[Peace-discuss] News notes 030105

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Notes on the week's news
	from the "War on Terrorism"
	for the AWARE meeting,
	Sunday, January 5, 2003

[1] TERRORISM.  WP on Friday, January 3, 2003: "THERE HAS BEEN a lull
recently in Palestinian attacks against Israelis; a shooting attack that
killed four in a West Bank settlement last week was the first major
incident in a month.  But almost every day, Palestinian civilians,
including many children, are being killed by the Israeli army and police.  
An 18-year-old high school student named Amran Abu Hamediye was found
beaten to death in the West Bank town of Hebron on Monday; family and
neighbors say he had been detained by Israeli forces a few minutes before.  
On Sunday, an 11-year-old boy was shot and killed by troops in the town of
Tulkarm.  The day before, a 9-year-old girl was killed as she played
outside her home in the Gaza Strip.  At least four other Palestinian
children under the age of 16 were killed by Israeli fire in Gaza during
the past month.  In one case, an 11-year-old girl was shot in the chest
and killed as she leaned out her bedroom window to watch the funeral of a
teenage boy who had been gunned down the previous day."  The Cairo
newspaper Al-Ahram called for an end to attacks on civilians.  Then today
at least 19 people were killed and 90 others were wounded in a double
suicide bombing at around 6:30 P.M. Sunday evening at the Old Central Bus
Station in south Tel Aviv. [HA'ARETZ]

[2] STATE TERROR.  The WP reports that Israel has "with American help"
built a $2 billion short-range missile-defense system called the Arrow-2,
three submarines with cruise missiles capable of delivering nuclear
warheads.

[3] ANOTHER REMINDER THAT NEW BUSHIES ARE BUT OLD REAGANITES.  The Bush
administration is to announce a plan to help the economy this week: it's
reported that the plan is no taxes on dividends, which will certainly help
the economies of the well-to-do in the country.  Although it will increase
the deficit by $600 B over 10 years, (And we know there can't be more
social spending when there's a deficit -- the reason the Reagan
administration expanded the deficit.  [TIME] Even the Brookings Institute
claims that two-thirds of the benefits will go to the richest five percent
of Americans.  [LAT] "I understand the politics of economic stimulus -
that some would like to turn this into class warfare," Mr. Bush told
reporters on his ranch the other day.  "That's not how I think.  I think
about the overall economy and how best to help those folks who are looking
for work."  [WT]

[4] HOW TO HELP THOSE FOLKS.  Bush begins the year with a new
justification for attacking Iraq: Saddam Hussein could "cripple" the U.S.
economy.  "A Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is a threat
to the security of the American people."  [NYT 030101]

[5] HOW TO HELP THOSE FOLKS (II).  Health departments across the country
are having to cut back some services, like cancer and tuberculosis
screenings, in order to comply with President Bush's federal smallpox
vaccination program.  [NYT]

[6] NOT ALL FOLKS.  Board of Immigration Appeals, which is "often the last
stop for people fighting deportation," has been forced to decide many of
its cases in just minutes thanks to changes pushed by Atty. Gen. John
Ashcroft. The result has been an alarming increase in the number of
foreigners being kicked out of the country. [LAT]

[7] WAR ON THE GROUND. About 100 U.S. special forces members and more than
50 Central Intelligence Agency officers have been operating in small
groups inside Iraq for at least four months, searching for Scud missile
launchers, monitoring oil fields, marking minefield sites, and using
lasers to help U.S. pilots bomb Iraqi air-defence systems, according to
intelligence officials and military analysts. "The Boston Globe is
withholding details of recent operations that may compromise future
missions." [BG 030105]

[8] SINS OF OMISSION AND COMMISSION. Despite the near-constant talk of a
U.S.-led invasion to overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein, aid officials
here say there appears to be little preparation by the Bush
administration, the United Nations or private foreign aid agencies to
handle a potential humanitarian disaster. Aid officials cite a litany of
calamities in the making if war comes: the expected exodus of Iraqi
refugees, either internally or across national borders, as well as
potential interruptions in food distribution, electricity, water, fuel,
waste disposal and public health services throughout the country. Making
matters worse, say these officials, is Iraq's already weakened condition
-- a result of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, the 1991 U.S.-led Persian
Gulf War and 12 years of international economic sanctions that have ruined
the economy of this once-flourishing nation. [SF CHRONICLE]

[9] BUSH TO HIS FAVORITE AUDIENCE, IN THE STATE WHERE HE KILLED 182
PEOPLE. Bush at Fort Hood TX: "Should Saddam Hussein seal his fate by
refusing to disarm, by ignoring the opinion of the world, you will be
fighting not to conquer anybody, but to liberate people," Bush declared.
The WP predicts that Bush may announce his decision to go to war on Jan.
28, the day of his State of the Union address and the day after Iraqi
weapons inspectors are set to report to the UN. [WP]

[10] WORLD OPINION. Archbishop Desmond Tutu criticised the United States
as an arrogant superpower bent on unilateral action, in an interview on
the Iraq crisis to be telecast in Britain 
 Tutu also questioned why Iraq
- which denies it has nuclear, chemical or biological weapons - was being
singled out when India and Pakistan are confirmed nuclear powers. "What do
you do with weapons of mass destruction in Europe? What do you do with
them in India? What do you do with them in Pakistan?" he asked. 
 "America
should remember that they supported some of the most repressive
governments," he said. "Let's hear what (UN weapons) inspectors get to
see. But if you are going to apply as strictly as you want UN resolutions
there, you ask why there and not in other places. Why not in Palestine?"
[AFP]

[11] THE LIBERAL OPPOSITION. Sunday NYT magazine contains a defense of the
US empire by a liberal academic. Michael Ignatieff, director of the Carr
Center at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, has
written recently for The Times Magazine about Bosnia and Afghanistan -
offerring :critical support: for US imperialism.

[12] WHO PAYS THE BILL. The Labor Department has decided to stop issuing
its monthly report on mass layoffs. The department says it can't afford to
put out the reports, which cost $6.6 million per year. A number of state
employment officials bemoaned the cuts. "We use them to determine which
occupations are going kaput," said one. [WP]

[13] WHO GETS THE GOODIES. Nine northeastern states have filed a legal
challenge to the Bush administration's partial rollback of the Clean Air
Act 
 New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer argues that the new rules -
which will allow aging plants to upgrade without installing anti-pollution
devices - "will bring more acid rain, more smog, more asthma and more
respiratory disease to millions of Americans." [NYT 030101]

[14] HEALTH OF THE ECONOMY. Year in review: 2002 was a record year for
bankruptcies, their value up 50% from previous record year -- which was
2001. The wreckage includes five of the 10 largest bankruptcies ever

[15] BUT WHO CARES? "In January, Enron was receiving 1 137 "mentions" in
the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, and Iraq only
200. Iraq stories grew almost 100 percent by early spring as Enron
mentions declined by 50 percent to 618. After a dip in early summer, Iraq
soared to 1,529 mentions, with Enron down to 310. Remarkable, isn't it,
how you can clear a messy economic scandal off the front pages by renaming
your hate figure?" [ROBERT FISK, INDEPENDENT]

[16] HOW DICK CHENEY'S FORMER COMPANY IS MAKING MILLIONS ON THE "WAR ON
TERROR" As the Bush / Cheney White House prepares for war in Iraq, few
companies are set to benefit as much as Halliburton. Yes, that's the same
Halliburton that Dick Cheney headed up until the controversial
presidential election of 2000. The same Halliburton where Cheney made over
$20 million. The same Halliburton that got embroiled in an Enron-like
scandal due to questionable accounting practices under Cheney's helm. And
the same Halliburton that continued to quietly trade with Iraq long after
the Gulf War ended. During the 1990s Halliburton had contracts worth over
$70 million with Iraq. Today it is set to profit from a war against Iraq
as Halliburton has with the so-called war on terror. Since Sept. 11, the
Pentagon is increasingly relying on a unit of Halliburton called KBR,
sometimes referred to as Kellogg Brown & Root. It has done work from
building cells for detainees at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. It feeds American
troops in Uzbekistan. And near the Turkish/Iraqi border Halliburton it
helps run three military bases. In July, the New York Times reported, "The
attacks of Sept. 11 have led to significant additional business. KBR is
the exclusive logistics supplier for both the Navy and the Army, providing
services like cooking, construction, power generation and fuel
transportation. The contract recently won from the Army is for 10 years
and has no lid on costs." The Times went on to report that Halliburton is
the only company that has a contract with the Amy that has an unlimited
budget. This comes despite Halliburton's questionable past performance on
government contracts. Halliburton recently paid the government $2 million
out of court after the Pentagon accused the company's employees of lying
and overcharging the government. [DEMOCRACY NOW]

[17] VENEZUELAN PRESIDENT HUGO CHAVEZ GAINS SUPPORT FROM LULA, BRAZIL'S
NEW PRESIDENT Venezuela Hugo Chávez said yesterday that he favored the
creation of a group of "Friends of Venezuela" to lead an international
diplomatic effort to end the month-long general strike. The Venezuelan
leader made the announcement in Brazil where he attended the inauguration
of Brazil's new president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Chavez said that he
expected countries from Latin America, Europe and OPEC, which Venezuela
helped found more than 40 years ago, would help his country end the
strike. Chavez also proposed forming a "Latin American OPEC" between
Venezuela and Brazil. Chavez said Lula expressed his "total support" and
predicted that Brazil and Venezuela would make "great advances together in
the coming years" because of the similar views. To relieve economic
pressure, Brazil last week sent an oil tanker with 520,000 barrels of
gasoline to Venezuela. As for the ongoing strike, Chavez said yesterday,
"What is going on in my country is not a strike. It is a coup attempt
disguised as a strike," organized by "terrorists who are blocking oil and
food distribution and sabotaging refineries." Meanwhile the leaders of the
strike called today on the military to join their cause. So far, the
military has backed Chavez. [DEMOCRACY NOW]

**********

Published on Saturday, January 4, 2003 by the Independent/UK

The Double Standards, Dubious Morality and Duplicity of This Fight Against
Terror

Meanwhile, we are ploughing on to war in Iraq, which has oil, but avoiding
war in Korea, which does not have oil
 
by Robert Fisk
  
I think I'm getting the picture. North Korea breaks all its nuclear
agreements with the United States, throws out UN inspectors and sets off
to make a bomb a year, and President Bush says it's "a diplomatic issue".
Iraq hands over a 12,000-page account of its weapons production and allows
UN inspectors to roam all over the country, and - after they've found not
a jam-jar of dangerous chemicals in 230 raids - President Bush announces
that Iraq is a threat to America, has not disarmed and may have to be
invaded. So that's it, then.

How, readers keep asking me in the most eloquent of letters, does he get
away with it? Indeed, how does Tony Blair get away with it? Not long ago
in the House of Commons, our dear Prime Minister was announcing in his
usual schoolmasterly tones - the ones used on particularly inattentive or
dim boys in class - that Saddam's factories of mass destruction were "up
[pause] and running [pause] now." But the Dear Leader in Pyongyang does
have factories that are "up [pause] and running [pause] now". And Tony
Blair is silent.

Why do we tolerate this? Why do Americans? Over the past few days, there
has been just the smallest of hints that the American media - the biggest
and most culpable backer of the White House's campaign of mendacity - has
been, ever so timidly, asking a few questions. Months after The
Independent first began to draw its readers' attention to Donald
Rumsfeld's chummy personal visits to Saddam in Baghdad at the height of
Iraq's use of poison gas against Iran in 1983, The Washington Post has at
last decided to tell its own readers a bit of what was going on. The
reporter Michael Dobbs includes the usual weasel clauses ("opinions differ
among Middle East experts... whether Washington could have done more to
stop the flow to Baghdad of technology for building weapons of mass
destruction"), but the thrust is there: we created the monster and Mr
Rumsfeld played his part in doing so.

But no American - or British - newspaper has dared to investigate another,
almost equally dangerous, relationship that the present US administration
is forging behind our backs: with the military-supported regime in
Algeria. For 10 years now, one of the world's dirtiest wars has been
fought out in this country, supposedly between "Islamists" and "security
forces", in which almost 200,000 people - mostly civilians - have been
killed. But over the past five years there has been growing evidence that
elements of those same security forces were involved in some of the
bloodiest massacres, including the throat-cutting of babies. The
Independent has published the most detailed reports of Algerian police
torture and of the extrajudicial executions of women as well as men. Yet
the US, as part of its obscene "war on terror", has cozied up to the
Algerian regime. It is helping to re-arm Algeria's army and promised more
assistance. William Burns, the US Assistant Secretary of State for the
Middle East, announced that Washington "has much to learn from Algeria on
ways to fight terrorism".

And of course, he's right. The Algerian security forces can instruct the
Americans on how to make a male or female prisoner believe that they are
going to suffocate. The method - US personnel can find the experts in this
particular torture technique working in the basement of the Château Neuf
police station in central Algiers - is to cover the trussed-up victim's
mouth with a rag and then soak it with cleaning fluid. The prisoner slowly
suffocates. There's also, of course, the usual nail-pulling and the usual
wires attached to penises and vaginas and - I'll always remember the
eye-witness description - the rape of an old woman in a police station,
from which she emerged, covered in blood, urging other prisoners to
resist.

Some of the witnesses to these abominations were Algerian police officers
who had sought sanctuary in London. But rest assured, Mr Burns is right,
America has much to learn from the Algerians. Already, for example - don't
ask why this never reached the newspapers - the Algerian army chief of
staff has been warmly welcomed at Nato's southern command headquarters at
Naples.

And the Americans are learning. A national security official attached to
the CIA divulged last month that when it came to prisoners, "our guys may
kick them around a little in the adrenaline of the immediate aftermath
(sic)." Another US "national security" official announced that "pain
control in wounded patients is a very subjective thing". But let's be
fair. The Americans may have learnt this wickedness from the Algerians.
They could just as well have learned it from the Taliban.

Meanwhile, inside the US, the profiling of Muslims goes on apace. On 17
November, thousands of Iranians, Iraqis, Syrians, Libyans, Afghans,
Bahrainis, Eritreans, Lebanese, Moroccans, Omanis, Qataris, Somalis,
Tunisians, Yemenis and Emiratis turned up at federal offices to be
finger-printed. The New York Times - the most chicken of all the American
papers in covering the post-9/11 story - revealed (only in paragraph five
of its report, of course) that "over the past week, agency officials...
have handcuffed and detained hundreds of men who showed up to be
finger-printed. In some cases the men had expired student or work visas;
in other cases, the men could not provide adequate documentation of their
immigration status."

In Los Angeles, the cops ran out of plastic handcuffs as they herded men
off to the lockup. Of the 1,000 men arrested without trial or charges
after 11 September, many were native-born Americans.

Indeed, many Americans don't even know what the chilling acronym of the
"US Patriot Act" even stands for. "Patriot" is not a reference to
patriotism. The name stands for the "United and Strengthening America by
Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism
Act". America's $200m (£125m) "Total Awareness Program" will permit the US
government to monitor citizens' e-mail and internet activity and collect
data on the movement of all Americans. And although we have not been told
about this by our journalists, the US administration is now pestering
European governments for the contents of their own citizens' data files.
The most recent - and most preposterous - of these claims came in a US
demand for access to the computer records of the French national airline,
Air France, so that it could "profile" thousands of its passengers. All
this is beyond the wildest dreams of Saddam and the Dear Leader Kim.

The new rules even worm their way into academia. Take the friendly little
university of Purdue in Indiana, where I lectured a few weeks ago. With
federal funds, it's now setting up an "Institute for Homeland Security",
whose 18 "experts" will include executives from Boeing and Hewlett-Packard
and US Defense and State Department officials, to organize"research
programs" around "critical mission areas". What, I wonder, are these areas
to be? Surely nothing to do with injustice in the Middle East, the
Arab-Israeli conflict or the presence of thousands of US troops on Arab
lands. After all, it was Richard Perle, the most sinister of George Bush's
pro-Israeli advisers, who stated last year that "terrorism must be
decontextualized".

Meanwhile, we are - on that very basis - ploughing on to war in Iraq,
which has oil, but avoiding war in Korea, which does not have oil. And our
leaders are getting away with it. In doing so, we are threatening the
innocent, torturing our prisoners and "learning" from men who should be in
the dock for war crimes. This, then, is our true memorial to the men and
women so cruelly murdered in the crimes against humanity of 11 September
2001.

© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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  C. G. Estabrook, Ph.D., Visiting Scholar
  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign [MC-190]
  109 Observatory, 901 South Mathews Avenue, Urbana IL 61801 USA
  office: 217.244.4105 mobile: 217.369.5471 home: 217.359.9466
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