[Peace] News notes 2005-12-11

[Carl Estabrook]

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        Notes from last week's "global war on terrorism,"
        for the Sunday, 11 December 2005, meeting of AWARE,
        "Anti-War Anti-Racism Effort" of Champaign-Urbana.
        (A summary format: the links are hardly exhaustive;
	they indicate places to start to follow a story.)
        ===================================================

	"Some things you must always be unable to bear. Some things you
	must never stop refusing to bear. Injustice and outrage and
	dishonor and shame. No matter how young you are or how old you
	have got. Not for kudos and not for cash. Your picture in the
	paper nor money in the bank, neither. Just refuse to bear them."
		--William Faulkner

A week of lies.

[1] Secretary of State Rice lies arrantly about US torture and rendition
-- her lies are even more transparent than those of her predecessor, Colin
Powell, which got us into this war -- and European governments are
pretending to accept them.  Meanwhile at home Senate majority leader Frist
says that the torture amendment should allow the US to remain free to
"degrade" prisoners.
<http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/12/11/news/assess.php>
<http://www.forbes.com/home/feeds/ap/2005/12/11/ap2383516.html>

[2] Bush is reported to declare that he's not to be limited by "a
goddamned piece of paper" -- the Constitution.  "I'm the President and the
Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way."
<http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_7779.shtml>

[3] He was talking about the Patriot Act on which a "compromise" was
reached in congress -- i.e., the White House version -- and there may be a
filibuster against it in the senate.
<http://www.sj-r.com/sections/news/stories/73517.asp>

[4] In a blow to the administration's propaganda account of the GWOT, a
federal jury refuse to convict Florida professor Sami Al-Arian on
terrorism charges.
<http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/D7B3D692-3F87-4EB0-83A7-57E5FE2C6361.htm>

[5] The NYT rages against that "quasi-dictator" and "demagogue," Pres.
Chavez of Venezuela, while that country does what US oil companies won't
do, viz., deliver low cost heating oil to poor people, as Venezuelan-owned
CITGO is doing in the Bronx and Boston.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/10/opinion/10sat2.html?n=Top%2FOpinion%2FEditorials%20and%20Op-Ed%2FEditorials>
<http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=aLDaMEvMH5g4&refer=us>

[6] The source for US claims of connections between Iraq and Al-Qaida
fabricated them under torture in Egypt.  And more than a year before the
president's 2003 State of the Union speech alleging that Iraq tried to buy
nuclear-weapons material in Africa, the French counterintelligence agency
warned the US government that there was no evidence for it.
<http://www.discourse.net/archives/2005/12/cia_getting_cold_feet_on_renditiontorture.html>
<http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-niger11dec11,0,3678379.story?coll=la-home-headlines>

[7] Since the invasion of Iraq, the US has detained some 3,000 in its
secret prisons abroad and has not given the Red Cross access; though it
claims to be engaged in a "war on terrorism," it denies that its prisoners
are prisoners of war and says it need not observe the Geneva conventions.
<http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts135.html>
<http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1237589,00.html>

[8] Rumsfeld claims that the administration never offered rosy predictions
about post-war Iraq.
<http://thinkprogress.org/2005/12/09/rumsfeld-predictions/>

[9] Federal agents in Miami kill an innocent passenger, terrorize the
other passengers, and apparently lie about the circumstances.
<http://amleft.blogspot.com/>

[10] Working for its real clients, the House quietly passes tax cuts for
the rich on dividends and capital gains.  (Our representative -- IL 15th
CD -- voted for them.)
<http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1326249.cms>

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  C. G. Estabrook, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  109 Observatory, 901 South Mathews Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801
  ### <www.carlforcongress.org> <www.newsfromneptune.com> ###
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