[Peace-discuss] News notes, 12/30/01 (Part 1 of 2)

[C. G. Estabrook]

NOTES ON THE WEEK'S NEWS, FOR AWARE MEETING, 12/30/01 (Part 1 of 2)
 
[NB: These notes are followed by a selection from a 12/8 talk by Noam
Chomsky, on "two terrible ...  crimes ... The first was the terrorist
attacks of Sept. 11; the second, the response to them, surely taking a far
greater toll of innocent lives..."  --CGE]

SUNDAY DECEMBER 23

NY Mayor Rudy Giuliani was named "person of the year" by Time magazine.
The NYT reported Thursday that Fire Department officials warned the city
and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in 1998 and 1999 that a
giant diesel fuel tank for the mayor's $13 million command bunker in 7
World Trade Center, a 47-story high-rise that burned and collapsed on
Sept. 11, posed a hazard and was not consistent with city fire codes. The
6,000-gallon tank was positioned about 15 feet above the ground floor and
near several lobby elevators and was meant to fuel generators that would
supply electricity to the 23rd-floor bunker in the event of a power
failure. Although the city made some design changes to address the
concerns moving a fuel pipe that would have run from the tank up an
elevator shaft, for example it left the tank in place. But the Fire
Department repeatedly warned that a tank in that position could spread
fumes throughout the building if it leaked, or, if it caught fire, could
produce what one Fire Department memorandum called "disaster." Putting a
tank underground typically protects it from falling debris, and impedes
leaks or tank fires from spreading throughout the building.

Michael Powell Washington Post - Curled up on sidewalks and jammed into
crowded shelters, the masses of homeless men, women and children in this
city have reached record numbers, surpassing the worst levels of the last
recession. About 29,400 homeless live in city shelters and hot-plate hotel
rooms each night, including 12,500 children. They are the face of a poor
New York that supposedly vanished after the early 1990s. Now they are
everywhere. A decaying economy and, even more important, a severe lack of
affordable housing have driven the current crisis. In the past few years,
housing costs in New York's poor neighborhoods have spiked sharply, rising
far faster than in wealthy districts. Homelessness has jumped 13 percent
nationwide this year. In Chicago, homelessness jumped 22 percent, in San
Francisco, 20 percent. In Washington, the number of homeless families has
risen by 32 percent - after four years of decline. D.C. Village, the
city's intake shelter for families, is at capacity, and about 600 men and
women bed down each night on city streets . . . In Providence, R.I., and
Portland, Maine, shelters are at capacity and a quarter of their homeless
population consists of children. In Connecticut, where unlike New York
there is no legal right to shelter, officials have turned away 11,241
people seeking shelter this year, compared with 9,000 last year. In New
Haven, Bridgeport and Hartford, homeless people sleep in abandoned
buildings and cars, as well as in train and bus stations. [WASH POST]

A TELEVISION documentary in which Shimon Peres, Israel's foreign minister,
discloses for the first time details about Israel's acquisition of nuclear
weapons is to be broadcast in the Arab world. It is intended, at a time of
rising tensions, as a warning.  In the documentary, Mr Peres goes further
than any other Israeli official in confirming that the Jewish state has a
nuclear capability ... Mordechai Vanunu, a technician at the Dimona
nuclear facility, is serving an 18-year jail sentence for revealing in
1986 that Israel had a nuclear programme and more than 100 warheads ...
Israel still officially neither confirms nor denies making nuclear weapons
at the plant near Dimona. The country's journalists use coded language,
never stating unequivocally that Israel has the bomb ... The documentary
marks the first time that the Israeli broadcasting media has dealt with
the issue candidly ... in the past six months Israel has detained an
academic over a book he wrote on the country's nuclear capacity and jailed
Yitzhak Yaakov, a retired general, for talking to a journalists on the
subject. [So it's clearly a statement the Israeli government wants to
make, to its neighbors and the world, that it has many weapons of mass
destruction...] [TELEGRAPH UK]

US special forces are cutting off the fingers of dead al-Qaida fighters in
the mountains of eastern Afghanistan to clarify through DNA analysis
whether accused terrorist Osama bin Laden died in the battle of Tora Bora
... the fingers will be turned over to the FBI for DNA analysis to clarify
whether bin Laden died in the battle. U.S. officials have reportedly
already collected DNA samples from members of bin Laden's family to check
for a match.  [TIMES UK]

MONDAY, DECEMBER 24

India and Pakistan are massing troops on their borders, resulting in the
biggest military build-up in years. Pakistan has also deployed ballistic
missiles near the border--the kind that can hold nukes. Don't worry, said
some Indian officials, it's all for show. "We are keeping up the
warmongering to get the U.S. to put pressure" on Pakistan to crack down
Kashmiri separatist groups, said one.  [WASH POST]

The newly installed president of Argentina's first official act in office:
basically declaring his government bankrupt and defaulting on $132 billion
worth of government bonds and loans. That's the largest default in
history. The papers note that foreign lenders have been expecting this for
a while, so they've already sold off Argentinean bonds. [ALL]

In Argentina, the restructuring initiated by the military dictatorship in
the mid-1970s profoundly altered the economic and social conditions in
Argentina. After more than 20 years of neo-liberalism, investment
represents a smaller share of gross domestic product today than it did in
1975. Per capita GDP has been stagnant throughout the period, unemployment
and job instability have reached unprecedented levels, and workers'
incomes have fallen. "Trickle down" fiscal policy was supposed to lead
eventually to broad improvements in living standards, but it has actually
contributed to a marked deterioration in the level and distribution of
income. In 1975, salaried workers received 43% of total income generated,
while today their participation does not exceed 20%. In 1974, the poorest
10% of the population earned 4.4% of total national income; in 1999, this
segment earned only 1.5%. In contrast, the richest 10% of the population
went from receiving 23.6% of total income in 1974 to 36.1% today.
[PROGRESSIVE REVIEW]

As the global coffee crisis grows ever worse, a new human rights campaign
has exploded across the United States demanding fair trade and a living
wage for impoverished farmers. The campaign, which is spearheaded by the
Global Exchange, is calling on Folgers, the international coffee giant, to
support growers by buying Fair Trade Certified coffee. It was officially
launched on December 15 in a series of supermarket protests that took
place across the nation.  The new corporate accountability campaign comes
in response to a worldwide collapse in wholesale coffee prices. The
collapse has pushed millions of farmers into poverty and debt and
threatens to ruin an entire generation of coffee farmers. While dozens of
coffee companies have responded to the crisis by buying Fair Trade Coffee,
Folgers has refused. The Procter & Gamble-owned company is one of the
largest and most profitable coffee sellers in the world.  For dozens of
developing countries, coffee is an essential cash crop, with some 20
million households depending on it for a living. But in recent years, this
living has been harder and harder to make as international coffee prices
have plummeted to an all-time low. The global price of coffee is now 43
cents per pound, down 50 percent since 1999.  The result of this coffee
crisis has been widening famine and social instability in countries as
diverse as Kenya, Columbia, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. The UN World Food
Program estimates that 150,000 refugees have been created by the collapse
in prices. Meanwhile, transnational corporations and 'designer coffee'
retailers are posting record profits. [DEMOCRACY NOW]

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 25 [THE WESTERN CHRISTIAN CHURCH CELEBRATES ITS THIRD
MOST IMPORTANT YEARLY FESTIVAL]

"Warlike momentum" is building between India and Pakistan, which have both
moved troops to their shared border.  Unlike in recent years, this buildup
is along the full length of the border, not just in Kashmir, and according
to diplomats, it's the largest buildup in years. [NY TIMES]

Afghanistan's president, Ahmed Karzai, had appointed a warlord from
northern Afghanistan, Abdurrashid Dostum, to be his deputy defense
minister. Dostum is a nasty fellow. He has a lengthy history of
human-rights abuses and penchant for switching sides. But he also controls
a few thousand troops. The WP calls Dostum's new position, "a key post."
The NYT, though, says there are rumors that he wanted a bigger position.
Until yesterday, Dostum had been bad-mouthing Afghanistan's new
government. [WASH POST] It was at Dostum's stronghold in Mazar-i_Sharif
that the the mass killing of prisoners occurred; see the article on Dostum
by Alexander Cockburn. [COUNTERPUNCH]

MOLLY IVINS.  The problem is General Abdul Rashid Dostum, the warlord's
warlord; a man who has changed sides nine times, including stints fighting
for the Soviets, the Soviet puppets, the mujahideen, the Taliban, and now
the Northern Alliance. This one is a classic. One Western diplomat,
according to The New York Times, says that Dostum has ''a very checkered
human rights record.'' Now that's diplomatic language. According to
intelligence sources, the guy is brutal and corrupt, as well as
untrustworthy - and according to the Revolutionary Association of the
Women of Afghanistan, his soldiers' record of rape is ghastly. To have
fought a war, costing who knows how many Afghan lives, at least several
American lives, and a monetary cost of billions only to end up with Dostum
in power is beyond bearing. Dostum has been appointed deputy defense
minister in the new Afghan government, ''something of an unsavory
trade-off,'' notes the Times. If he remains deputy defense minister - one
of his rival warlords notes that Dostum is illiterate and incompetent to
be deputy defense minister - we will presumably have to accept it as a
necessary evil pursuant to Hamid Karzai's noble effort to create a true
coalition government. [BOSTON GLOBE]

Drug enforcement authorities anticipate that opium production will
"increase dramatically" next year. That's because in the past year the
Taliban had cracked down on poppies, cutting production by about 90
percent. [WASH POST]

VH1 rebroadcast Paul McCartney's Oct. 20 Twin Tower relief concert on
Christmas Day. The music video cable channel edited out the infamous
twenty seconds where firefighters, cops and their friends in the crowd
booed New York Sen. Hillary Clinton off the stage. "The boos were...
replaced with general crowd noise," reports the New York Post's Neal
Travis, adding, "the cable channel evidently wants to keep on Hillary's
good side." . . . VH1 is owned by Viacom, parent company of Simon &
Schuster, the book publisher that awarded Clinton $8 million last year for
a book she won't even have to write till next year.

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 26

"This year the downsizing just dwarfs anything we've seen before that,"
John Challenger, chief executive officer of the company that tracks
employment trends, said Wednesday.  The worst year prior to 2001 was 1998,
when 677,795 job cuts were announced.  The job losses cut across three
significant economic sectors: manufacturing/industrial, high technology
and travel, Challenger said. Challenger compiles figures from job cut
announcements and does not count actual job losses, which can come from
firings, early retirements and attrition.  The telecommunications industry
led the way with 292,756 planned cuts through November.  Besides the
struggling economy and the Sept. 11 attacks, Challenger pointed to two
other trends that seem to have led to more layoffs: an increase in mergers
in recent years and a "frenzy of overhiring" that occurred as the economy
soared in the mid to late 1990s.  Challenger said he has also been struck
by the fact that even industry-leading companies are now downsizing. [AP]

Michael D. Andreas was released from federal prison early Wednesday, but
that doesn't mean the former vice chairman of Archer Daniels Midland Co.
will return to the company his father built. ADM said it has no plans to
rehire Andreas, who was one of three top executives at the agribusiness
giant convicted in 1998 of taking part in a global conspiracy to illegally
fix the price of lysine, a widely used additive in livestock feed during
the early 1990s. [CHICAGO TRIBUNE]

The rising power this year of rightist paramilitary forces in Colombia ...
is altering the strategic balance in the country after four decades of
civil war. Although the paramilitary force is listed by the State
Department as a terrorist organization [its growth is a] byproduct of a
U.S. program to strengthen Colombia's armed forces, which frequently work
alongside the paramilitary groups. The paramilitary forces, once a
collection of armed groups sponsored by wealthy landowners, have become a
national movement and the most potent new dimension in Colombia's civil
war ... Congress approved a $1.3 billion, mostly military aid package last
year [including] helicopters, military training and herbicide spraying ...
aerial herbicide spraying has killed more than 180,000 acres of coca [but]
much of the coca has been replanted in the same locations. [WASH POST]

Elementary school students in [South Korea] are reportedly singing the
praises of Osama bin Laden. School authorities said they are working to
discourage children from singing what they called a "Bin Laden worship
song."  The South Gyeongsang Office of Education reported Tuesday that
1,750 students had been punished at 15 schools for singing the song. The
education office said a survey it conducted showed that in Gimhae about
1,700 of the city's 40,000 elementary school students have at least heard
the song. In Busan about 10 percent of elementary school students said
they have heard or sung the song.  Calling the song "potentially
dangerous," the Busan Police Agency and the city's education office on
Dec. 7 ordered schools to stop students from singing the song and to
educate them as to why Mr. bin Laden is not someone to be admired. They
are also searching for the origin of the song, but have not had any luck.
The song, reportedly sung to the tune of the theme song of a popular
cartoon, goes something like this: "Osama bin Laden, the person I admire
most. I also want to be a terrorist when I grow up. President Bush, the
person I detest most. I'm going to blow up the 63 building." [JOONGANG
ILBO via INT HERALD TRIBUNE]

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27

U.S. military officials are making it clear publicly that Afghanistan
isn't the only country where American forces are fighting - or planning to
fight - terrorist networks.  They won't say where, but other areas known
as hide-outs for terrorist Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network include
Somalia, Yemen, Sudan and the Chechnya region of Russia. All are
predominantly Muslim, with vast, war-ravaged areas under little or no
central government control.  The Afghanistan war's commander, Army Gen.
Tommy Franks, gave one of the strongest indications yet about the shadowy
aspects of the U.S. military campaign. Speaking to The Associated Press
Tuesday on the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier, Franks said overt
and covert U.S. military operations are ``going on in a great many
places.'' [AP]

The Pentagon has nixed it a plan to send hundreds of Marines into Tora
Bora. Instead, the U.S. is pushing Afghan forces to do the checking, and
is helping to convince them by "offering incentives like weapons, money
and winter clothing."  Tora Bora is a dangerous place--filled with mines,
unexploded ordinance, and perhaps booby-traps-- but another issue holding
back the Marines back is that TB happens to be located in a fundamentalist
province of Afghanistan. Thus the U.S. is keen on keeping a low presence
there. [NY TIMES]

India confirms that it has moved ballistic missiles to its border with
Pakistan. India said it was merely responding to similar moves by
Pakistan. Nobody is sure whether either country's missiles are armed with
nukes, but then, as one expert put it, "if Indian radar picks up a
missile, what do you think would happen?" [WASH POST]

Afghanistan's new foreign minister, Abdullah ... said yesterday that it
may take up to two years to rid Afghanistan of al-Qaida's presence ... the
marines' prisoners could be on their way to a less than fun-filled cruise
to the Caribbean ... (NBC with breaking the news.) ... the military is
preparing to send some of the prisoners to the U.S. base on Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba. [NY TIMES]

Saudi Arabia let many of its disaffected youth go abroad to fight foreign
wars as a sort of safety valve. "The Saudis' policies made the world safer
for Saudi Arabia and the Saudi regime," said one U.S. diplomatic. "And I
don't think it was their intention to make it unsafe for the United
States. But that was the actual, if unintended of exporting the
troublemakers." [NY TIMES]

Ninety foreign civilians traveling on a solidarity visit to Gaza were
blocked entry by the Israeli military at Erez today, after being processed
and given initial permission to enter.  The international group was
comprised of American, Belgian, British, and French citizens. Protesting
the Israeli Army decision not to let the group enter Gaza, where they were
scheduled to tour Gaza City, Khan Younis and Rafah, including the refugee
camps, and meet with Dr. Haidar Abdel Shafi, Director of the Red Crescent,
one half of the group decided to walk through Erez. With hands up in the
air the group proceeded to walk, but were met with a violent Israeli
response.  Soldiers began firing shots and then descended upon the group,
punching the men and body-slamming the women.  The internationals sat down
to try to avoid injury, but to no avail.  All of the personal cameras in
the group were confiscated and a number of cameras were broken.  Israeli
soldiers also verbally threatened to shoot and kill all of the foreign
civilians. Members of the group were then dragged and forcefully thrown
onto their tour bus.  Two French civilians were detained. [SOUTHNEWS]

[continued in part 2]