[Peace-discuss] News notes, Feb. 24 (part 1 of 2)

[C. G. Estabrook]

	NOTES ON THIS WEEK'S "WAR ON TERRORISM"
	FOR AWARE MEETING 2002.02.24

	"We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth
	concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."
	--Louis Brandeis (1856-1941), Supreme Court justice

[I've appended to these notes a column by Alexander Cockburn on the murder
of Wall Street journal reporter Daniel Pearl.  --CGE]

***Sunday, February 17, 2002***

ANOTHER VICTORY IN W.O.T. On February 14, 2002 a federal judge agreed with
CIA lawyers who argued that the now 80-year-old secret invisible ink
formula should remain secret. U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson
disagreed with arguments advanced by attorneys for the James Madison
Project, a nonprofit group that aims to reduce secrecy and promote
government accountability, and ruled that release of the secret World-War
I formula ... could compromise national security. The legal battle over
the ink formula began back in 1998 when the Project asked the National
Archives to identify the oldest classified document in its custody. The
Archives responded with six documents dealing with secret ink. The Project
requested copies but the request was denied. [A CIA spokesman said,] "We
don't want information that would be useful to terrorists and others who
wish to harm Americans out in the public domain...Just because a document
is dated doesn't mean it has lost its usefulness and sensitivity. It could
be very useful to someone who wishes to communicate secretly and do harm."
[CP]

AND MORE. U.S. Army attack helicopters whipped up dust clouds and blew the
tops off coconut trees as 30 U.S. Special Forces troops arrived on an
island in the southern Philippines to train soldiers battling Muslim
extremists. The start of the training mission opens a new front in the
U.S. war against terrorism and marks the largest American deployment in
the campaign after Afghanistan. U.S. officials say the Abu Sayyaf rebels
have been linked to al-Qaida. The Special Forces troops who arrived at
Tabiawan army base, the first of 160 due on Basilan in the coming days,
were to head for other Philippine military camps on the rugged island
where the government has been tracking the guerrillas for months,
sometimes engaging in combat. The U.S. forces will train the Philippine
army in night fighting, night flying and psychological operations. They
may travel into combat zones but are permitted to fire only in
self-defense. "We will take all measures to defend ourselves," said U.S.
Special Forces Lt. Col. David Maxwell, who arrived with his men Sunday at
the base, a jumble of bamboo huts, crowing roosters and grazing goats amid
mahogany and coconut trees. The troops flew in from the Philippine
military's Southern Command headquarters across a strait from Basilan in
Zamboanga, where more than 250 American military support personnel are
staying for the six-month maneuvers called Balikatan, or "shoulder to
shoulder." The U.S. contingent is to grow to its full size of 660
personnel, including the 160 Special Forces troops, in the coming weeks.
Shortly after landing, some U.S. soldiers strung up hammocks and napped as
others began installing equipment and more attended a briefing in a
grass-roofed hut. While only about 80 Abu Sayyaf members are believed to
remain on Basilan - several hundred others operate on nearby islands -
they know the mountainous jungles well enough to have eluded thousands of
Philippine troops for more than eight months with hostages in tow. [AP]

***Tuesday, February 19, 2002***

GREATER EAST ASIA CO-PROSPERITY SPHERE; ER, NO. Declaring that the next
100 years would be the "Pacific Century," President Bush strongly
reaffirmed the role of the American military in Asia during a speech today
to the Japanese Parliament. The United States, Mr. Bush said, would stop
aggression against South Korea [THAT'S AMBIGUOUS AT BEST], show "American
power and purpose" in support of the Philippines, maintain its commitments
to Taiwan and press forward with a missile defense system [SEE 'FULL
SPECTRUM DOMINANCE']. "America, like Japan, is a Pacific nation, drawn by
trade and values and history to be a part of Asia's future," Mr. Bush
said. "We stand more committed than ever to a forward presence in this
region" ... In a joint news conference on Monday, Mr. Bush repeated that
he wanted to keep "all options on the table" with Iraq, one of the nations
he has called part of his "axis of evil." But he also said that he wanted
"to resolve all issues peacefully, whether it be Iraq, Iran or North
Korea." [NY TIMES]

THIS IS NEWS? The Pentagon is developing plans to provide news items,
possibly even false ones, to foreign media organizations as part of a new
effort to influence public sentiment and policy makers in both friendly
and unfriendly countries, military officials said. The plans, which have
not received final approval from the Bush administration, have stirred
opposition among some Pentagon officials who say they might undermine the
credibility of information that is openly distributed by the Defense
Department's public affairs officers ... The recently created the Office
of Strategic Influence, a small but well-financed Pentagon office
established shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, was a response
to concerns in the administration that the United States was losing public
support overseas for its war on terrorism, particularly in Islamic
countries ... Little information is available about the Office of
Strategic Influence, and even many senior Pentagon officials and
Congressional military aides say they know almost nothing about its
purpose and plans. Its multimillion dollar budget, drawn from a $10
billion emergency supplement to the Pentagon budget authorized by Congress
in October, has not been disclosed. Headed by Brig. Gen. Simon P. Worden
of the Air Force, the new office has begun circulating classified
proposals calling for aggressive campaigns that use not only the foreign
media and the Internet, but also covert operations ... Another proposal
involves sending journalists, civic leaders and foreign leaders e-mail
messages that promote American views or attack unfriendly governments,
officials said. Asked if such e-mail would be identified as coming from
the American military, a senior Pentagon official said that "the return
address will probably be a dot-com, not a dot- mil," a reference to the
military's Internet designation. To help the new office, the Pentagon has
hired the Rendon Group, a Washington-based international consulting firm
run by John W. Rendon Jr., a former campaign aide to President Jimmy
Carter. The firm, which is being paid about $100,000 a month, has done
extensive work for the Central Intelligence Agency, the Kuwaiti royal
family and the Iraqi National Congress ... "Saddam Hussein has a charm
offensive going on, and we haven't done anything to counteract it," a
senior military official said ... The Pentagon and the Central
Intelligence Agency are barred by law from propaganda activities in the
United States. In the mid-1970's, it was disclosed that some C.I.A.
programs to plant false information in the foreign press had resulted in
articles published by American news organizations ... General Worden, an
astrophysicist who has specialized in space operations in his 27-year Air
Force career, did not respond to several requests for an interview.
General Worden has close ties to his new boss, Douglas J. Feith, the under
secretary of defense for policy, that date back to the Reagan
administration, military officials said. The general's staff of about 15
people reports to the office of the assistant secretary of defense for
special operations and low-intensity conflict, which is under Mr. Feith
... One of the military units assigned to carry out the policies of the
Office of Strategic Influence is the Army's Psychological Operations
Command. The command was involved in dropping millions of fliers and
broadcasting scores of radio programs into Afghanistan encouraging Taliban
and Al Qaeda soldiers to surrender. In the 1980's, Army "psyop" units, as
they are known, broadcast radio and television programs into Nicaragua
intended to undermine the Sandinista government. In the 1990's, they tried
to encourage public support for American peacekeeping missions in the
Balkans. The Office of Strategic Influence will also oversee private
companies that will be hired to help develop information programs and
evaluate their effectiveness using the same techniques as American
political campaigns, including scientific polling and focus groups,
officials said. [NY TIMES]

CARPET OF GOLD OR CARPET OF BOMBS, AGAIN. American forces appear to have
opened a new phase in the war in Afghanistan with two bombing raids over
the weekend that Afghan commanders in the area said were aimed at clashing
militia forces rather than the Taliban or Al Qaeda. A statement on Sunday
by the United States Central Command said American aircraft dropped
precision-guided bombs when "enemy troops" attacked forces loyal to the
eight-week-old Kabul government near the southeastern city of Khost on
Saturday afternoon. The command said a second strike was carried out on
Sunday, again with precision-guided bombs. [NY TIMES]

WHAT DO YOU THINK THEY ARE, POWS? With the Department of Justice already
fighting a federal suit in Washington by civil libertarians seeking the
names of immigrants detained after Sept. 11, the United States attorney's
office here now says it will help oppose a similar suit in state court
against two county jails housing detainees. In December, after the United
States Immigration and Naturalization Service invoked a new federal law,
the Patriot Act, in refusing to identify the detainees, the American Civil
Liberties Union filed a suit in United States District Court in Washington
to get the names. [NY TIMES]

NOW ASHCROFT WILL TALK RELIGION. The Los Angeles Times leads with growing
protests about the execution scheduled for Wednesday in Georgia of
Alexander E. Williams IV, who murdered a girl in 1997. The paper says that
Williams is "so delusional that he believes actress Sigourney Weaver is
God" [HMM...]. According to the Supreme Court, the death penalty can only
be imposed if a prisoner is aware of his or her impending execution. So
prison officials have had Williams forcibly medicated, and thus declared
him sane enough to be executed. [SLATE]

WHY NOT ECONOMIC TORTURE, TOO? House Republicans blocked vital aid to the
nation's most vulnerable workers, and have refused to release it unless
they secure passage of a dying stimulus plan. The plan, you won't be
surprised to learn, consists almost entirely of tax cuts for corporations
and the wealthy. Here's how the blackmail scheme works. U.S. unemployment
insurance, unlike benefits in many other advanced countries, has a sharp
cutoff: 26 weeks and you're out ... Last week 80,000 workers reached the
end of their benefits; the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
estimates that two million workers will have exhausted their insurance by
June. Fortunately, in practice the rule is relaxed in hard times. When
recession strikes, Congress invariably acts to extend unemployment
benefits ... But the hard men of the House leadership refuse to allow a
clean vote on unemployment benefits. Instead they continue to insist that
it's their way or no way: they won't allow a vote on benefits extension
except as part of a bill that mainly consists of tax cuts for corporations
and families in upper tax brackets, pretty much identical to the failed
stimulus bills of the fall. And they rammed that bill through last
Thursday. [H R 622, YEA-AND-NAY 14-FEB-2002, ROLL CALL 38, ALMOST STRAIGHT
PARTY 225-199-11, OUR REP. TIM JOHNSON VOTING WITH THE REPUBLICAN
MAJORITY] ... Great effort was devoted to obscuring the simple truth that
last year's tax cut offered crumbs for ordinary families, but huge breaks
for the wealthy. Then ordinary workers were told that they should support
bills like the two House stimulus plans from the fall - bills that offered
retroactive tax cuts to corporations, big tax breaks to families with high
incomes, and nothing at all to two-thirds of the population - because
those bills would create jobs. After all, tax cuts are part of the war on
terrorism, or something. But now tax-cut advocates have moved from
promises to threats. Support tax cuts for the elite, the House leadership
says, or we'll cut off your unemployment benefits. [KRUGMAN, NY TIMES]

A member of AWARE contributes the following observation, from the Center
for Disease Control: "Just remember this: you are twice as likely to die
of a hernia as to die in a terrorist incident. Now ask yourself: what
constitutional rights would I be willing to sacrifice in order to reduce
my chance of having a hernia?" -- Michael L. Rothschild, professor
emeritus, University of Wisconsin

***Wednesday, February 20, 2002***

INTERIM REPORT; IT GETS WORSE. Israel attacked Yasser Arafat's Gaza office
by air and sea, killing four guards early Wednesday, a day after violence
by both sides left 15 dead ... In a separate raid early Wednesday, Israeli
tanks shelled two Palestinian police outposts in the West Bank town of
Nablus, killing five policemen ... It was the first time that the Israeli
military targeted Arafat's headquarters in Gaza. Arafat was at his West
Bank headquarters, trapped there by Israeli tanks. Palestinians in nearby
buildings fled in panic. "This is another night of terror," said Ilham
Johfur, who was fleeing with her two small children in tow ... Palestinian
gunmen late Tuesday infiltrated an army post near Ein Arik on the West
Bank, killing six Israeli soldiers, the Israeli army said. The Al Aqsa
Brigades, linked to Arafat's Fatah, claimed responsibility. Earlier
Israeli airstrikes along with shelling and a raid by undercover forces
left eight Palestinians dead, including a 14-year-old girl, in the West
Bank and Gaza ... The carnage since early Tuesday left 24 dead: the four
guards, five policemen, the suicide bomber, eight other Palestinians, and
the six Israelis. Palestinian sources said 33 Palestinians were wounded
... Israeli Deputy Internal Security Minister Gideon Ezra said the
Palestinians "attack and we defend. In the past we attacked and they
defended. We need to return to that" ... A group of 1,200 retired Israeli
security officials proposed an immediate Israeli withdrawal from much of
the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the dismantling of 40 to 50 isolated
Jewish settlements ... In recent weeks, more than 200 Israeli reserve
soldiers have declared they will no longer serve in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip ... In 17 months of fighting, Israel has launched air strikes
against Palestinian Authority installations, raided Palestinian areas,
killed suspected militants in targeted attacks and destroyed hundreds of
acres of crops. [AP]

NO BOOM FOR THEM. Bankruptcy filings by American consumers and businesses
jumped 19 percent in 2001 [to 1.5 million, the highest of any year in
history] The number of new bankruptcies filed in the fourth quarter, from
Oct. 1 through Dec. 31, was up 18 percent over the same period in 2000
[i.e., no big jump after 9/11]. [AP]

NO BOOM FOR THEM (II). Ninety percent of young male workers now doing
worse than they would have 20 years ago The promise of upward mobility may
have disappeared with the 20th century. Prospects for upward mobility were
on the decline long before the current economic downturn and the
aftereffects of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, contends Martina Morris, a
University of Washington professor of sociology and statistics. Morris,
one of the authors of a new study printed in the book DIVERGENT PATHS,
said 90 percent of young white male workers can expect to have lower
lifetime wage growth than the previous generation. Morris and her
co-authors from the UW, the University of Wisconsin and New York
University, analyzed data from a national survey that tracked two groups
of men, each for 16 years, through the early, key wage-earning years of
their careers. Nearly 5,200 men were involved. Other key findings indicate
that: * The new economy has not distributed prosperity equally, in
contrast to previous periods of economic growth, so inequality in lifetime
wage growth has risen rapidly in the 1980s and 1990s. The gap between the
high and low achievers has widened by some 20 percent -- not because those
at the top are doing better, but because so many of these men are now
doing worse. * While some college graduates are achieving higher wage
growth in the new economy, surprisingly most are actually seeing lower
wage gains now than in the past. Only those in the small finance,
insurance and real estate sector are consistently posting higher wage
growth. * Men with some college education, such as an associate of arts
degree or technical training, have lost even more ground. Few now see any
payoff to their investment in a two-year degree, and the typical person in
this group can now expect his wage growth to look much like that of a high
school graduate. * More workers are now being funneled into low-end,
low-paying jobs in sectors such as retail trade and business services.
These types of jobs tend to trap workers in low-wage careers. * The net
result is a 40-percent decline in the fraction of men who can expect to
achieve the kind of economic standing that defined America's middle class
in the 1970s. * Growing job instability seems to be one of the main
factors driving these changes. The rewards for changing jobs in the early
part of the career, a traditional route for wage growth for workers, have
evaporated. And the rewards to building tenure with an employer in later
years are being lost as job instability has nearly doubled among those in
their mid-30s... "What the findings from this study tell us is that the
negative impact of economic restructuring is not just happening at the
fringes of the work force," said Morris. "It is happening to white men,
traditionally the most protected group, at the heart of the work force.
With the kinds of declines in hourly wages that we find here, it is a bit
of a puzzle why there has been so little public outcry. One reason may be
that people are working more hours and there are more women in the work
force now. The net result is that total household income levels have held
steady, but it takes more effort to bring in the same income. This kind of
new economy may preserve living standards, but it is not family friendly.
As it sucks more and more resources out of the home, we are seeing rising
stress on families, and declining time for being with children. Morris
said such factors as the decline of labor unions and the increased trends
of downsizing and outsourcing by businesses has produced a climate in
which the American economy is producing more low-paying jobs than high-end
ones. The service industry produces a lot of low-wage jobs and we are
churning them out," she said. "The No. 1 job for projected growth in the
coming years is cashier. As a result we can now make things cheaper here,
but we are beginning to lose our middle class. And many more Americans
work to live, not live to work ... The facts that 90 percent of white
males are now doing worse economically and that more than one-quarter of
the workers in the second survey did not even manage to double their wages
after more than 15 years in the labor force should give us a reason to
pause and reflect on the path we are on," she said. We have choices to
make here "and we can choose a system in which prosperity is shared, and
the reward for hard work is at least a living wage. It is a question of
distribution and equity. Economists will say that is a political question,
and they are right. This is a political choice, and it determines where
American society will be in the future. For many decades, regulated
economic growth was the rising tide that lifted all boats. But that has
clearly changed now. Upward mobility has deteriorated to the point where
workers face much more limited and unequal wage growth, even when the
economy grows at record rates..."

VICE, AS IN VICIOUS. [In public appearances this week, VP] Cheney's
concentration was singular, girding the nation [HEY, I DON'T WRITE THIS
STUFF] for what he called the "defining struggle of the 21st century."
With Bush in South Korea explaining his reasons for including North Korea
in the administration's "axis of evil" formulation, Cheney offered his
indictment of Iran and Iraq. The vice president labeled Iran as "the
world's leading exporter of terror, directly supporting Hamas, Hezbollah
and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist groups." He also said Iran has
"an ambitious nuclear weapons program and is building up its ballistic
missile force." As for Iraq, Cheney pointed to its use of chemical
weapons. "His regime also harbors terrorist groups, including Abu Nidal,
the Palestine Liberation Front," Cheney charged. "Since the mid-1990s,
Baghdad has publicly claimed to have a suicide terrorist capability in the
Fedayeen Saddam, directed by Saddam's oldest son." In Yorba Linda, Cheney,
who was a young Nixon aide, toured the late president's museum and boyhood
home and then participated in a fundraising reception for the museum,
during which he and his wife, Lynne, were presented with an "Architects of
Peace" award by Julie Nixon Eisenhower. Aides described Cheney's remarks
as his most extensive to date on the anti-terrorism effort, and he
presented Americans with a stern warning. "We face an enemy determined to
kill Americans by any means, on any scale, and on our own soil," Cheney
said, noting that the administration is "not certain" how far al Qaeda had
advanced with nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Specifically,
Cheney spoke of terrorist cells operating in "60-odd countries" and
asserted that arrests recently in Spain, Malaysia and Singapore "have
thwarted imminent terrorist attacks on the United States and its
interests." He said the United States already has "operations underway"
against terrorism in the Philippines, Bosnia and off the Horn of Africa to
block weapons shipments to Somalia. [WASH POST]

SURPRISE. The Los Angeles Times leads with a federal appeal court's order
that the Federal Communication Commission reconsider its regulations
limiting the number of TV stations that any one company can own. The paper
says that if the rules are revoked-and that's likely given that the
current head of the FCC supports repealing them-it would be the biggest
change in the regulations since they were created in the 1940s and would
mean that media conglomerates would be able to buy as many stations as
they like. [SLATE]

***Thursday, February 21, 2002***

Today is the 37th anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X. The
leader ­ one of the greatest this country saw in the last century ­ was
shot to death as he spoke before a packed audience in Harlem's Audubon
Ballroom. He was just 39 years old. [DN] "I believe that there will be
ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those who do the
oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want
freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue
the system of exploitation. I believe that there will be that kind of a
clash. But I don't think it will be based on the color of the skin." -
Malcolm X

INTERIM REPORT; IT GETS WORSE (II). Israeli tanks and troops staged a
massive raid into Gaza City, blowing up a local television and radio
transmission center and seriously wounding two people, Palestinian
security sources said. Israeli troops also killed four Palestinians and
two dozen others in another tank raid into a refugee camp in the town of
Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. [AFP]

WHAT THE US HAS BEEN TRYING TO GET UNDERWAY FOR MONTHS. Colombian
warplanes began bombing a vast rebel territory Thursday and amassing
troops nearby, following the president's decision to cancel peace talks
and reclaim the region from leftist guerrillas, the military reported.
[AP]

SURPRISE. The Central Intelligence Agency is warning in a classified
analysis that Afghanistan could descend into civil war due to fierce
competition for power among rival warlords, a senior U.S. official said
Thursday. [AP]

DEMONSTRATION WAR. The Washington Post reports that Philippine guerrilla
"Abu Sayyaf has had links to al-Qaida and, *although those ties have
weakened in recent years*, Pentagon officials worry that they could be
renewed as al-Qaida members flee Afghanistan." [Emphasis added.] Two
paragraphs further down, the WP says, "U.S. military support for battling
the Filipino insurgency is unequaled in Southeast Asia." If Abu Sayyaf is
no longer best buddies with al-Qaida, why is it the United States'
regional Enemy No.1? Especially since, as the WSJ reported a few weeks
ago, many Filipinos say that "another group-the Moro Islamic Liberation
Front, a 15,000-man, separatist army-has stronger ties to Mr. Bin Laden's
al-Qaida network." (NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof offered a possible
explanation earlier this week. He wrote, "Abu Sayyaf is an enemy that can
be quickly beaten.") [SLATE]

[continued in part 2]