributed
    to this report.

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



    posted 12:15 PM  0 comments
     

    BAUAW NEWSLETTER-WEDNESDAY, JAN. 12, 2005

    Breaking News on Lynne Stewart Case:
    From: PatLevasseurP@aol.com
    www.lynnestewart.org
    212-625-9696

    The jury began deliberating around 2 p.m. today. After today they
    can deliberate as late as they want and on Friday if they choose to.
    Lynne would like people to come by if they can and wait with the
    defense during deliberations. The jury may have questions or ask
    for read back of testimony. So if you are in New York and even have
    an hour or so to go to the courtroom please do. As soon as a verdict
    is announced I will get the word out. Pat

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

    NEXT BAUAW MEETING:

    SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 11:00 a.m.
    CENTRO DEL PUEBLO
    474 VALENCIA STREET
    (NEAR 16TH ST. IN S.F.)

    HELP GET THE MILITARY OUT OF OUR SCHOOLS!
    KILLING AND BEING KILLED IS NOT A CAREER CHOICE!

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

    1) STOP THE WAR ON IRAQ! BRING OUR TROOPS HOME NOW!
    ALL OUT JANUARY 20TH, 5:00 P.M., CIVIC CENTER, S.F.
    Washington, D.C.:
    Converge at 4th St. & Pennsylvania Ave.
    on the north side of the parade route

    2) Let's Hit the Streets
    On the 32nd Anniversary of Roe v. Wade
    To Defend Abortion Rights!
    Saturday, January 22
    10 am Rally at Powell & Market Streets, San Francisco
    11 am March to the Embarcadero
    www.indybay.org/womyn .
    Driving? Need a ride? Visit http://drivingvotes.org/rides/sfprochoice.php
    ALSO: Join the Women‚s Rights Contingent in the San Francisco
    Counter-Inaugural Protest on January 20th. Meet at 5 pm at the
    corner of Grove and Polk in Civic Center Plaza.

    3) PICTURES OF WAR

    4) ITALIAN.QUEER.DANGEROUS
    a one-man show featuring Tommi Avicolli Mecca
    directed by Francesca Prada, Jan. 14-19, 8:00pm,
    JON SIMS CENTER
    1519 Mission, Between Van Ness and 11th Sts., SF

    5) You are invited To Celebrate and claim victory on
    James Yee's case and his Honorable Discharge from the U.S. Army
    Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday
    JOIN THOUSANDS in the Freedom March
    When: Monday, January 17, 2005
    11:30 A.M. TO 12:30 p.m.
    Where:J4NA members will meet at
    3rd & Mission at 11:30 a.m and join the parade.
    The big march will start at the San Francisco Caltrain Station
    (4th St. and Townsend St.,) proceeding to Mission Street @
    Third Street, continuing to the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium

    6) Health Care? Ask Cuba
    By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
    OP-ED COLUMNIST
    January 12, 2005
    http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/12/opinion/12kris.html?oref=login&hp

    7) A High Level of Alert for the Inauguration
    "This is the most visible manifestation of our democracy,"
    Mr. Ridge said, adding, "So there's very little intelligence,
    but we're as vigilant as ever."
    By DAVID JOHNSTON and MICHAEL JANOFSKY
    January 12, 2005
    http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/12/politics/12security.html

    8) What the First Lady Will Wear
    "She has gone from being just folks to being a bit
    imperial, assuming a bit more of a queenly role,"
    By RUTH LA FERLA
    January 11, 2005
    http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/11/fashion/11DRES.html

    9) Is Al Qaeda Just a Bush Boogeyman?
    By Robert Scheer
    January 11, 2005
    http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/011305Z.shtml
    http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-scheer11jan11,0,4938608
    ,print.column

    10) U.S. MULLS STRIKES ON SYRIA
    By Richard Sale
    United Press International
    January 12, 2005
    http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20050111-105709-6329r.htm

    11) URGENT: Mumia Hearing Cancelled,
    Stay Tuned for Update on Action of Feb.11th!
    Ona MOVE!
    In a message dated 1/11/05 6:57:34 PM, icffmaj@aol.com writes:

    12) 1000 Days of Hell
    After three years' incarceration, Guantanamo Britons are
    set to be freed
    By Robert Verkaik, Legal Affairs Correspondent
    12 January 2005
    http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/story.jsp?story=599984

    13) January 20: Inauguration Day
    Not Our President! Not in Our Name!

    14) Should a Defender of Immigrants and Critic of
    the Patriot Act be silenced?
    A tribute to Manlin Chee, a local and national hero
    Who is Manlin Chee?

    15) BOEING SCANDAL PART OF DEEPER PENTAGON CORRUPTION
    By David Phinney
    From: "CorpWatch"
    Date: Thu,6 Jan 2005 20:54:38 -0800 (PST)
    List-Id:
    List-Subscribe:

    List-Owner:
    List-Archive:

    16) GLOBAL DAY OF PROTEST ON THE TWO-YEAR
    ANNIVERSARY OF THE IRAQ WAR
    SATURDAY, MARCH 19:
    ACTION ALERT * UNITED FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE
    * End the War * Bring the Troops Home Now
    * Rebuild Our Communities *
    http://www.unitedforpeace.org | 212-868-5545

    17) JANUARY 20, 2005 COUNTER INAUGURAL EVENT
    THE COST OF WAR - THE PRICE WE'RE ALL PAYING
    JOIN US AS WE STATE THE FACTS
    AND OFFER ALTERNATIVES
    WHERE: The Foundry United Methodist Church
    1500 16TH Street, NW and P Street
    (near DuPont Circle), Washington, D.C.
    WHEN: 10:00 AM – 11:30 PM


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

    1) STOP THE WAR ON IRAQ! BRING OUR TROOPS HOME NOW!
    ALL OUT JANUARY 20TH, 5:00 P.M., CIVIC CENTER, S.F.
    Washington, D.C.:
    Converge at 4th St. & Pennsylvania Ave.
    on the north side of the parade route

    A permit has been obtained for a mass convergence at 4th St. and
    Pennsylvania Ave. along the north side of the parade route. You can
    bring your own signs or pick up signs, banners and other materials
    at this location. Any sign that is made of cardboard, posterboard
    or cloth and that is no larger than 3 feet by 20 feet and 1/4 inch in
    thickness can be brought to the parade route. We will provide
    additional logistical information in the coming days.

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

    2) Let's Hit the Streets
    On the 32nd Anniversary of Roe v. Wade
    To Defend Abortion Rights!
    Saturday, January 22
    10 am Rally at Powell & Market Streets, San Francisco
    11 am March to the Embarcadero

    Jan. 22 is the 32nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court
    decision that established the constitutional right to reproductive freedom.
    On the same day, anti-choice extremists plan to march in San Francisco
    against women‚s health and rights. The anti-choice minority might be
    emboldened by the climate in Washington, DC but they are not
    welcome here!

    Join the San Francisco Area Pro-Choice Coalition to Stand Up for
    Reproductive Freedom and Demonstrate that San Francisco is PRO-CHOICE!

    Sponsored by the San Francisco Area Pro-Choice Coalition. For more
    information or to get involved, visit www.indybay.org/womyn www.indybay.org/womyn> .
    Driving? Need a ride? Visit http://drivingvotes.org/rides/sfprochoice.php

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

    3) PICTURES OF WAR

    PLEASE ACCESS:
    ** Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches **
    ** http://dahrjamailiraq.com **

    I have obtained the originals of the photos I recently posted which were
    taken from inside Fallujah.
    These are of much higher quality.

    Some of the comments have been updated, and there are some additional
    pictures added which I did not have before.

    http://dahrjamailiraq.com/gallery/
    view_album.php?set_albumName=album28&page=1

    More writing, photos and commentary at http://dahrjamailiraq.com

    You can visit http://dahrjamailiraq.com/email_list/ to subscribe or
    unsubscribe to the email list.

    (c)2004 Dahr Jamail.
    All images and text are protected by United States and
    international copyright law. If you would like to reprint Dahr's
    Dispatches on the web, you need to include this copyright notice
    and a prominent link to the DahrJamailIraq.com website. Any
    other use of images and text including, but not limited to,
    reproduction, use on another website, copying and printing
    requires the permission of Dahr Jamail. Of course, feel free
    to forward Dahr's dispatches via email.

    Iraq_Dispatches mailing list
    http://lists.dahrjamailiraq.com/mailman/listinfo/iraq_dispatches

    http://dahrjamailiraq.com/gallery/
    view_album.php?set_albumName=album28&page=1
    view_album.php?set_albumName=album28&page=1>
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/coalitionforfreethoughtinmedia/message/26138
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/coalitionforfreethoughtinmedia/message/26138
    Virginion Pilot via AP - Photos - click here
    http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=79598&ran=187050

    TSUNAMI PHOTOS:
    A Community Labor News E-Zine

    http://homepage.mac.com/demark/tsunami/2.html

    This one has a BUNCH of different sources. I liked the
    CTV site and the maps on the Washington Post site.

    ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/asl/guides/indian-ocean-disaster.html

    Readers may email your article submissions
    or your comments to ListAdmin@CLNews.org

    http://www.clnews.org/MailList/subscribtion.htm
    "Freedom is always and exclusively
    freedom for the one who thinks differently"
    --Rosa Luxemburg

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

    4) ITALIAN.QUEER.DANGEROUS
    a one-man show featuring Tommi Avicolli Mecca
    directed by Francesca Prada, Jan. 14-19, 8:00pm,
    JON SIMS CENTER
    1519 Mission, Between Van Ness and 11th Sts., SF

    JANUARY 14-29 (
    Friday and Saturday nights only: 14, 15; 21, 22; 28, 29)

    JON SIMS CENTER, 1519 Mission/between Van Ness and 11th
    8pm, $5-10 sliding scale (no one turned away)
    Seating is limited, for reservations: 415-554-0402
    To volunteer to help with the show, call 415-552-6031

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

    5) You are invited to Celebrate and claim victory on
    James Yee's case and his Honorable Discharge from the U.S. Army
    Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday
    JOIN THOUSANDS in the Freedom March
    When: Monday, January 17, 2005
    11:30 A.M. TO 12:30 p.m.
    Where:J4NA members will meet at
    3rd & Mission at 11:30 a.m and join the parade.
    The big march will start at the San Francisco Caltrain Station
    (4th St. and Townsend St., )proceeding to Mission Street
    @ Third Street, continuing to the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium
    BART FREEDOM TRAINS
    For free flash passes go to the transportation page
    or
    call (510) 268-3777
    We encourage you to take home made signs to celebrate honorable
    discharge of Chaplain James Yee

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

    6) Health Care? Ask Cuba
    By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
    OP-ED COLUMNIST
    January 12, 2005
    http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/12/opinion/12kris.html?oref=login&hp

    Here's a wrenching fact: If the U.S. had an infant mortality rate as good
    as Cuba's, we would save an additional 2,212 American babies a year.

    Yes, Cuba's. Babies are less likely to survive in America, with a health
    care system that we think is the best in the world, than in impoverished
    and autocratic Cuba. According to the latest C.I.A. World Factbook,
    Cuba is one of 41 countries that have better infant mortality rates
    than the U.S.

    Even more troubling, the rate in the U.S. has worsened recently.

    In every year since 1958, America's infant mortality rate improved,
    or at least held steady. But in 2002, it got worse: 7 babies died for
    each thousand live births, while that rate was 6.8 deaths the year before.

    Those numbers, buried in a recent report from the Centers for
    Disease Control and Prevention, didn't get much attention. But
    they are part of a pattern of recent statistics dribbling out of the
    federal government suggesting that for those on the bottom in
    America, life in our new Gilded Age is getting crueler.

    "America's children are at greater risk than they've been in for at
    least a decade," said Dr. Irwin Redlener, associate dean at the
    Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and
    president of the Children's Health Fund. "The rising rate of infant
    mortality is an early warning that we're headed in the wrong
    direction, with no relief in sight."

    It's too early to know just what to make of the increase in infant
    mortality in 2002 for American babies. Reliable data for 2003 and
    2004 are not out yet. Sandy Smith of the Centers for Disease
    Control says that the statisticians are pretty sure there was not
    a further deterioration in 2003, but that it's too soon to know
    whether there was an improvement or just a leveling off at the
    higher rate.

    Singapore has the best infant mortality rate in the world: 2.3 babies
    die before the age of 1 for every 1,000 live births. Sweden, Japan
    and Iceland all have a rate that is less than half of ours.

    If we had a rate as good as Singapore's, we would save 18,900 babies
    each year. Or to put it another way, our policy failures in Iraq may
    be killing Americans at a rate of about 800 a year, but our health
    care failures at home are resulting in incomparably more
    deaths - of infants. And their mothers, because women are
    70 percent more likely to die in childbirth in America than in Europe.

    Of course, deaths in maternity wards occur one by one, and
    don't generate the national attention, grief and alarm of an
    explosion in Falluja or a tsunami in Sri Lanka. But they are far
    more frequent: every day, on average, 77 babies die in the U.S.
    and one woman dies in childbirth.

    Bolstering public health isn't as dramatic as spending $300 million
    for a single F/A-22 Raptor fighter jet, but it can be a far more
    efficient way of protecting Americans.

    For example, during World War II, the employment boom meant
    that many poor Americans enjoyed regular health care for the
    first time. So even though 405,000 Americans died in the war,
    life expectancy in the U.S. actually increased between 1940 and
    1945, rising three years for whites and five years for blacks.

    True, infant mortality and many other American health problems
    are largely intertwined with poverty, and experience suggests that
    neither the left nor the right has easy solutions for intractable
    poverty. But some of the steps the government is now taking or
    talking about - like cutting back further on entitlements,
    particularly those giving children access to health care - would
    aggravate the situation. Last year, a study by the Institute of
    Medicine, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences, estimated
    that the lack of health insurance coverage causes
    18,000 unnecessary deaths a year.

    As readers know, I complain regularly about the Chinese government's
    brutality in imprisoning dissidents, Christians and, lately, Zhao Yan,
    a New York Times colleague in Beijing. Yet for all their ruthlessness,
    China's dictators have managed to drive down the infant mortality
    rate in Beijing to 4.6 per thousand; in contrast, New York City's
    rate is 6.5.

    We should celebrate this freedom that we enjoy in America - by
    complaining about and working to address pockets of poverty and
    failures in our health care system. It's simply unacceptable that the
    average baby is less likely to survive in the U.S. than in Beijing
    or Havana.

    Copyright 2005 The New York Times


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

    7) A High Level of Alert for the Inauguration
    "This is the most visible manifestation of our democracy,"
    Mr. Ridge said, adding, "So there's very little intelligence,
    but we're as vigilant as ever."
    By DAVID JOHNSTON and MICHAEL JANOFSKY
    January 12, 2005
    http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/12/politics/12security.html

    WASHINGTON, Jan. 11 - Tom Ridge, the homeland security secretary,
    said Tuesday that even in the absence of any specific security threat
    to next week's presidential inauguration, civilian and military forces
    had been ordered to an extraordinarily high state of alert.

    "You can well imagine that the security for this occasion will be
    unprecedented," Mr. Ridge said at a news conference. "Protective
    measures will be seen. There will be quite a few that are not seen.
    Our goal is that any attempt on the part of anyone or any group to
    disrupt the inaugural will be repelled by multiple layers of security."

    In his first detailed outline of inauguration security planning,
    Mr. Ridge said that more than 6,000 civilian and military personnel
    trained in crisis response, crowd control and dignitary security
    would be in place, with thousands more available to respond if
    necessary.

    At the heart of the plan are tightly controlled security zones that
    will restrict pedestrian and vehicle access to the streets around
    the Capitol, where Mr. Bush will be sworn in, and over the route
    of the traditional parade along Pennsylvania Avenue to the White
    House.

    Before the inauguration events, security teams will sweep through
    hotels and office buildings along the parade route, in some cases
    barring office workers from sitting near windows overlooking the
    procession.

    Even now, security teams are working to ensure the safety of food
    that will be served to President Bush and other guests at inaugural
    events. Caterers are being instructed to arrive for work at 7 p.m.
    the night before the inauguration.

    For next Thursday's swearing-in ceremonies, sniper teams will
    be in position on rooftops. Specialists in chemical, biological
    and radiological terrorism will mingle with the crowds, carrying
    hand-held detection devices designed to pick up any sign of
    unconventional weapons. Squads of plainclothes agents, with
    federal prosecutors among them, will move along the parade
    route scouting for potential problems. Armed Coast Guard
    boats will patrol the Potomac River.

    Security will be tighter than at recent high-profile events like
    last year's political conventions.

    "Our system of government is rooted in the sovereign principle
    of democratic authority bestowed by the people," Mr. Ridge
    said. "And the people, both the inauguration participants and
    city residents, are resolved to go forward with an event that
    so deeply reflects that ideal."

    Mr. Ridge said that the security for the inauguration would
    cost millions of dollars but that he did not know the total
    amount

    Costs have created at least one conflict between the federal
    government and the District of Columbia. The city is underwriting
    about $17.3 million of the cost, and Washington officials are
    not happy about it.

    Mayor Anthony A. Williams has asked Mr. Ridge and Joshua B. Bolten,
    director of the Office of Management and Budget, why the city
    should cover security costs out of federal grants that are otherwise
    used for everyday needs, like protecting buildings, bridges,
    subways and waterways, as well as for emergencies and events
    like the funeral of President Ronald Reagan last year.

    City officials say this is the first time that the federal government
    has not promised to cover all of the district's inauguration expenses,
    leaving open the possibility that district taxpayers might have to pay.

    "We're delighted to be part of this; it's a great honor," said Gregory
    McCarthy, Mr. Williams's deputy chief of staff. "But we shouldn't
    be raided for something as predictable as this."

    Asked about the issue, Mr. Ridge said that city governments of
    Boston and New York had agreed to spend federal security money
    to cover costs associated with protecting last year's political
    conventions in their cities.

    Even as Mr. Ridge emphasized the urgency of preventive steps,
    several senior security officials said in private that planning for
    security at inaugurations seemed to be growing beyond the
    precautions that could be justified based on the threat level.

    They also said that security planning for the inauguration was
    a well-rehearsed responsibility involving agencies whose roles
    were well known from past inaugurations.

    "There's not much about this that we haven't done before,"
    a senior law enforcement official said.

    In part, the officials said, the extraordinary security arrangements
    at this year's swearing-in, parade and related events represent
    a chance for the nearly 50 federal agencies involved to show
    newly bought exotic equipment, specially trained antiterror
    units and communications networks put into place after the
    September 2001 attacks.

    The military will play a more visible role in this inauguration,
    with 2,500 troops involved in security, said Maj. Gen. Galen
    B. Jackman, commander of the Joint Task Force-Armed Forces
    Inaugural Committee, which coordinates military operations
    for the inauguration.

    "We believe we are ready to deter any type of attack," General
    Jackman said before Mr. Ridge's news conference.

    The general wore camouflage gear as he spoke with reporters
    in front a group of battle-dressed soldiers who carried
    automatic weapons.

    The security plan for the inauguration is based on a system
    of overlapping zones. Vehicular traffic will be restricted from
    an outer zone about six blocks from inauguration sites.
    Pedestrians will be screened at 22 checkpoints set up around
    an inner zone perimeter about two blocks from event locations.
    An even more restrictive area in the vicinity of the swearing-in
    and the parade bleachers will be closed to anyone without
    a ticket or an invitation.

    In a break with past inauguration parades, protest groups are
    being assigned specific areas for their demonstrations in
    a way that protest organizers say will enable law enforcement
    agencies to exert tighter control over them.

    Access to the presidential entourage itself will be limited to
    people who have been subjected to fingerprinting and criminal
    background checks.

    Security is under the control of the Secret Service, which will
    manage the event from a central command center, known as
    the Joint Field Office, in a Virginia suburb. A number of federal
    agencies will open operations centers in a network being
    coordinated through 13 subcommittees, each with
    responsibilities ranging from the processing of drunken
    revelers to a nuclear attack.

    Not everything is working smoothly, officials said. At one
    training exercise this week intended to test the complex
    communications network that links federal, state and local
    agencies, personnel were handed a 10-page phone directory
    of agencies listed only by acronym. The directory was so confusing
    - even to emergency workers - that officials ordered a new phone
    book with the names of agencies written out in full.

    Mr. Ridge said that the nation's color-coded alert level would not
    be raised for the inauguration. The alert level is at yellow, for
    a heightened but not imminent threat.

    "This is the most visible manifestation of our democracy,"
    Mr. Ridge said, adding, "So there's very little intelligence,
    but we're as vigilant as ever."

    Mr. Ridge has said that several factors may help explain
    the absence of threats, among them efforts by the United
    States and its allies to disrupt terrorist networks overseas
    and initiatives by the government to reduce the nation's
    vulnerability to attack.

    Some intelligence officials have offered other reasons for the
    fewer reports of threats, including the possibility that planning
    for an attack might be going on undetected or that extremists
    might be turning their attention to other objectives like
    interfering with Iraqi elections scheduled this month.

    Copyright 2005 The New York Times

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

    8) What the First Lady Will Wear
    "She has gone from being just folks to being a bit
    imperial, assuming a bit more of a queenly role,"
    By RUTH LA FERLA
    January 11, 2005
    http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/11/fashion/11DRES.html

    Laura Bush has made her choice. Ending weeks of speculation
    on Seventh Avenue about what she would wear on Inauguration
    Day, Jan. 20, Mrs. Bush said Monday that Oscar de la Renta would
    design her inaugural ball gown, a dress that for a time at least
    will be the most scrutinized in the country.

    The silver-blue tulle gown, embroidered with bugle beads and
    outlined in Austrian crystals, is the stately if conventional
    centerpiece in a wardrobe Mrs. Bush will wear during four
    days of festivities in Washington, including 10 balls,
    candlelight dinners, a parade and fireworks.

    In addition to Mr. de la Renta, a longtime couturier to the
    fashionable elite, designers for Mrs. Bush's wardrobe include
    Carolina Herrera, who fills a similar niche, and Peggy Jennings,
    a little-known designer who has been quietly wardrobing
    Mrs. Bush from her apartment at the Waldorf Towers in
    Manhattan for two years.

    The president's daughters, Jenna and Barbara, will be
    dressed by Badgley Mischka, Lela Rose, Derek Lam and
    Mr. de la Renta for the inaugural festivities.

    The first lady's wardrobe is sure to be studied for clues
    about her evolving personal style and even for hints about
    the overall tone of the White House in the next four years.
    "The first lady is certainly a reflection as to the man holding
    the office," Mr. de la Renta said. He was reluctant to ascribe
    special significance to Mrs. Bush's sartorial choices, which
    are more glamorous than anything the White House has
    seen since the Reagan years.

    But another observer, Catherine Allgor, a historian of first
    lady style, suggested that in anointing Mr. de la Renta and
    Mrs. Herrera, mainstays of taste among wealthy women,
    Mrs. Bush appears to be displaying a growing awareness
    that "her power is entrenched." "She has gone from being
    just folks to being a bit imperial, assuming a bit more of
    a queenly role," said Ms. Allgor, the author of "Parlor Politics:
    In Which the Ladies of Washington Help Build a City and
    a Government" (University Press of Virginia, 2002).

    Mrs. Bush, who during her husband's first term sometimes
    professed an aversion to fashion, preferring straight-fitting,
    neutral and matronly suits that concealed her shape, has
    reversed herself. She has embraced Seventh Avenue to the
    point of visiting Mr. de la Renta and Mrs. Herrera in their
    design showrooms - a departure from White House tradition.

    Bush watchers point out that Mr. de la Renta and
    Mrs. Herrera are light years in sophistication from the image
    Mrs. Bush conceived four years ago by employing Michael
    Faircloth, a little-known Texas designer, to make her scarlet
    lace gown for the inauguration.

    The dress was much deprecated by style-watchers. Since
    then, Mrs. Bush has projected a more feminine, worldly
    image, and she seems more conscious of her role as
    a symbol of state. "Mrs. Bush has very successfully created
    a strong iconography for herself," said Hamish Bowles, an
    editor of Vogue who was curator of an exhibition on the
    style of Jacqueline Kennedy in the White House for the
    Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2001. "She is less provincial,
    more urbane, but still on the safe side," he said, adding
    that her image is "calculated not to frighten the horses."

    There is nothing intimidating about Mr. de la Renta's
    ice-blue ball gown. To judge from the sketches released
    by the White House on Monday, it has a reassuringly
    familiar look, reminiscent in spirit and in silhouette of
    the gowns James Galanos designed for Nancy Reagan
    in the 1980's.

    Since 2001, Mrs. Bush's fashion sense has ripened with
    nudges from her daughters and design world friends.
    She appeared with President Bush to claim victory in the
    election in November dressed in a pale pink suit by
    Ms. Jennings that discreetly showed off her figure,
    slimmed down to a size 6, the designer said over the
    weekend. Ms. Jennings has designed a rose-colored
    hand-beaded lace gown that Mrs. Bush will wear to
    candlelight dinners on Jan. 19.

    In addition, she will wear a raspberry-colored striped
    silk shirtdress by Mrs. Herrera to the Texas State
    Society's black tie and boots ball on Jan. 19. Mrs. Bush
    will pay for all of her dresses, said Gordon Johndroe,
    her press secretary.

    In Vogue this month, the first lady is photographed
    modeling a streamlined Herrera suit and a deep blue
    silk shirtwaist gown by Mr. de la Renta, accessorized
    with amber beads that match her hair, which was clipped
    for a youthfully breezy look by Sally Hershberger, who
    shears the heads of the Hollywood elite.

    Through Mr. Johndroe, Mrs. Bush acknowledged that she
    is increasingly taking style cues from her 22-year-old twin
    daughters, who have been dressed by New York arbiters of
    hip like Zac Posen and Narciso Rodriguez. "Mrs. Bush has
    really enjoyed working with some of the designers Barbara
    and Jenna favor," Mr. Johndroe said.

    The glamorization of Mrs. Bush's image began as far back
    as the aftermath of the 2001 inauguration. Preparing to have
    her photographed for Vogue, Anna Wintour, the magazine's
    editor, requested that Mr. de la Renta provide some clothes.
    The designer, who dressed Hillary Rodham Clinton in the
    White House, balked at first. "I didn't think Mrs. Bush would
    want to wear my clothes," he recalled. "I had been so closely
    identified with Mrs. Clinton."

    But Mrs. Bush, it seemed, had notions of her own. "She arrived
    at the shoot with a red suit of mine that she had bought in
    Austin, Tex.," Mr. de la Renta said, and specifically asked to see
    more of his work. He has been dressing her since.

    What he did not acknowledge is that coaxing Mrs. Bush out of
    the prim, upholstered-looking suits she once favored is a job
    requiring a vast reservoir of tact.

    "You have to be very diplomatic to dress a president's wife," said
    Arnold Scaasi, who has wardrobed his share, including Barbara
    Bush, the president's mother; Mrs. Kennedy; and Mamie Eisenhower.
    "You must tell them nicely that they didn't look too great before
    you, and would look so much better now if they would only
    listen to you. "

    Ms. Jennings, who met with Mrs. Bush last Saturday for a fitting
    in Manhattan, prides herself on having persuaded Mrs. Bush to
    wear more form-fitting, feminine clothes. "The first gown that
    I made for her I took the liberty of making the neckline too low,"
    Ms. Jennings said. She recalled that Mrs. Bush responded with tact.
    " `You know, Peggy,' the first lady told me, `maybe this would
    look nicer if the neckline were a little higher,' " Ms. Jennings recalled,
    adding that she recut the dress.

    For designers inaugural commissions are well worth it. For prestige
    they know no equal, not even a dress for the Oscars. "Designing
    for the first lady is the best sort of attention you can get," Mr. Scaasi
    said, translating into dresses that are widely copied and widely
    ordered by stores.

    Mr. Faircloth, whose star has faded a bit since Inauguration Day
    in 2001, still designs for Mrs. Bush. As a fashion billboard, she
    trumps any celebrity, he said. "Celebrities are like chameleons,
    playing many different roles in their careers and in their fashion
    statements," he said. "I feel more in line with someone who wants
    to create a consistent image."

    Mr. Scaasi agreed. "There are 2,700 girls out there that have
    a one-night shot and stardom, and then you never see them
    again," he scoffed. "The first family is beyond all that."

    Copyright 2005 The New York Times

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    9) Is Al Qaeda Just a Bush Boogeyman?
    By Robert Scheer
    January 11, 2005
    http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/011305Z.shtml
    http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-scheer11jan11,0,4938608
    ,print.column

    Is it conceivable that Al Qaeda, as defined by President Bush as the
    center of a vast and well-organized international terrorist conspiracy,
    does not exist?

    To even raise the question amid all the officially inspired hysteria is
    heretical, especially in the context of the U.S. media's supine
    acceptance of administration claims relating to national security.
    Yet a brilliant new BBC film produced by one of Britain's leading
    documentary filmmakers systematically challenges this and many
    other accepted articles of faith in the so-called war on terror.

    "The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear,"
    a three-hour historical film by Adam Curtis recently aired by the
    British Broadcasting Corp., argues coherently that much of what
    we have been told about the threat of international terrorism "is
    a fantasy that has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians.
    It is a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through
    governments around the world, the security services and the
    international media."

    Stern stuff, indeed. But consider just a few of the many questions
    the program poses along the way:

    € If Osama bin Laden does, in fact, head a vast international
    terrorist organization with trained operatives in more than
    40 countries, as claimed by Bush, why, despite torture of
    prisoners, has this administration failed to produce hard
    evidence of it?

    € How can it be that in Britain since 9/11, 664 people have been
    detained on suspicion of terrorism but only 17 have been found
    guilty, most of them with no connection to Islamist groups and
    none who were proven members of Al Qaeda?

    € Why have we heard so much frightening talk about "dirty
    bombs" when experts say it is panic rather than radioactivity that
    would kill people?

    € Why did Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claim on "Meet
    the Press" in 2001 that Al Qaeda controlled massive high-tech
    cave complexes in Afghanistan, when British and U.S. military
    forces later found no such thing?

    Of course, the documentary does not doubt that an embittered,
    well-connected and wealthy Saudi man named Osama bin Laden
    helped finance various affinity groups of Islamist fanatics that
    have engaged in terror, including the 9/11 attacks. Nor does
    it challenge the notion that a terrifying version of fundamentalist
    Islam has led to gruesome spates of violence throughout the
    world. But the film, both more sober and more deeply provocative
    than Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," directly challenges the
    conventional wisdom by making a powerful case that the Bush
    administration, led by a tight-knit cabal of Machiavellian
    neoconservatives, has seized upon the false image of a unified
    international terrorist threat to replace the expired Soviet
    empire in order to push a political agenda.

    Terrorism is deeply threatening, but it appears to be a much
    more fragmented and complex phenomenon than the
    octopus-network image of Al Qaeda, with Bin Laden as
    its head, would suggest.

    While the BBC documentary acknowledges that the threat
    of terrorism is both real and growing, it disagrees that the
    threat is centralized:

    "There are dangerous and fanatical individuals and groups
    around the world who have been inspired by extreme Islamist
    ideas and who will use the techniques of mass terror - the
    attacks on America and Madrid make this only too clear. But
    the nightmare vision of a uniquely powerful hidden organization
    waiting to strike our societies is an illusion. Wherever one looks
    for this Al Qaeda organization, from the mountains of Afghanistan
    to the 'sleeper cells' in America, the British and Americans are
    chasing a phantom enemy."

    The fact is, despite the efforts of several government commissions
    and a vast army of investigators, we still do not have a credible
    narrative of a "war on terror" that is being fought in the shadows.

    Consider, for example, that neither the 9/11 commission nor any
    court of law has been able to directly take evidence from the key
    post-9/11 terror detainees held by the United States. Everything
    we know comes from two sides that both have a great stake in
    exaggerating the threat posed by Al Qaeda: the terrorists
    themselves and the military and intelligence agencies that have
    a vested interest in maintaining the facade of an overwhelmingly
    dangerous enemy.

    Such a state of national ignorance about an endless war is, as
    "The Power of Nightmares" makes clear, simply unacceptable in
    a functioning democracy.

    Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times


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

    10) U.S. MULLS STRIKES ON SYRIA
    By Richard Sale
    United Press International
    January 12, 2005
    http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20050111-105709-6329r.htm

    NEW YORK -- Bush administration hard-liners have been considering launching
    selected military strikes at insurgent training camps in Syria and
    border-crossing points used by Islamist guerrillas to enter Iraq in an
    effort
    to bolster security for the upcoming elections, according to former and
    current administration officials.

    Pressure for some form of military action is also coming from interim Iraqi
    Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, these sources said.

    Some former and serving U.S. intelligence officials who have usually been
    opposed to any expansion of U.S. military activities in the region are
    expressing support for such strikes.

    A former senior U.S. intelligence official told United Press International,
    "I
    don't usually find myself in sympathy with the Bush neo-cons, but I think
    there is enough fire under this smoke to justify such action."

    Referring to the escalating attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq by Iraqi
    insurgents, he added, "Syria is complicit in the (anti-U.S.) insurgency up
    to
    its eyeballs."

    "Syria is the No. 1 crossing point" for guerrillas entering Iraq," Gary
    Gambill, editor of the *Middle East Intelligence Bulletin*, said. He added
    that Damascus "does nothing about it."

    An administration official said Syria has "camps in which Syrians are
    training
    Iraqis for the insurgency and others where Iraqis are training Syrians for
    the
    same purpose" which could be hit by U.S. air strikes.

    Gal Luft, a former Israeli military official with ties to Israeli and U.S.
    intelligence, said, "I have heard of the same thing about the camps."

    Recently, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said
    that
    senior Baath Party officials from Iraq are operating from Syria where they
    provide financing and direction to the cells of Iraqi insurgents killing
    Americans, sparking new discussions within the administration about possible
    measures against Syria.

    "There are all sorts of discussions going on, the White House, the Pentagon,
    the Joint Chiefs," said former CIA counterterrorism chief, Vince
    Cannistraro.

    He felt the talk of strikes "is part of a general plan of intimidation."

    The White House did not return phone calls.

    U.S. officials told United Press International that money, direction,
    weapons
    and personnel are flowing into Iraq from Syria, ending up in Iraqi cities
    such
    as Iskanderiya, Baqouba, Latafiya and Fallujah.

    Damascus is also home to associates of a top insurgency commander now
    affiliated with al-Qaida, Jordanian Abu Musab Zarqawi, who is responsible
    for
    many major suicide bombing attacks in Iraq, U.S. officials said.

    The presence of a Zarqawi branch in Damascus, discovered last summer,
    was said to have acted as a major spur in uniting France and the
    United States in supporting U.N. Resolution 1559 that demanded
    Syria withdraw from Lebanon and that elections be held in April 2005,
    U.S. officials said.

    Gambill charged that a major Zarqawi deputy lives in Damascus.

    In addition to Syria being used as a rear area for insurgents, it is a key
    center of finance for former Saddam Hussein officials who are leading the
    insurgency, thanks to stashes of Iraqi cash that could run as high as $3
    billion, which is all in the Syrian banking system, according for former and
    serving administration officials.

    There are also allegedly "many millions of dollars" from Palestinian groups
    flowing into Syria that are also being used to help finance anti-American
    guerrilla groups in Iraq, these sources said.

    The Bush administration has applied increasing pressure on Syrian President
    Bashar Assad to halt the activities of militant groups inside Syria, and to
    arrest and extradite former Saddam Hussein officials who are the leading
    financiers, according to several U.S. government sources.

    So far there has been no positive response, they said.

    What especially worries U.S. former and serving intelligence analysts is the
    seeming weakness of Assad to act against these groups. According to these
    sources, Assad is "well aware of the U.S. Army on its border to the east,"
    and
    does not want to antagonize the United States, in the words of one.

    In fact, Bashar's inner circle of key advisers consists of reformist,
    "smart,
    streetwise young technocrats" who are urging Bashar to yield to U.S.
    pressure
    and begin to shut down some of the anti-U.S. activity, one U.S. official
    said.

    But Bashar is also surrounded by "the old guard" -- rogue members of the
    ruling circle, "various people who are making millions and millions of
    dollars" by allowing former Baath officials to shelter in Syria, this source
    said.

    "If something goes wrong, they can pack up and go and live in Geneva," he
    said.

    Because of the rogue elements, after the technocrats (who are also
    pro-reform)
    give Bashar their views, they often find themselves visited the next day by
    hard-line members of Syria's Mukhabarat, or secret police, who tell them to
    keep their mouths shut, according to this official.

    "Bashar is trapped," this U.S. government official said. "He's the prisoner
    of Zenda."

    Luft agreed, saying, "The Mukhabarat and some of the old guard are
    known to be pressuring Bashar's senior confidents to
    ignore U.S. demands."

    One former senior CIA official, usually an administration critic, said, "We
    should send a cruise missile into south-side Damascus and blow the
    Mukharbarat headquarters off the map. We should first make clear
    to them that they are the target."

    But are the hawks likely to get their strikes?

    Former CIA Syria expert, Martha Kessler doesn't think so. "I don't think
    the
    administration can afford to destabilize another country in the region," she
    said.

    Kessler pointed out that Syria has tried, often in vain, to cooperate with
    the
    United States, only to be either snubbed or ignored.

    According to Kesssler, Syria offered to station U.S. forces on its soil
    before
    the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003. The Syrians have also opened their
    intelligence books that identify assets in Europe, including front
    companies,
    to the administration in an attempt to help track down al-Qaida.

    But Kessler said a chief reason for not moving against Damascus is that any
    strikes would "destabilize Lebanon," where the Lebanese Hezbollah movement
    awaits orders from Iran before launching retaliations against Israeli
    attacks.

    "Damascus is not the heartbeat of this Iraqi insurgent movement," she said.

    However, one administration official said, "We have got one hell of a
    problem."

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

    11) URGENT: Mumia Hearing Cancelled,
    Stay Tuned for Update on Action of Feb.11th!
    Ona MOVE!
    In a message dated 1/11/05 6:57:34 PM, icffmaj@aol.com writes:

    Judge Pamela Dembe cancelled Mumia's scheduled Feb. 11th court
    hearing. Her reasoning was explained by Mumia's attorney, Robert Bryant:

    "Judge Pamela Dembe, Court of Common Pleas, Philadelphia, has ordered
    briefing by February 15 on the issue of whether the Pennsylvania Supreme
    Court's recent decision in Commonwealth v. Johnson, 2004 Pa. LEXIS
    3118, "speaks to the jurisdiction of the Court to proceed in defendant's
    third PCRA petition." This is disturbing since the court's preliminary
    interpretation of the Johnson case appears to be wrong, for it does not
    prevent her from granting us a hearing on two issues of great significance
    relating to the unfairness of the trial. There is no new law in Johnson,
    rather it is just the application of long-established law to the facts of
    Mumia's case."

    Legally, cancelling a hearing at this late date is not the norm, but
    Mumia's case has consistently been subject to rule bending against
    him. Dembe should be pressured to do right by Mumia. Call her and demand
    that Mumia's hearing be reinstated, with him present, to let the evidence
    be heard and ultimately release him!

    phone 215-683-7148
    fax 215-683-7150

    We previously scheduled a meeting to organize for the hearing. This
    meeting will go ahead as planned: tomorrow, Wednesday January 12th, 7 pm,
    at the AFSC (Cherry and 15th). We need your presence at the
    meeting! There will still be an action on Feb. 11th to keep the pressure
    on! There is even *more* work ahead of us now-- to attack Dembe and her
    contemporaries flagrant disregard for justice and most importantly to press
    forward for Mumia's freedom at this critical juncture!

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

    12) 1000 Days of Hell
    After three years' incarceration, Guantanamo Britons are
    set to be freed
    By Robert Verkaik, Legal Affairs Correspondent
    12 January 2005
    http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/story.jsp?story=599984

    1000 Days of Hell

    Promise to pursue convictions secures the repatriation of last British
    inmates

    Prisoners freed a year ago struggle to rebuild their lives

    Leading article: The return of the last British detainees will not end the
    disgrace of Guantanamo

    It has been just over a thousand days since Pakistani security officers
    broke down Moazzam Begg's front door and bundled him into the
    boot of a waiting police car.

    His terrified wife and three children looked on helplessly as Mr Begg
    was taken away in the middle of the night, transported to Bagram air
    base near Kabul before being flown to the infamous prison camp at
    Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

    The former law student and bookshop owner from Birmingham joined
    hundreds of other "unlawful combatants", shackled and dressed in
    orange jump suits, and then held without charge, trial or even access
    to lawyers.

    For much of his detention he has been held in solitary confinement,
    often exposed to extreme weather conditions and deprived of basic
    necessities.

    His letters home, supported by testimony from former Guantanamo
    detainees, reveal that Mr Begg may also have been tortured by US
    military officials, increasingly desperate to extract a confession
    from him.

    Last night the end of his ordeal appeared to be in sight after the
    British and American governments brokered a deal to release
    Mr Begg and three other Britons from the notorious US detention
    centre.

    Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, said following "intensive and
    complex" discussions with the US, the four men would be
    returned to Britain to face questioning. But for Mr Begg and his
    elderly father, Azmat, who has tirelessly campaigned for his son's
    release, freedom will come at a price.

    Their reunion after three turbulent years is likely to be tempered
    by the psychological and physical toll of the ordeals endured by
    both men. Mr Begg, or detainee JJEEH#00558 as he is known to his
    American captors, will not be the same man who first left Birmingham
    with his family four years ago to help educate children in Afghanistan.

    Azmat Begg said: "I will be very happy, I will be the happiest person
    that he is released. But my concern is about his mental health and
    his physical health after he has spent three years in solitary
    confinement without talking to people.

    "I am very much worried because I was told that even after three
    or four weeks in solitary confinement, like he had, that people go
    out of their minds." The detainee's father, a retired bank manager,
    is still haunted by the telephone call that he received from his son
    while he was in the boot of the police car driving through Islamabad.

    "I can't help thinking how terrifying that must have been for him
    and how distraught he must have been to have been separated from
    his wife and children without a chance to say goodbye or say where
    he was being taken." Moazzam Begg's three-year detention at
    Camp X-Ray and Camp Delta has also taken its toll on the health
    of his father, who is diabetic. Doctors have twice treated Azmat
    Begg, 66, for a heart condition they believe may have been brought
    on by stress caused by his son's detention: as a result, he suffers
    paralytic spasms.

    His ill-health has not prevented him running a high-profile
    campaign for his son's release, including two trips to Washington
    to try to persuade the Americans of his son's innocence and the
    injustice of his continued detention. The story of Moazzam Begg,
    argue his family and supporters, is a case of an innocent abroad
    who took his wife and three young children to Afghanistan to
    help educate the local children.

    Mr Begg was a law student at Wolverhampton University before
    dropping out in his second year. After marrying a local girl he
    opened a bookshop in Birmingham, but started to feel the need
    to play a bigger part in the education of the children in poorer
    countries. So he took his young family to Taliban-controlled
    Afghanistan.

    His father said: "The Taliban didn't allow any co-education so
    his wife wanted to teach the girls and he wanted to teach the
    boys. But he ran into trouble with Taliban red tape. While he was
    waiting for clearance he took his family to a remote area to make
    tube wells to improve their access to water."

    Then the US bombardment started and the family fled to Pakistan.
    It was while the Beggs were waiting in Islamabad to return to
    teaching that he was arrested, taken to the US-controlled Bagram
    airbase, and then to Guantanamo Bay.

    Moazzam Begg's wife, stepmother and three brothers will spend
    the next few days waiting anxiously for the RAF plane that will
    bring him home. But it will be the Begg children who have suffered
    the most. "The eldest one can remember the day when the police
    came and took her father away and she still wakes in the middle
    of the night screaming," said Azmat Begg.

    There is one other member of the Begg family who has never seen
    his father. Ibrahim Begg, nearly three, was born shortly after his
    mother Sally, 33, returned to Britain. Azmat Begg added: "He is
    nearly old enough to be told the story of his father - it's not a story
    any child should be told."

    (c) 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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

    13) January 20: Inauguration Day
    Not Our President! Not in Our Name!

    Order posters and stickers online, or make your own!

    On January 20th, the day George W. Bush is inaugurated, Not in
    Our Name is planning a massive day of protest declaring "NO" to
    Bush and all he represents. In addition to a massive poster and
    media campaign-and building for an outpouring of resistance in
    the streets of San Francisco that evening-we are calling for groups
    and individuals to choose an intersection or overpass to hold
    a banner during the morning commute that morning to greet
    commuters with a very visible repudiation! "Not Our President!"
    is the suggested theme.

    Help make it happen!

    VOLUNTEER WORK PARTIES
    Wednesday, January 12 ~ 6pm-8:30pm
    Thursday, January 13 ~ 6pm-8:30pm
    Meet at the Not in Our Name office for phone banking, poster
    prep, banner making prep, and more! Join us to get ready for
    January 20! Not in Our Name, 3945 Opal Street, Oakland
    (at 40th Street-short walk towards the hills from Macarthur BART)

    OUTREACH
    Saturday, January 15 ~ 11am
    Meet at Macarthur Bart parking lot - we'll leave at 11am sharp
    to do poster blitzes throughout the entire Bay Area!

    BANNER MAKING PARTY
    Sunday, January 16 ~ 11am-6pm
    Laney College - Student Center Quad
    (From the Lake Merritt Bart station walk directly onto Laney
    campus, and then to the Student Center - look for Not in
    Our Name signs!)

    JANUARY 20-DAY OF

    Morning Commute Banner/Sign Holding
    Join Not In Our Name on January 20 to hold a banner declaring
    NO to Bush during the morning commute. Call or email to
    claim a corner or overpass, make your own banner, or use
    one of ours! Stay tuned for more details - or call our office
    at 510.601.8000. Email: bayarea@notinourname.net

    "Stop the War! Fight the Right" March and Rally
    Join the Not In Our Name contingent at the January 20 march a
    nd rally! Powell and Market, San Francisco ~ 5pm. Declare
    "Not Our President!" with us - look for the banners, and red "
    NO" posters!

    The Not in Our Name Project
    needs your support!

    Donate online
    donate.notinourname.net

    Or send your tax-deductible contribution today to:

    Not in Our Name
    3945 Opal Street, Oakland CA 94609
    www.notinourname.net

    phone: 510-601-8000
    email: bayarea@notinourname.net
    local: bayarea.notinourname.net

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

    14) Should a Defender of Immigrants and Critic of
    the Patriot Act be silenced?
    A tribute to Manlin Chee, a local and national hero
    Who is Manlin Chee?

    Manlin is a defense attorney specializing in immigration law.
    Some facts:

    *One of the first Asian-American women to graduate from
    Wake Forest School of Law in 1978.

    *Called "one of the foremost immigration attorneys in North
    Carolina, if not the country" by the Triad Business News.

    *Presented the American Bar Association's Pro Bono Public
    Award in 1991 by U. S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra
    Day O'Connor.

    *Recipient of the 1990 William L. Thorp Pro Bono Award by
    the North Carolina Bar Association.

    *Graduate of Guilford College.

    *Naturalized Citizen.

    *Wife and Mother.

    For years Manlin helped her clients navigate the complex and
    daunting web of immigration regulations. She is well known
    for going beyond an attorney's duties by assisting her clients
    to obtain work, education, credit, and housing.

    She also challenged North Carolinians to learn about and
    appreciate the rich histories and customs of people from other
    countries.

    Should Manlin and her daughter Chernlian Forgay be punished?
    Is this right?

    Beginning in Spring 2003 Manlin, her clients past and present,
    and her staff became the target of an extensive investigation
    by the FBI and the Dept. of Homeland Security. After months
    of scrutinizing hundreds, perhaps thousands, of cases that
    Manlin had handled over the years, the government finally
    sent two undercover agents into Manlin's office, where they s
    olicited advice that they knew to be illegal. One "client,"
    appealing to Manlin's well-known sense of compassion for
    immigrants and concern for human life, pretended to be
    gay and from a country where homosexuality is punishable
    by death. The other wanted an arranged marriage.

    Significantly, both of the agents were immigrants, whose
    insecure position made them extremely vulnerable to
    government "persuasion."

    The relentless and unprecedented investigation made it
    impossible for Manlin's law practice to continue, leaving
    her clients without legal representation. It is now known
    that government investigators attempted to "sweat" information
    out of her immigrant clients by subjecting them to interrogation
    sessions that often lasted for hours. Some of her office staff
    had to endure this as well.

    To get more leverage in their efforts to silence Manlin Chee,
    the government even resorted to charging her daughter
    Chernlian, who worked in the law office as a paralegal for
    only 10 months. Manlin admitted to the seven charges
    involving the two agents and was prepared to contest the
    other 20 charges. The following week the government
    dismissed all charges not linked to the undercover agents.

    Of course, Manlin Chee is not the only immigration attorney
    in the Triad. Why, then, has the government spent so much
    time and taxpayer money investigating her only to dismiss
    the charges?

    Why is Manlin being singled out?

    Could it be because:

    *She spoke out against the Patriot Act at a forum at the
    Greensboro Public Library, which was broadcast repeatedly
    on local television? Shortly after this forum Manlin became
    aware that she was the target of a federal investigation.

    *She carried the largest caseload of Muslim and Middle Eastern
    clients in the area? Beginning after 9/11 she would wear Muslim
    dress to work one day a week in solidarity with this beseiged
    population.

    *She pointed out that John Ashcroft's involuntary registration
    of Muslims after 9/11 was identical to procedures in Nazi Germany?
    She was the only immigration attorney in the area who personally
    accompanied her clients to the registrations to prevent them from
    being secretly deported.

    *She has been an outspoken critic of the severe and overly complex
    regulations of the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services
    (formerly the INS)?

    This follows a pattern of the Federal government where individuals
    are accused of crimes which are widely and uncritically reported
    in the media, only to have the "evidence" fail to stand up to scrutiny.
    Such individuals include Capt. James Yee, a Muslim chaplain at the
    military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who was accused of spying,
    and attorney Brandon Mayfield, who was acccused of involvement in
    the Madrid terrorist attacks that killed 191 people. In both
    these cases accusations either evaporated or charges were
    dropped.

    Why We Care

    We believe that in singling out Manlin for investigation and
    prosecution the federal government is attempting to chill dissent
    and our constitutional right to free speech, as well as sending a
    threatening message to attorneys and other defenders of immigrants.
    By forcing her out of her law practice and attempting to
    silence her, the immigrant community has been deprived of an
    effective, passionate advocate.

    (photos not shown)

    For more information please email us at
    defendchee@hotmail.com
    Hands off Manlin Chee!

    First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up
    because I wasn't a Communist.

    Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up
    because I wasn't a Jew.

    Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up
    because I wasn't a trade unionist.

    Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up
    because I was a Protestant.

    Then they came for me, but by that time no one
    was left to speak up.

    -Pastor Martin Niemoellor, concentration camp
    survivor, on repression in Hitler's Germany

    You Be the Judge

    * Organization listed for indentification purposes only
    We, the undersigned, believe that Manlin Chee has been
    a friend to immigrants and a force for good in our community
    for many years. We believe any attempt to silence and punish
    her sets a dangerous precedent and is incompatible with the
    right of free speech and dissent that is
    essential to a just society. In addition, we are concerned
    about the role that some local media played in this case,
    uncritically printing stories about "marriage rings" and articles
    that promoted the U.S. Government's allegations against Manlin
    Chee that have since been found to be false.

    Daniel Bayer, journalist °¥ Elizabeth Ito, ESOL teacher
    °¥ Joseph Gruendler °¥ Tim and Robin Hopkins, Not In
    Our Name Project °¥ Ann F.
    Deagan °¥ Lewis A. Brandon, III, Beloved Community
    Center* °¥ Ginger Holt °¥ Ronda J. Cranford °¥
    Lynn Dorn °¥ Jane Cranford °¥ Roberta M.
    Trulove, teacher °¥ Leia Forgay, student °¥ Linda
    Horney °¥ Scott Trent, Blue Triangle Network °¥ Larkin
    Carroll, Blue Triangle Network °¥ John
    Rash, Slave Magazine °¥Carolyn S. Allen, Truth &
    Community Reconciliation Project* °¥Signe Waller °¥Marnie
    Thompson, Partnership Project*
    °¥Edward Goins °¥Liz Seymour,
    Greensboro Community Arts Collective °
    ¥Diane Phoenix-Neal °¥Calvert "Butch"
    Stewart, October 22 Coalition
    Against Police Brutality °¥ Edward L.
    Whitfield, Greensboro Peace Coalition* °¥
    John Skujins °¥ Deborah Greene °¥ Muslims
    for a Better North
    Carolina °¥ Barbara P. Walker °¥ Chris Censullo
    °¥ Chellie Mason °¥ Rev. Alex L. Richardson,
    Unitarian Universalist Church of Greensboro °¥ Rev.
    Nelson Johnson °¥ Marilyn Clayton °¥ Anita Earls,
    UNC Center for Civil Rights °¥ Brenda Howerton,
    mother of Daryl Howerton °¥ Tina Mercado
    l
    ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

    15) BOEING SCANDAL PART OF DEEPER PENTAGON CORRUPTION
    By David Phinney
    From: "CorpWatch"
    Date: Thu,6 Jan 2005 20:54:38 -0800 (PST)
    List-Id:
    List-Subscribe:

    List-Owner:
    List-Archive:


    WHAT'S NEW ON CORPWATCH
    Holding Corporations Accountable
    << http://www.corpwatch.org >>
    BOEING SCANDAL PART OF DEEPER PENTAGON CORRUPTION
    By David Phinney
    Military contractors like Boeing, Halliburton and Lockheed, have
    beome increasingly embedded with the Pentagon bureaucrats who give
    them lucrative work as the jailing of Darleen Druyun, a former U.S.
    Air Force weapons buyer, demonstrates.
    http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11780

    HOT OFF THE PRESS!
    Seven Stories Press publishes "Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation."
    Read the most complete chronicle to date of the exploits of private
    contractors hired to reconstruct and manage Iraq. Donate to CorpWatch
    and get your own copy today!
    http://www.corpwatch.org/donate

    IN THE NEWS

    GUATEMALA: Supermarket Giants Crush Farmers
    http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11770

    US: War is Bad for Business
    http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11771

    US: Departing Lawmakers Cash in Years of Service for Big Bucks
    http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11773

    WORLD: Newmont Must Keep Focus on the Goal
    http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11779

    IRAQ: Families Sue Blackwater Over Deaths in Fallujah
    http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11772

    EU: Corporate Lobbying Grows
    http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11774

    IRAQ: Four Halliburton Workers from U.S. Killed
    http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11775

    DONATE TO CORPWATCH!
    Support CorpWatch's work to hold corporations accountable on human
    rights, labor rights and environmental justice issues through
    education and activism. Help us bring the critical information and
    resources that tens of thousands of you access every month by making
    a contribution to CorpWatch. http://www.corpwatch.org/donate

    For all list information and functions, including changing
    your subscription mode and options, visit the Web page:
    http://lists.corpwatch.org/lists/info/corp-watchers

    New Address!
    CorpWatch -- Holding Corporations Accountable
    1611 Telegraph Ave, Suite 702
    Oakland, CA 94612 USA
    Tel: 510-271-8080
    Fax: 510-271-8083
    Email: corpwatch@corpwatch.org
    URL: http://www.corpwatch.org

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

    16) GLOBAL DAY OF PROTEST ON THE TWO-YEAR
    ANNIVERSARY OF THE IRAQ WAR
    SATURDAY, MARCH 19:
    ACTION ALERT * UNITED FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE
    * End the War * Bring the Troops Home Now
    * Rebuild Our Communities *
    http://www.unitedforpeace.org | 212-868-5545


    March 19-20 marks the two-year anniversary of the U.S. bombing
    and invasion of Iraq. After all of the death and destruction, and with
    the Bush administration claiming a mandate to continue their war,
    there's a new urgency and a stronger determination within the
    global antiwar movement to bring the troops home now.

    LOCAL ACTIONS NATIONWIDE

    UFPJ calls on supporters of peace and justice in every corner of
    the country, in communities large and small, to organize local
    protests against the war on Saturday, March 19. These can take
    many forms: vigils, rallies, marches, nonviolent civil disobedience.
    We especially encourage creative efforts to put the spotlight on
    the institutions of militarism at home by organizing actions
    outside military bases or military recruitment offices. List your
    activities on the UFPJ website calendar at
    http://www.unitedforpeace.org/events

    (select "March 19" under Event Type).

    On the first anniversary of the war, at least 319 cities and towns
    across the United States organized protests. This year there is
    the potential to organize even more demonstrations, and to
    bring more people than ever out into the streets. The Bush
    Administration will soon ask Congress to pump as much as
    $100 billion more into the war; March 19 is an opportunity to
    call for an end to this disaster, and to demand that the billions
    be allocated instead for rebuilding our communities at home
    and paying for the damage in Iraq.

    MAJOR REGIONAL PROTEST IN FAYETTEVILLE, N.C.

    UFPJ is also supporting a major regional demonstration in
    Fayetteville, North Carolina. We hope those of you within
    driving distance of Fayetteville will make this action your priority.
    Fayetteville is home to Fort Bragg - ground zero for the 82nd
    Airborne Division and many of the Army's elite units. Beyond
    Fort Bragg, North Carolina hosts four other of the nation's largest
    military bases, making the state one of the friendliest to the
    military-industrial complex.

    Less well-known is the fact that Fayetteville is also home to
    a growing base of anti-war activists and organizations. They
    are military folks, veterans, families of active-duty soldiers
    and veterans, students, workers, housewives, clergy, educators,
    and all are part of a vibrant, and growing, statewide network.
    They stand firm in the knowledge that organizing in Fayetteville
    is a key to bringing the troops home from Iraq.

    Military Families Speak Out (http://www.mfso.org/
    ), Bring Them Home Now
    (http://www.bringthemhomenow.org
    ),
    Iraq Veterans Against the War
    (http://www.ivaw.net ),
    Veterans For Peace (http://www.veteransforpeace.org
    ), Quaker House,
    Fayetteville Peace with Justice, the North Carolina
    Peace and Justice Coalition (http://www.ncpeacejustice.org
    ), and the North
    Carolina Council of Churches
    (http://www.nccouncilofchurches.org
    ) are spearheading
    the Fayetteville action. Please do all you can to
    be in Fayetteville this year; by actively building
    and participating in this demonstration, we have
    the opportunity to support the efforts of Southern
    organizers to build a Southern network, and
    a Southern movement, to replace war and
    occupation with justice and self-determination.

    BE PART OF A GLOBAL ANTIWAR MOVEMENT

    In addition to the many protests already being planned in the
    United States, people all around the world will be taking action
    on March 19 as well. Responding to a call from the European
    Social Forum's Assembly of Social Movements, European
    activists are organizing national mobilizations across Europe.
    Brussels will be the site of a central demonstration on the eve
    of a meeting of the European Council, where demonstrators
    will march against war, racism, and a corporate-dominated
    Europe. India's national Anti-War Assembly recently committed
    to major protests on the second anniversary of the war. And
    we anticipate that the World Social Forum will join this call
    when it meets later this month in Sao Paolo, Brazil.

    GET OUT THE WORD

    Circulate this email wide and far. UFPJ will soon have flyers,
    stickers, and other resources available to help you get
    out the word.

    BEGIN PLANNING LOCAL MARCH 19th ACTIONS

    Bring together local groups to plan March 19th actions in
    your community. Post your plans at
    http://www.unitedforpeace.org/events


    UFPJ mailing list
    UFPJ@mediajumpstart.net
    https://secure.mediajumpstart.net/mailman/listinfo/ufpj

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

    17) JANUARY 20, 2005 COUNTER INAUGURAL EVENT
    THE COST OF WAR - THE PRICE WE'RE ALL PAYING
    JOIN US AS WE STATE THE FACTS
    AND OFFER ALTERNATIVES
    WHERE: The Foundry United Methodist Church
    1500 16TH Street, NW and P Street
    (near DuPont Circle), Washington, D.C.
    WHEN: 10:00 AM – 11:30 PM

    PROGRAM: 10:00 -11:30 a.m. Speakers and Discussion

    · Jana Meyer, Minister, FUMC

    · Elias Vlanton, Co-author of www.costofwar.org

    · Erik Leaver, Associate at Foreign Policy in Focus
    www.fpif.org)

    · Other speakers, including representatives from Military
    Families Speak Out and Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)



    REFRESHMENTS



    11:30 Join DC Anti War Network members as we walk down 16th Street
    to the Inaugural Parade.



    DONATIONS WELCOME ON SITE



    BRING: Signs showing the cost of war for YOUR STATE, COUNTY
    or CITY and what those dollars could buy (go to
    www.costofwar.org ). Supporters. Fact sheets for distribution.
    Organizational materials (tables available).



    DO: Contact your media.



    RSVP: Malachy (malachykilbride@yahoo.com, Debby
    dchurchm@yahoo.com or Moya (moyaatk@att.net)



    Sponsored by

    Foundry United Methodist Peace with Justice Mission – and Hosts

    Middle Atlantic Region of the American Friends Service Committee

    Northern Virginians for Peace and Justice

    Arlingtonians for Peace

    DC Anti-War Network (DAWN)

    Prince George's Co. Peace & Justice Coalition


    UNITED FOR PEACE & JUSTICE | 212-868-5545

    This email list is designed for posting news articles or event
    announcements of interest to UFPJ member groups.
    It is not a discussion list.

    To engage in online discussion of UFPJ matters, join our
    discussion list by sending a blank
    email to ufpj-disc-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
    Yahoo! Groups Links

    <*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ufpj-news/

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





    posted 12:07 AM  0 comments

    Thursday, January 13, 2005
     

    BAUAW NEWSLETTER - TUESDAY, JANUARY 11, 2005


    1) STOP THE WAR ON IRAQ! BRING OUR TROOPS HOME NOW!
    ALL OUT JANUARY 20TH, 5:00 P.M., CIVIC CENTER, S.F.
    Washington, D.C.:
    Converge at 4th St. & Pennsylvania Ave.
    on the north side of the parade route

    2) Let's Hit the Streets
    On the 32nd Anniversary of Roe v. Wade
    To Defend Abortion Rights!
    Saturday, January 22
    10 am Rally at Powell & Market Streets, San Francisco
    11 am March to the Embarcadero
    www.indybay.org/womyn .
    Driving? Need a ride? Visit
    http://drivingvotes.org/rides/sfprochoice.php
    ALSO: Join the Women‚s Rights Contingent in the San Francisco
    Counter-Inaugural Protest on January 20th. Meet at 5 pm at the
    corner of Grove and Polk in Civic Center Plaza.

    3) PICTURES OF WAR

    4) ITALIAN.QUEER.DANGEROUS
    a one-man show featuring Tommi Avicolli Mecca
    directed by Francesca Prada, Jan. 14-19, 8:00pm,
    JON SIMS CENTER
    1519 Mission, Between Van Ness and 11th Sts., SF

    5) *****URGENT*****
    Please Help Us Demand Clemency for Donald Beardslee
    by Attending These Important Events!
    Beardslee is scheduled to be executed by the State of
    California on January 19th.
    Urgent Press Conference & Rally
    Tuesday, January 11th
    4:00-5:00 PM
    California State Building
    505 Van Ness Ave. (Corner of Van Ness & McAllister)
    Death Penalty Focus
    870 Market St. Ste. 859
    San Francisco, CA 94102
    Tel. 415-243-0143
    Fax 415-243-0994
    stefanie@deathpenalty.org
    www.deathpenalty.org

    www.californiamoratorium.org

    http://www.californiamoratorium.org/

    6) You are invited To Celebrate and claim victory on
    James Yee's case and his Honorable Discharge from the U.S. Army
    Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday
    JOIN THOUSANDS in the Freedom March
    When: Monday, January 17, 2005
    11:30 A.M. TO 12:30 p.m.
    Where:J4NA members will meet at
    3rd & Mission at 11:30 a.m and join the parade.
    The big march will start at the San Francisco Caltrain Station (
    4th St. and Townsend St., ) proceeding to Mission Street @
    Third Street, continuing to the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium

    7) Indonesia Restricts Aid Workers in Aceh
    By Dan Eaton and Jeff Franks
    BANDA ACEH, Indonesia (Reuters)
    Tue Jan 11, 2005 05:13 AM ET
    http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=7290072&src=eD
    ialog/GetContent§ion=news

    8) PEOPLE'S NONVIOLENT RESPONSE COALITION (PNVRC)
    SPECIAL EVENT
    BREAKING THE SILENCE . . .JUSTICE NOT WAR
    Friday January 14 from noon until sundown at the
    Oakland Federal Building 1301 Clay Street

    9) Is This Call A justice? Torturer Got Some Charges Dropped
    While Military Jailed A Solider Who Refuse to Kill!
    Iraq Watch Specials: From Peace No War Network
    January 7, 2004
    http://www.PeaceNoWar.net http://www.peacenowar.net/


    10) Subject: Lynne Stewart on Democracy Now 1/6/05
    From: "Larry Felson"
    Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2005 07:10:35 +0000
    RUSH TRANSCRIPT

    11) Subject: Seven Palestinian Children Killed in Strawberry
    Fields by Israeli Anti-Personnel Shells
    From: "Justice Freedom"
    Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 20:05:33 -0800

    12) The other tsunami
    By John Pilger
    While the sea may have killed tens of thousands, western
    policies kill millions every year. Yet even amid disaster,
    a new politics of community and morality is emerging.
    http://www.newstatesman.com/nscoverstory.htm

    13) 'The Salvador Option'
    The Pentagon may put Special-Forces-led assassination or
    kidnapping teams in Iraq
    WEB EXCLUSIVE
    By Michael Hirsh and John Barry
    Newsweek
    Updated: 10:22 a.m. ET Jan. 9, 2005,
    MSNBC.com
    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6802629/site/newsweek/

    14) US deserters flee to Canada to avoid service in Iraq
    By Charles Laurence in New York
    (Filed: 09/01/2005)
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/01/09/wus09.xml&sS
    heet=/portal/2005/01/09/ixportal.html

    15) Second US attack on civilians feeds calls for Iraq withdrawal
    By Stephen Negus in Baghdad
    Published: January 10 2005 02:00
    http://news.ft.com/cms/s/07926a26-62ac-11d9-8e5d-00000e2511c8,ft_acl=,s01=1.
    html

    16) How much "aid" will reach the tsunami survivors?
    By Richard Phillips
    World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org
    11 January 2005
    http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/jan2005/tsun-j11.shtml

    17) IRAQ IN TRANSITION: COST OF OCCUPATION
    Grind of Insurgency
    Eroding U.S. Military
    By Robert Burns
    Associated Press
    WASHINGTON
    January 9, 2005
    http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0501090305jan09,1,741531.
    story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true

    18) STEELERS FANS AGAINST THE WAR KICKS OFF JANUARY 15TH
    AT HEINZ FIELD IN FRONT OF THE ENTRANCE TO GREAT HALL
    (the entrances to Heinz Field have names engraved
    above them..look for the one that says the Great Hall)
    Press Conference at 2:30pm
    Contact: Etta Cetera 412- 802-8575

    19) A Better World Is Under Construction!
    Call for a Mass Mobilization during the 2005
    Spring Meetings of the World
    Bank and International Monetary Fund
    April 15-17th, Washington DC.
    The main action will be April 16.
    For more Information: www.globalizethis.org
    or mgj@riseup.net

    20) ACTION ALERT * UNITED FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE
    http://www.unitedforpeace.org | 212-868-5545
    SATURDAY, MARCH 19:
    GLOBAL DAY OF PROTEST ON THE TWO-YEAR
    ANNIVERSARY OF THE IRAQ WAR
    * End the War * Bring the Troops Home Now * Rebuild Our Communities *

    21) Bush Plans to Screen Whole
    US Population for Mental Illness
    Jeanne Lenzer
    New York
    BMJ 2004;328:1458 (19 June),
    doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7454.1458 k

    22) City of Ghosts
    On November 8, the American army launched its biggest ever
    assault on the Iraqi city of Falluja, considered
    a stronghold for rebel fighters. The US said the raid had
    been a huge success, killing 1,200 insurgents. Most of
    the city's 300,000 residents, meanwhile, had fled for their
    lives. What really happened in the siege of Falluja?
    In a joint investigation for the Guardian and Channel 4 News,
    Iraqi doctor Ali Fadhil compiled the first independent
    reports from the devastated city, where he found scores of
    unburied corpses, rabid dogs - and a dangerously embittered
    population Watch an extract from the documentary
    Ali Fadhil
    Tuesday January 11, 2005
    Guardian
    December 22 2004
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1387460,00.html

    23) U.S. Military Families Bring Help
    Families of the Fallen Unite in Grief - And Anger
    January 11, 2005
    Inter Press Service
    Dahr Jamail
    Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches
    http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/hard_news/archives/hard_news/000166.php#more

    24) "This is not a life."
    ** Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches **
    ** http://dahrjamailiraq.com **
    January 11, 2005

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

    1) STOP THE WAR ON IRAQ! BRING OUR TROOPS HOME NOW!
    ALL OUT JANUARY 20TH, 5:00 P.M., CIVIC CENTER, S.F.
    Washington, D.C.:
    Converge at 4th St. & Pennsylvania Ave.
    on the north side of the parade route

    A permit has been obtained for a mass convergence at 4th St. and
    Pennsylvania Ave. along the north side of the parade route. You can
    bring your own signs or pick up signs, banners and other materials
    at this location. Any sign that is made of cardboard, posterboard
    or cloth and that is no larger than 3 feet by 20 feet and 1/4 inch in
    thickness can be brought to the parade route. We will provide
    additional logistical information in the coming days.

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

    2) Let's Hit the Streets
    On the 32nd Anniversary of Roe v. Wade
    To Defend Abortion Rights!
    Saturday, January 22
    10 am Rally at Powell & Market Streets, San Francisco
    11 am March to the Embarcadero

    Jan. 22 is the 32nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court
    decision that established the constitutional right to reproductive freedom.
    On the same day, anti-choice extremists plan to march in San Francisco
    against women‚s health and rights. The anti-choice minority might be
    emboldened by the climate in Washington, DC but they are not
    welcome here!

    Join the San Francisco Area Pro-Choice Coalition to Stand Up for
    Reproductive Freedom and Demonstrate that San Francisco is PRO-CHOICE!

    Sponsored by the San Francisco Area Pro-Choice Coalition. For more
    information or to get involved, visit www.indybay.org/womyn www.indybay.org/womyn> .
    Driving? Need a ride? Visit http://drivingvotes.org/rides/sfprochoice.php

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

    3) PICTURES OF WAR

    PLEASE ACCESS:
    ** Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches **
    ** http://dahrjamailiraq.com **

    I have obtained the originals of the photos I recently posted which were
    taken from inside Fallujah.
    These are of much higher quality.

    Some of the comments have been updated, and there are some additional
    pictures added which I did not have before.

    http://dahrjamailiraq.com/gallery/
    view_album.php?set_albumName=album28&page=1

    More writing, photos and commentary at http://dahrjamailiraq.com

    You can visit http://dahrjamailiraq.com/email_list/ to subscribe or
    unsubscribe to the email list.

    (c)2004 Dahr Jamail.
    All images and text are protected by United States and
    international copyright law. If you would like to reprint Dahr's
    Dispatches on the web, you need to include this copyright notice
    and a prominent link to the DahrJamailIraq.com website. Any
    other use of images and text including, but not limited to,
    reproduction, use on another website, copying and printing
    requires the permission of Dahr Jamail. Of course, feel free
    to forward Dahr's dispatches via email.

    Iraq_Dispatches mailing list
    http://lists.dahrjamailiraq.com/mailman/listinfo/iraq_dispatches

    http://dahrjamailiraq.com/gallery/
    view_album.php?set_albumName=album28&page=1
    view_album.php?set_albumName=album28&page=1>
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/coalitionforfreethoughtinmedia/message/26138
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/coalitionforfreethoughtinmedia/message/26138
    Virginion Pilot via AP - Photos - click here
    http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=79598&ran=187050

    TSUNAMI PHOTOS:
    A Community Labor News E-Zine
    Hi, folks -

    I thought this group would be interested in seeing how
    different places are using a lot of different technologies
    to display various aspects of the tsunami.

    I belong to another list for map librarians as a result of
    my background with them when I was working at the
    Library of Congress.

    The two best references are one that shows before
    and after pictures of several areas and a comprehensive
    site put together at the University of Buffalo website.

    In the first one the button immediately above the picture
    indicates whether you are looking at a before or an after.
    If you click the button, you'll shortly be looking at the opposite
    picture of the same area, approximately georeferenced as
    best as possible in the short time they had to put these
    pages together.

    http://homepage.mac.com/demark/tsunami/2.html

    This one has a BUNCH of different sources. I liked the
    CTV site and the maps on the Washington Post site.

    ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/asl/guides/indian-ocean-disaster.html

    virginia

    Readers may email your article submissions
    or your comments to ListAdmin@CLNews.org

    You may Subscribe or Un-Subscribe through a
    Confirmed Opt-In or Opt-out Automatic Process at
    http://www.clnews.org/MailList/subscribtion.htm
    "Freedom is always and exclusively
    freedom for the one who thinks differently"
    --Rosa Luxemburg

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

    4) ITALIAN.QUEER.DANGEROUS
    a one-man show featuring Tommi Avicolli Mecca
    directed by Francesca Prada, Jan. 14-19, 8:00pm,
    JON SIMS CENTER
    1519 Mission, Between Van Ness and 11th Sts., SF

    (The most important thing is for folks to make reservations ASAP.
    Seating is limited. Please take a moment to call 554-0402 if you plan
    to come to the show.)
    JANUARY 14-29 (Friday and Saturday nights only: 14, 15; 21, 22; 28, 29)
    JON SIMS CENTER, 1519 Mission/between Van Ness and 11th
    8pm, $5-10 sliding scale (no one turned away)
    seating is limited, for reservations: 415-554-0402
    to volunteer to help with the show, call 415-552-6031

    Through monologue and spoken word, well-known San Francisco
    queer activist and writer Tommi Avicolli Mecca tells his story of growing
    up in South Philly's working-class Little Italy. At age 19, fired up with
    new pride in being gay, he came out to the world--and his traditional
    Roman Catholic southern Italian famiglia--on a TV talk show.
    The rest is history, and the subject of this performance.

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

    5) *****URGENT*****
    Please Help Us Demand Clemency for Donald Beardslee
    by Attending These Important Events!
    Beardslee is scheduled to be executed by the State of
    California on January 19th.
    Urgent Press Conference & Rally
    Tuesday, January 11th
    4:00-5:00 PM
    California State Building
    505 Van Ness Ave. (Corner of Van Ness & McAllister)
    We need a huge crowd to rally on the steps!!!
    Feel free to bring signs and banners.
    We need to show the Governor that the public is demanding
    clemency for Donald Beardslee.
    Clemency Hearing
    January 14, 2005 - 10 AM
    Auditorium - Capitol East End Facility
    1500 Capitol Avenue
    Sacramento, CA 95814

    This event is open to the public and members of the public
    may have an opportunity to give a short comment.
    It is extremely important that we pack the room.
    No signs or banners will be allowed but you may wear buttons
    or stickers.
    Please continue flooding the Governor's office with letters
    and calls!
    Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
    State Capitol Building
    Sacramento, CA 95814
    Phone: 916-445-2841
    Fax: 916-445-4633
    To send an Email, please visit: http://www.govmail.ca.gov

    For sample letters, event information, and more information on Donald
    Beardslee: http://www.deathpenalty.org/index.php?pid=Executions

    Stefanie L. Faucher
    Program Director

    Death Penalty Focus
    870 Market St. Ste. 859
    San Francisco, CA 94102
    Tel. 415-243-0143
    Fax 415-243-0994
    stefanie@deathpenalty.org
    www.deathpenalty.org

    www.californiamoratorium.org
    http://www.californiamoratorium.org/

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

    6) You are invited to Celebrate and claim victory on
    James Yee's case and his Honorable Discharge from the U.S. Army
    Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday
    JOIN THOUSANDS in the Freedom March
    When: Monday, January 17, 2005
    11:30 A.M. TO 12:30 p.m.
    Where:J4NA members will meet at
    3rd & Mission at 11:30 a.m and join the parade.
    The big march will start at the San Francisco Caltrain Station
    (4th St. and Townsend St., )proceeding to Mission Street
    @ Third Street, continuing to the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium
    BART FREEDOM TRAINS
    For free flash passes go to the transportation page
    or
    call (510) 268-3777
    We encourage you to take home made signs to celebrate honorable
    discharge of Chaplain James Yee

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

    7) Indonesia Restricts Aid Workers in Aceh
    By Dan Eaton and Jeff Franks
    BANDA ACEH, Indonesia (Reuters)
    Tue Jan 11, 2005 05:13 AM ET
    http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=7290072&src=eD
    ialog/GetContent§ion=news

    BANDA ACEH, Indonesia (Reuters) - Indonesia told thousands
    of aid workers helping tsunami victims in its worst-hit region,
    Aceh, on Tuesday not to venture beyond two large cities because
    of what it said were militant threats.

    Budi Atmaji, Indonesia's head of relief operations, said
    agencies would need permission to work outside the provincial
    capital, Banda Aceh, and the ravaged west coast town of Meulaboh.

    Asked if Aceh was unsafe for international aid workers, he
    said: "Yes, in some places."

    However, separatist rebels said they would never attack aid
    workers -- who in turn said they were not overly worried.

    Huge waves unleashed by an earthquake 94 miles out to sea
    from Meulaboh killed at least 156,000 people on coasts around
    the Indian Ocean -- 104,000 in Indonesia, 30,000 in Sri Lanka,
    15,000 in India and more than 5,000 in Thailand.

    GAM (Free Aceh Movement) separatists and Indonesia's
    government made conciliatory gestures after the tsunami but
    have since accused one another of initiating several clashes as
    their three-decade-old conflict drags on despite the devastation.

    Indonesian military chief General Endriartono Sutarto said
    GAM might attack foreign aid workers or troops in Aceh.

    "Killing a foreigner here will attract international
    attention and they need it," the Jakarta Post newspaper quoted
    him as saying. GAM dismissed his remarks as propaganda.

    "We never attacked and will never attack aid workers, be it
    foreign or Indonesian," GAM military wing spokesman Sofyan
    Dawood told Reuters by telephone.

    Mike Huggins, spokesman for the World Food Program in Banda
    Aceh, appeared surprised by the Indonesian warning, but not too
    concerned that the safety of aid workers could be threatened.

    "We have no reason to believe GAM would want to do anything
    untoward," he said.

    No aid workers have been caught to date in the conflict.

    Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation and
    fears exist that radical Islamic groups could suspect Western
    aid workers of pursuing a Christian agenda.

    Indonesia said it was sending around 2,000 more troops and
    1,000 military cadets to Aceh to help with reconstruction.

    MASS GRAVES

    In Thailand, Interpol launched the world's biggest disaster
    victim identification system to unravel forensic data from the
    bodies of more than 5,000 tsunami dead and, adding to
    relatives' anguish, said it could take many months to identify
    them all.

    Bodies hastily buried in mass graves around Khao Lak beach
    resort to avoid disease are now being exhumed for DNA and
    dental tests to identify them.

    About 3,400 people are missing in Thailand in addition to
    5,300 reported dead. Many were Western tourists.

    People also died in the Maldives, Myanmar, Bangladesh and
    several east African nations.

    Aid donations have been unprecedented, with governments and
    agencies pledging $5.5 billion and companies and individuals
    almost $2 billion.

    However, the scale brings its own problems.

    "The government faces a second tsunami of aid," said Luky
    Djani of Indonesia Corruption Watch, a non-governmental group.
    "They are deluged by the huge amount of donations and they
    don't know how to manage and how to deliver it in the right way."

    The airport at Banda Aceh is clogged with planes flying in
    relief material, water and workers.

    In Sri Lanka, food has rotted at airports while awaiting
    clearance. Mountains of clothes lie unused with victims loath
    to wear second-hand garments, but graft is the biggest worry.

    "Problems with corruption are so high it is almost
    inevitable," said Sidney Jones, an Indonesia expert with the
    International Crisis Group. "There is simply no history in
    Indonesia of the monitoring mechanism necessary to stop it."

    U.N. officials said they would adopt new steps to guard
    against improprieties such as those alleged in the oil-for-food
    program for Iraq.

    Among measures in the works are a way to let the public
    track every tsunami aid dollar via a Web site and rules to
    protect U.N. staff whistle-blowers.

    President Bush said the United States should keep up its
    aid effort even after attention moves on from the devastation,
    which has left a million homeless and five times as many
    needing help.

    "The intense scrutiny may dissipate, it probably will. But
    our focus has got to stay on this part of the world. We have a
    duty," Bush said.

    SURVIVOR

    In India, the sea again washed into the heart of Port Blair
    in the Andaman islands at high tide on Monday night, lapping at
    doors before receding. People fled to nearby hillocks and many
    slept on the pavements on high ground.

    "We did not sleep last night as the waters crossed the
    road, and the drain and came right up to our house," said Ram
    Kumar, a sailor living in a military housing estate. The
    tsunami killed an estimated 6,800 people on the remote islands.

    Long after the world had given up hope of finding more
    survivors, a ship brought an Aceh man into port in Malaysia. He
    had been swept out to sea by the tsunami and survived adrift
    living on coconuts and chancing upon a leaky boat that saved
    him.

    (For more news on emergency relief from Reuters AlertNet
    visit http://www.alertnet.org email: alertnet@reuters.com; +44
    20 7542 2432)

    (Additional reporting by Sanjeev Miglani in Port Blair,
    Achmad Sukarsono in Banda Aceh and Ed Cropley in Khao Lak)

    (c) Reuters 2005

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

    8) PEOPLE'S NONVIOLENT RESPONSE COALITION (PNVRC)
    SPECIAL EVENT
    BREAKING THE SILENCE . . .JUSTICE NOT WAR
    Friday January 14 from noon until sundown at the
    Oakland Federal Building 1301 Clay Street

    Friday January 14 from noon until sundown at the Oakland Federal
    Building 1301 Clay Street, join the Peoples NonViolent Response
    Coalition (PNVRC) and Jobs with Justice for a continuous public
    reading of Dr. Martin Luther King's 1967 speech, Beyond Vietnam:
    A Time to Break Silence, featuring East Bay workers, labor leaders,
    local elected offices, students, members of the faith community,
    and members of the public. A noon rally will launch this celebration
    of the life and work of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as East Bay
    workers speak-out for workers rights right here. We will honor the
    full legacy of Dr. King's work with the community reading of his words
    that oppose militarism, racism and poverty.

    Volunteers needed. Please call Jackie Cabasso at 510. 839.5877.

    Sponsored by Peoples NonViolent Response Coalition and the
    Alameda County Central Labor Council//Jobs with Justice Bay
    Area Labor Committee for Peace and Justice.

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

    9) Is This Call A justice? Torturer Got Some Charges Dropped
    While Military Jailed A Solider Who Refuse to Kill!
    Iraq Watch Specials: From Peace No War Network
    January 7, 2004
    http://www.PeaceNoWar.net

    Spc. Charles Graner, the soldier accused of being the ringleader of
    the Abu Ghraib prison scandal who facing up to 24 1/2 years in a
    military prison on charges of conspiracy to maltreat detainees,
    assault and committing indecent acts. For some reason, yesterday
    (1/6) the prosecutors "dropped" two other charges (obstruction
    of justice and adultery) against him.

    Graner still could go to prison for his role on the torture case, but
    why he can get a little "break" when on the same day, another soldier
    who re-enlisted with the Marines after becoming a Seventh-Day
    Adventist, has been jailed for refusing to pick up a gun?

    Peace No War Commantary
    Lists of Articles
    1) Prosecutors Drop Charges Against Soldier (AP)
    2) Marine Jailed for Refusing to Pick Up Gun (AP)

    1) Prosecutors Drop Charges Against Soldier
    By T.A. BADGER
    .c The Associated Press

    FORT HOOD, Texas (AP) - On the eve of the first trial stemming
    from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, prosecutors dropped two
    charges against the soldier accused of being the ringleader of
    the abuse.

    Charges of obstruction of justice and adultery were dropped
    Thursday against Spc. Charles Graner, of Uniontown, Pa. Capt.
    Steven Neill, a spokesman for the prosecution, would not say why
    they were dropped, only that it is usually done for evidentiary
    issues or strategic reasons.

    Guy Womack, Graner's attorney, said he thinks the charges were
    dropped because his client was wrongly accused of those counts.

    Graner, 36, faces up to 24 1/2 years in a military prison on charges
    of conspiracy to maltreat detainees, assault and committing
    indecent acts. Jury selection was to begin Friday.

    Three other soldiers from the Maryland-based 372nd Military
    Police Company also face charges.

    Among them is Pfc. Lynndie England, who gave birth in October
    to a child that Army prosecutors claim was fathered by Graner.
    Her trial at Fort Hood has not yet been scheduled.

    In one photo taken at Abu Ghraib, Graner is shown giving
    a thumbs-up behind a pile of naked Iraq prisoners. Another photo
    shows him cocking his fist as if to punch a hooded detainee.

    Graner, a former prison guard, is also accused of jumping on
    detainees, stomping on their hands and feet, and punching one
    man in the temple hard enough to knock him out and require
    medical treatment.

    Womack, a former Marine Corps lawyer, made his client's defense
    clear at a pretrial hearing last month: Graner was ordered by
    higher-ranking soldiers and other government agents to go rough
    on detainees to soften them up for interrogators.

    Womack said any abusive acts Graner may have committed at
    Abu Ghraib were not crimes because the soldier had no choice
    but to obey orders.

    Lawyers for the other Abu Ghraib defendants will be closely
    watching Graner's trial.

    ``If Graner is successful in his defense, then we've been assured
    that the prosecution will take an entirely different, enlightened
    position pertaining to our case,'' said attorney Paul Bergrin of
    Newark, N.J., whose client Sgt. Javal Davis is scheduled for trial
    in February.

    Should Graner be convicted, Bergrin said he may rethink his
    strategy of going to trial and instead pursue a plea bargain for Davis.

    Three other soldiers from the 372nd Military Police Company have
    already made plea deals, among them Staff Sgt. Ivan Frederick
    of Buckingham, Va.

    Frederick, sentenced to eight years in prison, is to date the
    highest-ranking soldier charged with abuses at Abu Ghraib.

    01/07/05 05:12 EST

    Photos of U.S. Military Torture in Abu Ghraib Prison
    http://www.peacenowar.net/Iraq/News/April%2004-Photos/Abu%20Ghraib.htm


    2) Marine Jailed for Refusing to Pick Up Gun
    By ESTES THOMPSON
    .c The Associated Press

    RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - A soldier who re-enlisted with the Marines
    after becoming a Seventh-Day Adventist has been jailed for refusing
    to pick up a gun.

    Cpl. Joel D. Klimkewicz, 24, of Birch Run, Mich., was sentenced last
    month in a court-martial to seven months in Camp Lejeune's brig.
    He also received a reduction in rank to private and a bad conduct
    discharge.

    Klimkewicz was charged with refusing to obey order two years to
    draw a weapon from his unit's armory for a training exercise in
    preparation for an Iraq deployment.

    In refusing the order, Klimkewicz told his superiors he was
    a conscientious objector and cited his new status as a member
    of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church.

    The church supports noncombatant status for its members who
    serve in the military, but leaves such decisions to a member's
    individual conscience.

    Klimkewicz joined an Adventist church in Jacksonville in 2003,
    a year after he re-enlisted. He sought conscientious objector
    status, which was rejected in last March.

    ``Conscientious objector status has to be granted,'' said
    Capt. Jeff Pool, a spokesman for the 2nd Marine Division at
    Lejeune. ``Since his package was denied, it was just simply
    disobeying an order. That is what he was charged with.''

    The timing of Klimkewicz's conversion and re-enlistment were
    issues in his case, church attorney Mitchell Tyner said Tuesday.
    The Marine Corps said he should have known better than to re-enlist
    after joining the church, he said.

    ``Marines are not big on this kind of thing,'' Tyner said in a telephone
    interview from the church office in Silver Spring, Md. ``The whole
    thing comes down to the timing.''

    Tyner said Klimkewicz was to be one of 10 troops sent to Iraq
    as replacements for other Marines. He told authorities he would
    work removing mines in Iraq, but did not want to carry a weapon.

    01/05/05 04:46 EST

    Useful Links:


    Los Angeles Times has a complete biographical Information on
    U.S. Soldiers Killed:
    http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/external/fmmac2.mm.ap.org/war2/adv_search.php?S
    ITE=CALOS&SECTION=MIDEAST
    SITE=CALOS&SECTION=MIDEAST>


    For more photos and Videos from Iraq, visit:

    "Report from Baghdad" July, 2003

    http://www.actionla.org/Iraq/IraqReport/intro.html



    Peace, No War
    War is not the answer, for only love can conquer hate
    Not in our Name! And another world is possible!

    Information for antiwar movements, news across the
    World, please visit:
    http://www.PeaceNoWar.net

    Please Join PeaceNoWar Listserv, send e-mail to:
    peacenowar-subscribe@lists.riseup.net


    Please Donate to Peace No War Network!
    Send check pay to:
    ActionLA/SEE
    1013 Mission St. #6
    South Pasadena CA 91030
    (All donations are tax deductible)

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

    10) Subject: Lynne Stewart on Democracy Now 1/6/05
    From: "Larry Felson"
    Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2005 07:10:35 +0000
    RUSH TRANSCRIPT

    This transcript is available free of charge, however donations help us
    provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our
    TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.
    Donate -$25 ,$50 ,$100 ,more...

    AMY GOODMAN: Lynne Stewart will be headed to the trial right
    after this program. Your response so far, Lynne Stewart. Your lawyer
    calls you courageous, brash and feisty. The thousands of tape
    recordings that have been made, did this number surprise you?
    What is it now, 8,500? ?

    LYNNE STEWART: No, 85,000. ?

    AMY GOODMAN: 85,000. ?

    LYNNE STEWART: They were mainly made of Mr. Sattar's telephone,
    and then laterly Mr. Yousry's telephone. I was never tapped. I was
    never a target until John Ashcroft decided to make me the
    centerpiece of this particular prosecution. But it is notable that
    with all of these calls, and supposedly a conspiracy, that we
    question, I'm not on any of those calls. I'm just not there. It's
    just not -- my name is not mentioned. There's no reference to
    the female lawyer who's going to help us out with this or
    anything else. So, the absence of evidence is also supposed to
    count for something, I think. So, we're a winding down, in
    answer to the first question, I guess. The six month-trial.
    I was on the witness stand for three weeks, which Michael will
    be commenting on today. At least at this point it will be in the
    hands of the jury, and as I have said to you before, Amy,
    I have great faith in the jury system. I'm not saying it works
    perfectly, because of course, it brings inherently all of the
    prejudices of the society. ?

    AMY GOODMAN: The prosecutors have raised a lot of questions,
    and in the summary arguments as well, about why you went and
    visited the sheikh in prison. I mean, they say it's a life sentence,
    no chance of getting out. Raised questions, and of course,
    focusing on that 2000 release that you were trying to communicate
    with his supporters in Egypt, when the government was trying
    to cut off all communication to say -- end the cease-fire? ?

    LYNNE STEWART: Well, of course, we do. As Michael said yes, we
    lawyers do this kind of pro bono work for people who are despised
    or thought little of, we wear that as a badge of honor. It wasn't
    me alone, of course. That's one of the big points of our case. It
    was me. It was Ramsey Clarke, Abdean Jabar. We were all doing
    this. The tapes show we all dealt with him in pretty much the same
    way. It was mainly done because you want to keep pressure on the
    government so the conditions don't worsen. You want to bring up
    a lawsuit if the time is right to make a lawsuit. You cannot let the
    government dictate how you practice law. Lawyers being
    autonomous is really to some degree the backbone of the entire
    legal system when it does work well, and lawyers making decisions
    based on the rules of ethics. So, those things are all in the case,
    but I always like to say, there's absolutely no proof that I'm linked
    to any terrorist conspiracy. That they have to prove. The second
    thing is, everything I did Ramsey Clarke did, Abdean Jabar did,
    and I'm sure the jurors are going to say, why aren't they arrested
    and why aren't they part of this? ?

    JUAN GONZALEZ: Why do you think that Ashcroft decided to target
    you specifically, and to go after you in this way that even most
    defense lawyers, no matter what their political persuasion
    cannot believe happened? ?

    LYNNE STEWART: Yeah, I think that. well, Ashcroft, as we know,
    has a certain viewpoint, and a certain viewpoint towards women,
    I think is clear also. So, my friends do say, if you don't think this
    has to do with your being a woman, you're crazy. But I also think
    that one of the things they said in their summation was something
    like, if it's a revolution, Stewart's for it. She will back any revolution.
    Like I'm some wingnut -- left wing -- wingnut out there, espousing
    soapbox violence for everything. They sort of wanted to commingle
    my personal politics with my work as a lawyer. They are really, very,
    very separate. I'm hardly a fundamentalist. But I think Ashcroft saw
    me as an easy target. I hope he now knows that he was wrong. ?

    AMY GOODMAN: They also accuse you of covering up political
    conversations that your translator was having with Sheikh Abdel
    Rahman, putting out words that might cover as they were having
    a conversation, since you weren't supposed to have political
    conversations, but only legal conversations. They knew this
    because they were recording your conversations. ?

    LYNNE STEWART: Exactly. You know, when you visit someone in
    a jail, when the guards seem to get too interested, we now realize
    they were so interested because the F.B.I. was in the next room taping
    all of this. It was a different scenario, but we couldn't understand
    why they were leaning in, why they would turn around and look at
    us. We said, let's deal with this. I know that I have the right as
    a lawyer to protect my client's confidences, whatever they may be.
    If he says, I'm having trouble with my teenage son, I'd like you to
    tell my wife to do this and that. He has to have confidence in
    saying that to me, confidence in me and also a confidence. So,
    when we whisper, we lawyers, when we talk in somebody's ear,
    whatever way we do it, even Patrick Fitzgerald, who was their
    first witness, the government's first -- the sinny qua non
    prosecutor, said there are things that lawyers do that are
    secret and we are bound to protect them. Thats all we were
    doing. There was no big secret. When they recorded it, we were
    equally protecting conversations that are totally innocuous to
    those which might have had political content. ?

    JUAN GONZALEZ: In other words, they are prosecuting you for
    being too good at preventing them from being able to listen
    in on what should be confidential conversations with your clients? ?

    LYNNE STEWART: Exactly, Juan. As Michael Tiger likes to say,
    they were not supposed to be listening in, but you're wrong
    for preventing them from listening to what they're not supposed
    to listen to. It's a little convoluted, but it is sort of the hallmark
    of the entire case. ?

    AMY GOODMAN: We will continue to follow this case, again
    closing arguments continue today in New York at 40 Foley
    Square. It is open to the public. We went down yesterday afternoon
    to hear the beginning of these closing argument, and we will
    continue to follow your case, Lynne Stewart, the attorney who
    faces 45 years in prison.

    To purchase an audio or video copy of this entire program,
    click here for our new online ordering or call 1 (800) 881-2359

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

    11) Subject: Seven Palestinian Children Killed in Strawberry
    Fields by Israeli Anti-Personnel Shells
    From: "Justice Freedom"
    Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 20:05:33 -0800

    Israeli violence has intensified in the run-up to the first Palestinian
    presidential elections in eight years. Since Yasser Arafat died, during
    a much-vaunted "window of opportunity for peace", more than
    75 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces, many of them
    children. In the same period, no Israeli civilians have been killed
    by Palestinians.

    Seven Palestinian Children Killed in Strawberry Fields by Israeli
    Anti-Personnel Shells
    http://www.palestinemonitor.org/new_web/Jan_05_archive.htm
    January 5, 2005

    Israeli anti-personnel shells, which throw out thousands of metal
    darts in a deadly cloud that rips apart everything it encounters,
    killed seven children between the ages of ten and 17 in a strawberry
    field in northern Gaza yesterday. Dr. Mohamed Sultan of the Beit
    Lahiya hospital said eleven were also wounded, four critically.
    Two of the survivors had double leg amputations, another
    a single leg amputation.

    According to eyewitnesses, Israeli occupation military posts
    between the illegal Israeli settlements of Elei Sinai and Nisanit,
    located north of the Palestinian town of Beit Lahiya, fired a tank
    shell at a Palestinian agricultural area south of the fence that
    separates the two settlements from Beit Lahiya. The shell
    directly hit a number of Palestinian children who were farming
    their land.

    Six of the boys who were killed were from the same family,
    and three were brothers. The names of the dead children are:
    Hani Mohammed Ghaben (17), and his brothers Bassam (14)
    and Mohammed (12); their cousins Rajeh Ghassan Ghaben (10),
    Jaber Abdullah Ghaben (15), Mohammed Hassan Ghaben (17);
    and a neighbor named Jibril Abdul Fattah al-Kaseeh (16).

    The father of the three dead brothers was among the villagers
    who came to see the effects of the shelling. When he reached
    the site, he was shocked to see the scattered and bloody remains
    of his dead children. Medical staff and family members gathered
    the shredded body part of the children from the grass and clay.

    Israeli violence has intensified in the run-up to the first
    Palestinian presidential elections in eight years. Since Yasser
    Arafat died, during a much-vaunted "window of opportunity
    for peace", more than 75 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli
    forces, many of them children. In the same period, no Israeli
    civilians have been killed by Palestinians.

    - Modern "war" is state terrorism directed against civilians.

    - The purpose of u.s. actions toward Iraq over the last 14 years
    (2 horrific illegal bombing invasions, and 12 years of illegal,
    immoral sanctions) is to destroy Iraq as a nation, the fulfillment
    of the neo-con dream of "ending nations" that defy usrael.
    Forget what bush, klinton and others say, forget stated
    intentions, just look at what they do, and what they have done.

    - If my men could think, they would not fight.
    - Napoleon

    - The most outlandish conspiracy theory of them all (and the most
    widely accepted): 19 hijackers from a third world terrorist group
    armed with boxcutters forced 3 planes into 3 of the nation's
    most important and symbolic structures with no assistance from
    US government / intelligence insiders.
    -http://www.oilempire.us/conspiracy.html

    - It's too late for religions to fight over market share. Adopting
    a particular religion is not the way. It's no good for us to "become"
    Jews, or Christians, or Buddhists. Rather, we must be like Jesus,
    without necessarily being a Christian, be like Buddha, without
    necessarily being a Buddhist. In order to do this, we need to
    study these religions a little, not use them for political ends..
    - paraphrase of Robert Thurman (author of Anger) being
    interviewed by Chris Welch
    on Living Room, KPFA-FM Radio, 11-18-04

    Daniel Stone
    justice_freedom@earthlink.net

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

    12) The other tsunami
    By John Pilger
    While the sea may have killed tens of thousands, western
    policies kill millions every year. Yet even amid disaster,
    a new politics of community and morality is emerging.
    http://www.newstatesman.com/nscoverstory.htm

    The west's crusaders, the United States and Britain, are giving less
    to help the tsunami victims than the cost of a Stealth bomber or
    a week's bloody occupation of Iraq. The bill for George Bush's
    coming inauguration party would rebuild much of the coastline
    of Sri Lanka. Bush and Blair increased their first driblets of "aid"
    only when it became clear that people all over the world were
    spontaneously giving millions and that a public relations problem
    beckoned. The Blair government's current "generous" contribution
    is one-sixteenth of the £800m it spent on bombing Iraq before
    the invasion and barely one-twentieth of a £1bn gift, known as
    a soft loan, to the Indonesian military so that it could acquire
    Hawk fighter-bombers.

    On 24 November, one month before the tsunami struck, the Blair
    government gave its backing to an arms fair in Jakarta, "designed
    to meet an urgent need for the [Indonesian] armed forces to review
    its defence capabilities", reported the Jakarta Post . The Indonesian
    military, responsible for genocide in East Timor, has killed more than
    20,000 civilians and "insurgents" in Aceh. Among the exhibitors at
    the arms fair was Rolls-Royce, manufacturer of engines for the Hawks,
    which, along with British-supplied Scorpion armoured vehicles,
    machine-guns and ammunition, were terrorising and killing people
    in Aceh up to the day the tsunami devastated the province.

    The Australian government, currently covering itself in glory for its
    modest response to the historic disaster befallen its Asian neighbours,
    has secretly trained Indonesia's Kopassus special forces, whose
    atrocities in Aceh are well documented. This is in keeping with
    Australia's 40-year support for oppression in Indonesia, notably
    its devotion to the dictator Suharto while his troops slaughtered
    a third of the population of East Timor. The government of John
    Howard - notorious for its imprisonment of child asylum-seekers
    - is at present defying international maritime law by denying East
    Timor its due of oil and gas royalties worth some $8bn. Without
    this revenue, East Timor, the world's poorest country, cannot build
    schools, hospitals and roads or provide work for its young people,
    90 per cent of whom are unemployed.

    The hypocrisy, narcissism and dissembling propaganda of the rulers
    of the world and their sidekicks are in full cry. Superlatives abound
    as to their humanitarian intent while the division of humanity into
    worthy and unworthy victims dominates the news. The victims of
    a great natural disaster are worthy (though for how long is uncertain)
    while the victims of man-made imperial disasters are unworthy and
    very often unmentionable. Somehow, reporters cannot bring
    themselves to report what has been going on in Aceh, supported
    by "our" government. This one-way moral mirror allows us to ignore
    a trail of destruction and carnage that is another tsunami.

    Consider the plight of Afghanistan, where clean water is unknown
    and death in childbirth common. At the Labour Party conference
    in 2001, Tony Blair announced his famous crusade to "reorder the
    world" with the pledge: "To the Afghan people, we make this
    commitment . . . We will not walk away . . . we will work with you
    to make sure [a way is found] out of the miserable poverty that is
    your present existence." The Blair government was on the verge of
    taking part in the conquest of Afghanistan, in which as many as
    25,000 civilians died. In all the great humanitarian crises in living
    memory, no country suffered more and none has been helped less.
    Just 3 per cent of all international aid spent in Afghanistan has been for
    reconstruction, 84 per cent is for the US-led military "coalition"
    and the rest is crumbs for emergency aid. What is often presented
    as reconstruction revenue is private investment, such as the $35m
    that will finance a proposed five-star hotel, mostly for foreigners.
    An adviser to the minister of rural affairs in Kabul told me his
    government had received less than 20 per cent of the aid promised
    to Afghan-istan. "We don't even have enough money to pay wages,
    let alone plan reconstruction," he said.

    The reason, unspoken of course, is that Afghans are the unworthiest
    of victims. When US helicopter gunships repeatedly machine-gunned
    a remote farming village, killing as many as 93 civilians, a Pentagon
    official was moved to say, "The people there are dead because we
    wanted them dead."

    I became acutely aware of this other tsunami when I reported from
    Cambodia in 1979. Following a decade of American bombing and
    Pol Pot's barbarities, Cambodia lay as stricken as Aceh is today.
    Disease beckoned famine and people suffered a collective trauma
    few could explain. Yet for nine months after the collapse of the
    Khmer Rouge regime, no effective aid arrived from western
    governments. Instead, a western- and Chinese-backed UN
    embargo was imposed on Cambodia, denying virtually the
    entire machinery of recovery and assistance. The problem for
    the Cambodians was that their liberators, the Vietnamese, had
    come from the wrong side of the cold war, having recently
    expelled the Americans from their homeland. That made them
    unworthy victims, and expendable.


    A similar, largely unreported siege was forced on Iraq during
    the 1990s and intensified during the Anglo-American "liberation".
    Last September, Unicef reported that malnutrition among Iraqi
    children had doubled under the occupation. Infant mortality is
    now at the level of Burundi, higher than in Haiti and Uganda.
    There is crippling poverty and a chronic shortage of medicines.
    Cases of cancer are rising rapidly, especially breast cancer;
    radioactive pollution is widespread. More than 700 schools are
    bomb-damaged. Of the billions said to have been allocated for
    reconstruction in Iraq, just $29m has been spent, most of it
    on mercenaries guarding foreigners. Little of this is news in
    the west.

    This other tsunami is worldwide, causing 24,000 deaths every
    day from poverty and debt and division that are the products of
    a supercult called neoliberalism. This was acknowledged by the
    United Nations in 1990 when it called a conference in Paris of
    the richest states with the aim of implementing a "programme
    of action" to rescue the world's poorest nations. A decade later,
    virtually every commitment made by western governments had
    been broken, making Gordon Brown's waffle about the G8
    "sharing Britain's dream" of ending poverty as just that: waffle.
    Very few western governments have honoured the United
    Nations "baseline" and allotted a miserable 0.7 per cent or
    more of their national income to overseas aid. Britain gives
    just 0.34 per cent, making its "Department for International
    Development" a black joke. The US gives 0.14 per cent, the
    lowest of any industrial state.

    Largely unseen and unimagined by westerners, millions of
    people know their lives have been declared expendable. When
    tariffs and food and fuel subsidies are eliminated under an IMF
    diktat, small farmers and the landless know they face disaster,
    which is why suicides among farmers are an epidemic. Only the
    rich, says the World Trade Organisation, are allowed to protect
    their home industries and agriculture; only they have the right
    to subsidise exports of meat, grain and sugar and dump them
    in poor countries at artificially low prices, thereby destroying
    livelihoods and lives.

    Indonesia, once described by the World Bank as "a model pupil
    of the global economy", is a case in point. Many of those washed
    to their deaths in Sumatra on Boxing Day were dispossessed by
    IMF policies. Indonesia owes an unrepayable debt of $110bn.
    The World Resources Institute says the toll of this man-made
    tsunami reaches 13-18 million child deaths worldwide every
    year; or 12 million children under the age of five, according to
    a UN Human Development Report . "If 100 million have been
    killed in the formal wars of the 20th century," wrote the
    Australian social scientist Michael McKinley, "why are they to
    be privileged in comprehension over the annual [death] toll
    of children from structural adjustment programmes since 1982?"

    That the system causing this has democracy as its war cry is
    a mockery which people all over the world increasingly understand.
    It is this rising awareness, consciousness even, that offers more
    than hope. Since the crusaders in Washington and London
    squandered world sympathy for the victims of 11 September
    2001 in order to accelerate their campaign of domination, a
    critical public intelligence has stirred and regards the likes of
    Blair and Bush as liars and their culpable actions as crimes. The
    current outpouring of help for the tsunami victims among
    ordinary people in the west is a spectacular reclaiming of the
    politics of community, morality and internationalism denied
    them by governments and corporate propaganda. Listening to
    tourists returning from stricken countries, consumed with
    gratitude for the gracious, expansive way some of the poorest
    of the poor gave them shelter and cared for them, one hears
    the antithesis of "policies" that care only for the avaricious.

    "The most spectacular display of public morality the world has
    ever seen", was how the writer Arundhati Roy described the
    anti-war anger that swept across the world almost two years
    ago. A French study now estimates that 35 million people
    demonstrated on that February day and says there has never
    been anything like it; and it was just a beginning.

    This is not rhetorical; human renewal is not a phenomenon, rather
    the continuation of a struggle that may appear at times to have
    frozen but is a seed beneath the snow. Take Latin America, long
    declared invisible and expendable in the west. "Latin Americans
    have been trained in impotence," wrote Eduardo Galeano the other
    day. "A pedagogy passed down from colonial times, taught by
    violent soldiers, timorous teachers and frail fatalists, has rooted
    in our souls the belief that reality is untouchable and that all
    we can do is swallow in silence the woes each day brings."
    Galeano was celebrating the rebirth of real democracy in his
    homeland, Uruguay, where people have voted "against fear",
    against privatisation and its attendant indecencies. In Venezuela,
    municipal and state elections in October notched up the ninth
    democratic victory for the only government in the world sharing
    its oil wealth with its poorest people. In Chile, the last of the
    military fascists supported by western governments, notably
    Thatcher, are being pursued by revitalised democratic forces.

    These forces are part of a movement against inequality and
    poverty and war that has arisen in the past six years and is
    more diverse, more enterprising, more internationalist and
    more tolerant of difference than anything in my lifetime. It is
    a movement unburdened by a western liberalism that believes
    it represents a superior form of life; the wisest know this is
    colonialism by another name. The wisest also know that just
    as the conquest of Iraq is unravelling, so a whole system of
    domination and impoverishment can unravel, too.

    www.johnpilger.com


    (c) New Statesman 1913 - 2004

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

    13) 'The Salvador Option'
    The Pentagon may put Special-Forces-led assassination or
    kidnapping teams in Iraq
    WEB EXCLUSIVE
    By Michael Hirsh and John Barry
    Newsweek
    Updated: 10:22 a.m. ET Jan. 9, 2005,
    MSNBC.com
    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6802629/site/newsweek/

    Jan. 8 - What to do about the deepening quagmire of Iraq? The Pentagon's
    latest approach is being called "the Salvador option"-and the fact that it
    is being discussed at all is a measure of just how worried Donald
    Rumsfeld really is. "What everyone agrees is that we can't just go on
    as we are," one senior military officer told NEWSWEEK. "We have to find
    a way to take the offensive against the insurgents. Right now, we are
    playing defense. And we are losing." Last November's operation in
    Fallujah, most analysts agree, succeeded less in breaking "the back"
    of the insurgency-as Marine Gen. John Sattler optimistically declared
    at the time-than in spreading it out.

    Now, NEWSWEEK has learned, the Pentagon is intensively debating an
    option that dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan
    administration's battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in
    El Salvador in the early 1980s. Then, faced with a losing war
    against Salvadoran rebels, the U.S. government funded or
    supported "nationalist" forces that allegedly included so-called
    death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and
    sympathizers. Eventually the insurgency was quelled, and many
    U.S. conservatives consider the policy to have been a success-
    despite the deaths of innocent civilians and the subsequent
    Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal. (Among the current
    administration officials who dealt with Central America back
    then is John Negroponte, who is today the U.S. ambassador to
    Iraq. Under Reagan, he was ambassador to Honduras.)

    Following that model, one Pentagon proposal would send Special
    Forces teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads,
    most likely hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite
    militiamen, to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers,
    even across the border into Syria, according to military insiders
    familiar with the discussions. It remains unclear, however,
    whether this would be a policy of assassination or so-called
    "snatch" operations, in which the targets are sent to secret
    facilities for interrogation. The current thinking is that while
    U.S. Special Forces would lead operations in, say, Syria,
    activities inside Iraq itself would be carried out by Iraqi
    paramilitaries, officials tell NEWSWEEK.

    Also being debated is which agency within the U.S. government-
    the Defense department or CIA-would take responsibility for
    such an operation. Rumsfeld's Pentagon has aggressively
    sought to build up its own intelligence-gathering and clandestine
    capability with an operation run by Defense Undersecretary
    Stephen Cambone. But since the Abu Ghraib interrogations
    scandal, some military officials are ultra-wary of any operations
    that could run afoul of the ethics codified in the Uniform Code
    of Military Justice. That, they argue, is the reason why such
    covert operations have always been run by the CIA and
    authorized by a special presidential finding. (In "covert"
    activity, U.S. personnel operate under cover and the U.S.
    government will not confirm that it instigated or ordered
    them into action if they are captured or killed.)

    Meanwhile, intensive discussions are taking place inside the
    Senate Intelligence Committee over the Defense department's
    efforts to expand the involvement of U.S. Special Forces personnel
    in intelligence-gathering missions. Historically, Special Forces'
    intelligence gathering has been limited to objectives directly related
    to upcoming military operations-"preparation of the battlefield," in
    military lingo. But, according to intelligence and defense officials,
    some Pentagon civilians for years have sought to expand the use
    of Special Forces for other intelligence missions.

    Pentagon civilians and some Special Forces personnel believe CIA
    civilian managers have traditionally been too conservative in
    planning and executing the kind of undercover missions that
    Special Forces soldiers believe they can effectively conduct. CIA
    traditionalists are believed to be adamantly opposed to ceding
    any authority to the Pentagon. Until now, Pentagon proposals for
    a capability to send soldiers out on intelligence missions without
    direct CIA approval or participation have been shot down. But
    counter-terrorist strike squads, even operating covertly, could
    be deemed to fall within the Defense department's orbit.

    The interim government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi is said to
    be among the most forthright proponents of the Salvador option.
    Maj. Gen.Muhammad Abdallah al-Shahwani, director of Iraq's
    National Intelligence Service, may have been laying the groundwork
    for the idea with a series of interviews during the past ten days.
    Shahwani told the London-based Arabic daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat
    that the insurgent leadership-he named three former senior figures
    in the Saddam regime, including Saddam Hussein's half-brother-
    were essentially safe across the border in a Syrian sanctuary. "We
    are certain that they are in Syria and move easily between Syrian
    and Iraqi territories," he said, adding that efforts to extradite
    them "have not borne fruit so far."

    Shahwani also said that the U.S. occupation has failed to crack the
    problem of broad support for the insurgency. The insurgents, he
    said, "are mostly in the Sunni areas where the population there,
    almost 200,000, is sympathetic to them." He said most Iraqi people
    do not actively support the insurgents or provide them with material
    or logistical help, but at the same time they won't turn them in.
    One military source involved in the Pentagon debate agrees that
    this is the crux of the problem, and he suggests that new offensive
    operations are needed that would create a fear of aiding the
    insurgency. "The Sunni population is paying no price for the
    support it is giving to the terrorists," he said. "From their point
    of view, it is cost-free. We have to change that equation."

    Pentagon sources emphasize there has been no decision yet to
    launch the Salvador option. Last week, Rumsfeld decided to send
    a retired four-star general, Gary Luck, to Iraq on an open-ended
    mission to review the entire military strategy there. But with the
    U.S. Army strained to the breaking point, military strategists note
    that a dramatic new approach might be needed-perhaps one as
    potentially explosive as the Salvador option.

    With Mark Hosenball
    (c) 2005 Newsweek, Inc.

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

    14) US deserters flee to Canada to avoid service in Iraq
    By Charles Laurence in New York
    (Filed: 09/01/2005)
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/01/09/wus09.xml&sS
    heet=/portal/2005/01/09/ixportal.html

    American Army soldiers are deserting and fleeing to Canada rather than
    fight in Iraq, rekindling memories of the thousands of draft-dodgers
    who flooded north to avoid service in Vietnam.

    An estimated 5,500 men and women have deserted since the invasion
    of Iraq, reflecting Washington's growing problems with troop morale.

    Jeremy Hinzman: a 'wrong career choice'

    Jeremy Hinzman, 26, from South Dakota, who deserted from the 82nd
    Airborne , is among those who - to the disgust of Pentagon officials -
    have applied for refugee status in Canada.

    The United States Army treats deserters as common criminals, posting
    them on "wanted" lists with the FBI, state police forces and the
    Department of Home Security border patrols.

    Hinzman said last week: "This is a criminal war and any act of violence
    in an unjustified conflict is an atrocity. I signed a contract for four
    years,
    and I was totally willing to fulfil it. Just not in combat arms jobs."

    Hinzman, who served as a cook in Afghanistan, was due to join
    a fighting unit in Iraq after being refused status as a conscientious
    objector.

    He realised that he had made the "wrong career choice" as he
    marched with his platoon of recruits all chanting, "Train to kill,
    kill we will".

    He said: "At that point a light went off in my head. I was told in basic
    training that if I'm given an illegal or immoral order, it is my duty to
    disobey it. I feel that invading and occupying Iraq is an illegal and
    immoral thing to do.''

    Pte Brandon Hughey, 19, who deserted from the 1st Cavalry
    Division at Fort Hood, Texas, said that he had volunteered because
    the army offered to pay his college fees. He began training soon
    after the invasion of Iraq but became disillusioned when no
    weapons of mass destruction were found.

    "I had been willing to die to make America safe," he said. "I found
    out, basically, that they found no weapons of mass destruction
    and the claim that they made about ties to al-Qaeda was coming
    up short. It made me angry. I felt our lives as soldiers were being
    thrown away."

    When he was ordered to deploy to Iraq, Hughey searched the
    internet for an "underground railroad" operation, through which
    deserting troops are helped to escape to Canada.

    He was put in touch with a Quaker pacifist couple who had helped
    Vietnam draft-dodgers and was driven from Texas to Ontario.

    The Pentagon says that the level of desertion is no higher than usual
    and denies that it is having difficulty persuading troops to fight. The
    flight to Canada is, however, an embarrassment for the military, which
    is suffering from a recruiting shortfall for the National Guard and the
    Army Reserves.

    The deaths of 18 American soldiers in a suicide bomb attack in Mosul,
    northern Iraq, last month, was a further blow to morale. Soon after,
    the number of American soldiers killed since President Bush declared
    that large-scale combat operations were at an end passed the
    1,000 mark.

    Lt Col Joe Richard, a Pentagon spokesman, said that the US government
    wanted the deserters to be returned from Canada. "If you don't want
    to fight, don't join," he said.

    "The men in Canada have an obligation to fulfil their military contracts
    and do their duty. If and when they return to this country, they will
    be prosecuted."

    The penalty for desertion in wartime can be death. Most deserters,
    however, serve up to five years in a military prison before receiving
    a dishonourable discharge.

    In order to stay in Canada, deserters must convince an immigration
    board that they would face not just prosecution but also "persecution"
    if they returned to America. Hinzman's hearing has begun in Toronto
    and a decision is expected next month.

    During the Vietnam war an estimated 55,000 deserters or draft-
    dodgers fled to Canada. There were amnesties for both groups in
    the late 1970s under President Jimmy Carter, but many stayed.

    One who did so is Jeffrey House, a Toronto-based lawyer, who
    represents some of the deserters. He said that at least 25 had
    reached Canada in recent months with the help of "railroad"
    organisations, and believed that the immigration board would
    back his clients.

    19 April 2004: US 'soldiers of conscience' take Sixties route to
    Canada

    18 December 2004: US military sees sharp fall in black recruits

    Information appearing on telegraph.co.uk is the copyright of
    Telegraph Group Limited and must not be reproduced in any
    medium without licence. For the full copyright statement see
    Copyright

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

    15) Second US attack on civilians feeds calls for Iraq withdrawal
    By Stephen Negus in Baghdad
    Published: January 10 2005 02:00
    http://news.ft.com/cms/s/07926a26-62ac-11d9-8e5d-00000e2511c8,ft_acl=,s01=1.
    html

    US soldiers mistakenly opened fire on Iraqi police and civilians after
    an ambush south of Baghdad yesterday, killing five people.

    The incident came less than 24 hours after a mis-aimed US bomb was
    dropped on a home in the north of the country, killing another five Iraqis.

    Combined, the incidents will feed calls that US forces set a date for
    their withdrawal, a demand made by several Iraqi political factions
    during the run-up to the January 30 elections.

    On Saturday the conservative Sunni organisation, the Association of
    Muslim Scholars, joined the calls after meeting US representatives to
    demand a timetable for withdrawal. The group was reported to have
    said it would abandon its election boycott in return for a departure
    date for US forces.

    However, despite the rhetoric about withdrawal, a senior US official
    said last week that representatives of Iraqi political groups in regular
    contact with the embassy were not pushing for a departure date,
    while Iyad Allawi, prime minister, argues that most Iraqis support
    the presence of foreign forces.

    According to Iraqi police, the soldiers shot dead two police and two
    civilians after their convoy was hit by a roadside bomb in the town
    of Yusufiya, while a fifth Iraqi died of a heart attack at the scene.

    The US military did not have information on the shooting of civilians,
    but reported one soldier killed by a roadside bomb in or near Baghdad.

    Iraqis say US soldiers, fearing suicide car bombers, are quick to
    shoot at civilian vehicles, but the incidents often go unreported.

    Meanwhile, seven Ukrainian soldiers and an eighth from Kazakhstan
    were killed in a blast that occurred when they were loading an
    unexploded bomb.

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

    16) How much "aid" will reach the tsunami survivors?
    By Richard Phillips
    World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org
    11 January 2005
    http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/jan2005/tsun-j11.shtml

    While the corporate media has hailed the increased promises of
    assistance from the US, Australia and other wealthier countries to the
    tsunami-hit nations, the almost $5 billion pledged over the past fortnight
    will do little to overcome the extraordinary problems confronting survivors.

    According to Britain's Overseas Development Institute, at least $25 billion
    is needed to restore basic infrastructure and provide shelter. This raw
    estimate, however, does not take into account the amounts required to
    provide adequate food and health services to the more than five million
    people facing the outbreak of dysentery, malaria, pneumonia, cholera
    and other life-threatening diseases.

    In Sri Lanka, for example, the United Nations World Food Program
    announced last week that it would distribute some 4,000 tons of rice,
    wheat flour, lentils and sugar. But this is enough only to supply
    approximately 500,000 people for two weeks. On current estimates,
    over one million people are now homeless in Sri Lanka, with around
    400,000 having taken refuge in public buildings, schools and
    makeshift camps.

    In Indonesia, where over 80 percent of western Sumatra's towns
    and villages have been destroyed and more than 100,000 are dead,
    thousands face dying because no mechanisms exist for the rapid
    distribution of assistance. Aceh, the worst hit, has no airport
    capable of receiving heavy transport planes, with the nearest
    facility located in Medan, 400 kilometres from Banda Aceh, the
    regional capital. Two weeks after the tsunami, parts of the province
    have not received any assistance.

    Even within the framework of official government assistance, the a
    mount spent on foreign aid from the world's richest nations has
    declined dramatically over the past decade or more. According to
    Paying the Price , a report published last December by Oxfam, the
    annual aid budgets of the top 20 donor nations are half what they
    were in 1960, in real terms. On average, G7 nations-Canada, France,
    Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US-allocate only 0.19 percent
    of their Gross National Income (GNI) for international assistance.

    The combined annual foreign aid from the world's wealthiest nations
    is about $55 billion-far less than capital expenditure on the military.
    Britain currently spends eight times as much on its military as it does
    on aid, France 9, Italy 15 and the US 33 times. The US annual defence
    budget in 2003 was over $400 billion, or 3.6 percent of its Gross
    National Income (GNI), while its foreign aid was only $16 billion or
    just 0.14 percent of GNI. This is about a ninth of the $148 billion
    it has spent invading and occupying Iraq.

    The reality of international aid

    While aid from the economically powerful nations has always been
    devised to promote donors' interests, the amounts and political
    purpose of this assistance has changed dramatically over the past
    two decades.

    In the immediate aftermath of World War II, the US provided millions
    of dollars through the Marshall Plan to help rebuild war-devastated
    Europe, boost world trade and improve markets for American goods.

    This program was expanded and became the model for the
    Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
    and other Cold War international aid programs. It was never devised
    to eliminate poverty, but to try and undermine the Soviet Union's
    economic and political sphere of influence. Within this framework,
    other imperialist nations, France and Britain and lesser ones such as
    Australia, set up assistance programs for their former colonies.

    Various underdeveloped countries, or, at least, the ruling elites
    within them, benefited from these arrangements and some rudimentary
    infrastructure was developed during the Cold War period. But all this
    changed with the collapse and liquidation of the Soviet Union in 1991.
    The US and other imperialist nations slashed funds and adjusted their
    aid programs to the new reality. The US aid budget, for example,
    dropped by 32 percent between 1985 and 1995. International
    assistance to sub-Saharan Africa declined in real terms by almost
    50 percent in the 1990s.

    Behind the official government rhetoric of "poverty reduction" and
    "development assistance", the international financial institutions also
    began devising new methods to extract more from the
    underdeveloped world.

    Assistance and development loans to the less-developed nations
    started to come with increasing demands from donor nations and
    the international banks. From 1995 to 2000, for example, there were,
    on average, 41 conditions attached to every International Monetary
    Fund (IMF) loan to poorer countries. These included specific demands
    on exchange rates, pricing and market privatisation, financial sector
    regulation and privatisation of education, health and social welfare
    systems.

    By 1999, IMF loans to sub-Sahara African countries had 114
    conditions on average, with most requiring prior compliance before
    the finance, or part thereof, was granted. These directives were
    made irrespective of the social and economic impact on the
    recipient nations or factors outside their control, such as currency
    and commodity price fluctuations or access to international markets.
    In other words, compliance, rather than improving living conditions
    in the under-developed nations, worsened the poverty and
    undermined the existing, and generally inadequate, basic
    infrastructure in water, power, health, education and transport.

    As Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize winner and chief economist at
    the World Bank from 1996 until November 1999, admitted in
    2000, the policies pursued by Washington and the international
    banks during the 1990s were akin to "using a flamethrower to
    burn off an old coat of house paint, and then lamenting that you
    couldn't finish the new paint job because the house had burned down".

    The "aid" offered to Indonesia following the 1997-98 Asian
    economic crisis, for example, increased poverty significantly.
    To secure emergency assistance, the Indonesian government
    had to agree to privatise state services, restructure national banks,
    cut social spending and move to abolish price subsidies on fuel,
    electricity and food. These measures were clearly incompatible
    with the basic needs of the majority of Indonesians. The number
    living in poverty doubled to 100 million, and real wages
    plummeted by 30 percent during this period.

    According to a World Bank report in 2002, Indonesia was the only
    country directly affected by the Asian financial crisis where current
    economic activity remained "significantly below pre-crisis levels ...
    [with] more than half of Indonesia's population living on less than
    $US2 per day". A UN World Food Program reported that 90 percent
    of Aceh's population lived in poverty in 2002, with illness from
    malaria, dengue fever and hepatitis a "significant problem" for
    the overwhelming majority of the province, the layers most
    affected by the December 26 tsunami.

    Like Indonesia, Sri Lanka is also dependent on international aid.
    But apart from some basic health programs and other limited
    measures, recent foreign assistance packages have done little
    to improve the position of the poor.

    A high-profile international aid project was launched in June 2003,
    following the Tokyo aid conference, with representatives from the
    US, Japan, the European Union, the IMF, World Bank and Asian
    Development Bank. The $4.5 billion promised at the meeting was
    to be provided only after the Sri Lankan government agreed to
    introduce a number of so-called "poverty reduction" programs.

    One of these, entitled "Regaining Sri Lanka," drawn up by the Sri
    Lankan government in conjunction with donor countries and the
    banks, included agreements to increase the privatisation of Sri
    Lanka's ports, health, education and other state sectors.

    Tied aid

    "Tied aid", which forces countries receiving assistance to purchase
    goods and services from donor nations, is another notorious
    technique that ensures most foreign aid flows back to the donor.
    Although officially condemned by international financial
    institutions and the UN, "tied aid" has increased over the
    past 20 years

    According to a recent UN survey, 84 cents of every US aid dollar
    returns to America in the form of purchased goods and services.
    Up to 75 percent of Canadian aid is tied, while Germany, Japan,
    France, Australia and numerous other donors insist that a large
    of proportion of these funds must be used to buy their goods
    and services. This can include anything from food products,
    telecommunications, transport, and technical advice to policing
    and security.

    Last week, Australian Prime Minister John Howard made clear
    that his government's $A1 billion tsunami aid package to
    Indonesia would not be channeled through the UN or other
    international aid agencies. His government, he said, did not
    want to see any "unnecessary bureaucratising" of the relief
    effort or the money being "put into the hands of others".
    Australian aid will be distributed via a Jakarta-based planning
    agency and overseen by a committee headed by Howard and
    Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. How this
    will work and how much will be distributed is still not clear,
    but much of it will flow back to Australian corporations.

    In fact, approximately $1.8 billion per annum in official
    Australian foreign assistance is distributed to a select group
    of wealthy local companies involved in the "aid" industry. GRN
    International, which is owned by Kerry Packer, Australia's richest
    individual, for example, receives $200 million per year for
    Australian aid projects. As AusAID, the official donor of
    Australian aid money, declares in its mission statement,
    its prime objective is to improve Australia's "national interest".

    A large component of Australian overseas aid consists of
    payment for its military and police operations in the South
    Pacific. Australian Defence Forces have occupied the Solomon
    Islands since 2003, claiming this as international aid, and the
    Howard government recently threatened to suspend all
    assistance to Vanuatu unless it agreed to accept Australian
    police and government "advisors" inside the poverty-stricken
    South Pacific country.

    Washington's African Growth and Opportunity Act is another
    example of how foreign aid is directed back to US banks and
    corporations. Adopted by the US Congress in May 2000, the
    Act stipulates that African countries seeking American aid
    must comply with IMF "structural adjustment" conditions.
    Free market access to the US for African textile, clothing and
    footwear, however, is only provided if the manufacturers use
    nominated American raw materials.

    One of the more blatant examples of "tied aid" is Washington's
    HIV/AIDS assistance program. Under this policy, African
    governments seeking help for HIV/AIDS treatment are
    compelled to purchase all anti-AIDS drugs from the US,
    instead of cheaper generics from South Africa, India or Brazil.
    US drugs cost up to $15,000 per year compared to $350 for
    their generic versions.

    The September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the US also provided
    Washington with the opportunity to radically transform its
    international assistance. Aid would now be distributed according
    to Washington's immediate military requirements and its so-
    called "war on terror".

    Pakistan became a major recipient of US aid, receiving over
    $600 million in 2001. Other countries previously deemed ineligible
    for assistance, but vital strategically for the "war on terror", also
    began to receive funds. At the same time, under-developed
    countries that refused to back US demands in the United
    Nations for war against Iraq had their development funds cut.

    Washington followed this by blocking assistance to any
    country that refused to grant American citizens immunity for
    human rights violation cases in the International Criminal
    Court. Likewise, underdeveloped countries that supported
    abortion rights were cut out of US aid.

    Foreign aid redefined

    Foreign assistance for long-term development not only
    dropped during the 1990s but donors also expanded their
    definition of aid to include spending on refugees in the donor
    country and the education costs of overseas students from the
    recipient nations. Debt relief was added into the donor nation's
    overall aid spending. These calculations cut real assistance to
    the underdeveloped countries and artificially boosted official
    aid budgets.

    Another means of inflating aid figures has been "technical
    assistance". This involves forcing recipient countries to use
    expensive consultants and financial corporations from the
    donor nations. According to a 1999 UN estimate, technical
    assistance swallows up $14 billion per year, or about a quarter
    of total annual development aid.

    Even as overseas aid to the less developed nations remains close
    to an all-time low, moves are afoot to modify OECD rules so that
    spending on so-called peace-keeping operations, or the training
    of foreign armies, can be counted as aid spending.

    Last month, a coalition of Non Government Organisations warned
    that several countries, including Australia, Denmark and others,
    were lobbying for this change. This would allow them to artificially
    boost their aid budgets and claim to be meeting previously agreed
    UN Millennium Project targets, under which wealthy nations were
    to increase foreign assistance spending to 0.7 percent of their
    GNI by 2015.

    Even this brief overview shows that foreign aid from the world's
    wealthiest nations in the twenty-first century has little to do with
    overcoming the terrible poverty that afflicts most of the world's
    population. On the contrary, it is a multi-billion dollar exercise that
    ultimately worsens the conditions of life for the oppressed.

    Having ignored the deaths of thousands each year in South East Asia
    and the Indian sub-continent from typhoons, floods and other
    natural disasters, donor governments and the corporate interests
    they represent are using the tsunami disaster to expand their
    political, economic and military influence in the region. Their
    concerns are not and never have been humanitarian.

    In January 2004, a major earthquake hit the ancient Iranian city of
    Bam, killing almost 32,000 people and destroying the city. While
    more than $1 billion in aid was promised by Western governments,
    only $17.5 million arrived. Twelve months after the catastrophe,
    survivors are still living in temporary accommodation, with little
    of the city's infrastructure rebuilt. Given the recent history of
    "aid" what, therefore, is to be the fate of the tsunami survivors?

    Copyright 1998-2004
    World Socialist Web Site
    All rights reserved

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    17) IRAQ IN TRANSITION: COST OF OCCUPATION
    Grind of Insurgency
    Eroding U.S. Military
    By Robert Burns
    Associated Press
    WASHINGTON
    January 9, 2005
    http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0501090305jan09,1,741531.
    story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true


    WASHINGTON -- The strain of fighting an insurgency war in Iraq, on
    a scale not foreseen even a year ago and with no end in sight,
    is taking a startling toll on the U.S. military.

    The U.S. death count is rising by 70 or more each month, adding
    to the more than 1,330 deaths already recorded.

    Costs of the occupation and rebuilding are also escalating--at more
    than $1 billion a week, with the total now exceeding $100 billion.

    While Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld remains focused on his
    exit strategy of training Iraqis for security units so U.S. troops can
    return home, even he has recently used the term "bleak" to describe
    the situation.

    Rumsfeld says he remains convinced that the only way out is to
    exercise patience and fortitude while a reliable Iraqi security force
    is developed. In echoing him, U.S. military commanders in Iraq
    make almost daily pronouncements of optimism that the tide
    is beginning to turn against the insurgents.

    Indeed, Iraqi security forces are growing in numbers and U.S.
    troops continue to kill or capture combatants, destroy uncovered
    weapons caches and support the country's rebuilding efforts.

    The administration has said it hopes the Jan. 30 election will mark
    a turning point for the better.

    Yet, the Pentagon is so strapped to sustain a force of 150,000
    troops in Iraq that some senior Army leaders are worried that the
    war--combined with the conflict in Afghanistan--is wearing out
    their squads and other units.

    The question is being raised: How does the military retain an all-
    volunteer force at the current level of U.S. commitment overseas?

    One way, a senior Army official suggested, would be to spend an
    additional $3 billion a year to expand the Army by 30,000 soldiers.
    Another way would be to loosen restrictions on the use of the
    National Guard and Reserve units, so those soldiers could be
    called to active duty for more than 24 months.

    In putting together a force to rotate into Iraq starting this
    summer--the fourth rotation since the war began in 2003--
    the Army found itself with a smaller proportion of National
    Guard members and reservists available because there just
    were not enough left.

    "We've tapped 'em out," the senior Army official said last week,
    speaking on condition of anonymity because the manpower
    question has not been settled within the Pentagon.

    The Army has about 135,000 soldiers in Iraq and Kuwait, and the
    official said that for planning purposes the service is figuring it
    will have to maintain that level for four or five more years. That
    is in addition to the Army's many other obligations, including
    deterring war on the Korean Peninsula and peacekeeping roles
    in the Balkans.

    And there is the war in Afghanistan, now heading toward its
    fourth year.

    When President Bush made the decision to invade Iraq and topple
    Saddam Hussein's government in March 2003, battlefield success
    came so quickly that military planners foresaw withdrawing
    50,000 U.S. troops within weeks, with even more coming home
    in the fall of 2003. Instead, the size of the U.S. force has grown
    and now stands at the highest level of the entire war.

    Among the indicators of how troubled the situation appears:

    - Despite a long and determined effort to build a competent
    Iraqi security force that could take over from the U.S. troops,
    the Iraqi force is only half the size that U.S. commanders consider
    is needed to do the job.

    - Even after an offensive in November against insurgents in Fallujah,
    rebels remain capable of killing U.S. troops and Iraqi police and
    soldiers in Baghdad, Mosul and elsewhere almost daily. A roadside
    bomb killed seven U.S. soldiers in Baghdad on Thursday. On Friday,
    a police captain was killed in a drive-by shooting in Abu Ghraib west
    of the capital, and gunmen shot to death a police officer walking
    near his house in Mosul.

    - A U.S. military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Erv Lessel, said Friday the
    worst may be yet to come. "I think a worst case is where they have
    a series of horrific attacks that cause mass casualties in some
    spectacular fashion in the days leading up to the elections," he
    said. "A year ago you didn't see these kinds of horrific things."

    Copyright (c) 2005, Chicago Tribune

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    18) STEELERS FANS AGAINST THE WAR KICKS OFF JANUARY 15TH
    AT HEINZ FIELD IN FRONT OF THE ENTRANCE TO GREAT HALL
    (the entrances to Heinz Field have names engraved
    above them..look for the one that says the Great Hall)
    Press Conference at 2:30pm
    Contact: Etta Cetera 412- 802-8575

    Steelers Fans Against the War (SFAW) will be hosting a
    press conference and rally in favor of the Steelers
    stellar 15 and 1 season but against George Bushes'
    unjust and unsportsmanlike conduct against Iraq. We
    think it's great to see today's Iron Curtain keep the
    Jets out of their endzone, but sheesh, sure is
    embarrassing when they sack the Iron City Beer dudes.
    Just as we don't want to see the Steelers sack people
    on the sidelines we certainly don't want to see the
    president rushing into war against the wrong enemy.
    Osama Bin Laden is NOT the quarterback of Iraq. Iraq
    and Al Quaeda are two different teams. We charge
    George Bush not only with an illegal use of arms but
    an illegal use of arms against the wrong team. We
    would expect such tactics from a team like the
    Cleveland Browns but not by someone who is supposed to
    be the leader of the United States. We also charge the
    U.S. government with unnecessary roughness on the
    grounds that no weapons of mass destruction were ever
    found. Iraq never had the ball and since the sanctions
    they haven't even had the pigs to make a pigskin. On
    the other hand, George Bush has been lobbing long
    bombs all over the Middle East ever since the second
    invasion of Iraq. But he ain't in Heinz field he's in
    left field in PNC Park hitting foul balls. If you
    want to challenge these calls we will show you the
    instant replays.

    When the SFAW marched against the war on January 20th,
    2002, we said "Make Touchdowns NOT War" and "YARDLINES
    NOT FRONT LINES" and we will continue to raise our
    voice in protest this Saturday. Even after the U.S.
    Government claims to have already sacked Iraq's
    quarterback, Saddam Hussein, Bush continues the
    Blitz. George Bush's encroachment has cost the lives
    of 100,000 Iraqi's and the lives of 1,313 U.S.
    soldiers. The number of people that have died because
    of this war would fill up Heinz Stadium one and 1Ž2
    times. Not to mention, the U.S. disabled list bares
    10,000 names and the number is rising. .

    We call TIME OUT to rethink this war. The United
    States is off sides and out of bounds. The penalties
    committed by the U.S. government are costing more than
    a few yards, they are costing lives. We are running
    out of TIME OUTS.

    SFAW will stand with our WAR IS TERRIBLE towels in
    solidarity with people across the country that are
    demanding no more war games.
    UP WITH THE SUPERBOWL! DOWN WITH THE DEATH TOLL!
    GO STEELERS.

    If for some reason the armed referees move us from the
    front of the great hall gate, just look for people
    waving war is terrible towels or listen for the
    marching band.

    To engage in online discussion of UFPJ matters, join our
    discussion list by sending a blank email to
    ufpj-disc-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
    Yahoo! Groups Links

    <*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ufpj-news/

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    19) A Better World Is Under Construction!
    Call for a Mass Mobilization during the 2005
    Spring Meetings of the World
    Bank and International Monetary Fund
    April 15-17th, Washington DC.
    The main action will be April 16.
    For more Information: www.globalizethis.org
    or mgj@riseup.net

    The 2005 meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank
    will represent the five year anniversary of the first major demonstrations
    against these institutions in the United States. Again we will gather in the
    streets of D.C. on A16 to show that our resistance to these institutions and
    their greed only grows stronger. A16 will once more be the day we show that
    our dreams for a better world are not only possible, but under construction
    at this moment, in all corners of the globe- and the IMF and World Bank,
    with all their efforts to demolish these dreams and actions, can never stop
    us.

    The World Bank claims to combat world poverty. The IMF claims to promote
    global economic stability. For the 60 years of their existence, they have
    done neither. The World Bank has poured billions into dams, mining, and
    other projects that have caused immense social and environmental
    destruction, displacing poor, often indigenous, people from their lands and
    livelihoods, and destroying fragile ecosystems. The IMF has destabilized the
    economies of countries like Korea, Thailand, and Argentina, creating mass
    unemployment. Together, the IMF and World Bank have trapped poor countries
    in a cycle of unpayable debt. To extract debt repayment from them, they have
    imposed conditions such as budget caps, user fees for health care, and
    privatization of water. These policies have impoverished billions. They have
    also corroded self-determination and corrupted political systems, making
    governments accountable to foreign creditors rather than their own people.

    Instead of building the world that they have promised, the World Bank and
    IMF have plunged it into a global crisis that is now more urgent than ever.
    The number of people in abject poverty worldwide is at an all-time high, and
    more and more people lack access to water, healthcare, education and other
    basic services. The world is headed for environmental disaster, while World
    Bank fossil fuel projects account for half of world carbon dioxide
    emissions. The global AIDS epidemic is spreading - 7,000 people in Africa
    die of AIDS every day. And now it is quickly reaching crisis proportions in
    the Caribbean, India, Thailand, and Eastern Europe. According to the United
    Nations, 30,000 people worldwide die every day as a direct consequence of
    IMF and World Bank-imposed cuts in social services.

    Over the 60 years of their existence, the IMF and World Bank have shown
    themselves to be utterly arrogant institutions which completely ignore
    people's voices worldwide and systematically enrich multinational corporate
    interests at the expense of nature and of the rest of humanity. It's time to
    demolish these institutions and build a better world.

    Each day people around the world people are coming together to construct a
    better, more just world. Not only are they demonstrating in the streets, but
    they are actively reclaiming their communities. In South Africa, citizens
    too poor to afford the privatized water have dismantled water meters and
    learned plumbing to connect homes to water services. In Argentina unemployed
    workers are taking over the factories they used to work in and running them
    as collectives. Facing the devastating effects of World Bank and IMF
    Structural Adjustment Policies, people throughout the Global South are
    working everyday to take back their rights to water, health, land, a clean
    environment, and self-determination. Five years after thousands of
    activists came to Washington DC in the first mass show in the U.S. of
    dissent and solidarity with the global struggle against the World Bank and
    IMF, the Mobilization for Global Justice is calling for people to come to
    Washington DC April 15-17th, 2005 to protest the institutions during their
    semi-annual spring meetings and to celebrate the other, more just world that
    is under construction due to the daily resistance of millions of people
    worldwide!

    For more Information: www.globalizethis.org
    or mgj@riseup.net

    The Mobilization for Global Justice is committed to making all events safe
    spaces that are open, accessible, and accepting of all. We welcome everyone
    to participate in making this happen. If you have any special needs, please
    let us know.

    mgj-discuss mailing list
    mgj-discuss@lists.mutualaid.org
    http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/mgj-discuss
    free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org

    Christy Pardew
    Communications Coordinator
    School of the Americas Watch
    202-234-3440
    cpardew@soaw.org; www.SOAW.org
    * To visit your group on the web, go to:
    * http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ufpj-global/
    ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

    20) ACTION ALERT * UNITED FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE
    http://www.unitedforpeace.org | 212-868-5545
    SATURDAY, MARCH 19:
    GLOBAL DAY OF PROTEST ON THE TWO-YEAR
    ANNIVERSARY OF THE IRAQ WAR
    * End the War * Bring the Troops Home Now * Rebuild Our Communities *

    March 19-20 marks the two-year anniversary of the U.S. bombing
    and invasion of Iraq. After all of the death and destruction, and with
    the Bush administration claiming a mandate to continue their war,
    there’s a new urgency and a stronger determination within the
    global antiwar movement to bring the troops home now.

    LOCAL ACTIONS NATIONWIDE

    UFPJ calls on supporters of peace and justice in every corner of
    the country, in communities large and small, to organize local
    protests against the war on Saturday, March 19. These can take
    many forms: vigils, rallies, marches, nonviolent civil disobedience.
    We especially encourage creative efforts to put the spotlight on
    the institutions of militarism at home by organizing actions
    outside military bases or military recruitment offices. List your
    activities on the UFPJ website calendar at
    http://www.unitedforpeace.org/events (select “March 19”
    under Event Type).

    On the first anniversary of the war, at least 319 cities and
    towns across the United States organized protests. This year
    there is the potential to organize even more demonstrations,
    and to bring more people than ever out into the streets. The
    Bush Administration will soon ask Congress to pump as much
    as $100 billion more into the war; March 19 is an opportunity
    to call for an end to this disaster, and to demand that the
    billions be allocated instead for rebuilding our communities
    at home and paying for the damage in Iraq.

    MAJOR REGIONAL PROTEST IN FAYETTEVILLE, N.C.
    UFPJ is also supporting a major regional demonstration in
    Fayetteville, North Carolina. We hope those of you within
    driving distance of Fayetteville will make this action your
    priority. Fayetteville is home to Fort Bragg – ground zero
    for the 82nd Airborne Division and many of the Army’s elite
    units. Beyond Fort Bragg, North Carolina hosts four other of
    the nation’s largest military bases, making the state one of
    the friendliest to the military-industrial complex.

    Less well-known is the fact that Fayetteville is also home to
    a growing base of anti-war activists and organizations. They
    are military folks, veterans, families of active-duty soldiers
    and veterans, students, workers, housewives, clergy, educators,
    and all are part of a vibrant, and growing, statewide network.
    They stand firm in the knowledge that organizing in Fayetteville
    is a key to bringing the troops home from Iraq.

    Military Families Speak Out (http://www.mfso.org/), Bring
    Them Home Now (http://www.bringthemhomenow.org), Iraq
    Veterans Against the War (http://www.ivaw.net), Veterans For
    Peace (http://www.veteransforpeace.org), Quaker House,
    Fayetteville Peace with Justice, the North Carolina Peace and
    Justice Coalition (http://www.ncpeacejustice.org), and the
    North Carolina Council of Churches
    (http://www.nccouncilofchurches.org) are spearheading the
    Fayetteville action. Please do all you can to be in Fayetteville
    this year; by actively building and participating in this demonstration,
    we have the opportunity to support the efforts of Southern
    organizers to build a Southern network, and a Southern movement,
    to replace war and occupation with justice and self-determination.

    BE PART OF A GLOBAL ANTIWAR MOVEMENT

    In addition to the many protests already being planned in the United
    States, people all around the world will be taking action on
    March 19 as well. Responding to a call from the European Social
    Forum’s Assembly of Social Movements, European activists are
    organizing national mobilizations across Europe. Brussels will be
    the site of a central demonstration on the eve of a meeting of the
    European Council, where demonstrators will march against war,
    racism, and a corporate-dominated Europe. India’s national Anti-
    War Assembly recently committed to major protests on the second
    anniversary of the war. And we anticipate that the World Social
    Forum will join this call when it meets later this month in
    Sao Paolo, Brazil.

    GET OUT THE WORD

    Circulate this email wide and far. UFPJ will soon have flyers,
    stickers, and other resources available to help you get out the word.

    BEGIN PLANNING LOCAL MARCH 19th ACTIONS
    Bring together local groups to plan March 19th actions in your
    community. Post your plans at http://www.unitedforpeace.org/events

    ACTION ALERT * UNITED FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE
    http://www.unitedforpeace.org | 212-868-5545
    To subscribe or unsubscribe, visit http://www.unitedforpeace.org/email
    Powered by PHPlist, www.phplist.com

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    21) Bush Plans to Screen Whole
    US Population for Mental Illness
    Jeanne Lenzer
    New York
    BMJ 2004;328:1458 (19 June), doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7454.1458 k

    A sweeping mental health initiative will be unveiled by President
    George W Bush in July. The plan promises to integrate mentally
    ill patients fully into the community by providing "services in the
    community, rather than institutions," according to a March 2004
    progress report entitled New Freedom Initiative
    (www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/newfreedom/toc-2004.html).
    While some praise the plan's goals, others say it protects the
    profits of drug companies at the expense of the public.

    Bush established the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health
    in April 2002 to conduct a "comprehensive study of the United
    States mental health service delivery system." The commission
    issued its recommendations in July 2003. Bush instructed more
    than 25 federal agencies to develop an implementation plan
    based on those recommendations.

    The president's commission found that "despite their prevalence,
    mental disorders often go undiagnosed" and recommended
    comprehensive mental health screening for "consumers of all
    ages," including preschool children. According to the commission,
    "Each year, young children are expelled from preschools and
    childcare facilities for severely disruptive behaviours and
    emotional disorders." Schools, wrote the commission, are in a
    "key position" to screen the 52 million students and 6 million
    adults who work at the schools.

    The commission also recommended "Linkage [of screening]
    with treatment and supports" including "state-of-the-art
    treatments" using "specific medications for specific conditions."
    The commission commended the Texas Medication Algorithm
    Project (TMAP) as a "model" medication treatment plan that
    "illustrates an evidence-based practice that results in better
    consumer outcomes."

    Dr Darrel Regier, director of research at the American Psychiatric
    Association (APA), lauded the president's initiative and the
    Texas project model saying, "What's nice about TMAP is that
    this is a logical plan based on efficacy data from clinical trials."

    He said the association has called for increased funding for
    implementation of the overall plan.

    But the Texas project, which promotes the use of newer,
    more expensive antidepressants and antipsychotic drugs,
    sparked off controversy when Allen Jones, an employee of
    the Pennsylvania Office of the Inspector General, revealed
    that key officials with influence over the medication plan in
    his state received money and perks from drug companies
    with a stake in the medication algorithm (15 May, p1153).
    He was sacked this week for speaking to the BMJ and the
    New York Times.

    The Texas project started in 1995 as an alliance of individuals
    from the pharmaceutical industry, the University of Texas, and
    the mental health and corrections systems of Texas. The project
    was funded by a Robert Wood Johnson grant-and by several
    drug companies.

    Mr Jones told the BMJ that the same "political/pharmaceutical
    alliance" that generated the Texas project was behind the
    recommendations of the New Freedom Commission, which,
    according to his whistleblower report, were "poised to consolidate
    the TMAP effort into a comprehensive national policy to treat
    mental illness with expensive, patented medications of questionable
    benefit and deadly side effects, and to force private insurers to
    pick up more of the tab"
    (http://psychrights.org/Drugs/AllenJonesTMAPJanuary20.pdf).

    Larry D Sasich, research associate with Public Citizen in Washington,
    DC, told the BMJ that studies in both the United States and Great
    Britain suggest that "using the older drugs first makes sense.
    There's nothing in the labeling of the newer atypical antipsychotic
    drugs that suggests they are superior in efficacy to haloperidol
    [an older "typical" antipsychotic]. There has to be an enormous
    amount of unnecessary expenditures for the newer drugs."

    Drug companies have contributed three times more to the
    campaign of George Bush, seen here campaigning in Florida,
    than to that of his rival John Kerry (photo not included...bw)

    Credit: GERALD HERBERT/AP

    Olanzapine (trade name Zyprexa), one of the atypical
    antipsychotic drugs recommended as a first line drug in
    the Texas algorithm, grossed $4.28bn (£2.35bn; 3.56bn)
    worldwide in 2003 and is Eli Lilly's top selling drug. A 2003
    New York Times article by Gardiner Harris reported that 70%
    of olanzapine sales are paid for by government agencies,
    such as Medicare and Medicaid.

    Eli Lilly, manufacturer of olanzapine, has multiple ties to the
    Bush administration. George Bush Sr was a member of Lilly's
    board of directors and Bush Jr appointed Lilly's chief executive
    officer, Sidney Taurel, to a seat on the Homeland Security
    Council. Lilly made $1.6m in political contributions in 2000-
    82% of which went to Bush and the Republican Party.

    Jones points out that the companies that helped to start up
    the Texas project have been, and still are, big contributors
    to the election funds of George W Bush. In addition, some
    members of the New Freedom Commission have served on
    advisory boards for these same companies, while others
    have direct ties to the Texas Medication Algorithm Project.

    Bush was the governor of Texas during the development of the
    Texas project, and, during his 2000 presidential campaign, he
    boasted of his support for the project and the fact that the
    legislation he passed expanded Medicaid coverage of psychotropic
    drugs.

    Bush is the clear front runner when it comes to drug company
    contributions. According to the Center for Responsive Politics
    (CRP), manufacturers of drugs and health products have
    contributed $764 274 to the 2004 Bush campaign through
    their political action committees and employees-far
    outstripping the $149 400 given to his chief rival, John Kerry,
    by 26 April.

    Drug companies have fared exceedingly well under the Bush
    administration, according to the centre's spokesperson,
    Steven Weiss.

    The commission's recommendation for increased screening
    has also been questioned. Robert Whitaker, journalist and
    author of Mad in America, says that while increased screening
    "may seem defensible," it could also be seen as "fishing for
    customers," and that exorbitant spending on new drugs
    "robs from other forms of care such as job training and
    shelter programmes."

    But Dr Graham Emslie, who helped develop the Texas project,
    defends screening: "There are good data showing that if you
    identify kids at an earlier age who are aggressive, you can
    intervene... and change their trajectory."

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

    22) City of ghosts
    On November 8, the American army launched its biggest ever
    assault on the Iraqi city of Falluja, considered
    a stronghold for rebel fighters. The US said the raid had
    been a huge success, killing 1,200 insurgents. Most of
    the city's 300,000 residents, meanwhile, had fled for their
    lives. What really happened in the siege of Falluja?
    In a joint investigation for the Guardian and Channel 4 News,
    Iraqi doctor Ali Fadhil compiled the first independent
    reports from the devastated city, where he found scores of
    unburied corpses, rabid dogs - and a dangerously embittered
    population Watch an extract from the documentary
    Ali Fadhil
    Tuesday January 11, 2005
    Guardian
    December 22 2004
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1387460,00.html

    It all started at my house in Baghdad. I packed my equipment, the
    camera and the tripod. Tariq, my friend, told me not to take it with
    us. "The fighters might search the car and think that we are spies."
    Tariq was frightened about our trip, even though he is from Falluja
    and we had permission from one group of fighters to enter under
    their protection. But Tariq, more than anyone, understands that the
    fighters are no longer just one group. He is quite a character,
    Tariq: 32 and an engineer with a masters degree in embryo
    implantation, he works now at a human rights institute called
    the Democratic Studies Institute for Human Rights and
    Democracy in Baghdad. He is also deeply into animal rights.

    Foolishly, I took a pill to try to keep down the flu, which made
    me sleepy. It was 9am when we crossed the main southern gate
    out of Baghdad, taking care to stay well clear of American convoys.
    The southern gate is the scene of daily attacks on the Americans
    by the insurgents - either a car-bomb or an ambush with rocket
    -propelled grenades.

    It took just 20 minutes from Baghdad to reach the area known
    as the "triangle of death", where the kidnapped British contractor
    Kenneth Bigley was held and finally beheaded in the town of Latifya.
    It is supposed to be a US military-controlled zone, but insurgents
    set up checkpoints here. As the road became more rural and more
    isolated, I got nervous that at any moment we would be stopped
    by carjackers and robbed of our expensive equipment. At a checkpoint
    a hooded face came to the window; he was carrying an old AK47 on
    his shoulder and looking for a donation towards the jihad. There were
    six fighters in total, all hooded. The driver and Tariq both made
    a donation; I was frightened he would search the car and find the
    camera, so I gave him my Iraqi doctor's ID card, hoping that would
    work. He apologised and asked that we excuse him.

    Now, there was nothing ahead but the sky and the desert. It was
    1.30pm and a bad time to use this road; we had been told that
    carjackers were particularly active at this time of day. Tariq pointed
    out four young men dressed in red, their two motorbikes parked by
    the side of the road. They were planting a small, improvised explosive
    device made out of a tin of cooking oil for the next American convoy
    to leave the base outside Falluja.

    It was 3.30pm before we got to Habbanya, a tourist resort on
    a lake supplied with fresh water by the Euphrates, which was once
    controlled by Uday, Saddam's oldest son. It was here that Fallujans,
    who used to be wealthy as they supplied a lot of the top military
    for Saddam's army, came for holidays.

    Now the place was freezing, and full of refugees. All the holiday
    houses were crammed with people, sometimes two families to
    a room. The first family we came across had been there since a
    month before the attack started. A man called Abu Rabe'e came
    up. He was 59 and used to be a builder; he said he had a message
    for our camera. "We're not looking for this sort of democracy, this
    attacking of the city and the people with planes and tanks and
    Humvees." He had also fled Falluja with his family. They were
    all living in a former mechanic's garage in Habbanya.

    Most of the people we spoke to in Habbanya were poor and
    uneducated, and had fled Falluja in anticipation of the US attack.
    Some were in tents; others were sharing the old honeymoon
    suites where newlyweds used to come when this was a holiday
    resort. They squabbled among themselves to persuade me to
    film the conditions they were living in. There was still a fairground
    in Habbanya, but nothing was working. In the middle of the
    bumper cars an old lady had pitched a tent with bricks, where
    she was living with her son. I tried to talk to her but she told me
    to go away. There was no cooking gas in Habbanya, so the
    Fallujan refugees were cutting down trees to keep warm and
    cook food.

    Then someone came up and said the resistance fighters had
    heard we were asking questions. We decided to put the camera
    away and go to a friendly village that our driver knew. It was
    also filled with refugees from Falluja.

    One 50-year-old man, a major in the Iraqi Republican Guards
    under the former regime, took us in. There were four families
    squeezed into one apartment, all of them once wealthy. The major,
    like the others, was sacked after the liberation when the US
    disbanded the army and police. Now jobless, his house in Falluja
    was wrecked and he was a refugee with his five children and
    wife near the town where he used to spend his holidays. He
    was angry with the Americans, but also with the Iraqi rebels,
    whom he blamed, alongside the clerics in the mosques, for
    causing Falluja to be wrecked.

    "The mujahideen and the clerics are responsible for the destruction
    that happened to our city; no one will forgive them for that," he
    said with bitterness.

    "Why are you blaming them - why don't you blame the Americans
    and Allawi?" said Omar, the owner of the apartment.

    "We told the mujahideen to leave it to us ordinary Fallujans, but
    those bloody bastards, the sheikhs and the clerics, are busy painting
    some bloody mad picture of heaven and martyrs and the victory of
    the mujahideen," said Ali, another refugee. "And, of course, the kids
    believe every word those clerics say. They're young and naive, and
    they forget that this is a war against the might of the machine of
    the American army. So they let those kids die like this and our city
    gets blown up with the wind."

    I wanted to ask the tough old Republican guard why they had let
    these young muj have the run of the city, but I actually didn't have
    to. I remember being in Falluja just before the fighting started and
    seeing a crowd gathered around a sack that was leaking blood.
    A piece of white A4 paper was stuck on to the sack, which read:
    "Here is the body of the traitor. He has confessed to acting as
    a spotter for American planes and was paid $100 a day."

    At the same time as we were standing looking at the sack,
    I knew I would be able to buy a CD of the man in this sack
    making his confession before he was beheaded in any CD
    shop in Falluja. These were the people who controlled Falluja
    now - not old majors from Saddam's army.

    December 24

    In the morning we went back towards Falluja and heard that
    there were queues of people waiting to try to get back into
    the city. The government had made an announcement saying
    that the people from some districts could start to go back home;
    they promised compensation. About midday we got a mile east
    of the city and saw that four queues had formed near the
    American base. They were mostly men, waiting for US military
    ID to allow them back home.

    The men were angry: "This is a humiliation. I say no more than
    that. These IDs are to make us bow Fallujan heads in shame,"
    one of them said.

    I met Major Paul Hackett, a marine officer in the Falluja liaison
    base. He said that the US military was not trying to humiliate
    anyone, but that the IDs were necessary for security. "I mean,
    my understanding is that ultimately they can hang this ID card
    on a wall and keep it as a souvenir," he said.

    They took prints of all my fingers, two pictures of my face in
    profile, and then photographed my iris. I was now eligible to
    go into Falluja, just like any other Fallujan.

    But it was late by then, somewhere near 5pm (the curfew is at
    6pm). After that anyone who moves inside the city will be shot
    on sight by the US military. Tomorrow, we would try again to
    get into the city.

    December 25

    At around 8am, Tariq and I drove towards Falluja. We didn't
    believe that we might actually get into the city.

    The American soldiers at the checkpoint were nervous. The
    approach to the checkpoint was covered in pebbles so we had
    to drive very slowly. The soldiers spent 20 minutes searching
    my car, then they bodysearched Tariq and me. They gave me a
    yellow tape to put on to the windscreen of the car, showing
    I had been searched and was a contractor. If I didn't have this
    stripe of yellow, a US sniper would shoot me as an enemy car.

    By 10am we were inside the city. It was completely devastated,
    destruction everywhere. It looked like a city of ghosts. Falluja
    used to be a modern city; now there was nothing. We spent
    the day going through the rubble that had been the centre of
    the city; I didn't see a single building that was functioning.

    The Americans had put a white tape across the roads to stop
    people wandering into areas that they still weren't allowed to
    enter. I remembered the market from before the war, when you
    couldn't walk through it because of the crowds. Now all the
    shops were marked with a cross, meaning that they had been
    searched and secured by the US military. But the bodies, some
    of them civilians and some of them insurgents, were still rotting
    inside.

    There were dead dogs everywhere in this area, lying in the middle
    of the streets. Reports of rabies in Falluja had reached Baghdad,
    but I needed to find a doctor.

    Fallujans are suspicious of outsiders, so I found it surprising when
    Nihida Kadhim, a housewife, beckoned me into her home. She
    had just arrived back in the city to check out her house; the
    government had told the people three days earlier that they
    should start going home. She called me into her living room.
    On her mirror she pointed to a message that had been written
    in her lipstick. She couldn't read English. It said: "Fuck Iraq and
    every Iraqi in it!"

    "They are insulting me, aren't they?" she asked.

    I left her and walked towards the cemetery. I noticed the dead
    dogs again. I had been told in Baghdad by a friend of mine,
    Dr Marwan Elawi, that the Baghdad Hospital for Infectious Diseases
    admits one case of rabies every week. The problem is that infected
    dogs are eating the corpses and spreading the disease.

    As I was walking by the cemetery, I caught the smell of death
    coming from one of the houses. The door was open and the
    first thing I saw was a white car parked in the driveway and
    on top of it a launcher for an RPG.

    I went inside, and the sound of the rain on the roof and the
    darkness inside made me very afraid. The door was open, all
    the windows were broken and there were bullet holes running
    down the hall to a bathroom at the end - as if the bullets were
    chasing something or somebody. The bathroom led on to
    a bedroom and I stepped inside and saw the body of a fighter.

    The leg was missing, the hand was missing and the furniture
    in the house had been destroyed. I couldn't breathe with the
    smell. I realised that Tariq wasn't with me, and I panicked and
    ran. As I got out of the house I saw a white teddy bear lying
    in the rain, and a green boobytrap bomb.

    Some of the worst fighting took place here in the centre of the
    city, but there was no sign of the 1,200 to 1,600 fighters the
    Americans said they had killed. I had heard that there was
    a graveyard for the fighters somewhere in the city but people
    said that most of them had withdrawn from the city after the
    first week of fighting. I needed to find one of the insurgents
    to tell me the real story of what had happened in the city.
    The Americans had said that there had been a big military
    victory, but I couldn't understand where all the fighters
    were buried.

    After I saw the body I felt uncomfortable about sleeping in
    Falluja. The place was deserted and polluted with death and
    all kinds of weapons. Imagine sleeping in a place where any
    of the surrounding houses might have one, two or three
    bodies. I wanted out.

    We went back to my friend the old Republican guard officer.
    I was so tired I could hardly take my clothes off to go to sleep
    but I couldn't sleep with the smell of death on my clothes.

    December 26

    In the morning, I went back to find the cemetery and look for
    evidence of the fighters who had been killed. It was about
    4pm before I got inside the martyrs' cemetery; people kept
    waylaying me, wanting to show me their destroyed houses
    and asking why the journalists didn't come and show what
    the Americans had done to Falluja. They were also angry at
    the interim President Allawi for sending in the mainly Shia
    National Guard to help the Americans.

    At the entrance to the fighters' graveyard a sign read: "This
    cemetery is being given by the people of Falluja to the heroic
    martyrs of the battle against the Americans and to the martyrs
    of the jihadi operations against the Americans, assigned and
    approved by the Mujahideen Shura council in Falluja."

    As I went into the graveyard, the bodies of two young men
    were arriving. The faces were rotting. The ambulance driver
    lifted the bones of one of the hands; the skin had rotted
    away. "God is the greatest. What kind of times are we living
    through that we are holding the bones and hands of our
    brothers?"

    Then he began cursing the National Guard, calling them
    even worse things than the Americans: "Those bastards,
    those sons of dogs." It wasn't the first time I had heard
    this. It was the National Guard the Americans used to
    search the houses; they were seen by the Fallujans as
    brutal stooges. Most of the volunteers for the National
    Guard are poor Shias from the south. They are jobless
    and desperate enough to volunteer for a job that makes
    them assassination targets. "National infidels", they were
    also called.

    I counted the graves: there were 74. The two young men
    made it 76. The names on the headstones were written in
    chalk and some had been washed away. One read: "Here lies
    the heroic Tunisian martyr who died", but I didn't see any
    other evidence of the hundreds of foreign fighters that the
    US had said were using Falluja as their headquarters.
    People told me there were some Yemenis and Saudis,
    some volunteers from Tunisia and Egypt, but most
    of the fighters were Fallujan. The US military say they
    have hundreds of bodies frozen in a potato chip factory
    5km south of the city, but nobody has been allowed to
    go there in the past two months, including the
    Red Crescent.

    Salman Hashim was crying beside the grave of his son, who
    had been a fighter in Falluja.

    "He is 18 years old. He wanted to be a doctor or engineer after
    this year; it was his last year in high school." At the same grave,
    the boy's mother was crying and remembering her dead son,
    who was called Ahmed. "I blame Ayad Allawi. If I could I would
    cut his throat into pieces." Then, to the mound of earth covering
    her son's body, she said: "I told you those fighters would get
    you killed." The boy's father told her to be quiet in front of
    the camera.

    On the next grave was written the name of a woman called
    Harbyah. She had refused to leave the city for the camps with
    her family. One of her relatives was standing by her grave.
    He said that he found her dead in her bed with at least
    20 bullets in her body.

    I saw other rotting bodies that showed no signs of being fighters.
    In one house in the market there were four bodies inside the guest
    room. One of the bodies had its chest and part of its stomach opened,
    as if the dogs had been eating it. The wrists were missing, the
    flesh of the arm was missing, and parts of the legs.

    I tried to figure out who these four men were. It was obvious
    which houses the fighters were in: they were totally destroyed.
    But in this house there were no bullets in the walls, just four
    dead men lying curled up beside each other, with bullet holes
    in the mosquito nets that covered the windows. It seemed to
    me as if they had been asleep and were shot through the
    windows. It is the young men of the family who are usually
    given the job of staying behind to guard the house. This is
    the way in Iraq - we never leave the house empty. The four
    men were sleeping the way we sleep when we have guests -
    we roll out the best carpet in the guest room and the men
    lie down beside each other.

    "Its Abu Faris's house. I think that the fat dead body belongs
    to his son, Faris," said Abu Salah, whose chip shop was also
    destroyed in the bombing.

    It was getting dark and it was time to go, but I needed some
    overview shots of the city. There was a half-built tower, so
    I climbed it and looked around. I couldn't see a single building
    that hadn't been hit.

    After a few minutes I got the sense that this wasn't a good place
    for me to be hanging around, but I had to pee urgently. I found
    a place on the roof of the building. While I was doing that a warning
    shot passed so close to my head that I ducked and didn't even wait
    to pull up my zip, but ran to the half-destroyed stairs to climb down
    the building. I felt as if the American sniper was playing with me;
    he had had plenty of time to kill me if he wanted to.

    For the rest of the day people were pulling on me to come and
    see their houses. Again, they asked where all the journalists were.
    Why were they not coming to report on what has happened in
    Falluja? But I have worked with journalists for 18 months and
    I knew it would be too dangerous for them to come to the city,
    that they are seen as spies and could end up in a sack. So since
    I was the only one there with a camera, everyone wanted to
    show me what happened to their house. It took hours.

    Back in Baghdad that night, I changed my clothes and decided
    to send them to the public laundry. I was worried about
    contaminating my family with Falluja. I was thinking that
    nobody was going to be able to live there for months.
    Then, I took a very long bath.

    December 27

    I woke up at home in Baghdad around 9am. I had had enough
    of Falluja, but I still felt that I didn't understand what had happened. The
    city was completely devastated - but where were the bodies of all
    the dead fighters the Americans had killed?

    I wanted to ask Dr Adnan Chaichan about the wounded. I found him
    at the main hospital in Falluja at midday. He told me that all the
    doctors and medical staff were locked into the hospital at the
    beginning of the attack and not allowed out to treat anyone.
    The Iraqi National Guard, acting under US orders, had tied him
    and all the other doctors up inside the main hospital. The US had
    surrounded the hospital, while the National Guard had seized all
    their mobile phones and satellite phones, and left them with no
    way of communicating with the outside world. Chaichan seemed
    angrier with the National Guards than with anyone else.

    He said that the phone lines inside the town were working, so
    wounded people in Falluja were calling the hospital and crying,
    and he was trying to give instructions over the phone to the local
    clinics and the mosques on how to treat the wounds. But nobody
    could get to the main hospital where all the supplies were and people
    were bleeding to death in the city.

    It was late afternoon when I drove out of Falluja and back to Baghdad,
    feeling that I had just scratched the surface of what really happened
    there. But it is clear that by completely destroying this Sunni city,
    with the help of a mostly Shia National Guard, the US military has
    fanned the seeds of a civil war that is definitely coming. If there are
    elections now and the Shia win, that war is certain. The people
    I spoke to had no plans to vote. No one I met in those five days
    had a ballot paper.

    A week after I arrived in London to make the film for Channel 4
    News, the tape of the final interview arrived by Federal Express.
    It was the interview with Alzaim Abu, who had led the fighters in
    the centre. We had been been trying to track him down for nearly
    three weeks. Then Tariq had got a call from him the night I had
    left for London saying that he would talk.

    There was a lot of bullshit in the interview; lots of bravado about
    how many Americans they had killed and about never surrendering
    and how Fallujans would win. He said that there were a few foreign
    fighters in the city, but none in his units; mostly, they were Fallujans.

    But one thing stood out for me that explained the empty graveyard
    and the lack of bodies. He said that most of the fighters had been
    given orders to abandon the city by November 17, nine days after
    the assault began. "The withdrawal of the fighters was carried out
    following an order by our senior leadership. We did not pull out
    because we did not want to fight. We needed to regroup; it was
    a tactical move. The fighters decided to redeploy to Amiriya and
    some went to Abu Ghraib," he said.

    The US military destroyed Falluja, but simply spread the fighters
    out around the country. They also increased the chance of civil
    war in Iraq by using their new national guard of Shias to suppress
    Sunnis. Once, when a foreign journalist, an Irish guy, asked me
    whether I was Shia or Sunni - the way the Irish do because they
    have that thing about the IRA - I said I was Sushi. My father is
    Sunni and my mother is Shia. I never cared about these things.
    Now, after Falluja, it matters.
    Guardian Unlimited (c) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005


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

    23) U.S. Military Families Bring Help
    Families of the Fallen Unite in Grief - And Anger
    January 11, 2005
    Inter Press Service
    Dahr Jamail
    Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches
    http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/hard_news/archives/hard_news/000166.php#more

    AMMAN, Jordan, Jan 11 (IPS) - It has been nearly two years since
    Fernando Suarez del Solar's son Jesus, a lance corporal in the U.S.
    Marines, died during the invasion of Iraq.

    The father's grief is still fierce, but rather than succumbing to feelings
    of vengeance, he has chosen instead to bring medical aid to Iraqi
    children and speak out against what he believes is an unjust and
    ill-advised war.

    Suarez has every right to be angry. He was initially told that his son,
    one of the first U.S. casualties, was killed by a gunshot to the head
    on Mar. 27, 2003. Later, Suarez was informed that his 20-year-old
    son was killed by a landmine.

    Still later, based on information confirmed by an ABC reporter
    embedded with Jesus' unit, Suarez learned that his son died from
    stepping on an unexploded cluster bomb, a weapon that many
    argue is illegal under the Geneva Conventions.

    "This has given me a lesson that we can work together, no matter
    if we are Arab, Mexican or American," Suarez told a meeting of the
    Arab Human Rights Association in Amman, Jordan late last month.
    "The blood of our people who have died should serve to unite us
    against this corrupt government in the U.S."


    While several Arab attendees nodded in agreement, Suarez added,
    "I ask for the forgiveness in the name of my people, but this is not
    enough. We have to do something to end this."

    Laden with three bulging suitcases of medical supplies he collected
    in California, Suarez had come to Jordan with his wife on a mission
    to help Iraqis, particularly children, who are suffering and dying
    amidst the occupation.

    Sponsored by the human rights group Global Exchange and the
    Los Angles-based peace group, Code Pink, the delegation included
    members of two other families who lost loved ones in Iraq, as well
    as a woman who lost her son in the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks
    on the United States.

    Emotions ran high at a meeting between the delegation and Iraqis
    who have lost relatives to the violence, and many began crying,
    including Suarez, a native of Mexico who moved to the United
    States when Jesus was a teen.

    "You have to understand that our children were forced to go to
    Iraq, they didn't want to go," he said. "Sometimes it is survival,
    but that doesn't justify that they don't help people, or that they
    abuse prisoners. Maybe the medicine we bring can help 100
    children survive. But we are working to help the whole country
    survive."

    Later, at another meeting with Iraqi families, Suarez listened to
    the story of a sheikh -- a religious and community leader --
    from Fallujah, who said his son-in-law had been executed by
    U.S. soldiers in his home the previous week.

    Asking to remain nameless for his own safety, the sheikh took
    great personal risks to travel to Amman to share his story. He
    said his son-in-law had been executed during a home raid,
    while his wife was in the next room. Later, the U.S. military
    informed the sheikh that they had mistakenly killed the
    wrong man.

    "This man was killed last weekend," the bearded sheikh said,
    holding up a photo of his dead son-in-law in one hand and
    a picture of two little girls in the other. "These two kids will
    not see their father again."

    "This moment should be a lesson for us all. Let us say the truth
    for all the people. To the people whose presidents lied to them,
    and the media who helps them in their lies," continued the sheikh.

    After pausing to wipe his tears, Suarez took the opportunity to
    address the group. "I understand we are united here in our grief,"
    he said, "The pain of having lost a part of our lives...No matter
    what I say, your own suffering is not going to change. But we can
    hopefully avoid that other people suffer what we have suffered.
    Thank you for being together today, my brother, and you are all
    part of my family."

    For a moment nobody in the room could speak, until the sheikh
    added, "Thank you for these words that come from the heart."

    "I am going to try to continue the campaign to bring medicine for
    Iraq," Suarez told IPS near the end of his trip last week. "This is
    important because the war is not going to stop today. The victims
    are increasing every single day. The Iraqi children need more help."

    It is estimated that the medical supplies and funding totaling
    600,000 dollars brought in by Suarez and the delegation will bring
    relief to at least 10,000 Iraqis, the majority of them women and
    children in refugee camps along the border.

    He knows the bond of grief between himself and people like the
    sheikh is a touchstone for unity and action.

    "When the Iraqi families listen to my story, hear that my son died,
    it opens their hearts and they give me a beautiful welcome," he
    explained, "The Iraqi families see that Americans cry too, that
    Americans have pain, and we are humans and they see this.
    It doesn't matter where we come from."

    Posted by Dahr_Jamail at January 11, 2005 05:58 PM

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

    24) "This is not a life."
    ** Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches **
    ** http://dahrjamailiraq.com **
    January 11, 2005

    Already today at least 18 Iraqis have died as violence continues to
    escalate as the so-called elections approach.

    Suicide car bombers are striking Iraqi Police (IP) stations on nearly a
    daily basis now.

    Today's target was in Tikrit, where U.S. military spokesman Major Neal
    O'Brien said six were killed when the police headquarters was bombed.

    He also said, "As the Iraqi police continue to get stronger, and
    continue to pose a threat to the insurgents and terrorists, they will be
    targeted."

    Most Iraqis I've spoken with appear to disagree with Mr. O'Brien.

    "The Iraqi Police are puppets of the Americans," says Abdulla Khassim,
    an Iraqi man selling vegetables in central Baghdad, "Who can respect
    them when they are so ashamed themselves many of them wear
    masks to hide their faces."

    Of course the IP's who wear the face masks do so for their own security,
    and that of their families. As anyone seen as a collaborator with the
    occupiers is immediately subject to attacks by the resistance, as are
    their families. Many of the Iraqi National Guard, which has now been
    folded into the Iraqi Army, wear black face masks as well for the same
    reason.

    "Nobody respects them because they obviously cannot provide the
    security," Abu Talat tells me as we drive past a truck with two IP's in
    it in front of a closed gas station today.

    During my last trip I interviewed several IP's who complained of lack of
    weapons, radios and vehicles from the occupation forces. Their
    complaints were centered on the fact that the resistance had better
    weapons than the police.

    Later in my room we watched a press conference on the television with
    the so-called interim prime minister Iyad Allawi. A journalist asked him
    if it was true that the cell phone service would be cut on the 15th of
    this month because of the upcoming "elections."

    He dodged the question...deferring it to the ministry of defense. The same
    ministry of defense who yesterday announced that the Iraqi Army was
    50,000 troops and hoped that it would be increased to 70,000. Just today
    Allawi announced that it was comprised of 100,000 troops.

    Of course the gas crisis continues to worsen. Most of the stations in
    Baghdad are closed
    losed_station>.

    Rather than cars filling their tanks, strands of razor wire
    tation>
    and empty fuel tanker trucks sit in many of them.

    Ugly reminders of the lack of reconstruction about in Baghdad, like this
    building
    estroyed_building>
    that was destroyed during the invasion.

    Iraqis are reminded daily of the 70% unemployment with the gas shortage
    driving the costs of everything through the roof. Even petrol is 1000
    Iraq Dinars (ID) per liter on the black market, which unless you are
    willing to endure 12-24 hours waiting in a line, is the only way to get
    your tank filled.

    When I was in Iraq one month ago it was 300 ID per liter. Imagine what
    you would do if in your country you had 70% unemployment, were without a
    job, and the cost of fuel rose 333% in one month, thus driving the costs
    of everything from food to heating oil up?

    Speaking of the gas crisis, this morning a pipeline between Kirkuk and
    the Beji refinery was exploded, and several lines southwest of Kirkuk
    were also destroyed.

    In central Samarra today a car bomb detonated as a US convoy was
    passing, but no word from the military on casualties, which means there
    probably were some. A second bomb detonated shortly thereafter, killing
    at least one Iraqi soldier and a civilian.

    Also, a roadside bomb intended for a US convoy near Yusufiyah missed and
    struck a mini-bus, killing 8 Iraqis and wounding three others. For
    unknown reasons the mini-bus was then attacked by gunmen, who kidnapped
    three Iraqis.

    Keep in mind that Yusufiyah, just south of Baghdad and in the "triangle
    of death" was recently the scene of large scale US/UK military
    operations to rid the area of resistance fighters. Looks like those
    operations were about as successful as Fallujah, were fighting also
    continues on a near daily basis.

    Driving through Baghdad today, en route to an interview, we are once
    again spending most of the time sitting in traffic. At most
    intersections, women and children begging for dinars walk between cars
    with their hands out...pleading.

    Abu Talat fumbles in his pocket for some dinars while an old man
    pleading for God to help him stands at the car window.

    Holding a cane, he is blessing Abu Talat repeatedly for his kindness as
    he is handed some money.

    "Look at what has become of Baghdad Dahr," he tells me as the traffic
    finally begins to inch forward again, "All of us are suffering now. This
    is not a life."

    More writing, photos and commentary at http://dahrjamailiraq.com

    You can visit http://dahrjamailiraq.com/email_list/ to subscribe or
    unsubscribe to the email list.

    Or, you can unsubscribe by sending an email to
    iraq_dispatches-request@dahrjamailiraq.com and write unsubscribe in the
    subject
    or the body of the email.

    (c)2004 Dahr Jamail.
    All images and text are protected by United States and international
    copyright law. If you would like to reprint Dahr's Dispatches on the
    web, you need to include this copyright notice and a prominent link
    to the DahrJamailIraq.com website. Any other use of images and text
    including, but not limited to, reproduction, use on another website,
    copying and printing requires the permission of Dahr Jamail.
    Of course, feel free to forward Dahr's dispatches via email.

    Iraq_Dispatches mailing list
    http://lists.dahrjamailiraq.com/mailman/listinfo/iraq_dispatches

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




    posted 11:52 PM  0 comments

    Tuesday, January 11, 2005
     

    BAUAW NEWSLETTER-MONDAY, JAN. 10, 2005 - PART 1  



    1) STOP THE WAR ON IRAQ! BRING OUR TROOPS HOME NOW!
    ALL OUT JANUARY 20TH,
    5:00 P.M., CIVIC CENTER, S.F.
    Permit granted Pennsylvania Ave.
    Plus: Washington Post [Washington, DC]
    Friday, January 7, 2005; Page B1
    A Security Blanket for Pennsylvania Avenue
    Partygoers, Parade Watchers and Hotel Guests Will Face Multiple
    Screenings
    By Spencer S. Hsu and Manny Fernandez, Washington Post Staff Writers
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54566-2005Jan6.html


    2) Let's Hit the Streets
    On the 32nd Anniversary of Roe v. Wade
    To Defend Abortion Rights!
    Saturday, January 22
    10 am Rally at Powell & Market Streets, San Francisco
    11 am March to the Embarcadero
    www.indybay.org/womyn .
    Driving? Need a ride? Visit http://drivingvotes.org/rides/sfprochoice.php
    ALSO: Join the Women’s Rights Contingent in the San Francisco
    Counter-Inaugural Protest on January 20th. Meet at 5 pm at the
    corner of Grove and Polk in Civic Center Plaza.

    3) PICTURES OF WAR

    4) ITALIAN.QUEER.DANGEROUS
    a one-man show featuring Tommi Avicolli Mecca
    directed by Francesca Prada, Jan. 14-19, 8:00pm,
    JON SIMS CENTER
    1519 Mission, Between Van Ness and 11th Sts., SF

    5) *****URGENT*****
    Please Help Us Demand Clemency for Donald Beardslee
    by Attending These Important Events!
    Beardslee is scheduled to be executed by the State of
    California on January 19th.
    Urgent Press Conference & Rally
    Tuesday, January 11th
    4:00-5:00 PM
    California State Building
    505 Van Ness Ave. (Corner of Van Ness & McAllister)
    Death Penalty Focus
    870 Market St. Ste. 859
    San Francisco, CA 94102
    Tel. 415-243-0143
    Fax 415-243-0994
    stefanie@deathpenalty.org
    www.deathpenalty.org

    www.californiamoratorium.org
    http://www.californiamoratorium.org/

    6) You are invited To Celebrate and claim victory on
    James Yee's case and his Honorable Discharge from the U.S. Army
    Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday
    JOIN THOUSANDS in the Freedom March
    When: Monday, January 17, 2005
    11:30 A.M. TO 12:30 p.m.
    Where:J4NA members will meet at
    3rd & Mission at 11:30 a.m and join the parade.
    The big march will start at the San Francisco Caltrain Station (
    4th St. and Townsend St., ) proceeding to Mission Street @
    Third Street, continuing to the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium

    7) Journalists told to keep quiet on Aceh skirmish
    Martin Chulov
    January 07, 2005
    http://tinyurl.com/4hz37 [The Australian]

    8) TORTURE, DETENTION, and DENYING DUE PROCESS?
    This message is originated by FaithAmerica.org and
    forwarded to you by Justice for New Americans
    J4na@justicefornewamericans.org
    http://justicefornewamericans.org/mailman/listinfo/j4na

    9) ADC Update:
    ADC Expresses Concern About Gonzales Nomination

    10) Iraq: The Devastation
    (links only-article very long but important)
    ** Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches **
    ** http://dahrjamailiraq.com **
    TomDispatch.com
    (A project of The Nation Institute)
    7 January 2004
    http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/hard_news/archives/newscommentary/000162.php#m
    ore

    11) HANDS OFF SOCIAL SECURITY!
    Social Security for Our Future,
    Not for Wall Street Profits!
    Join us in a March on
    Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2005 at 11:30 AM
    To The Pacific Stock Exchange,
    115 Sansome (at Bush Street)
    Near the Montgomery Street BART Station
    Then on to the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce
    235 Montgomery Street (Between Bush and Pine)
    Then to Senator Dianne Feinstein's Office
    1 Post Street (Corner of Market
    We'll be there with banners, signs, costumes, skits, music!

    12) IN THE WAKE OF THE TSUNAMI:
    ** Demand increased U.S. aid
    ** Demand immediate debt cancellation
    ** Donate to grassroots relief efforts (details below)
    ACTION ALERT * UNITED FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE
    http://www.unitedforpeace.org | 212-868-5545
    >> please forward >>

    13) The Class Warfare on Education and those wishing to
    escape poverty!
    http://cbs.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7B4F64501F-9182-48AB-97FD-BF
    B7F302F5EB%7D&siteid=google&dist=google

    14) Critics: Corporate donors eye inaugural party favors
    By Andrew Miga
    Tuesday, December 21, 2004
    http://news.bostonherald.com/politics/view.bg?articleid=59833

    15) CELEBRATE THE BIRTHDAY OF "THE ANTI-WAR" KING!
    Fourth Annual Party and Collective Reading of one of
    the greatest anti-war speeches ever made (from April 4, 1967)
    SATURDAY, JANUARY 15
    7;30 to 10:00 p.m.
    "The Kitchen", 225 Potrero Ave. @16th St.;
    near the Potrero Center (MUNI: 9, 22, 33, 53, 19, 27)

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

    1) STOP THE WAR ON IRAQ! BRING OUR TROOPS HOME NOW!
    ALL OUT JANUARY 20TH, 5:00 P.M., CIVIC CENTER, S.F.

    (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Kkk1928.jpg

    This link brings you to a photo of the KKK marching down Pennsylvania
    Avenue in Washington, DC in 1928. Evidently they were able to get
    a permit.

    (With many thanks to Kwame Somburu for supplying the link. This site
    has a plethora of information about the KKK.... Bonnie Weinstein, Bay
    Area United Against War)

    Momentum Grows for
    January 20 CounterInaugural demonstration
    Converge at 4th St. & Pennsylvania Ave.
    on the north side of the parade route
    - Find buses from your city -
    - Funds are urgently needed for the January 20th mobilization -
    - View a short documentary (5 min.) for the demonstration -
    - Access updated logistical information, including bus parking and maps -

    Converge at 4th St. & Pennsylvania Ave.
    on the north side of the parade route

    A permit has been obtained for a mass convergence at 4th St. and
    Pennsylvania Ave. along the north side of the parade route. You can
    bring your own signs or pick up signs, banners and other materials
    at this location. Any sign that is made of cardboard, posterboard
    or cloth and that is no larger than 3 feet by 20 feet and 1/4 inch in
    thickness can be brought to the parade route. We will provide
    additional logistical information in the coming days.

    The Bush administration has done everything to try to prevent mass
    assembly protest along Pennsylvania Avenue on January 20. We are
    involved in an ongoing legal and political challenge, asserting the
    right of the people to line the inaugural route. The whole world will
    be watching Pennsylvania Avenue on January 20, 2005, just as they
    were at the inauguration on January 20, 2001.

    At the same time as we are continuing to fight to stop the
    government from creating large exclusive use sections lining the
    public parade route solely for Bush supporters and donors, we want
    to make it clear to everyone that we have obtained permitted space
    and that under all circumstances you have the lawful right to come
    to Pennsylvania Avenue and to make your views known, seen, and
    heard. Pennsylvania Avenue does not belong to Corporate America
    and the ultra-right.

    The government is glad to give antiwar organizations a permit to
    go anywhere but Pennsylvania Avenue. They have been attempting
    the same tactic they used during the Republican National Convention
    when they tried to banish mass protest from midtown Manhattan,
    the site of the RNC. Don't be diverted.

    The only way to maintain our right to demonstrate at the site of the
    inauguration is to come to Pennsylvania Avenue in large numbers
    as close to 9 am as possible on January 20. The Bush/Cheney
    Presidential Inaugural Committee and the National Park Service know
    full well that unless people arrive at Pennsylvania Avenue as close to
    9 am as possible it is unlikely they will gain access to the area.

    To reiterate: We have obtained a permit for an antiwar convergence
    at 4th St. and Pennsylvania Avenue. Those organizing bus
    transportation, vans, car caravans, or planning individual transportation
    should do everything in their power to be at 4th St. and Pennsylvania
    Avenue, and along the Pennsylvania Avenue parade route, as close to
    9 am as possible. The Bush government is using national security as
    a pretext to avoid the political embarrassment of thousands of people
    holding up antiwar signs and banners as the presidential caravan
    travels, first to the Capitol and later to the White House along
    Pennsylvania Avenue.

    FUNDS ARE URGENTLY NEEDED FOR THE JANUARY 20 MOBILIZATION

    Funds are urgently needed for the January 20th mobilization. If you
    cannot personally attend but would like to help cover the costs of
    transportation, printing banners, signs and literature you can make
    a contribution through a secure server by clicking here, where you
    can also find information on how to contribute by check.

    BUSES FROM ACROSS THE U.S.

    A.N.S.W.E.R. organizers are in touch with people organizing buses,
    vans and car caravans that are coming to be on Pennsylvania Avenue
    from across the East Coast, Midwest, South and West. In a tremendous
    display of the vast opposition that exists to the Bush administration's
    criminal war against Iraq and the other elements of their reactionary
    program here and abroad, a massive number of people are coming
    to DC from every region of the country.

    Cities organizing transportation to Washington DC include:
    - Altoona, Pennsylvania
    - Ann Arbor, Michigan
    - Atlanta, Georgia
    - Boston, Massachusetts
    - Charlotte, North Carolina
    - Charlottesville, Virginia
    - Chicago, Illinois
    - Cleveland, Ohio
    - Elkins, West Virginia
    - Emporium, Kansas
    - Hackensack, New Jersey
    - Lincoln, Nebraska
    - Linwood, New Jersey
    - Madison, Wisconsin
    - Miami, Florida
    - New Paltz, New York
    - New York City, New York
    - Norfolk, Virginia
    - Orange, New Jersey
    - Parksburg, West Virginia
    - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
    - Plymouth, Massachusetts
    - Reading, Pennsylvania
    - Reno, Nevada
    - Richmond, Virginia
    - Rochester, New York
    - Saint Helena Island, South Carolina
    - Savannah, Georgia
    - Syracuse, New York
    - West Chester, New York
    - Youngstown, Ohio
    & many more!

    For details about transportation and contact information,
    click here.

    If you are organizing transportation from your city but are
    not yet listed, fill out the Transportation Form.

    Demonstrations on January 20 are also taking place in San
    Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle and other cities.

    SHORT DOCUMENTARY (5 MIN.) FOR THE DEMONSTRATION

    Dissent in the Age of Empire

    A short documentary by Kaan Cuhaci & Imre Balanli
    in collaboration with the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition

    Watch the film
    duration: 4 minutes, 53 seconds

    Please contact local public access television stations,
    independent film theaters, community groups and others
    who may wish to screen this piece as a way to spread the
    word about the January 20 CounterInaugural demonstration.
    Copies of the DVD are available free of charge.
    Call 202-544-3389 for details.

    Thanks to CircularMovement.org for this important contribution.
    ACCESS UPDATED LOGISTICAL INFORMATION

    For all those who are coming to the demonstration, the A.N.S.W.E.R.
    Coalition National Office in Washington DC is providing all of the
    information people need where the protest is, how to get there,
    where to eat, what the weather will be like, and more.

    Click here to view the January 20 CounterInaugural Logistics
    Page for
    - Maps
    - Bus drop off and parking
    - Van/car parking
    - Directions
    - Public transportation in DC
    - Airports, train and bus station in DC
    - Housing in DC
    - Volunteering
    & more.

    A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
    Act Now to Stop War & End Racism
    http://www.ANSWERcoalition.org
    info@internationalanswer.org
    National Office in Washington DC: 202-544-3389
    New York City: 212-533-0417
    Los Angeles: 323-464-1636
    San Francisco: 415-821-6545
    For media inquiries, call 202-544-3389.

    Washington Post [Washington, DC]
    Friday, January 7, 2005; Page B1

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54566-2005Jan6.html

    A Security Blanket for Pennsylvania Avenue
    Partygoers, Parade Watchers and Hotel Guests Will Face
    Multiple Screenings

    By Spencer S. Hsu and Manny Fernandez, Washington
    Post Staff Writers

    The Secret Service and D.C. police plan to erect roadblocks and screen
    pedestrians as far as three blocks from Pennsylvania Avenue in the tightest
    security cordon ever for a presidential inauguration, downtown
    businesspeople say.

    Property owners, building tenants and private security officials said they
    have been told that vehicles will be barred from the blocks surrounding the
    historic avenue, which President Bush's motorcade will travel before he is
    sworn in at noon Jan. 20 at the U.S. Capitol and afterward when he leads a
    parade back to the White House.

    The Secret Service, which is overseeing inauguration security, declined to
    comment yesterday. An announcement on the restrictions is expected next
    week. Privately, officials have met with those who do business along
    Pennsylvania Avenue as they prepare for the event. The plans are fluid and
    could change depending on the government's threat assessments.

    Access to buildings in the area will be limited. Employees will have to
    present government-issued identification cards, hotel guests will be
    required to show their room keys, and others attending private inauguration
    parties must have their names submitted ahead of time to the Secret Service,
    several business owners and executives said.

    Tens of thousands of paradegoers also will be screened and directed
    separately to viewing spots.

    "Clearly, this is the first inauguration after September 11, 2001, and there
    have been significant changes in how we do things," said Harold F. Nelson,
    president of the Apartment and Office Building Association of Metropolitan
    Washington. He praised security agencies for imposing unprecedented
    safeguards in cooperation with hotels, property managers and businesses.

    "To make this as palatable and comfortable for everyone, the Secret Service
    truly did reach out early," said Nelson, vice president of CarrAmerica,
    which owns 10 buildings near the parade route.

    The pomp and pageantry of Inauguration Day has long been accompanied by
    tight security, such as the posting of snipers on rooftops and the sealing
    of windows on buildings facing Pennsylvania Avenue. Yet preparations this
    time far exceed those for George W. Bush's first inauguration four years
    ago.

    Security officials have refined practices used to defend against car or
    truck bombs and have improved their ability to screen people as they
    ratcheted up security at a series of major events since the 2001 terrorist
    attacks, such as the funeral last year for former president Ronald Reagan,
    meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund and the
    presidential nominating conventions in New York City and Boston.

    Dozens of high-rise owners in the downtown area have been contacted by the
    Secret Service since November and asked to complete security surveys,
    prepare contingency plans and meet specific requirements for their
    entrances, garages and roof decks.

    Caterers have been ordered to truck supplies into place the night before the
    inauguration because all vehicles will be prohibited Jan. 20.

    Two Secret Service and police perimeters will be set up to move people out
    of their vehicles and on foot where they can be screened, sometimes more
    than once. Two Metro stations, Archives-Navy Memorial on the Yellow and
    Green lines and Smithsonian on the Blue Line, will be shut on inauguration
    day until after the parade. Federal buildings will be closed, most private
    deliveries halted and garages facing the avenue sealed.

    Organizers of private parties expecting more than 100 guests -- of which
    there are scores among the law firms, consultancies and trade groups in the
    pricey real estate that lines the avenue -- must submit guest lists for
    special checks, and those attending the posh events will be inconvenienced.
    .

    At least one law firm said it would scale back plans because of the
    heightened security. Washington-based Crowell & Moring LLP has hosted four
    inaugural parties at its 1001 Pennsylvania Ave. NW offices. The parties,
    with a balcony view of the parade route, have been formal, catered affairs
    with up to 600 guests from around the country and the world.

    But this time, the firm is throwing a smaller, more subdued party for about
    250 guests, many of them local. The heightened security is "perhaps the
    determining factor in why we're scaling back," said Jose Cunningham, chief
    marketing and business development officer.

    The firm sent out invitations to its previous inaugural parties but this
    year is asking lawyers to invite clients personally. Only one entrance to
    the building on E Street NW will be accessible to guests, the building
    garage will be sealed the night before, and Secret Service agents will be at
    the party, Cunningham said.

    The Department of Homeland Security has scheduled a public announcement
    about inauguration security for Tuesday, with briefings for businesses to
    follow Wednesday and Thursday.

    Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), who has condemned the fortification of
    Washington over the past three years and unilateral street closures by
    federal agencies, said inaugural preparations should not be excessive.

    "I am concerned that we are unnecessarily closing large parts of the city,"
    said Norton, who will meet with federal planners today. "I want to go down
    each and every one of these issues, to see if we can get the greatest amount
    of openness . . . [and] an ironclad security reason for each and every
    closing."

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

    2) Let's Hit the Streets
    On the 32nd Anniversary of Roe v. Wade
    To Defend Abortion Rights!
    Saturday, January 22
    10 am Rally at Powell & Market Streets, San Francisco
    11 am March to the Embarcadero

    Jan. 22 is the 32nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court
    decision that established the constitutional right to reproductive freedom.
    On the same day, anti-choice extremists plan to march in San Francisco
    against women’s health and rights. The anti-choice minority might be
    emboldened by the climate in Washington, DC but they are not
    welcome here!

    Join the San Francisco Area Pro-Choice Coalition to Stand Up for
    Reproductive Freedom and Demonstrate that San Francisco is PRO-CHOICE!

    Sponsored by the San Francisco Area Pro-Choice Coalition. For more
    information or to get involved, visit www.indybay.org/womyn
    .
    Driving? Need a ride? Visit http://drivingvotes.org/rides/sfprochoice.php

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

    3) PICTURES OF WAR

    PLEASE ACCESS:
    ** Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches **
    ** http://dahrjamailiraq.com **

    I have obtained the originals of the photos I recently posted which were
    taken from inside Fallujah.
    These are of much higher quality.

    Some of the comments have been updated, and there are some additional
    pictures added which I did not have before.

    http://dahrjamailiraq.com/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=album28&page=
    1

    More writing, photos and commentary at http://dahrjamailiraq.com

    You can visit http://dahrjamailiraq.com/email_list/ to subscribe or
    unsubscribe to the email list.

    (c)2004 Dahr Jamail.
    All images and text are protected by United States and
    international copyright law. If you would like to reprint Dahr's
    Dispatches on the web, you need to include this copyright notice
    and a prominent link to the DahrJamailIraq.com website. Any
    other use of images and text including, but not limited to,
    reproduction, use on another website, copying and printing
    requires the permission of Dahr Jamail. Of course, feel free
    to forward Dahr's dispatches via email.

    Iraq_Dispatches mailing list
    http://lists.dahrjamailiraq.com/mailman/listinfo/iraq_dispatches

    http://dahrjamailiraq.com/gallery/
    view_album.php?set_albumName=album28&page=1
    view_album.php?set_albumName=album28&page=1>
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/coalitionforfreethoughtinmedia/message/26138
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/coalitionforfreethoughtinmedia/message/26138
    Virginion Pilot via AP - Photos - click here
    http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=79598&ran=187050

    TSUNAMI PHOTOS:
    A Community Labor News E-Zine
    Hi, folks -

    I thought this group would be interested in seeing how
    different places are using a lot of different technologies
    to display various aspects of the tsunami.

    I belong to another list for map librarians as a result of
    my background with them when I was working at the
    Library of Congress.

    The two best references are one that shows before
    and after pictures of several areas and a comprehensive
    site put together at the University of Buffalo website.

    In the first one the button immediately above the picture
    indicates whether you are looking at a before or an after.
    If you click the button, you'll shortly be looking at the opposite
    picture of the same area, approximately georeferenced as
    best as possible in the short time they had to put these
    pages together.

    http://homepage.mac.com/demark/tsunami/2.html

    This one has a BUNCH of different sources. I liked the
    CTV site and the maps on the Washington Post site.

    ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/asl/guides/indian-ocean-disaster.html

    virginia

    Readers may email your article submissions
    or your comments to ListAdmin@CLNews.org

    You may Subscribe or Un-Subscribe through a
    Confirmed Opt-In or Opt-out Automatic Process at
    http://www.clnews.org/MailList/subscribtion.htm
    "Freedom is always and exclusively
    freedom for the one who thinks differently"
    --Rosa Luxemburg

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

    4) ITALIAN.QUEER.DANGEROUS
    a one-man show featuring Tommi Avicolli Mecca
    directed by Francesca Prada, Jan. 14-19, 8:00pm,
    JON SIMS CENTER
    1519 Mission, Between Van Ness and 11th Sts., SF

    (The most important thing is for folks to make reservations ASAP.
    Seating is limited. Please take a moment to call 554-0402 if you plan
    to come to the show.)
    JANUARY 14-29 (Friday and Saturday nights only: 14, 15; 21, 22; 28, 29)
    JON SIMS CENTER, 1519 Mission/between Van Ness and 11th
    8pm, $5-10 sliding scale (no one turned away)
    seating is limited, for reservations: 415-554-0402
    to volunteer to help with the show, call 415-552-6031

    Through monologue and spoken word, well-known San Francisco
    queer activist and writer Tommi Avicolli Mecca tells his story of growing
    up in South Philly's working-class Little Italy. At age 19, fired up with
    new pride in being gay, he came out to the world--and his traditional
    Roman Catholic southern Italian famiglia--on a TV talk show.
    The rest is history, and the subject of this performance.

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

    5) *****URGENT*****
    Please Help Us Demand Clemency for Donald Beardslee
    by Attending These Important Events!
    Beardslee is scheduled to be executed by the State of
    California on January 19th.
    Urgent Press Conference & Rally
    Tuesday, January 11th
    4:00-5:00 PM
    California State Building
    505 Van Ness Ave. (Corner of Van Ness & McAllister)
    We need a huge crowd to rally on the steps!!!
    Feel free to bring signs and banners.
    We need to show the Governor that the public is demanding
    clemency for Donald Beardslee.
    Clemency Hearing
    January 14, 2005 - 10 AM
    Auditorium - Capitol East End Facility
    1500 Capitol Avenue
    Sacramento, CA 95814

    This event is open to the public and members of the public
    may have an opportunity to give a short comment.
    It is extremely important that we pack the room.
    No signs or banners will be allowed but you may wear buttons
    or stickers.
    Please continue flooding the Governor's office with letters
    and calls!
    Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
    State Capitol Building
    Sacramento, CA 95814
    Phone: 916-445-2841
    Fax: 916-445-4633
    To send an Email, please visit: http://www.govmail.ca.gov

    For sample letters, event information, and more information on Donald
    Beardslee: http://www.deathpenalty.org/index.php?pid=Executions

    Stefanie L. Faucher
    Program Director

    Death Penalty Focus
    870 Market St. Ste. 859
    San Francisco, CA 94102
    Tel. 415-243-0143
    Fax 415-243-0994
    stefanie@deathpenalty.org
    www.deathpenalty.org

    www.californiamoratorium.org
    http://www.californiamoratorium.org/

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

    6) You are invited to Celebrate and claim victory on
    James Yee's case and his Honorable Discharge from the U.S. Army
    Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday
    JOIN THOUSANDS in the Freedom March
    When: Monday, January 17, 2005
    11:30 A.M. TO 12:30 p.m.
    Where:J4NA members will meet at
    3rd & Mission at 11:30 a.m and join the parade.
    The big march will start at the San Francisco Caltrain Station
    (4th St. and Townsend St., )proceeding to Mission Street
    @ Third Street, continuing to the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium
    BART FREEDOM TRAINS
    For free flash passes go to the transportation page
    or
    call (510) 268-3777
    We encourage you to take home made signs to celebrate honorable
    discharge of Chaplain James Yee

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

    7) Journalists told to keep quiet on Aceh skirmish
    Martin Chulov
    January 07, 2005
    http://tinyurl.com/4hz37 [The Australian]

    [At 5:36 PM -1000 1/6/05, Viviane Lerner wrote:
    There are many exceptional articles at DissidentVoice.org...
    Forwarded from Barbara Deutsch undone@lmi.net...bw]

    AUSTRALIAN journalists who witnessed a confrontation between
    Indonesian soldiers and alleged separatists in tsunami-ravaged
    Sumatra yesterday were ordered to leave the area and warned not to
    report on the incident.

    The clash occurred just 40km from the provincial capital Banda
    Aceh, the centre of the relief operation spearheaded by US and
    Australian forces in Aceh, where some 100,000 people died from the
    Boxing Day earthquake and tsunamis.

    After being the apparent target of rebel snipers, government
    soldiers fired into the air and roughed up Indonesians they
    suspected were Free Aceh Movement (GAM) sympathisers.

    The incident prompted special forces (Kopassus) soldiers to
    confront The Australian's representatives in the area.

    "Your duties here are to observe the disaster, not the conflict
    between TNI (the Indonesian army) and GAM," a Kopassus commander
    told The Australian's journalist and photographer before ordering
    them to leave.
    ==============
    ***NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this
    material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a
    prior interest in receiving the included information for research
    and educational purposes.***

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

    8) TORTURE, DETENTION, and DENYING DUE PROCESS?
    This message is originated by FaithAmerica.org and
    forwarded to you by Justice for New Americans
    J4na@justicefornewamericans.org
    http://justicefornewamericans.org/mailman/listinfo/j4na


    So tell me.

    What Are YOUR Thoughts on

    TORTURE, DETENTION, and DENYING DUE PROCESS?

    Confirmation hearings begin Thursday in the U.S. Senate for Alberto
    Gonzales, President Bush's pick for the next Attorney General, succeeding
    John Ashcroft.

    The Attorney General is the chief enforcer of the laws of our land. As
    people of faith, we believe the American people and the world deserve a U.S.
    Attorney General who has a proven record of upholding human rights here and
    abroad. Every major faith tradition honors justice and places supreme
    value on the treatment of others. Mr. Gonzales record while serving as
    White House Counsel raises serious issues that must be addressed. Among
    them:

    Torture: As White House Counsel, Mr. Gonzales oversaw policies that
    enabled the U.S. military and the CIA to ignore laws and practices designed
    to prevent torture. Outcome of policy: Abu Ghraib Prison

    Detention: As White House Counsel, Mr. Gonzales oversaw legal wording
    that enabled the U.S. to disregard the Geneva Conventions in the treatment
    of prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq. Outcome of policy: Abu Ghraib
    Prison

    Due Process: As White House Counsel, Mr. Gonzales forged policies that
    enabled the U.S. to claim that detainees could be held indefinitely and
    without charge, and without legal due process.

    Outcome of policy: The U.S. Prison Camp in Guantanamo, Cuba.

    Additionally, we believe the Senate Judiciary Committee MUST examine the
    record of any nominee for Attorney General in the areas of civil rights,
    including:
    Voting Rights
    Racial Profiling
    Enforcement of Sex Discrimination laws
    Click HERE to send an email to your Senators urging that these issues be
    addressed completely and forthrightly during the confirmation hearings.
    Further, we are joining other groups calling on Mr. Gonzales and members of
    the U.S. Senate to sign a Declaration Against Torture, which is detailed in
    the email we created for you to send to your Senators.

    The Hebrew scriptures challenge us to "DO justice, love mercy, and walk
    humbly." As a nation dedicated to the rule of law, we believe the
    scriptures from the prophet Micah offer good advice for guiding the chief
    enforcer of those laws. Your letter will help insure that these crucial
    questions are asked when they matter most - before confirmation.

    One more thing - please forward this email to your friends and colleagues
    and give them the opportunity to take action too. Thank you for stepping up
    to participate in this important event in our national life. Blessings to
    you as always,

    J4na mailing list
    J4na@justicefornewamericans.org
    http://justicefornewamericans.org/mailman/listinfo/j4na

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

    9) ADC Update:
    ADC Expresses Concern About Gonzales Nomination

    As the 109th Congress convenes this week, the Senate Judiciary
    Committee will be holding a nomination hearing for Alberto Gonzales,
    the nominee for Attorney General. If Gonzales is confirmed he will
    replace John Ashcroft as the head of the Department of Justice (DOJ).
    The date for the hearing has been scheduled for Thursday,
    January 6, 2005. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
    (ADC) calls on the Committee to carefully review his record before
    and during the hearing. ADC also asks our members, supporters,
    and friends to address their concerns to their Senators as they
    review the Gonzales nomination.

    When Gonzales was Legal Counsel to the President, he wrote memos
    allowing American and foreign combatants to be held indefinitely at
    Guantanamo, Afghanistan and Iraq, reversing the American military
    tradition of 'rule of law.' The memos also noted that US obligations
    under the Geneva Convention were "quaint" and "antiquated." The
    dangers of relaxing our detention and torture standards and, failure
    to uphold the Geneva Conventions were evident during the torture
    scandal at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. To date, none of the senior
    officials involved have been held accountable for their actions.

    ADC asks members of the Senate Judiciary Committee to use their
    authority to ask Gonzales to clarify his position on civil rights during
    the hearing. ADC hopes the Senators will ask Gonzales's opinion on
    the use of secret evidence, the DOJ racial profiling guidelines, and
    his views on the relationship between DOJ and the Department of
    Homeland Security with regards to immigration law enforcement
    efforts, the role of local law enforcement in immigration matters,
    and his views on supporting the FBI in counting hate crimes
    committed specifically against Arab Americans.

    ADC supports and encourages the nomination of qualified minorities
    to cabinet level positions as it is the diversity of our nation's peoples
    that makes our democracy truly unique. Accordingly, this diversity
    should be reflected in the nomination of our national leaders; however,
    ADC feels our great country deserves nothing less than those candidates
    who are truly qualified to represent and protect America's tradition
    of rule of law, civil liberties and civil rights.

    ADC: 25 Years of Dedicated Service to Civil and Human Rights
    1980 - 2005
    American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC)
    Legal Department
    4201 Connecticut Avenue, NW
    Suite 300
    Washington, DC 20008
    Phone: 202-244-2990
    Fax: 202-244-3196
    http://www.adc.org
    ---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

    10) Iraq: The Devastation
    (links only-article very long but important)
    ** Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches **
    ** http://dahrjamailiraq.com **
    TomDispatch.com
    (A project of The Nation Institute)
    7 January 2004
    more>

    The devastation of Iraq? Where do I start? After working 7 of the last
    12 months in Iraq, I'm still overwhelmed by even the thought of trying
    to describe this.

    Continue reading "Iraq: The Devastation"
    more>

    Or to read it from Tom's site with the prelude, click here:

    http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2109

    More writing, photos and commentary at http://dahrjamailiraq.com
    Iraq_Dispatches mailing list
    http://lists.dahrjamailiraq.com/mailman/listinfo/iraq_dispatches

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

    11) HANDS OFF SOCIAL SECURITY!
    Social Security for Our Future,
    Not for Wall Street Profits!
    Join us in a March on
    Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2005 at 11:30 AM
    To The Pacific Stock Exchange,
    115 Sansome (at Bush Street)
    Near the Montgomery Street BART Station
    Then on to the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce
    235 Montgomery Street (Between Bush and Pine)
    Then to Senator Dianne Feinstein's Office
    1 Post Street (Corner of Market
    We'll be there with banners, signs, costumes, skits, music!

    HANDS OFF SOCIAL SECURITY!

    President Bush is trying to cut back on our Social Security and line the
    pockets of his Wall Street friends. We must stop him now!

    Our Social Security is really not in danger, but Wall Street wants to tell
    us
    that it is doomed. Wall Street wants use our money to build corporations,
    slash our retirement benefits, and slash our kids' retirement benefits.
    Wall
    Street would pocket almost a trillion dollars in fees they would charge you
    in
    this private pension system. This would not be Social Security!

    More than 47 million retired workers, disabled workers, worker's families,
    widows, and their children depend on Social Security to keep them from
    poverty.
    For the last 70 years, our social insurance has operated efficiently and
    reliably. It is based on the idea that we want to help take care of each
    other
    and protect each other from the risks of living and dying.

    Right now, Social Security is there for us and our children. It has more
    than 1.5 trillion dollars in its reserve that is growing every year. Most
    economists believe that Social Security can pay out today's benefits until
    at least
    the year 2042, but only 73% of benefits after that. But today's benefits
    could
    be continued by having those with more than $88,000 a year paying their fair
    share.

    If Wall Street has its way, tomorrow's workers will be cheated four ways:

    1. Workers would get less pension in the future--workers retiring 50 years
    from now would have their retirement income cut by 40%. OUR CHILDREN would
    have to repay 1 to 2 trillion dollars that BUSH borrowed for transition
    costs.
    ThIS EXTRA MONEY would be needed for the next ten years, because

    2. Social Security would be paying out today's full benefit payments, but
    would only take in 2/3 of its payroll taxes: 1/3 would go into A PERSON'S
    PRIVATE retirEment account.

    3. The fees that financial managers would POCKET from PRIVATE retirement
    accounts ARE 20-30 times Social Security's operating costs. THE fees would
    BE
    PAID OUT OF our SOCIAL SECURITY income. Wall Street's stock brokers and
    financial managers would CLEAN UP more than $900 billion in fees over the
    next 75
    years.

    4. .The safety of private pension accounts is very uncertain. From 1999 to
    2003, the value of 401(k) accounts owned by people near retirement dropped
    by
    an average of 25%.

    Now Wall Street wants our money to solve problems it created. The
    government
    has a high budget deficit because of corporate tax cuts, and the Iraq war.
    The US imports 5 billion dollars more in goods each month than it exports,
    because it moved manufacturing to countries with cheap labor. Our dollar's
    value
    is falling. Wall Street's policies threaten to collapse the economy, and
    they want to use Social Security to bail themselves out. No way!

    Social Security began in 1935 because of strikes and street demonstrations
    by millions of working people who lost everything after the 1929 stock
    market
    crash, which triggered the Great Depression. Many older people were left in
    poverty because their stock market funds were lost. This is the very system
    that
    Wall Street and the Bush administration wants us to return to. We won't go
    back there!

    Contacts:

    SF: 415-215-7575, mlyon01@comcast.net
    East Bay: 510-548-9696, GrayPanthersBerk@aol.com

    See: http://graypantherssf.igc.org/socsec1-18.htm

    Margot Smith
    Gray Panthers of the East Bay
    1403 Addison Street
    Berkeley, CA 94709
    510-548-9696
    FAX 510-548-9697
    GrayPanthersBerk@aol.com

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

    12) IN THE WAKE OF THE TSUNAMI:
    ** Demand increased U.S. aid
    ** Demand immediate debt cancellation
    ** Donate to grassroots relief efforts (details below)
    ACTION ALERT * UNITED FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE
    http://www.unitedforpeace.org | 212-868-5545
    >> please forward >>

    The damage wrought by the December 26 tsunami is so epic and
    heartbreaking in its scope that words can hardly convey the sense
    of loss and grief we feel. United for Peace and Justice joins with
    people all around the world in mourning the devastation, and in
    seeking ways to help the survivors.

    We do so with an acute awareness of the role that global inequality
    and widespread poverty plays in intensifying “natural” disasters,
    and of the repressive conditions that defined ordinary life for many
    in the region – particularly in the hardest hit area, the Indonesian
    province of Aceh -- even before the tsunami hit. We are
    recommending several action steps intended not just to respond
    to this immediate crisis but to promote lasting social justice in
    the region.

    INCREASE U.S. AID. Contact your Congressional representatives
    to demand that the U.S. government dramatically increase its aid
    to the affected countries. After considerable pressure, the Bush
    Administration has upped its pledge of support to $350 million
    – but that figure is still insultingly small, less than the amount that
    is wasted every two days on the disastrous and unnecessary war
    in Iraq. Find contact information for your representatives at
    http://www.house.gov/ and http://www.senate.gov/

    CANCEL THE DEBT. Like much of the Global South, the countries
    most affected by the tsunami have been crippled for years by
    staggering debt. Indonesia alone pays more than $7 billion each
    year in debt service to the International Monetary Fund and World
    Bank – a figure that dwarfs the total aid pledged so far to the
    entire region. UFPJ strongly supports the call by Jubilee South
    (http://www.jubileesouth.org) and groups all around the world in
    calling for the unconditional cancellation of all the debt owed by
    countries hit by the tsunami. Support this demand by joining
    Jubilee USA Network in sending a letter to President Bush and
    Treasury Secretary Snow calling for immediate debt relief. Click here:
    http://www.jubileeusa.org/jubilee.cgi?path=/take_action&page=tsunamiletter.h
    tml

    SUPPORT GRASSROOTS RELIEF EFFORTS. Private giving is not a
    substitute for government aid or debt cancellation. That said, there
    are many grassroots nongovernmental organizations in the region
    that are not only doing key relief work but are also empowering
    local communities and providing a crucial counterweight to the
    often corrupt and brutal governments of the most affected countries.
    Below are several groups that we especially encourage you to support:

    East Timor Action Network
    http://www.etan.org/action/action2/23alert.htm
    The East Timor Action Network is collecting contributions from
    people in the United States who want to give direct aid to local
    grassroots and humanitarian organizations in Aceh, the remote
    and war-torn Indonesian province that has been most devastated
    by the tsunami. Direct donations to grassroots organizations in
    Aceh circumvent the inevitable siphoning off of resources - both
    monetary and material - to the Indonesian government and military,
    which has a long and brutal record of human rights violations in
    Aceh. Big international NGOs will be obliged to work through the
    Indonesian government, while donations via the ETAN relief fund
    will go towards developing local capacity and will help sustain
    groups that have been doing important humanitarian and social
    justice work for years.

    Via Campesina
    http://www.viacampesina.org/art_english.php3?id_article=500
    Via Campesina is global alliance of peasant, family farmer, farm
    worker, indigenous and landless peoples organizations, and other
    rural movements; they have numerous active member organizations
    in the region affected by the tsunami. The relief philosophy of Via
    Campesina is that local communities – particularly, in this case,
    fisherfolk and peasant organizations -- should participate actively
    and be the key actors in the reconstruction process. By donating
    to Via Campesina’s relief fund, you can help those in need at this
    time in ways that help build self-sufficiency, grassroots organization,
    and people’s power for the future.

    American Friends Service Committee
    http://www.afsc.org/give/asia-relief.htm
    The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a member group of
    United for Peace and Justice, is mounting an important relief effort in
    hard-hit Aceh. AFSC has had a presence and contacts in Indonesia for
    more than 35 years, through its peace-building efforts and international
    conferences and seminars, and is working to offer pragmatic,
    immediate help that builds longer-term recovery so that communities
    can rebuild long after the media attention and compassionate
    responses for aid have diminished. AFSC’s longstanding expertise
    in relief work, peace-building, and grassroots empowerment make
    it especially well-suited to provide effective support to communities
    in Aceh.

    MADRE
    http://www.madre.org/programs/appeal/tsunami.html
    The human rights group MADRE, which is a member group of United
    for Peace and Justice, has partnered with a Sri Lankan women’s
    organization, INFORM, to help establish and equip emergency
    health centers in areas affected by the tsunami. Through these
    centers, survivors will receive the emergency medical attention and
    clean drinking water they so desperately require and displaced women
    and families will receive crucial trauma counseling, which will help
    them cope with the deaths of their children and other loved ones,
    gradually heal from their trauma, and begin to rebuild.

    ACTION ALERT * UNITED FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE
    http://www.unitedforpeace.org | 212-868-5545
    To subscribe, visit http://www.unitedforpeace.org/email

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

    13) The Class Warfare on Education and those wishing to
    escape poverty!
    http://cbs.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7B4F64501F-9182-48AB-97FD-BF
    B7F302F5EB%7D&siteid=google&dist=google

    Sallie Mae, the student loan company, completed privatization at the
    very end of 2004. Then as a form of thank you to Mr. Bush for
    speeding up the process gave $250,000 (money made off of indebt
    students and former students) to Bush's Inaugural party (as many
    suffer from the tragedy of the tsunami in the Indian Ocean) on January
    20th 2005. The day that the electoral college proclaimed Mr. Bush
    winner in the 2004 presidential election Sallae Mae has began its
    campaign to collect money owed by students even if that former student
    is terminal and on a deathbed. This begins the new front in class
    warfare that the corporate media will ignore as soldiers (who joined
    the "volunteer" military to pay for school) loose veteran benefits.

    Below are articles with URLs documenting this new front in the class
    warfare that the Corporate run regime has begun. Please copy and
    paste this in every Blog and listserve that is appropriate and/or
    e-mail to friends and/or print it out and literally post it in public
    places. The war on the people has just reach a deeper assault.

    Sallie Mae completes privatization
    Educational lender cuts ties with U.S. government

    By Robert Schroeder, CBS MarketWatch
    Last Update: 2:21 PM ET Dec. 29, 2004

    WASHINGTON (CBS.MW) -- Educational lender SLM Corp., commonly known as
    Sallie Mae, completed its makeover from a government-sponsored
    enterprise into a private company Wednesday.


    Reston, Va.-based Sallie Mae (SLM: news, chart, profile) owns or
    manages student loans for more than 7 million borrowers, and is the
    nation's premier student lender.

    "We're very happy and very proud" to complete the privatization
    process, Chief Executive Albert L. Lord told reporters at a signing
    ceremony at the Treasury Department.

    Congress chartered Sallie Mae in 1972 to create a secondary market for
    student loans. Lawmakers authorized the company to begin going private
    in 1996, and the company has been managed as a private entity since
    1997, Lord said. Sallie Mae owes the government no money.

    Sallie Mae's stock rose modestly on the news, up 17 cents to $53.67.

    Lord predicted the company's loan business would not change following
    Wednesday's announcement.

    Sallie's stock price will probably continue to grow by 15 percent to
    20 percent per year, at least for the next five years, Lord added
    after the ceremony.

    Assistant Treasury Secretary Wayne Abernathy joined the executive in
    signing documents severing the company from the government.

    Sallie Mae completed its privatization plan almost four years ahead of
    schedule, Abernathy said.

    Lord also reconfirmed Sallie's pursuit of a combination with the
    Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, which the agency has
    rejected.

    He projected optimism that the deal would go through when its merits
    are considered by authorities.

    "We're just getting started" negotiating with the agency, he said
    Wednesday. "It's a question of who speaks for the taxpayer up there."

    In a Dec. 14 letter to the organization's president, Lord proposed
    that Sallie Mae assume operating control of the agency, while the
    board would retain control over policy. Student benefit programs would
    remain unchanged under Sallie's control, he asserted, and student
    discounts and grants could be increased "very significantly."

    "A Sallie Mae transaction would significantly improve the
    commonwealth's higher education financial picture," Lord wrote,
    referring to Pennsylvania.

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

    14) Critics: Corporate donors eye inaugural party favors
    By Andrew Miga
    Tuesday, December 21, 2004
    http://news.bostonherald.com/politics/view.bg?articleid=59833


    WASHINGTON - Two dozen wealthy corporations and businessmen each wrote
    whopping six-figure checks for President Bush's inaugural - donations
    that a Washington watchdog group charges are meant to win favor with
    the White House.
    ``It's to curry favor with the Bush administration,'' said Steven
    Weiss of the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics. ``It takes a
    hefty contribution to get noticed among this group of big donors.''
    Among the 14 big-ticket donors who wrote $250,000 checks were
    energy giants Occidental Petroleum Corp., Exxon Mobil and former Enron
    president Richard Kinder, according to the latest listing yesterday on
    the Presidential Inaugural Committee's Web site. Major donors will be
    granted special access to many of the Jan. 20 inaugural balls and
    other VIP events. Inaugural officials stress they publicly disclose
    large donations to avoid any suspicions of special influence for
    contributors.
    ``The president believes in full transparency and full
    disclosure,'' said committee spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt, who noted
    such contributions help many Americans who otherwise could not afford
    it to attend inaugural festivities.
    The roster of $250,000 donors also includes Dell computer founder
    Michael S. Dell, Texas financier T. Boone Pickens, the giant education
    loan company, Sallie Mae; and United Technologies, a Pentagon
    contractor that makes Black Hawk helicopters for the military. Another
    defense firm, Northrop Grumman Corp., gave $100,000. A nuclear
    industry trade group, the Nuclear Energy Institute, also wrote a
    $100,000 check. In all, 26 donors have given more than $4.5 million
    for the inaugural, which is expected to cost upward of $40 million.


    ABC News
    Energy Firms Lavish Funds on Inauguration
    Energy Companies Step Up With Major Donations for President Bush's
    Inauguration

    The Associated Press

    WASHINGTON Dec 18, 2004 — More than $4.5 million from the corporate
    world has flowed to President Bush's inauguration fund, much of it
    from the energy industry and some of its executives in contributions
    of $250,000 each.
    Outside the energy sector, New Orleans Saints football team owner Tom
    Benson gave $50,000 and his companies gave $200,000, the fund reported
    Friday.
    Northrop Grumman Corp., the world's largest shipbuilder and
    second-largest U.S. defense contractor, donated $100,000.
    Michael Dell, chairman of Dell Inc., the world's largest personal
    computer maker, gave $250,000. So did United Technologies, maker
    products ranging from escalators to aircraft engines.

    Investment banking firm Stephens Group Inc. of Little Rock, Ark., gave
    $250,000. And the education loan firm Sallie Mae gave $250,000.
    Occidental Petroleum Corp., whose business stands to benefit from the
    president's actions concerning Libya, donated $250,000, as did Exxon
    Mobil, the world's largest publicly traded oil company. Exxon Mobil
    reported record third-quarter profits, thanks to higher prices for oil
    and natural gas.
    In April, Bush took steps to restore normal trade and investment ties
    with Libya, enabling four American oil companies, including
    Occidental, to resume commercial activities there after an 18-year
    absence.
    Bush's action was a reward to Moammar Gadhafi for eliminating his most
    destructive weapons programs.
    Other donors from the energy sector included Texas oilman T. Boone
    Pickens, who gave $250,000; and former Enron President Richard Kinder,
    who left the firm five years before it collapsed and now is CEO of one
    of the largest energy transportation and storage companies in the
    country. Kinder also gave $250,000.
    Energy provider Southern Co., which owns utility companies in Alabama,
    Florida, Georgia and Mississippi, gave $250,000.
    The Nuclear Energy Institute, the policy organization of the nuclear
    industry, gave $100,000.
    On the Web:
    Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
    material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
    __________

    Jan. 6, 2005

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

    15) CELEBRATE THE BIRTHDAY OF "THE ANTI-WAR" KING!
    Fourth Annual Party and Collective Reading of one of
    the greatest anti-war speeches ever made (from April 4, 1967)
    SATURDAY, JANUARY 15
    7;30 to 10:00 p.m.
    "The Kitchen", 225 Potrero Ave. @16th St.;
    near the Potrero Center (MUNI: 9, 22, 33, 53, 19, 27)

    The space is beautiful, wheelchair accessible, and alcohol-free.


    $5 to $15 donation requested, but all are welcome regardless.


    This is a fun event for our less political friends too.



    Take part in a dynamic, shared reading of one of King's most

    provocative talks. Taking turns, we create a mosaic of voices, feeling

    how King's power and clarity speak directly to the problems of today.


    Then move to the reggae, rock and revolution of the band SANDFLY, and

    special guest tba. For info on Sandfly, go to www.sandflycentral.com.


    Snacks and refreshments (non-alcoholic) served too.



    We remember his entire great legacy, but in particular, as is the won't

    of the War Resisters League, we will focus on how anti-war Martin

    Luther King Jr. was, and specifically, his coming out against the

    Vietnam war speech he gave on April 4, 1967 at Riverside Church in

    Manhattan.


    Check out some of these gems from that address:


    "Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, people do not easily

    assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in

    time of war."


    "We will be marching and attending rallies without end unless there is

    a significant and profound change in American life and policy."


    "...I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence

    of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to

    the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today - my own

    government."



    Sponsored by War Resisters League West.

    http://wrlwest.org/; wrlwest@riseup.net



    And on Friday, January 14, all afternoon, in front of the Oakland

    Fedreral Building (Clay and 13th St., near City Center BART) join the

    People's Nonviolent Response Coalition (PNVRC) for their third annual

    marathon reading of the same, inspiring, prophetic talk. It really is

    amazing! For more information contact Western States Legal Foundation

    at 510-839-5877.


    Since 1923 the War Resisters League has affirmed that war is a crime

    against humanity. We therefore are determined not to support any kind

    of war, international or civil, and to strive nonviolently for the

    removal of all the causes of war.



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