[Peace-discuss] News notes 040829

[C. G. Estabrook]

        Notes from last week's "global war on terrorism" --
        for the AWARE meeting, Sunday, August 29, 2004.
        (Sources provided on request.)

[1. IRAQ] In Iraq, the three-week attack by the US military against the
Shi'ite resistance in seven cities has ended in defeat.  Najaf is now a
no-go area for the US military, like Fallujah, Samara, and other regions.
Events seem to have established the authority of the Shi'ite Grand
Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani (an Iranian who apparently doesn't speak good
Arabic) and "radical cleric" Maqtada al-Sadr (whom the puppet government
was referring to with the honorific "Sayyid" by the end of the week).  
The US did manage to kill a lot of people, mostly Iraqi. Meanwhile,
saboteurs have attacked about 20 oil pipelines in southern Iraq, reducing
exports from the key oil producing region by at least one third.  Iraqi
insurgent attacks against U.S. forces have not diminished significantly
since the U.S. "relinquished sovereignty" at the end of June. What's
striking is the sheer number of such attacks--some 49 a day--and their
geographic diversity. While 30 percent take place in Baghdad, they're
common across the country. The number of Americans killed in Iraq in 2004
now exceeds the 482 killed in 2003.

[2. TORTURE] USG barely managed this week to keep the lid (domestically at
least) on the two great scandals that have horrified the world about its
global prison system -- torture and show trials, things Americans think
characterized only their enemies in the totalitarian states of the 20th
century. Two whitewash reports, one from a group of Pentagon officials
handpicked by SOD Rumsfeld [Schlesinger report], and the other from a
general [Fay report], nevertheless let a few details slip – like
sadistic torture of teenager's with dogs, rape of prisoners, and
responsibility running into the Pentagon itself. The Pentagon quickly
announced that the report names the top US commander in Iraq, but that he
will not be punished.  An Army memo appeared asking for ideas on how to
break prisoners in Iraq, apparently issued by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez's
intelligence staff last summer. "The gloves are coming off, gentleman,
regarding these detainees," it reads.

[3. PRISONS] Amnesty International turned up in Baghdad to investigate the
mass detention center run by the Americans at Baghdad international
airport in which up to 2,000 prisoners live in hot, airless tents.  The
makeshift jail is called Camp Cropper and there have already been two
attempted breakouts. (Both would-be escapees, needless to say, were
swiftly shot dead by their American captors.)  Amnesty was forbidden
permission to visit Camp Cropper.

[4. TRIALS] On the legal front, show courts worthy of the Moscow trials of
1938 pretended to consider the cases of people in the US concentration
camp in Cuba.  (Why don't Americans ask why the camp is in Cuba?)  An
American Bar Association expert said the proceedings do not come close to
meeting the standards set by the Supreme Court.  The first war crimes
tribunals held by the United States since the Second World War considered
three people this week, one purportedly a guard for Osama bin Laden. The
presiding officer in the military court asked him, "Is your understanding
of our culture sufficient to make things that appear strange appear not so
strange?" -- a question that should be asked of all Americans.  "These
commissions are a lie behind the claim that all men are created equal,
that we are innocent until proven guilty, that we as a society believe in
the rule of law above all else," a Navy lieutenant commander said. Along
with the lack of an independent appeals process and the admissibility of
hearsay, one of the lawyers' major complaints is that coerced confessions
might be introduced as evidence without any description of how they were
obtained.

[5. ISRAEL] In our model for occupation, Israel announced 1,000 new houses
for Jews in Occupied Palestine last week, and the US agreed; Israel
announced 530 new settler homes this week, and the US agreed.

[6. SPY] The networks reported this weekend that the FBI is investigating
a Pentagon official who is suspected of spying for Israel and passing
secret documents about Iran to the Israeli government via AIPAC, the
pro-Israel lobby group. The official is Larry Franklin, who works in the
office of Dougles Feith, 3rd in the Pentagon after Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz.
The investigation has been going on for over a year, so the question is,
Why is it revealed now?  The answer I think has to do with a serious
internecine power struggle going on in the Bush administration –
basically whether the self-styled friends of Israel in the administration
will be able to manage an attack on Iran before by the end of the year, as
the Israeli government wants. Outing these Neocons' plan is an attempt to
stop them, and it might work.  The sign that it has, will be the
resignation of Feith, Wolfowitz, and/or Rumsfeld.  As Juan Cole says, "It
isn't about spying. It is about conspiring to conscript the US government
on behalf of a foreign power..."

[7. POVERTY] The US Census Bureau reports that nearly 36 million Americans
live in poverty (one and a half times the population of Iraq) ... Real
median household income remained unchanged between 2002 and 2003 [at
$43,318, according to a report released today by the U.S. Census Bureau.
The official poverty rate rose from 12.1 percent in 2002 to 12.5 percent
in 2003. The number of people with health insurance increased by 1.0
million to 243.3 million between 2002 and 2003, and] the number of people
without health insurance rose by 1.4 million to 45.0 million. The
percentage of the nation's population without coverage grew [from 15.2
percent in 2002 to 15.6 percent in 2003].

[8. OVERTIME] Sweeping changes to overtime pay rules took effect this
week.  The changes will eliminate overtime for millions of middle-class
Americans in a weak jobs market. “The new overtime rules that went into
effect yesterday are a huge victory for corporations and a major loss for
workers. Take-home pay will go down and hours worked will rise. America's
families will suffer even more in these financially distressing times. But
it's not too late to protect overtime. The Senate voted twice to protect
overtime. John Sweeney says when Congress returns in September, it's time
to force the House to vote up or down.”

[9. POLLS] An LA Times poll this week Kerry hurt by Swift Boat attacks,
Bush ahead 49% -46% for the first time this year.  Bush enters his
convention week holding a slight lead over Democrat John Kerry and
regaining ground he lost after the Democratic convention on the key issues
of handling terrorism and Iraq, according to a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll.
Bush led Kerry 50%-47% among likely voters. When independent Ralph Nader
is included, Bush leads Kerry, 48%-46%, among likely voters. Nader gets
4%.

[10. CAMPAIGN] In the presidential campaign, instead of talking about
killing people now or ruining their lives – i.e., the war and the
economy – the focus has been on the crimes Kerry and others committed in
Vietnam more than a generation ago. This massive displacement of attention
is material for the psychoanalyst. We don't seem to want to talk about
what we're responsible for now. George Bush – whom Texas politician
“Ben Barnes said, as speaker of the Texas House more than [35] years
ago, he recommended ... for a pilot's position in the Texas Air National
Guard at the request of a Bush family friend” -- makes the point in an
interview this week, when he [Bush] said that the GWOT “is a
long-lasting ideological struggle … I’m Not the Historian. I’m The
Guy Making History...” We need some real historians.

[11. BRITAIN] British MPs are aiming to impeach Blair over Iraq war.
Eleven members of the British parliament are making an impeachment bid
based on a parliamentary rule of procedure that has not been applied for
more than 150 years.  With Blair's own Labour party enjoying a healthy
majority in the Commons, the motion is unlikely to pass, but it would
force the prime minister to submit to a fresh debate on why he joined the
US-led offensive on Iraq. "It is not so much that he lied; it is rather
that he used all his lawyerly arts, and the trust that is naturally
reposed in his office, to communicate to the public a vast untruth," wrote
Johnson in the Daily Telegraph newspaper.

[12. HISTORY] A newly declassified document obtained by the National
Security Archive shows that amidst vast human rights violations by
Argentina's security forces in June 1976, Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger told Argentine Foreign Minister Admiral Cesar Augusto Guzzetti:
"If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly. But
you should get back quickly to normal procedures" ... Another document
recently unearthed by the National Security Archive and posted for the
first time here, shows that on July 9, 1976, Secretary Kissinger was
explicitly briefed on the rampant repression taking place in Argentina:
"Their theory is that they can use the Chilean method," Kissinger's top
aide on Latin America Harry Shlaudeman informed him, "that is, to
terrorize the opposition - even killing priests and nuns and others."

[13. COUP] The trial of 14 men accused of plotting to topple Equatorial
Guinea's president opens in the capital, Malabo. South African police
arrested the son of the former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher on
Wednesday and charged him with helping plot a coup attempt in the tiny,
oil-rich West African country of Equatorial Guinea.

  ==============================================================
  C. G. Estabrook
  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
  <www.newsfromneptune.org>
  ===============================================================
  Go see The Corporation at the Art Theatre, while you still can.
  ===============================================================
  [A corporation] is an unaccountable private tyranny
  in which power comes from above, from the owners and the managers ...
  At the very bottom people have the right to rent themselves to this
  tyrannical system. It is essentially unaccountable to the public ...
  if you look at [corporations'] intellectual roots ...
  they come out of the same neo-Hegelian conceptions of the rights of
  organic entities that led to bolshevism and fascism.
  We have three forms of twentieth century totalitarianism: bolshevism,
  fascism and the corporation. Two of them, fortunately, were dissolved,
  disappeared mostly. The third remains. It shouldn't.
  Power should be in the hands of populations. --Noam Chomsky
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