[Peace] News notes 2005-09-18

[Carl Estabrook]

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        Notes from last week's "global war on terrorism,"
        for the Sunday, 18 September 2005, meeting of AWARE,
        "Anti-War Anti-Racism Effort" of Champaign-Urbana.
        (Sources provided on request; some are indicated.)
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	"[The Bush administration and cronies] don't know how far they can
	press the attack, but there is every reason to suppose that
	they'll keep at it as long as they can. In order to mobilize
	support for their pro-business pro-state agenda they have to
	appeal to patriotic imagery, religious extremism, whipping up
	fear, and other devices that have a pretty ugly history. Most of
	the population is strongly opposed to their policies, but is
	atomized, demoralized, unorganized, and unable to respond
	constructively. To change that is the task of activists who care
	about the country and its future, and the world."
			--Noam Chomsky 9/9/05

[1] Another terrible week in Iraq.  Patrick Cockburn writes (in the
Independent/UK), "A suicide bomber sparked Baghdad's worst day of
slaughter since the fall of Saddam 30 months ago when he lured labourers
desperate for work towards his van by offering them jobs and then
detonated explosives that killed 114 and injured 156 of them. On a day
when more than a dozen co-ordinated attacks thundered across Baghdad from
dawn into the late afternoon -- claiming 152 lives and wounding 542 --
al-Qa'ida in Iraq said it was retaliating against a US-Iraqi operation
directed at the insurgents' northern stronghold of Tal Afar. And as the
hours passed with car and roadside bombs shattering the relative calm of
the past few days, fears of civil war intensified ... In Aruba Square, in
the Shia district of Qadimiyah, the crowd cried: 'Why? Why? Why?,' as the
dead and dying were carried out. Severed heads and limbs were stacked
beside burnt bodies inside the gates of the local hospital, its floor
slippery with blood ... Oily black smoke rose into the blue sky over
Baghdad as more than a dozen bombs exploded across the city throughout the
morning ... One of the many reasons why Iraqis are becoming more terrified
by the day is that they do not know if the policemen or soldiers who wake
them in the middle of the night truly work for the government or are a
death squad ... At least three of the bombs were aimed at US patrols, with
one Humvee being destroyed on the airport road, said witnesses. At least
two soldiers were badly wounded. One US convoy was attacked just north of
the Green Zone and the bomb injured 14 policemen. For 10 minutes
afterwards there was the sound of heavy machine-gun fire ... In the midst
of this mayhem, Iraq finally agreed a constitution to be voted on in a
referendum on 15 October. But it seemed hardly relevant [Wednesday].
	"A car bomb killed at least 30 people in a market in a poor,
predominantly Shiite district on the outskirts of Baghdad Saturday ...
Other bodies were discovered throughout Iraq yesterday, including several
who were bound, blindfolded and shot." [Slate] "The U.S. is also coming
under criticism in Iraq by the country's Minister of Justice, Abdul Husain
Shandal. In an interview with Reuters he condemned the US military for
arresting Iraqis without a warrant and for holding thousands of them
without charges. The Justice Minister also said he wants to strip immunity
from foreign troops." [DN]

[2] But Robert Fisk writes (also in the Independent, which clearly has the
best pair of English speaking-reporters in the region), "There will not be
a civil war in Iraq. There never has been a civil war in Iraq. In 1920,
[British PM] Lloyd George warned of civil war in Iraq if the British Army
left. Just as the Americans now threaten the Iraqis with civil war if they
leave. As early as 2003, American spokesmen warned that there would be
civil war if US forces left."
	Both the Israelis and Americans have killed people with car bombs
in the Middle East, and, given the Pentagon's known taste for death
squads, mercenaries, and assassination teams -- or, as Jim Lehrer would
say, militias, contractors, and Special Forces -- could it be they who
have carried out some of these suicide bombings?  After all, whose
interests are served by the bombings?  If they lead to civil war, the
occupation forces profit, on the principle of divide and rule, just as the
FBI tried to get black nationalist groups to kill one another in the US.
There are also political advantages at home, as earnest people argue "We
[sic] can't just cut and run from Iraq, because there'd be civil war!"
And the bombings undoubtedly destroy sympathy here for the supposed
insurgent perpetrators.  A sufficiently ruthless Pentagon -- and I think
we have one -- might see the use in that.

[3] As the admirable Cindy Sheehan pointed out, New Orleans has been more
successfully occupied than Iraq, with heavily armed mercenaries loose in
the streets, poor people removed (but not to the suburbs, which barred
them), and journalists beaten and intimidated.  A NY firefighter in New
Orleans said, "This is much worse, this dwarfs 9/11."  But the forces of
order are on the job: "A 73-year-old woman [who was taking care of her
80-year-old husband in NO] remains in jail on a $50,000 bond after police
arrested her for looting sixty dollars worth of sausage." [DN]

[4] The president gave a speech from Jackson Square in New Orleans in
which he tried to account for the awful scandal of government malfeasance
in the wake of the hurricane.  It was interesting to see how he did it.
He said that "...all of us saw on television [sic]" that there was "some
deep, persistent poverty in this region" -- but he ascribed it to race,
not class.  The problem, according to Bush, was simply discrimination, not
an economic system that makes people poor and simply has no use for many.
"That poverty has roots in a history of racial discrimination," he said,
"which cut off generations from the opportunity of America" -- that was
the administration's position.
	Whom the real opportunity of America exists for was on display,
with contracts for Halliburton, Bechtel, etc., already in place. The WSJ
reports that real estate prices in New Orleans are *rising* sharply since
the flood, even for lots still covered with water and toxic sludge, in
expectation of federal money for rebuilding.  Frenzied ads seeking any New
Orleans property to buy, submerged or not, appeared in the press and on
the net.
	The administration's priorities were clear from the fact that Bush
has put his top political adviser, Karl Rove, in charge of the
reconstruction effort instead of appointing an independent reconstruction
czar, although he didn't mention that in his speech.  But he did say, "It
is now clear that a challenge on this scale requires greater federal
authority and a broader role for the armed forces"; he "called for an
expanded role of the U.S. military in times of national emergency."

[5] The administration hoped desperately that they could use Senate
hearings for chief justice nominee John Roberts to bury the stories about
the Gulf Coast and Iraq, as they recently managed to bury the new Abu
Ghraib atrocity pictures and the Rove/Plame matter.  But Roberts' refusal
to answer questions has raised questions.
	It seems just backwards to accept the excuse that a judicial
nominee will not answer a question about either general principles or
specific cases, if they refer to matters that might come before his court.
Instead we get an earlier nominee's arrogant remark, that "A judge ... can
offer no forecast, no hints, for that would show ... disregard for the
specifics of the particular case... -- which is obviously false. How are
senators to advise and consent on a nominee if they can't find out
directly or indirectly what s/he thinks?  Not knowing those things alone
would justify a senator's voting against a nominee
	"Among the witnesses who supported Roberts was former Michigan
Gov. John Engler, who now heads the National Association of Manufacturers.
Engler said he expects Roberts would add a business-friendly voice to the
court." [Slate] Alex Cockburn, of Counterpunch.org, writes as follows:

	"The prime lobby that should feel gratified by his nomination is
of course Big Business, the protection of whose interests has been Roberts
chief concern throughout his career, and the protection of whose interests
has always been the prime concern of the US Supreme Court. Listen to the
assessment of Boalt law professor and torture-defender, John Yoo: "Roberts
is the type of person that business conservatives and judicial-restraint
conservatives will like, but the social conservatives may not like. What
the social conservatives want is someone who will overturn Roe v Wade and
change the court's direction on privacy. But he represents the Washington
establishment. These Washington establishment people are not
revolutionaries, and they're not out to change constitutional law." ...
Roberts' record may be opaque when it comes to Roe v Wade but on corporate
issues it's as clear as daylight.  When he was deputy solicitor general he
ran the government's case when the Supreme Court issued what was probably
the most devastating ruling on environmental issues in the last
generation. This was the Lujan v National Wildlife Federation decision in
1990. It tightly restricted the doctrine of 'standing' which gives
environmentalists the right to challenge destructive practices on federal
lands.
	"It would be hard for Roberts to argue that he was just doing his
job as a government lawyer. Returning to private practice from the
Solicitor General's office, he was swiftly picked as counsel by the
National Mining Association, which had noted his victory in the Lujan
decision. On behalf of the coal companies Roberts wrote a legal brief
arguing that local citizens in West Virginia had no right to bring
lawsuits challenging the most destructive form of mining ever devised,
mountain-top removal. Later, going through confirmation to the Appeals
Court, Roberts was asked what had been his most significant cases in
private practice. In his response he proudly highlighted his work for the
coal companies."

[6] Roberts is a member of a three judge panel that ruled in July that the
USG could indeed try detainees at Guantanamo Bay in military tribunals
(the first since WWII), which were declared unconstitutional last year.
Roberts and his colleagues rejected that ruling, with (as the NYT said)
occasionally disdainful language. They said (a) that the Geneva
Conventions "do not create judicially enforceable rights [sic]"; (b) that
Congress had implicitly authorized Bush to set up the tribunals in
post-911 resolutions which authorized the president "to use all necessary
and appropriate force" to prevent terrorism; and (c) the tribunals were
not even bound by the rules of courts-martial, like allowing for
defendants to be present!
	"Today the NYT reports on the ongoing hunger strike at [the
Guantanamo Bay prison], where as many as a third of prisoners there have
refused food in recent weeks ... this is the first time the Times has
reported on the growing demonstration (with the exception of running an
Associated Press report) ... As many as 200 prisoners are protesting their
detainment in the absence of charges and the conditions of their
imprisonment, and about 20 are being [force-]fed through nasal tubes."
[Slate]

[7] Senate's most senior member, Robert Byrd, called for the Bush
administration to withdraw from Iraq and bring the troops home. Byrd said,
"We cannot continue to commit billions in Iraq when our own people are so
much in need, not only now, in New Orleans, but all across America for
everything from education to health care to homeland security to securing
our own borders." [DN]

[8] At the 60th anniversary session of the UN, "Venezuelan President Hugo
Chavez denounced the U.S.-led war in Iraq on Thursday and told world
leaders they should consider moving the U.N. headquarters out of the
United States because of it. [He suggested Jerusalem.] ... World leaders
had been asked to speak for five minutes, and when Chavez kept talking,
the presiding diplomat passed him a note that his time was up. The
Venezuelan leader threw the note on the floor and said if Bush could speak
for 20 minutes at Wednesday's opening session, so could he. At the end,
Chavez's remarks got what observers said was the loudest applause of the
summit." [AP]
	"The Miami Herald is reporting that the U.S.-funded National
Endowment for Democracy has agreed to give a leading opposition group in
Venezuela over $100,000 in funding. The group -- Sumate -- helped lead the
effort to oust Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez through a recall
referendum last year. The recall failed. Backers of Chavez have long
accused the U.S. of helping to facilitate his overthrown by financially
backing opposition groups. The NED says the money will be used to
strengthen democracy in the country." [DN]

[9] It's perhaps a good time to read the new book by the American
conservative Andrew J. Bacevich, THE NEW AMERICAN MILITARISM, HOW
AMERICANS ARE SEDUCED BY WAR. "Bacevich, a West Point graduate ... and
former Bush Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin ... writes that he
still situates himself 'culturally on the right. And I continue to view
the remedies proffered by mainstream liberalism with skepticism. But my
disenchantment with what passes for mainstream conservatism, embodied in
the present Bush administration and its groupies, is just about absolute.
Fiscal irresponsibility, a buccaneering foreign policy, a disregard for
the Constitution, the barest lip service as a response to profound moral
controversies: these do not qualify as authentically conservative values.
On this score my views have come to coincide with the critique long
offered by the radical left: it is the mainstream itself, the professional
liberals as well as the professional conservatives who define the
problem.'" [Nation]

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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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