[Peace] News notes 2005-11-20

[Carl Estabrook]

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        Notes from last week's "global war on terrorism,"
        for the Sunday, 20 November 2005, meeting of AWARE,
        "Anti-War Anti-Racism Effort" of Champaign-Urbana.
        (Sources provided on request; some are indicated.)
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	"...the Republicans of the past generation have to rely far more
	on propaganda, deceit, and shifting of attention from social and
	economic issues, which the bosses care about, to 'cultural
	issues,' which are of little significance to them.  CEOs are
	probably very much like academics and journalists on 'cultural
	issues': they have 'liberal' attitudes on gay rights, creationism,
	abortion, etc., but don't care very much about the issues.  Their
	wives and daughters will have abortion rights in practice even if
	it's illegal, and their kids will go to schools where they study
	science, not 'intelligent design.' All of this is more important
	for the faction of the business party that is carrying out a
	harsher and more brutal attack against people, so it's necessary
	to divert them ... The basic point is pretty simple: if you are
	kicking someone in the face, better to divert their attention to
	something else." --Noam Chomsky

[1] IN THE WAR, "The Elaph Arab media website reported on Sunday that Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi [the Bush administration's bete noire] may have been
killed in Iraq on Sunday afternoon [in an explosion in Mosul].  The
unconfirmed report claimed that the explosions occurred while coalition
forces surrounded the house in which al-Zarqawi was hiding." [Jpost]
Meanwhile, the Pentagon admitted this week that it wasn't telling the
truth when it denied that U.S. troops used white phosphorus against Iraqis
in Fallujah. [DN]

[2] IN THE PLAMEGATE kerfuffle this week, a senior administration official
(Armitage? Hadley? Cheney?) called Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald on Monday
and said he told Watergate poseur Bob Woodward about Plame -- so Libby was
not the first to reveal the name, as Fitzgerald thought.  He wants a new
grand jury, and Woodward testified on Monday.

[3] BUSH'S VISIT TO ASIA, like his recent Latin American trip, seems to be
a PR disaster. Not only were there massive demonstrations against him at
the APEC meeting in Korea (including the suicides of several farmers), in
Beijing Chinese President Hu declined to hold a joint press conference
with him and the state-run media refused to cover much of his visit.  But
it's probably OK for the people Bush is working for: China will buy 70
Boeing 737 airliners, according to Mike Green, senior director for Asian
affairs on the National Security Council.

[4] U.S. TROOPS OUT OF IRAQ, say 80% of Iraqis (UK Defense Ministry poll)
and more than half of Americans (Gallup), but the Congress displayed once
again this week how both of the American political parties are far to the
right of the populace.  Both parties in the House voted overwhelmingly for
the CONTINUATION of the war.
	"A hawkish Democrat who voted to authorize the war introduced a
bill calling for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops. Democratic
Congressman John Murtha of Pennsylvania ... is an army veteran with close
ties to military commanders. He's also the top Democrat on the House
Appropriations defense subcommittee, and has visited Iraq several times
since the war began. His proposed bill read in part: 'The deployment of US
forces in Iraq, by direction of Congress, is hereby terminated and the
forces involved are to be redeployed at the earliest practicable date' ...
In response, White House spokesperson Scott McClellan said '... that he is
endorsing the policy positions of Michael Moore and the extreme liberal
wing of the Democratic Party.'" [DN] (For that, Bush in Asia has now all
but apologized -- another sign of White House disarray.)
	As one commentator said, "Murtha made the Democrats very nervous.
Not only was it a member of the party's right wing that was demanding a
withdrawal, he was calling for an immediate withdrawal. [So the Republican
leadership in the House decided to call the Democrat bluff: they
introduced a resolution saying 'It is the sense of the House of
Representatives that the deployment of United States forces in Iraq be
terminated immediately.'] In a classic exercise in Orwellian doublespeak
and political chicanery, the Democratic leadership called the GOP
resolution a 'political stunt' and voted against that resolution ... if
one is against the war and wants to see an immediate withdrawal of US
forces from Iraq, then one votes for immediate withdrawal, no matter who
sponsors the legislation. Only Cynthia McKinney (GA), Jose E. Serrano
(N.Y.), Robert Wexler (Fla.) agreed with this approach and voted for the
resolution (and for immediate withdrawal). Six other Congressional members
voted present and the other 403 voted to continue the war in Iraq as is
... what the GOP got was an overwhelming vote for the war -- a vote that
they can also use to their advantage come election time when Democratic
candidates attack the same war [Kerry-fashion].  Democrats ... told the
world that the resolution demanding a US withdrawal from Iraq wasn't what
it said it was.  Don't believe the words that are on the paper, they told
us, believe what we want you to believe, no matter how much it doesn't
jibe with what you see." [CP]
	Rep. John Murtha was quite right when he said "The American public
is way ahead of the members of Congress."  The entire "Out of Iraq
Congressional Caucus" consists of 66 members (of whom exactly three
actually voted for immediate withdrawal from Iraq).  As Washington Post
columnist Dana Millbank put it, "Democrats were cutting and running
yesterday -- not from Iraq, but from Murtha."
	Meanwhile the House cut social programs for the poor, farmers, and
students, and threw a quarter of a million people off food stamps (while
giving themselves a pay raise).  But it was close, the so-called Deficit
Reduction Act passed by a single vote, 217-215.  Rep. Tim Johnson (D-IL)
was one of 14 Republican nays.

[5] HABEAS CORPUS is a legal procedure inherited from English common law,
by which a judge can order that a prisoner be brought before the court.
It was considered important enough to be specifically mentioned in the
U.S. Constitution, which says, "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus
shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the
public Safety may require it." (Article One, section nine). Nevertheless
US administrations, Democrat and Republican, have ignored this specific
guarantee of the constitution without public outcry. E.g., Clinton's
Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 limited the use of
habeas corpus. The second Bush administration asserted presidential
authority to designate even U.S. citizens as enemy unlawful combatants and
hold them indefinitely, without criminal charges or access to counsel. The
PATRIOT Act of 2001 gives the President of the United States the power to
declare anyone suspected of connection to terrorists or terrorism, as an
Enemy combatant. As an Enemy combatant that person can be held without
charges being filed against him/her. Enemy combatants can be held
indefinitely without charges or a court hearing and are not even entitled
to legal consult. Many legal and constitutional scholars would contend
that these provisions of the PATRIOT Act are in direct opposition to
habeas corpus, and the United States Bill of Rights. Specifically,
American citizens declared Enemy combatants under the PATRIOT Act may be
denied their constitutional rights, as set forth in Amendments 4, 5, 6 and
8. [Wikipedia]
	The Senate this week reached a "compromise" on habeas corpus that
could still strip Guantanamo detainees of any trial at all. Senators
defeated an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for FY
2006 (approved 98-0), recognizing the right to habeas corpus of prisoners
at Guantanamo Bay. Both Illinois senators voted in favor of recognition,
but then Sen. Obama, who trumpets his legal education along with his
liberalism, voted IN FAVOR OF an amendment that will tightly restrict
access to the the courts by prisoners in the US gulag. (Appeals from
military tribunals can be heard only by the DC Court of Appeals, where the
new chief justice recently ruled in favor of those military kangaroo
courts.)  Even our lachrymose senior senator couldn't bring himself to
vote in favor of those restrictions -- but Obama did.
	Meanwhile the US prevented a UN examination of the concentration
camp from which Obama voted to limit appeals.  ABC news reported that
"Harsh interrogation techniques authorized by top officials of the CIA
have led to questionable confessions and the death of a detainee since the
techniques were first authorized in mid-March 2002."  And the House-Senate
conference committee agreed this week on a renewal of the Patriot Act.

[6] GERMAN INTELLIGENCE OFFICIALS are claiming the FBI and CIA
misrepresented pre-war intelligence provided by "an Iraqi defector
code-named Curveball," regarding Iraqi WMD programs. The CIA and FBI knew
that Curveball's statements about Iraqi biological weapons programs were
vague and impossible to verify. The German officials, who handled
Curveball over a period of six years, warned the U.S. agencies that
Curveball was emotionally and psychologically unstable. Nevertheless,
Curveball's unsubstantiated claims about Iraqi biological weapons programs
formed the backbone of the Bush administration's case for war. The LAT
tells the story of an Iraqi who'd say anything to get a German visa.
[Slate]

[7] THERE IS INTENSE FIGHTING in Afghanistan, and, as the deadline for
finishing a massive clinic- and school-building initiative draws to a
close, contractors have built far fewer structures than they'd been
ordered to complete and those that have been finished show signs of shoddy
workmanship, according to the Washington Post. [Slate]

[8] SEN. HILLARY CLINTON said last Sunday that she supports Israel's
separation fence and that it is the responsibility of the Palestinian
Authority to fight terrorism positions that place her once again to the
right of the Bush administration.

[9] "THE RACIAL HEALTH GAP in the US kills more people every week that
Hurricane Katrina, claims new research.  Inequalities between white and
black Americans cause 84,000 extra fatalities each year equating to the
same weekly number of victims that perished in the hurricane, according to
an editorial published in the British Medical Journal.  The authors of the
study ... work for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, which
is a division of the Department of Health & Human Services, i.e., part of
the U.S. government. Despite that fact, their article seems to have been
published only in Britain, and the only U.S. media outlets in which this
story has appeared are Workers World newspaper and the Macon Daily."
[lefti]

[10] [REMEMBERING that when we say race in such matters in the US we
usually mean class, we note that] Illinois' median family income has
dropped dramatically over the last six years, a sharper decline than in
every other state except for Michigan ... household incomes here --
adjusted for inflation --have fallen back to about where they were in
1989.  These income losses, coming at a time when costs are rising for
everything from housing to transportation, brings into sharp relief the
troubling shift from good-paying manufacturing to lower-paying service
jobs. Job growth, even during the booming 1990s, was fueled by
lower-paying occupations and there's no sign this trend will reverse ...
job growth is being fueled by an expanding service industry, where the pay
gap is widening between low-wage, low-skill jobs and higher-paying ones
requiring college degrees. Median household income has fallen by 12
percent in Illinois since 1999 ... The Illinois decline is far higher than
the nation's average decline of less than 4 percent for the six-year
period ... Illinois' median income of $46,132 in 2004, when adjusted for
inflation, is about the same as in 1989 ... "Absolutely all net new job
growth in this state has been in lower-paying service jobs. Generally
speaking that means no health insurance benefits, no retirement, and
working full-time for wages that pretty much cannot support a family of
four." [CT 11/17]

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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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