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Incite Newsletter Check out our web site: GOTOBUTTON BM_1_
www.incite-national.org
September 29, 2002
Back issues of our email newsletters can be found on GOTOBUTTON BM_2_
www.yahoogroups.com
In This Newsletter
1. In Response to Andrea Dworkin’s Essay "The Women Suicide Bombers"
2. Ex-prisoner undergoing sex change sues state, feds
3. Spiritual Appropriation is Hazardous To Your Health - Three Related articles
4. FBI Targets Black Muslims in Anti-Terrorist Watch
5. Pregnant aboriginals anonymously tested for HIV
6. U.S. Women and Cuba Collaboration Call for Action on Real Security,
Justice, and Peaceful Relations
7. Defend Reproductive Freedom * Defend Civil Rights*defend Human Rights
Stop C.R.A.C.K.!!! - New York, October 7
8. Massacre in Gujarat, India - Dossier Available
9. Subscribe/Unsubscribe Information
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1. In Response to Andrea Dworkin’s Essay "The Women Suicide Bombers"
[Note: Andrea Dworkin’s essay can be found on www.feminista.org]
We were disturbed to read Dworkin's analysis of "women suicide bombers."
Although Dworkin has a history advocating against gender oppression, this
article’s gender analysis fails because of its racist, colonial, and sexist
depictions of Palestinian women. Dworkin’s article is filled with hateful
lies, false accusations, and a lack of proof, particularly about the lives
of women "suicide bombers."
Dworkin unleashes biased undocumented repugnance on Palestinian women’s
national beliefs without any convincing references, dates, interviews,
resources, names, institutions, events, statistics, or personal accounts.
She starts by defining Palestinian women "as lower than animals". The first
question that comes to mind is how could Dworkin’s feminism be so frankly
and openly hypocritical? How could she call herself a "feminist" and
humiliate and degrade Palestinian women by saying that they are "lower than
animals"? Is it because they are Palestinians? Is this what US white
feminism is all about? Such a feminist analysis is unbalanced, dogmatic,
and biased, because it does not address the institutionalized and carefully
planned state terrorism that is manifested in one of the last racist
occupations/colonizations in the world, "Israel," against the indigenous
Palestinian people in Palestine.
Dworkin characterizes Palestinian female martyrs as "young women, often
women who had been raped, sometimes by men in their own families . . .
(who) trade in the lowly status of the raped woman for the higher status of
a martyr." Her argument disregards the reality that Palestinian women
sacrifice themselves in order to be liberated from Isreali racist military
occupation/colonization and to stop the annihilation of their people.
Furthermore, her blanket generalization that they are survivors of family
rape is unfounded, there is no support or evidence offered to prove such a
statement. How does Dworkin know if Wafa’ Idriss, Ayat Al Akras, Andaleeb
Taqtaqa, and Dareen Abu Aeshah were in fact victims of "family rape?" Where
are the voices of Wafa, Ayat, Andaleeb and Dareen in telling their own truths?
While we acknowledge that sexual violence happens in all communities,
Dworkin's analysis that sexual violence is the reason women would become
suicide bombers is faulty. She ignores the most obvious reason, that
Palestinians are subjected to a genocidal campaign of ethnic cleansing by
the state of Israel, funded by US tax dollars.
Why does Dworkin utilize women's sexuality as another colonial tool of
oppression, presenting falsifications of the lives of Palestinian women, of
so called "hymen repairs?" Is this all in the name of "feminism?" We must
unearth the Zionist, racist and colonialist underpinnings of US white
feminism. This article shows that in a racist world, rape and sexual
inequality within communities of color are used by racist oppressors,
including feminists, as an excuse for further racist and colonial ideology
and violence, as was also seen with the US government’s sudden interest in
Afghani women’s rights so as to justify military invasion.
Dworkin’s article ignores Palestinian women’s national aspirations and that
nationalist movements for communities and women of color are struggles for
liberation. Dworkin dismisses the valor of Palestinian women’s fifty-four
years of resistance to Israeli occupation, erasing the reality that
Palestinian women use their own bodies to fight for and defend their legal,
moral and national rights.
Elham Bayour, a member of the Incite! National Planning Committee,
documented Palestinian women political prisoner’s testimonies. Their voices
provide answers to why Palestinian women would join the Palestinian
national resistance. Jenin’s answer was,
"No one influenced or encouraged me to be involved, I did it by myself. It
was a protest of the situation, protest of the occupation. It is from the
poverty and misery. There were nights when my brothers and sisters did not
have dinner to eat. They cried to my mother, hungry, they wanted to eat.
I was fed up with the bugs and the dirt. We lived in tents in Shati Refugee
Camp in Gaza. The insects and the bugs infested our dirt floors. We
suffered from sewage water, rain, cold winters, hot summers, and
collective bathrooms. Open sewage became small puddles full of diseases and
bad smell. Plague attacked us once. Rats, roaches and mice were rampant.
Poverty and suffering pressed me to be political. This is why I became
involved in the struggle to free myself and my people."
(Excerpted from personal interviews conducted during Summer 1998, Fall 1999
& 2000)
Liberation from colonial oppression is the primary reason why Palestinian
women join in resisting the Israeli occupation. Moreover, Dworkin dismisses
the historical and socio-historical consequences of Israeli occupation that
rendered ethnic, social, health, political and cultural catastrophes. This
occupation uprooted and annihilated over 530 villages and created over five
million refugees. This military occupation instituted barbarity,
aggression, ethnocide, killing babies in cold blood, sieges, roadblocks,
curfews, starvation, malnutrition, anemia, homelessness, and violence
against women’s bodies. An expected human reaction to the occupation is to
resist it, because Palestinian women "are not lower than animals," as
Dworkin attested. They are human beings who do not and will not accept
Israeli colonization/aggression and these women continuously rise above
racist tactics that the Zionists and their sympathizers impose on them.
In addition, nowhere does Dworkin point to the complicity of the US
government in supporting the continued colonization of Palestine. She
reduces this colonization to a simple conflict between warring
nationalisms, as if this conflict is not in every way fostered by the
interests of US imperialism. It is disingenuous for a woman who is a US
citizen to write about this situation as a disinterested party when, in
fact, she is, as well as all US citizens, complicit in this colonization as
our tax dollars go to fund it.
There is another truth about violence against women that is painfully
neglected by Dworkin’s article. It is well known that aggressors/occupiers
utilize rape as a tactic of war against native women. Bayour’s research on
Palestinian women political prisoners reveals various tactics of sexual
terrorism that the Israeli occupiers perpetrate on Palestinian women
political prisoners. These Palestinian women are victims of Israeli sexual
violence because they are females of the Semite Palestinian race and
because they dare to stand up against the racist practices employed by
Zionism against the indigenous Palestinian population.
Regrettably, Dworkin’s article does not render attention to the reality
of state sanctioned Israeli sexual assaults of Palestinian women.
Dworkin’s second reason why Palestinian women martyr themselves is that
"women try to rise in the nationalist struggle so that when that struggle
is over the status of women will be recognized as deserving of citizenship
and equality." Is not the struggle for liberation of a people also the
struggle for liberation of women? Palestinian women fight for their
national liberation because they believe in their historic, legal, national
and moral rights as Palestinians. Are not women around the globe fighting
for these same reasons? But Dworkin missed the key element in this
reasoning, which is that the entire Palestinian population is under Israeli
military prosecution and Palestinian males, as well as Palestinian females,
do not possess citizenship or civil society. So there is a more fundamental
question of how can women be equal citizens, if there is no citizenship for
anyone?
Dworkin’s third reason why Palestinian women martyr themselves is "pride."
She argues that Palestinian women gain pride by holding up male family
members who are "civilly superior to them." "The best and brightest are
motivated to stand up for their families," she writes. Dworkin ignores the
fact that Palestinian women have human agency and political awareness. By
defining them as such, Dworkin’s article attempts to exterminate over
eighty years of Palestinian women’s national resistance, rendering
Palestinian women as selfish, apolitical, and "lower than animals.
Another key problem with Dworkin's article is that she equates Palestinian
nationalism with Israeli nationalism. That is, she seems to feel it is
acceptable to denounce Palestinian nationalism as long as she
simultaneously criticizes Israeli nationalism. While her analysis that
nationalist struggles often marginalize women is accurate, she fails to
acknowledge that asking a colonized people who are currently experiencing
genocide to give up a nationalist struggle is itself a colonial act. The
nationalism exercised by a colonial country, in this case, Israel, simply
cannot be equated with the nationalism of a colonized nation, in this case
Palestine. Dworkin suggests that Palestinian men stand in the way of
sisterhood between Israeli women occupiers and Palestinian women. The
reality is that there can be no sisterhood until colonization is eradicated
and until Israeli women occupiers stop wholly supporting the military
extermination of native Palestinians.
Palestinian women’s courage lies in their strong beliefs, in their rights
to their ancestral land, and in their commitment to living free lives.
Palestinian women will always rise high, despite the racist and colonizing
attacks of Dworkin and other western, white, US aggressors. Palestinian
women know well that their freedom will be never granted, but rather it
must be acquired.
Elham Bayour, Paula Rojas, Andrea Smith, Ann Caton, Sherry Wilson, Clarissa
Rojas, Mimi Kim, Loretta Rivera, Nadine Naber - INCITE: Women of Color
Against Violence
** According to the Arab Women’s Solidarity Association, Zionism is a form
of racism. Zionist ideology has manifested in the colonial implant of the
“exclusive Jewish state of Israel for Jewish people only, exclusive of the
indigenous inhabitants of Palestine.” Zionists encouraged Jews to make
‘aliya,’ the Jewish ‘return’ to the biblical Land of Israel (located in
Palestine). The Zionist project emerges through 18th century European
colonization, serving British political interests through the colonial
establishment of the state of Israel. The latter half of the 20th century
witnessed the shift to the United States becoming the primary supporter and
investor in Israel’s colonizing project.In the United States, Arab American
women have spoken to their experiences of being ‘–ism” so that greater
solidarity may be forged between all struggles resisting racism and
colonialism and so that we may further link the oppression of US women of
color with the oppression of women from the global south.“The Forgotten
“–ism:” An Arab American Women’s Perspective on Zionism, Racism and Sexism
which can be found at . In addition, the term anti-semitism has become
synonymous with anti-Jewish sentiment, yetArabs and Palestinians are
Semites as well and therefore the plight to free Palestinians, who are
Semites is actually pro-Semitic. With regards to anti-Jewish sentiment, it
is part of the Zionist project to confound criticism of the colonial state
of Israel with anti-Jewish sentiment. The reality is one can speak out
against the oppressive colonial violence of the state of Israel without
expressing anti-Jewish sentiment. It is possible for one to stand in
solidarity with all peoples and their rights to a free and safe existence
and simultaneously fight against colonization and racism, actually
resisting all forms of colonial and racist violence is a requirement
necessary for achieving such a solidarity.
2. Ex-prisoner undergoing sex change sues state, feds
By BOB ANEZ Associated Press
HELENA - A Canadian citizen, who was in the process of transforming himself
from a man into a woman when sent to the Montana State Prison in 1999, is
suing the state and federal government for alleged mistreatment while
behind bars.
Alexandria Tucker's lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court last week, seeks
$18 million in damages from Montana and federal officials whom Tucker holds
responsible for abuses allegedly suffered while locked in a men's prison
for 19 months.
The defendants displayed a "deliberate and continued pattern and practice
of discrimination, harassment, intimidation, assault, causing bodily injury
toward persons thought to be homosexual and/or transsexual," Tucker's
complaint said. "Defendants mistook plaintiff's gender identity crisis as
an invitation to sexually abuse, assault and harm plaintiff."
Diana Leibinger-Koch, chief attorney for the state Corrections Department,
said Tuesday the agency takes seriously Tucker's allegations, but she
doubts many are true.
"I think very little of this is true because I know the officers at Montana
State Prison and they're very professional," she said. "Their conduct does
not include things like this."
Although Tucker's gender situation two years after being paroled is unclear
from the complaint, Tucker had male genitals, augmented breasts and was
undergoing hormone treatments when arrested in 1998.
Tucker, who lives in Victoria, British Columbia, claimed that when he
attempted to complain about his treatment, his complaints were met with
retaliation by prison staff.
He alleged the federal government was at fault for ignoring his written
complaints to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Tucker also said he was unconstitutionally prosecuted, convicted and jailed
on the basis of his sexual orientation. He said he was denied access to an
attorney and not allowed to contact the Canadian consulate when arrested.
"The case was built on discrimination and intimidation based around the
plaintiff's gender orientation," he said.
Koch said corrections officials had little choice in sending Tucker to the
Deer Lodge prison.
"We have an obligation to send inmates who are anatomically males to the
men's prison," she said.
3. Spiritual Appropriation is Hazardous To Your Health - Three Related articles
Article One - Two die in solstice sweat lodge ritual
The pair may have asphyxiated inside the sealed enclosure.
By Walt Wiley -- Bee Staff Writer
A man and woman died of unknown causes early Friday while participating in
a summer solstice sweat lodge ritual in a rural area of El Dorado
County.Kirsten Dana Babcock, 34, of Redding and David Thomas Hawker, 36, of
Union City were participating in a ritual described to deputies as a
"vision quest," said El Dorado County Sheriff's Lt. Kevin House.
Autopsies are scheduled for Monday to determine the cause of death, "but it
appears they died from some sort of asphyxiation," House said. The two were
with another man and woman in a makeshift sweat lodge into which they had
sealed themselves for a four-hour cleansing ritual, chanting amid the
vapors of herbs and water poured over the hot rocks, the survivors told
officers.
About 1 ½hours into the ordeal, the surviving woman became dizzy and
nauseated and left the lodge, and minutes later the chanting from within
the lodge ceased, witnesses told sheriff's investigators.
The surviving man then crawled out, and other participants in the solstice
event went inside to find Babcock and Hawker unresponsive. House said the
rescuers reported "unusual odors" of unknown origin coming from the lodge.
"Our investigators collected herbs and water and other articles from the
lodge to see if there were any toxics or anything present to contribute to
these deaths," he said.
He said Babcock and Hawker were part of a group of perhaps 35 who had
gathered in a remote area of the forest near Omo Ranch to participate in w!
hat they described to officers as an American Indian ritual to observe the
summer solstice. Signs on the road directed visitors to a "Vision Quest."
The sweat lodge where the deaths occurred was made of a wooden frame shaped
in a near-circle about 10 feet in diameter and covered with plastic
sheeting, which was buried in the ground around the lower edge to make it
airtight. The plastic was covered with sleeping bags and blankets to keep
in the heat.
The participants told officers that they were seeking spiritual
enlightenment by sitting in the steam in the sealed environment. The
gathering did not appear to be sponsored by any tribal organization, and
none of the participants said they were of American Indian ancestry, House
said. House, a 20-year veteran of county law enforcement, said he knows of
no local Indian groups that use such sweat lodge rituals.
Article 2 - Deaths raise questions about spiritual quests
By Peter Hecht -- Bee Staff Writer
It was to have been a cleansing ritual, preparation for a "sacred pause" in
their lives.
About 30 people from Northern California had journeyed into the El Dorado
County forest near Omo Ranch last week for a "vision quest." For four days,
they were to isolate themselves in the Sierra Nevada, turning to nature in
search of meaning. Nationally, devotees to this growing spiritual movement
may include adolescents moving into adulthood or people soon to be married
or newly divorced. They may be changing careers or grieving for lost parents.
They gather in deserts or on mountaintops to cast aside their former selves
and be born again in new stations in life. But Friday, something went
tragically awry. A woman and man lost their lives. In the dark, wee hours,
four people entered a makeshift "sweat lodge" fashioned with a wood frame
and made nearly air-tight with blankets and plastic sheeting. In the
cleansing ceremony to prepare for their vision quest in the wilderness,
they gathered around heated rocks and chanted while breathing vapors of
herbs and water poured over the stones.
After 1 ½ hours of heat and little ventilation, authorities say, one man
and one woman managed to crawl out of the sweat lodge nauseous and nearly
overcome. But two others inside -- Kirsten Dana Babcock, 34, of Redding and
David Thomas Hawker, 36, of Union City -- stopped chanting and fell silent.
Soon one of the other vision quest participants called 9-1-1. "They said
somebody was having cardiac arrest or heart problems," said El Dorado
County Sheriff's Lt. Kevin House. Emergency workers arrived to find Babcock
and Hawker unresponsive, House said, and called for sheriff's deputies
"because it seemed a little too bizarre to them." Authorities say the
incident appears to be a terrible accident -- not a crime. But the deaths
in El Dorado County have stirred concerns and called into question
ceremonies employed by a growing number of wilderness and spiritualist
groups that bring people into isolated settings for reflective encounters
in nature. On Tuesday, House said autopsy results were inconclusive as to
what killed Babcock and Hawker. Authorities have speculated that the sweat
lodge may have been too hot or poorly ventilated, or that herbs used in the
cleansing ceremony may have emitted toxic fumes.
"It's a critical issue as to whether anything foreign was introduced," said
House, who said toxicology tests may take eight weeks to complete. "The
actual cause of death is yet to be determined."
House said a local group known as Kokopelli Ranch sponsored the gathering.
None of the members, who had ventured onto property owned by the Sierra
Pacific Industries logging company for their ritual, could be reached for
comment. But House and others say the group is one of the increasingly
popular vision quest organizations now operating in the United States and
Canada. Many of the groups borrow from centuries-old American Indian
traditions -- such as the sweat lodge cleansing ritual -- to help city
dwellers and suburbanites deal with their lives' passages and the stresses,
the triumphs and heartbreaks of the contemporary world.
But some of the groups shun the sweat lodge ritual, saying it may be
inappropriate for non- Indians to borrow their customs. And some American
Indians who revel in the sweat lodge traditions say they may not be a good
idea for those who don't know how to do them safely. The ceremony employed
last week -- in which rocks were heated outside the sweat lodge and stacked
inside -- was apparently patterned after rituals of the Lakota Sioux in
South Dakota. "All Native Americans have a sweat lodge ceremony that varies
in tradition, but 90 percent of the ceremony is the same," said Rick Adams,
a Nisenon Indian who is a member of the Shingle Springs Rancheria tribe in
El Dorado County and a cultural advisor to the Maidu Interpretive Center in
Roseville. In its sweat lodge ceremonies, the Shingle Springs tribe uses
fragrant herbs, including red clover, white sage and wormwood, as part of a
tradition of American Indians "cleansing themselves before they go out
hunting." But life-altering self-fulfillment "or coming of age or anything
like that," is not part of the tradition, Adams said. He also said sweat
lodges should be opened and ventilated every 15 to 30 minutes and that a
"sweat leader" should constantly check on the conditions of participants
and cool the stones, open doors, pull up blankets or give people water if
they are uncomfortable.
Authorities in El Dorado County say the Kokopelli Ranch sweat lodge was
kept nearly airtight to block out the natural light as the participants
cleansed themselves before setting off into nature. "It was 3 a.m.," House
wondered. "How much sun was going to get in?" The deaths shocked members of
other spiritual organizations known for putting people in nature as a path
to self-fulfillment. "I have never heard of anyone hurt like that," said
Michael Botkin, director of Rites of Passage Inc., a Santa Rosa group that
takes people into natural settings to "find a deeper sense of purpose" in
their lives.
But in 1993, Kelly Rice, a 35-year-old Austin, Texas, housekeeper and
masseuse, died of accidental heatstroke inside a sweat lodge she entered to
pray and purify herself as part of a vision quest ritual. Botkin said he
has participated in many sweat lodge ceremonies with American Indian
spiritual figures. But his Rite of Passage group -- which calls its treks
into nature "vision fasts" -- does not do the sweat lodge ceremony because
it believes it is inappropriate for non-Indians to mimic the American
Indian ritual. Botkin says Rite of Passage Inc. carries liability insurance
and has "some definite safety standards built into everything we do." As
part of the spiritual rites, nature -- the outdoors -- becomes a "death
lodge" in which people are supposed to experience their lives flashing
before them and allow their former selves to die.
"The first two days, I sat in the death lodge and received the oddest set
of visitors, random people from my life," wrote an Oregon woman, Kayla, on
the Web site of a vision quest group that sent followers into the southern
Oregon desert. "By midafternoon on the second day, the truth of this sunk
in: I had been dying for years, and it was time to stop dying ... and be
reborn."
Many of these spiritualist groups were inspired by the writings of a former
San Francisco State University professor, Steven Foster, and his wife,
Meredith Little. The couple founded the Rites of Passage organization and
the School of Lost Borders, a center near Big Pine in the Owens Valley that
organizes self-fulfillment trips. "They go out into an expanse of nature. I
call it 'the sacred pause,' " said Angelo LaZenka, the school's
co-director. LaZenka, who has participated in American Indian sweat lodge
rituals, said the School of Lost Borders doesn't use them. "If we do any
kind of sweat," he said, "we build a modern sauna."
Article 3 - Fort Peck Assiniboine Sioux first to support protection of
ceremonies
By Brenda Norrell
Special to the Navajo Times
5.16.02
POPLAR, Mont. - The Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux, assembled in a meeting
of the Indian Treaty Council, became the first to vote to support a
declaration to protect the sun dance and sweat lodge of the Northern Plains
from exploitation and abuse."I am behind this 100 percent," said Victor
Perry, president of the Fort Peck Indian Treaty Council.
Among the topics of discussion was a workshop offered for Star Nation
Knowledge on Mount Hood in Oregon. Claiming to be a chief and heyoka, the
man advertises a workshop and sweat lodge at the cost of $100 per
person.The $100 price includes an Inipi ceremony and registration is
available online.
"I don't think he has the right to make himself a chief," Perry said.Perry
said the man could only be a chief if he is the oldest son in a chief's
family or comes from a family of medicine men. Perry said the most
important point is that a true medicine man does not sell the ceremonies he
is entrusted to respect.
"A chief does not sell our rights," he said.Bernard Red Cherries, Northern
Cheyenne Sun Dance priest, said the purpose of the sun dance is to sustain
life and to humble oneself. Now, however, in the Pacific Northwest, the sun
dance and sweat lodge are being conducted by non-Indians and Indians
without traditional authority to do so. At least one white person is taking
flesh offerings. "This isn't about hating white people. I don't want my
grandchildren going to a white guy to learn the sun dance," he said.
Speaking to Fort Peck Sioux, he said, "If you were to put on a priest's
robe and run around, you would probably go to jail." Red Cherries said the
purpose of the declaration is to protect the ceremonies from being led by
non-Indians and from those who attempt to profit from the spiritual ways.
Red Cherries said the elders are to render guidance for the younger ones,
like Calve Bear First of Fort Peck, who was raised by his parents in a way
that he responded immediately to the need to defend the spiritual ways.Red
Cherries urged those gathered to remember in prayer Navajos at Big
Mountain, Ariz., whose sun dance is led by Lakota spiritual leaders,
following the arrests of Navajos and destruction of the Sun Dance Tree and
arbor last summer.
He said there must be more awareness of the abuse of Sioux and Cheyenne
ceremonies throughout the country."I know it's an unpopular issue, but we
should be talking about it," he said. "My life has been threatened because
I have been talking about this, but I'm not scared."During the discussion,
one Fort Peck woman said, "I was living a lie, trying to be a white person.
My world fell apart."When they started to wake me up. I said there has to
be another way to live, to end this suffering. I said, 'Help me.'"When you
walk this Red Road you have to walk it with truth. You have to be honest
about who you are," the Fort Peck woman, who asked that her name not be
published, told the gathering.
She said it is a critical time for Indian nations and warned that the
medicine can be used to hurt people. "We can get lost in wanting to be
powerful."Calve Bear First attended the meeting with his parents, Calvin
Robert First and Myrna First, hosts of a sweat lodge ceremony after the
gathering on Fort Peck tribal land. Bear First said the Sept. 11 tragedies
led all Americans to know the suffering that American Indians have long
felt.Bear First said America pours countless dollars into development in
other countries, yet fails to provide American Indians with development
funds at home.
He said there are many ceremonies vanishing and hopes there will be a
revival of interest in some of the vanishing sacred Sioux ways, such as the
Moccasin Game practiced in Canada.Urging Indian people to live their lives
in a good way, he said, "We don't hurt our
selves, we hurt our loved ones."Red Cherries offered a message to
non-Indians attending ceremonies led by traditional leaders."If you are
here to pray, pray with us. But don't take it from us. It belongs to
us." The Northern Cheyenne understand the exploitation of the sun dance
and will not condone or participate in its practice, Red Cherries
said.Non-Indians like Nathan Deon Cagle in California have exploited the
spiritual ceremonies to the extent of being convicted of crimes.Cagle, 49,
known as "Windwalker," was convicted on eight felony counts in Yolo County
Superior Court in California. Claiming to be a Northern Cheyenne spiritual
leader, Cagle charged hundreds of dollars for sweat lodge ceremonies and
"vision quests." He offered native experiences to children and advertised
rites of passage and pipe ceremonies on the Internet.
Cagle, who says he is innocent, was convicted of theft by false pretenses,
extortion, stalking, embezzlement and other charges. Red Cherries said
Cagle and others like him "are very troubled people and we humbly request
that they take pity on us."You have already taken so much from us, please
leave us with the little we have left."
4. FBI Targets Black Muslims in Anti-Terrorist Watch
By PATRICK J. MCDONNELL, Times Staff Writer
SEATTLE -- The brawny man in the Muslim skullcap gestured toward a brick
apartment building across the street from where he was standing guard at a
shelter for homeless families."See that window over there?" said the man,
Abdul-Hakim, pointing to an upper floor. "The FBI watches me from that
window." The FBI will not comment. But a federal investigation of a
possible terrorist cell in the Pacific Northwest is focusing on a group of
African American converts to Islam, possibly opening a new chapter in the
domestic war on terrorism.
Across the nation, court papers suggest that FBI anxiety about radical
African American Muslims has reemerged in the last decade as the bureau has
concentrated on Islamic terrorism.Federal investigations into the World
Trade Center bombing in 1993 and a related plot to blow up New York
landmarks discovered the names of black Americans associated with the
"blind sheik," Omar Abdel Rahman, now serving a life term for his part in
the bombing conspiracy. Among those convicted in the same plot was
U.S.-born Rodney Hampton-el, a former New York clinic worker and
ex-moujahedeen volunteer in Afghanistan. "FBI scrutiny of African American
Muslims has clearly increased since the [1993] World Trade Center bombing,"
said Ihsan Bagby, a professor at Shaw University in North Carolina who has
studied the nation's Muslims. "A lot of this is a combination of a focus on
terrorism and an agenda about black 'radicals' and Muslims--all lumped
together."
The Seattle investigation turns on the notion that foreign terrorists may
have recruited on U.S. soil among African American Muslims, and may even
have sponsored a "jihad training camp" in the Oregon backcountry with U.S.
collaborators. Law enforcement documents obtained by The Times say that an
American man who worshiped at one of the mosques here may have served as a
liaison for recruits seeking entry into Afghan terrorist training camps. In
addition, documents show, he and his brother were suspected of scouting
targets "for a terrorist operation" during a road trip back to Seattle last
month.
The inquiry has sent a shudder through a small, insular community whose
members view themselves as having worked hard to banish crack dealers from
their block. Abdul-Hakim says he worshiped with the two brothers. He said
neither the brothers nor anyone else associated with the case ever
advocated violence or terrorism. Most, if not all, strongly opposed U.S.
policy in the Middle East, Abdul-Hakim said, but none ever preached
violence."We're still trying to figure out what Al Qaeda is," said
Abdul-Hakim. "Muslims are under attack worldwide. Why are Muslims the only
people not allowed to train in self-defense?"
The specter of terrorism also surfaced in the case of Jamil Abdullah
Al-Amin (formerly H. Rap Brown, the onetime black power firebrand), a
charismatic Muslim convert who received a life sentence in Atlanta this
spring for killing a sheriff's deputy in a shootout. The FBI investigated
Al-Amin as a suspected terrorist in the years after the World Trade Center
bombing, but Al-Amin was never charged.
The movement founded by Al-Amin may be indirectly linked to the case in
Seattle. The mosques in question here were said to have at least an
informal affiliation with his group. Like the great majority of African
American Muslims, neither the Atlanta nor Seattle groups were affiliated
with the Nation of Islam and its leader, Louis Farrakhan, who promotes a
black nationalist agenda. Instead, the Muslims now drawing federal
attention attend mosques espousing a pro-Islam philosophy widely shared in
the Muslim world.
"It's not the policy of the FBI to investigate mosques or any other
religious institution," said Charles Mandigo, the FBI chief in Seattle.
"Any investigations that the FBI may be conducting would be based on the
actions of individuals and not their religion, national origin, race, or
any other such characteristics."
Nevertheless, the disquieting scenario of home-grown terrorist recruits has
set off alarms. A confidential FBI alert on the Seattle case last month was
sent to field offices--as well as to the White House, CIA, State Department
and other assorted government agencies. A copy was obtained by The
Times.The two brothers apparently targeted in the Seattle case--who had not
previously been publicly identified--issued a news release on Monday
denying any links to terrorism.
The release identified the pair as James and Mustafa Ujaama. According to
the FBI document, they were born in Denver, reared in Seattle and their
given names and ages are Earl James Thompson, 36, and Jon Alexander
Thompson, 34. "These two gentlemen are community activists, not
terrorists," declared Ron Sims, the King County executive, who is the
highest-ranking African American elected official in the state of
Washington. "It's the McCarthy era all over again," said Charlie James, who
heads a group called the Organization of African American Unity and who
issued the news release on behalf of the brothers.
Neither brother has been charged with a crime, and neither has been
questioned by the FBI, but both have been subject to considerable
surveillance, the law enforcement documents indicate.The two brothers,
along with others under scrutiny, worshiped at several now-defunct
storefront mosques just east of downtown Seattle that have been tied to
Semi Osman, an immigrant of apparent Lebanese origin, who served as an
imam, or prayer leader. Osman, 32, is a car mechanic and U.S. Navy
reservist and is the only person known to have been arrested in the inquiry.
He was charged with immigration and gun violations, but his attorney,
Robert M. Leen, said the government is pressuring Osman to tell all about
former acquaintances as part of the terrorism investigation.A search
warrant executed at Osman's home turned up several weapons, anti-U.S.
Islamic literature, military maps and "instructions on poisoning water
sources," according to the federal law enforcement document. Leen said he
had seen no evidence that water-poisoning directions were seized.
Acquaintances describe the two brothers targeted by the FBI as hard-working
fathers with small children. The younger sibling lives in Seattle and makes
his living as a mechanic and used-car salesman.
The older brother is an "entrepreneur" based in London, according to
Charlie James. The older brother has written and privately published
several inspirational books aimed at young African Americans. One book is
called "The Young People's Guide To Starting a Business Without Selling
Drugs." The older sibling also is reported to be the founder of
stopamerica.org, a Web site harshly critical of U.S. actions abroad. The
site lists offices in London; Karachi, Pakistan; and at an unspecified
address on south Crenshaw Boulevard in Los Angeles.
"America's foreign policy makers have brought hate to the people of the
United States," E.J. Ujaama states in a "founder's message" on the site.
"We the people of the United States charge this government and their
coalition with conspiracy to commit genocide and crimes of terrorism
against Muslim people in our names." In particular, the FBI inquiry has
zeroed in on the elder brother's supposed relationship with Abu Hamza
al-Masri, a militant London-based sheik whom U.S. authorities regard as a
recruiter for Al Qaeda. The FBI document states that the American "worked
for and provided services to" the cleric, including taking computers to the
Taliban before the U.S. invasion.
According to the FBI document, the asserted "jihad training camp" was
carried out in November 1999 "in concert with" Hamza al-Masri at a ranch in
the secluded community of Bly, in south-central Oregon. The London sheik,
whose Finsbury Park mosque is a center of radical Islam in Europe, has
denied any connection. The two brothers did travel to Bly, James conceded,
but he said the trip was for recreational "practice shooting," not for
terrorism training. The FBI is attempting to determine who visited the
site. The wide-ranging investigation based here may have arisen from
intelligence gleaned from interrogations of prisoners at the U.S. military
lockup at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Specifically, the documents cite the case
of a British citizen, Feroz Abbasi, who was captured in December by U.S.
forces while allegedly defending the former Taliban stronghold of Kunduz.
U.S. authorities state that the elder of the Seattle brothers introduced
Abbasi "to individuals at Al Qaeda facilities in Afghanistan," thus
enabling his "matriculation" into a "terror training camp."
Now, in Seattle, "the FBI is watching all the time," said Abdul-Hakim, the
mosque member. By Abdul-Hakim's account, the Muslims at the mosques in
question here adhered to ostensibly mainstream teachings of Islam,
worshiping alongside immigrants from Africa, Asia and elsewhere. Along with
providing spiritual guidance, the mosques take an active role in helping to
purge the area of crack purveyors and other criminals, which occasionally
results in conflicts with drug dealers.
One of the mosques ran afoul of the clientele of a bar-poolroom a few doors
down. At some point, according to police, officers responding to a report
of an assault were told weapons had been stored in the mosque. Worshipers
maintained that the arms were for self-defense against drug dealers and
others; the weapons may have been placed there by unauthorized mosque
visitors, according to Abdul-Hakim. No charges were filed.At one of the
Seattle mosques, Osman became involved in discussions about how to obtain a
steady source of meat prepared according to Muslim dietary laws, or halal
meat.That's when congregants first heard that he was moving to Bly,
apparently with a plan to raise sheep and goats to produce halal meat,
Abdul-Hakim said..Some fellow worshipers visited Osman in Bly, almost 400
miles southeast of Seattle. Among them were the two brothers from the
mosque--for "target practice," according to James. According to the FBI
document, Osman "helped coordinate" the "jihad training."
Osman is believed to have lived at a 160-acre ranch near Bly with his wife,
Angelica, a U.S.-born convert to Muslim, and her daughter, now 11, for
several months beginning in late 1999. Neighbors said they saw and heard
little evidence--such as automatic gunfire or large groups of strangers
coming and going--that would have signaled a training camp. Nor were many
African Americans or foreigners seen in a place where they would stand out.
A knowledgeable source reported that after the Sept. 11 attacks, the FBI
reviewed a December 1999 traffic stop of Osman. Two of his passengers may
have been top aides to Hamza al-Masri, the controversial London sheik, the
source said.
After his livestock operation foundered, Osman and his family moved out.
They eventually settled in Tacoma, Wash., and Osman enrolled in a computer
course at a nearby university, continued his Navy Reserve drills and
again worked as a car mechanic. But he hurt his back in an accident and
was unable to put in many hours, said the station owner, Mohammad Siddiqui,
an Indian Muslim who, like other co-workers, found Osman more enthusiastic
about religion and politics than fixing cars."He [Osman] talked a little
bit too much," Siddiqui said as he rang up gasoline sales on a recent
afternoon. "These days, talk can get you into trouble."
Times staff writer William C. Rempel and researcher Nona Yates contributed
to this report.
5. Pregnant aboriginals anonymously tested for HIV
by Paul Weinberg
A three-year programme in Canada's west coast province of British Columbia
(BC) to anonymously test the blood of pregnant aboriginal women in rural
communities is creating some controversy among aboriginal AIDS activists.
On the one hand, the data will be valuable in pinpointing the extent of
HIV/AIDS in what is considered a high-risk group in Canada, says Art
Zoccole, executive director of Ottawa-based Canadian Aboriginal AIDS
Network (CAAN).
At the same time, if any of the samples are found to contain the HIV virus
there is no way to relate that information back to the women who indirectly
provided the blood following prenatal examinations by their local doctors.
"If there is a hidden epidemic, how do we address that? It is a
double-edged sword," says Zoccole. He notes that HIV/AIDS carriers who are
public about their affliction face serious discrimination within the
generally small aboriginal communities.
In what is called an anonymous unlinked surveillance study, the women's
blood is being examined by Canadian Blood Services in Vancouver for the
federal government's Health Canada and the BC First Nations Chiefs' Health
Committee.
The blood samples arrive without identifying the donor or the community she
is from, explains Vancouver-based David Martin, one of the co-coordinators
of the study.
It will be another year before the statistical findings are
released. Martin estimates that HIV positive cases among Canadian
aboriginals - usually known as "first nations" or "native" people - vary
year to year, from 11 to 19 percent of all HIV cases in Canada.
This is "inordinately high", he says, given that aboriginals represent
about three to five percent of Canada's 30 million people.
Martin estimates that at least 50 to 60 percent of pregnant aboriginal
women whose leftover blood is being studied have voluntarily had their
blood tested for HIV during prenatal examinations that are completely
unconnected to the BC study.
But that still leaves 40 or 50 percent of this same group of pregnant
aboriginal women who for one reason or another are not being tested for HIV
during the prenatal tests. Still, that is no justification for the 'blind'
test, according to one activist.
"I think that is completely unethical," says LaVerne Monette, coordinator
of the Ontario Aboriginal HIV/AIDS Strategy in Toronto. "You are not
helping anyone. All you are doing is helping some researcher in the
government or attached to the government."
Monette says that when a similar anonymous study of pregnant aboriginal
women was conducted in her own province of Ontario, the women's
participation in prenatal examinations dropped from 85 to 25 percent. It is
a scenario that horrifies this activist, who wants more aboriginal women,
not fewer, getting tested for HIV/AIDS voluntarily.
"I was really hoping that they would never do another one like this in
Canada," says Monette.
One of Martin's associates said that pregnant women undergoing prenatal
examinations in rural aboriginal communities are being informed that their
leftover blood samples are the subject of an anonymous three-year study.
"Patients can refuse to participate and basically of the 1,200 (samples)
that have been collected, so far two (of the pregnant women) have refused,"
says Dennis Wardman, who, like Martin, works for the Pacific office of the
1st Nations Inuit health branch of Health Canada.
"They can refuse to participate and there is a lot of effort that has gone
on to create awareness of this surveillance," he adds.
But Monette says plenty of information already exists on the extent of
HIV/AIDS in BC. Drawing parallels with other groups, like Canada's Haitian
community, which has been found to have a high preponderance of people with
HIV/AIDS, she suggests that the results of the BC study will further
stigmatise an already marginalized group of people.
A more fruitful strategy from her point of view would be to focus on
providing information in aboriginal communities about how HIV/AIDS is
spread, the importance of safe sex and the value of women getting tested
for HIV before they become pregnant.
Martin counters that the study is similar to other medical surveys of the
spread of infectious or communicable disease in a particular area or
population. The research, he says, follows all of the standard ethical
guidelines.
He insists it is "not a new concept. It is something that has developed
over the years with the HIV epidemic. And it has been found to be a good
way of objectively assessing just what your infection rates are in any
population group."
AIDS researchers sense that the high HIV rates among aboriginals occur in
cities like Vancouver where hard drug use is more rampant.
"We are trying to find out to what degree is that virus infiltrating into
the rural communities. People go back and forth (between city and
country)," says Martin. Aboriginals "are no more ignorant" about HIVS/AIDS
than other people in Canada, says Monette. But poverty, overcrowding amidst
poor housing, a high birth rate, and the isolation of many communities
means, "we have less information about HIV/AIDS then most people", she adds.
Zoccole at CAAN is the first to admit that homophobia within first nations
communities and among their top chiefs has made it difficult to develop an
HIV/AIDS prevention strategy for aboriginals. Some of the leaders, for
instance, are opposed to needle exchange as a means to curtail HIV among
drug users.
The activist hopes that the BC research will at least provide useful
ammunition to pressure the Canadian government to raise the level of
spending on HIV/AIDS prevention in impoverished aboriginal communities in
Canada.
Zoccole estimates that of the 42 million Canadian dollars that Ottawa has
set aside to fight HIV-AIDS, two to three million dollars goes to meeting
the needs of aboriginals on and off first nations territory in Canada. "One
of the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, to
have 10,000 aboriginal health workers, doctors and nurses, was never
realised. It was not followed up by the government," says Zoccole.
6. U.S. Women and Cuba Collaboration Call for Action on Real Security,
Justice, and Peaceful Relations
The US Women and Cuba Collaboration* CALLS FOR ACTION to add to the voices
of women all over the world working for peaceful solutions to international
conflicts. We believe that our genuine security, even in light of the
terrorist acts of September 11th, 2001, and even in light of the tyrannical
and threatening government of Iraq, depends on our strategic use of
collaborative tools of diplomacy and negotiations, as well as international
law and other pressure, to bring just and peaceful resolutions with -and
among -nations and peoples of the Middle East and of the world. We believe
that the global crisis presented by the current Iraq regime, and the stated
desire of the US Administration for war on Iraq, demands that all of us who
are committed to peace and justice assert our leadership, drawing upon our
individual and collective experience, values, and perspectives to
fundamentally change the policies that make war a choice.
As members of women's organizations working collaboratively to end the U.S.
government policy of a blockade against Cuba and to normalize relations
between our two countries, we believe the current U.S. foreign policy on
Cuba violates the human rights of Cuba's citizens, especially women and
children. Countries are discouraged from trading with Cuba, even in the
areas of vitally needed food and medicine. The US embargo on Iraq has
resulted in even more grave human rights violations as children, women, and
the elderly of Iraq are in the front lines of those who suffer and die in
that country for lack of common basic daily necessities. An escalation of
US aggression against Iraq to include acts of military intervention will
provoke regional instability, jeopardize US international relations, and
produce many, many deaths of Iraqi citizens and US soldiers, and the vast
majority of these deaths on all sides will be those who are poor. The US
Women and Cuba Collaboration stands with other progressive women who speak
out against this war, and all wars, when we say: "Not in our name!"
MEASURES THAT ENSURE REAL SECURITY
Inspired and educated by the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action,
ratified in September, 1995, we work in concert with women globally to
strategize and achieve enduring security and peace for our families, for
our nations, and for our world. "Look at the world through women's eyes,"
was the rallying call at the NGO forum at Huairou, and because of the UN's
Fourth World Conference for Women at Beijing and Huairou, we are networked
to continue peace work in inclusive ways across national borders, races,
cultures, and classes. This is a powerful foundation for our collaborative
work as women's rights, racial justice and peace activists in the wake of
the events of September 11, 2001. The Beijing Platform addresses issues of
violence and armed conflict as two of its twelve strategic concerns,
calling for the promotion of conflict resolution that is non-violent and
for the elimination of human rights violations, in addition to equitable
access to health, education, food, economic opportunities and clean
environment as the foundation for the real security of sustainable human
development.
IMPACTS OF VIOLENCE AND MILITARISM
Women and girls of every color, culture, religion, sexual orientation and
age are profoundly affected by daily acts of violence, terrorism and
torture. We know too well the blatant forms of global violence we endure:
rape, domestic violence, sexual trafficking, physical and sexual abuse,
hate crimes, sexual harassment, to name but a few. It is women and children
who experience the brunt of local and global violence. We are also deeply
injured by the more subtle, sinister forms that degrade us, lower our
expectations and diminish our self-esteem, be it in our homes, our
communities, or our workplaces.
Through all of this we have arrived at a clear understanding that men are
not our enemy, even though they most often are the perpetrators of violence
against girls and women. We know that the greed of transnational
corporations in their quest for profits around the globe (globalization)
increases the legions of poverty-stricken people on our planet. The
starvation, disease and illiteracy of extreme poverty, as well as the rape
of the earth by environmental outrages, including war, lead to a desperate
hopelessness that can only be alleviated by policies aimed at peace with
justice--that is, peace with equality. This means that global development
must be primarily concerned with ending poverty. In this context we
resolutely oppose a war with Iraq. As in Afghanistan, a war with Iraq is an
attack on the world's peoples, just as the horrible acts of September 11,
2001, were an attack on the peoples of the world. It is our burden, as
caring and aware members of the human race, to challenge the chauvinism of
the capitalist economic system that drives war. While some remain silent,
so as to not be labeled unpatriotic and immoral, we must come forward to
demand that our Administration listen to calls from around the world to
find a peaceful solution to "regime change" in Iraq. Just as men are not
women's enemy, the people of Iraq are not our enemy. Militarism ultimately
destroys true democratic principles and processes, especially the freedom
to dissent; hence, recent anti-terrorist legislation and the development of
a department of "homeland security." Militarism diverts much needed human
and financial resources to conduct war, to pay for standing armies, weapons
systems, and the result is that the US has the largest so-called "defense"
budget in the world. Hand-in-hand with patriarchy and racism, militarism
causes all who are susceptible to its arguments to forsake compassion for
our fellow human beings around the world.
Because women have experienced many destructive and powerful forms of
violence, especially war and other forms of militarism, and because we know
the transforming and healing powers of conflict resolution, peaceful
alternatives to violence, and what constitutes real security for all
peoples and the earth,
WE THEREFORE CALL FOR:
1. A pledge by our President and our legislators to seek the advice and
consent of the United Nations, NGO's who work with issues of the Middle
East, and other international leadership about any strategic efforts to
effect a regime change in Iraq, and to organize a system for weapons
inspection. The US must not act unilaterally in dealing with Iraq, and it
should seek peaceful solutions.
2. An end to unjust US foreign policies such as the embargos against Iraq
and Cuba that disproportionately penalize women and children by withholding
necessary food and medicine, and a significant increase in the US budget
for humanitarian foreign aid appropriations.
3. Ongoing support for women in Iraq and in Afghanistan and the
Region--through support of organizations in defense of women's and human
rights such as the Iraq Action Coalition (http://leb.net/IAC/), the
Revolutionary Association of Afghanistan Women (www.rawa.org), and Women
Living Under Muslim Laws (www.wluml.org). Furthermore, we support the full
implementation of UN Security Resolution 1325 (adopted 31 October 2000),
lead by WILPF's UN Office, which calls for gender sensitivity in all UN
Missions including peacekeeping, for women to participate equally at all
negotiating tables and for the protection of women and girls during armed
conflict (see their web site www.peacewomen.org).
4. Recision of the "Patriot Act," the anti-terrorist legislation, which has
not only taken away civil liberties in the US, but also poses a profound
threat to the Bill of Rights and our Constitution; the removal of Cuba from
the list of nations the U.S. government defines as "terrorist"; and the
dismantling of the Office of Homeland Security in favor of genuine security
campaigns waged to abolish domestic and global poverty.
5. Adoption and full implementation of real security measures that can set
the basis for a peaceful and just world including the 1995 Beijing Platform
of Action, 1949 UN Convention on Human Rights, 1980 Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the
001 UN Conference on Racism document.
6. A dramatic increase in the leadership and public policy roles of
progressive anti-racist women of all races and classes, and public forums
for their voices for peace and justice.
7. Creation of peace-teaching actions and events for annual commemorations
of September 11 and for all commemorative and celebratory occasions that
mark US solidarity, liberation and international rights.
* Hermanas, EveryWoman's Movement for Cuba/LELO and WILPF comprise a
national collaboration project, directed by an advisory committee of
demographically and geographically diverse women. We are committed to
increasing women's voices and leadership to normalize U.S. government
policy toward Cuba, in particular, and for peaceful and just relations
internationally. Hermanas: Sisterhood in Central America and the Caribbean,
based in central New Jersey, began organizing women locally to travel and
build sisterhood with Cuban women in 1990. EveryWoman's Movement for
Cuba/LELO, based in Seattle, WA is organizing to end the U.S. embargo and
supports the Cuban peoples' right to self determination. EveryWoman's
delegations to China and Cuba have significantly increased the leadership
of women of color and working class women to change policy toward Cuba.
Women' s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), founded in
1915, is the oldest and largest international women's peace organization
working to prevent war by addressing the root causes of violence and social
injustice and advocating the transfer of resources from the military to
human needs. The Women and Cuba Collaboration is a national campaign of the
US Section of WILPF. We organize in solidarity with women throughout Cuba,
primarily through the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), a grassroots NGO
representing about 85% of Cuban women aged 14 years and older.
For more information, contact Collaboration Project Co-chairs Cindy Domingo
at gomojo@earthlink.net or 206/782-2565 and Jan Strout at janstrout@msn.com
or 206/547-0940.
7. Defend Reproductive Freedom * Defend Civil Rights* Defend Human Rights
Stop C.R.A.C.K.!!! - New York, October 7
“Don’t Let a Pregnancy Ruin Your Drug Habit.” –– C.R.A.C.K.
* This statement comes from an advertisement used by an organization called
C.R.A.C.K. or Project Prevention.
* C.R.A.C.K. is a private organization based in Southern California that
uses a $200 cash offer to bribe women and men with addictions into getting
sterilized or taking long-term birth control.
* It has targeted poor communities of color across the country, and has
begun targeting incarcerated women and men.
"We are steadily approaching 800 paid clients. We are currently contacting
probation/parole departments, and jails throughout the US. So we expect
those numbers to continue to rise!" (www.cashforbirthcontrol.com , 9/19/02)
CALL TO ACTION!
C.R.A.C.K will be holding a press conference in NYC on October 7th. Don’’t
allow the press to ignore voices of opposition.
WHAT: Protest C.R.A.C.K./Project Prevention
DATE: October 7,2002
TIME: Assemble at 9:30am
(C.R.A.C.K.’’S press conference starts at 10:00am)
WHERE: Radisson Lexington Hotel
511 Lexington Ave (between 47th and 48th Streets)
New York, NY 10017
CRACK violates principles of human rights, civil rights, and reproductive
freedoms because it:
* Attacks the reproductive capacity of women rather than the conditions of
oppression under which poor women live. CRACK's approach is misguided
because it does not acknowledge or confront the conditions of poverty,
racism, violence and gender discrimination that give rise to harmful drug
use practices among women.
* Targets communities of color and poor people. CRACK promotes its program
in low-income communities of color as evidenced by their placement of ads,
billboards, and outreach activities and by their emphasis on crack cocaine
and not on other harmful substances, such as tobacco, which has a broader
group of users.
* Compromises birth control options. CRACK only compensates for long-term
or permanent methods of birth control that are provider controlled. It will
not compensate women if they choose to use barrier birth control methods
that protect against HIV and other sexually transmitted conditions.
* Impedes addiction treatment. CRACK does not offer or encourage treatment
for drug problems. CRACK’’s quick-fix approach effectively gives up on
treatment as a solution to addiction. So long as women with addiction
problems stop having children, nothing else seems to matter. CRACK’’s
advertisement, ““Don’’t Let a Pregnancy Ruin Your Drug Habit,”” goes so far
as to maliciously encourage addiction.
* Builds the false notion that "crack babies" are wasted lives. CRACK
ignores the evidence that the teratogenic effects of crack cocaine are not
established scientifically and exaggerates the impact of prenatal exposure
to crack cocaine.
More information on C.R.A.C.K. including articles and factsheets is
available at
http://www.cwpe.org/issues/health_html/contraceptives/index.html
http://www.cara-seattle.org/crack.html
For more information on the protest, email: rajani@cwpe.org
8.Genocide in Gujarat, Dossier Available for Purchase
Dear friends,
We would like to inform you of an information resource brought out by us
recently. This is a newsclips dossier on 'Genocide in Gujarat' since March
2002. We thought you might find it useful. It is a newsclips dossier on
'Genocide in Gujarat' that we have compiled from news-stories, features and
opinion pieces which appeared in the national press from March to July
2002. The dossier is part of our ongoing work at compiling news, features
and analysis on development and rights' issues from six national
newspapers, Delhi editions.
We think the sheer magnitude and highly organised nature of the
violence, especially the complicity of institutions of the State, deserve
our serious attention. The violence is not over yet, and terror still
reigns, five months after Godhra. The guilty have still not been brought to
book, and no one has been held accountable for their actions and/or inaction.
It is necessary to document what is happening in Gujarat, lest we
forget or get used to it. There is already serious talk about holding
elections there. A highly communalised, brutalised and terrorised people,
living out the violent nightmare of genocide, will go to polls. Moreover,
refugee camps are being forcibly closed down, while the 'refugees' remain
refugees. Some of them got killed in separate incidents, when they tried
going back to the remains of their earlier dwellings, from where they had
been brutally driven out not very long ago.
Our modest effort is to help all of us understand this frightening
story, so that even as we push ourselves to respond in practice, our
perspective also gets sharper.
This dossier is available for your reference at the Kriti
Information Place, S-35 Tara Apartments, Alaknanda, New Delhi- 110019 (tel:
6213088, telefax: 6477845). Please feel free to visit us. You can get
relevant portions of the dossier photocopied for your later reference.
You can also ask for dossiers tailor-made to your specific needs.
These will be compiled from newsclips relevant to your selection of
subjects and months (between march and july) only, and will be priced
accordingly. Please e-mail us, in case you want any tailor-made dossiers. A
list of subject-heads under which we have organised the newsclips, and a
list of the newspapers we have covered, are given below.
We are not a funded organisation, and this is an independent
activity of our team. So even as we try to reach out as widely as possible
with this dossier, we have to ask you for a contribution towards its
photocopying, binding, packing and courier costs. The contribution amount
is Rs.750.00 (for institutions), and Rs.680.00 (for individuals). You can
make the contribution by sending us a cheque/ draft, drawn in favour of
"KRITI", payable at New Delhi.
SUBJECTS LIST:
*Saffron and the State
*Economics of the genocide
*Godhra: the spark?
*Ayodhya: a coincidence?
*Situation reports: violence and terror
*Women: victims and perpetrators
*Children: impact of the violence
*Repercussions outside Gujarat
*NHRC responses
*Advocacy
*Protests and demonstrations
*Relief and Rehabilitation
*Elections: problems and prospects
*' the law takes its course… '
*Opinion pieces
*Stories of Hope
LIST OF NEWSPAPERS:
ü The Times of India ü The Hindustan Times ü The Indian Express
ü The Pioneer ü The Hindu ü The Statesman
For information on ordering the dossier, email: kritidpc@ndf.vsnl.net.in
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "CISPES Nat'l Office"
Date: Tue, October 8, 2002 6:41 pm
CISPES ACTION ALERT
October 8, 2002
SALVADORAN GOVERNMENT USING PHONY "HEALTH EMERGENCY" TO BREAK
ANTI-PRIVATIZATION STRIKE--441 WORKERS THREATENED WITH IMMEDIATE FIRING
"EXTERMINATION COMMAND" DEATH SQUAD SURFACES;
THREATENS STRIKING DOCTORS -MORE REPRESSION FEARED
WORKERS RESPOND -- DEMONSTRATION PLANNED FOR OCTOBER 9
PRESSURE CALLS NEEDED IMMEDIATELY
Faced with a spreading strike against privatization, the Flores
government escalated the crisis by threatening 341 doctors and 10
members of the Health care union STISSS with firing if they do not
return to work by 11:00 AM tomorrow October 9. In response, the
Colegio Medico (national Salvadoran doctors professional association)
has called for a one-day strike of all hospitals in the San Salvador
area and a demonstration at the headquarters of the ISSS
(administration of the public health system).
Since STISSS began its strike on September 16, government attempts to
break it have failed and public support is growing. Together doctors
and workers have shut down 12 hospitals, and many sectors of the
public have denounced the government's privatization plan. Along with
the Colegio, influential figures in the church, including the
Archbishop of San Salvador have called on the government to
negotiate. ARENA's attempts to turn the public against the strike by
blaming the unions for lack of patient care have backfired as
well-their own human rights office stated publicly that health care was
the government's responsibility, not the strikers'. Finally, the
opposition FMLN dealt Flores' plan a severe blow by orchestrating a
bill in the Legislative Assembly that prohibited any further
"concessioning" (outsourcing or privatizing) of public services
without a vote by the Legislature. Flores faces two distasteful
alternatives: veto the bill and clearly flout the will of the
Assembly (with legislative elections scheduled for March 2003) or sign
it and see control of the process pass out of his hands.
However, today October 8, a Labor Court Judge declared the strike
illegal despite Constitutional guarantees of the right to strike in El
Salvador. He used a two-month-old state of emergency over Dengue fever
as the pretext. The Pan American Health Organization disputes the
existence of a true emergency in El Salvador but Flores has
refused to declare the emergency over. Instead, he has extended the
emergency in order to shore up his rapidly weakening position.
In addition to the firing threat, a new death squad, calling itself the
"Extermination Command" announced its existence publicly,
threatening over 30 striking doctors and health workers as well as
their families. In the past, death squads have carried out
repression that the government wished to distance itself from-but death
squad ties to the ARENA party and security forces are widely known.
Clearly, the health workers' struggle is growing and as a result,
ARENA's response is increasingly desperate. Violent repression is a
distinct possibility-- death squads have not voiced open threats
against unionists since the end of the war! In the 1980's, the
Salvadoran right attempted to drown popular organization in
blood-precisely because those organizations were so strong.
Thousands of North Americans responded then and we must do no less now.
As a result of our pressure, Andrea Rodriguez, the El Salvador Desk
Officer at the US State Department, is travelling to El Salvador next
week to investigate the situation. Let's keep the pressure on, and make
sure she knows what's really happening!
Hold the US and Salvadoran governments accountable!
Take Action:
Call Andrea Rodriguez, the El Salvador Desk Officer at the US State
Department, at (202) 647-3505, and demand that she convey the
following demands to President Flores!
… Don't fire any workers or doctors, and rehire all fired union
activists! … Do not allow state sponsored repression or death squad
attacks!
… Sign into law the legislative decree ending concession of public
services! … No privatization of health care, including the outsourcing
of services! … Negotiate in good faith with the STISSS union!
… Do not open official CAFTA negotiations!
Let her know that we will hold the US and Salvadoran governments
responsible for any acts of violence against the workers.
--
CISPES - Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador
130 W. 29th Street, 9th floor
New York, NY 10001
212-465-8115 phone
212-465-8998 fax
cispes@cispes.org
www.cispes.org
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
**********************************************************
Heresies in Pursuit of Peace: Thoughts on Israel/Palestine
By Starhawk
**********************************************************
In the ruins of Jenin, an old friend of mine is digging bodies out of the
rubble where Israeli bulldozers flattened houses, burying people alive.
Blackened, maggot ridden corpses, unearthed from the rubble, are displayed
to anguished relatives for identification. A teenage girl unearths an
infant's arm and wonders what to do with it. A Palestinian father cries
over the dark smears of flesh that once were his two little daughters.
Another Jewish friend leaves an anguished message on my cell phone: "I'm in
downtown Washington DC. There's a huge, pro-Israel rally going on. I don't
understand it. How can Jews support this? I know you must have something
inspirational to say. Send me what you write."
She doesn't know that for weeks I've been trying unsuccessfully to write
something about the situation. I'm overwhelmed with accounts of the
atrocities. Yet I am also haunted by images of bodies shattered at a Seder
meal, at a café, a Passover drenched in a new plague of blood. I'm
frightened and saddened by the real resurgence of anti-Semitism, by
swastikas carried in peace marches, synagogues attacked.
A third friend, a deeply spiritual woman and longtime ecofeminist ally,
sends me a copy of a letter she wrote to President Bush entitled, "Standing
Firmly With Israel."
In no way can I stand with her. And yet I cannot simply stand against her,
either. I cannot stand with an Israel that tortures prisoners, an Israel
that has mounted a restrictive and dehumanizing occupation, that
assassinates political leaders as a matter of policy, that has cut down
ancient olive groves to destroy the livelihood of the Palestinians, that is
daily committing war crimes: refusing medical care to the wounded, firing
on journalists and peace demonstrators, bombing civilians, destroying homes.
Nor can I stand in the bloody remains of the Seder meal, among the corpses
in the café, the restaurant. Yet to say, "both sides are wrong, both sides
should give up violence" is to ignore the reality that one side, the
Israeli side, is the fourth largest military power in the world. That the
suicide bombs are a direct response to calculated political assassinations
and to a brutal occupation that has made life untenable for the
Palestinians. That for over fifty years, the State of Israel has failed to
guard and cherish the Palestinians' rights, aspirations, and hopes for an
independence that could lead to peace and prosperity.
It is, on the one hand, incomprehensible to me that my friend could stand
with such a regime, that the Jewish community as a whole, composed of
people I know to be caring, compassionate and good, can stand behind the
tanks, the bombs, the brutality.
On the other hand, I understand quite well the wrenching emotional journey
that many Jews must make to admit the reality of what Israel is doing. For
those of us who grew up saving our pennies to plant trees in the Galil,
who, snowbound in blizzards, celebrated the New Year of the Trees timed to
the blossoming of almonds in the Judean hills, who ended every Seder with
the prayer "Next year in Jerusalem," no other issue is so painful and sad.
I am a Jew who has spent her adult life as a voice for a different
religion, a blatant Pagan whose spirituality is attuned to the Goddess of
regeneration, not the God of my fathers. To Orthodox Jews, I'm a heretic,
which gives me a certain freedom to say what I think. I was born into,
raised in, and acculturated by the post-war Jewish community, but I have
not been immersed in that world for many years. I speak from the margins of
the Jewish community. But I am still a Jew, and the view from the edge can
sometimes be clearer than that from the center.
The San Francisco Chronicle writes a front page story about a school in
Gaza where little Palestinian children are taught to hate Jews. I have no
reason to doubt the truth of their story, although I question why they
feature it front and center with no counterbalancing tale of, say, the
International Solidarity Movement where Palestinians and Jews together risk
themselves in nonviolent interventions for peace. The hate is real, and the
fear it engenders is
also real.
Yet the story makes me consider what I was taught in ten or more years of
Jewish education that included a teenaged summer spent on a kibbutz. We
never chanted, "Kill the Arabs". We were never told in so many words, 'Hate
them.' Rather, we learned a more subtle discounting, a not-seeing, as if
the Palestinians were not full human beings but rather a minor obstacle to
the fulfillment of a dream, something to be moved aside, that didn't really
count. We were taught to be proud of the brave Zionist settlers and
pioneers, the idealistic youth who fled the ghettoes and the pogroms of
Europe to build a 'new' land. And I am proud, still, of their experiments
in new ways of living, their awareness of women's rights, their courage in
leaving home and family to escape oppression.
But I understand now that they did not come into an empty place, and they
did not come with the capability of truly seeing and respecting and
honoring the people of the land. They came out of a Europe that had an
unshakeable belief in its own cultural and racial superiority and had for
centuries been appropriating the lands of darker peoples. They came as the
settlers came to the "New World", saying, "This land is ours by right, God
gave it to us," The people who had lived there during those two thousand
years of exile were an impediment. And so began the long litany of
justifications: that the land didn't really belong to them but to the Turks
or the British; that they weren't doing anything with it, had not made the
desert bloom nor drained the swamps, and above all, that they hate us, are
raised to hate us, with a hate irrational, implacable, and unchangeable.
The word for this sliding off of the glance, this NonSeeing, is racism.
Less blatant, perhaps, than chanting "Kill, kill!" but with the same
insidious results. Yet to simply condemn Zionism as racism without
acknowledging the context of centuries of racial hate against Jews from
which it arose is to absolve those who have blood on their hands as well.
Worse, it is to support the complacency of Jew haters and fascists who now
emerge into the open again.
Israel has indeed served the interests of the Western powers in subjugating
the Arab world. But Israel also arose out of an oppressed people's dream of
liberation. To discount the oppression, to deny the strength and the beauty
of the dream of a homeland, is to miss the full tragedy of what is
happening now.
Unless we understand the dream, we cannot truly comprehend the nightmare. I
know what Israel meant during my childhood in the fifties, to my family
still reeling in shock from the revelations of the gas chambers and the
ovens, still searching for news of lost relatives. Israel was the
restitution for all the losses of the Holocaust. It was the thing that
restored some meaning and some hope into a world utterly shattered by evil.
It was the proof that Jews were not just passive victims but actors on the
screen of history, capable of fighting back, of taking charge of our own
destiny. It was the one safe place, the refuge in a hostile world.
And for some, it was the answer to the anguished question, "How can I
believe in God in a world in which such things can happen?" To acknowledge
the truth of what Israel is now doing is to face a grief so deep and
overwhelming that it seems to suck away all hope, is to gasp again in the
suffocation chambers, to cover our faces with the ashes from the ovens and
know that there is no redemption, no silver lining, no happy ending, no
good and noble thing that emerged to give dignity to these deaths. There is
only the terrible cycle, of victims becoming victimizers, the abused
perpetuating abuse. It is to look down and see the whip in our own hands,
the jackboots on our own feet.
"Don't make the Nazi connection," a Jewish peace group warns. "It only
feeds the right wing." And yet the Nazi connection begs to be made.
It is true that the Israelis have not built extermination camps. It is
true, although not immediately relevant, that other people in the world
besides Jews have done and are doing bad things. Other atrocities occur
daily. But it is also true that to attempt to erase a people, to destroy
their culture, livelihood, and pride, is genocide.
A wan young woman, looking depressed, wanders through the Justice for
Palestine rally, carrying a sign that says: "My father survived Auschwitz.
His parents didn't. Orphaned, he fled to Israel." Part of the horror of
Jenin lies in her father's new kinship to the teenaged boy dug alive out of
the rubble of his house where his parents and brothers and sisters now lie
dead.
That parallel is a dark mirror that reveals how easily we become what we
most despise. If we look into it open eyed, we face truths so painful they
make it hardly bearable to be human. For this is not just about Jews and
Germans, Israelis and Palestinians, not about how any one people is prone
to evil. It's about us all. The capacity for cruelty, for inflicting
horrific harm, exists in us all. All we need is to feel threatened, and to
let our fear define our enemy as less than fully human, and the horrors of
hell are unleashed.
If we don't like the Nazi parallel, we must refuse to become Nazis. We must
remember that the Nazis played on the German sense of deprivation and loss
after World War One, and admit that our own real victimization has not
elevated us to some realm of purity and eternal innocence. We can grow
beyond the propaganda we were taught and the myths of our childhood and the
comfort of our chosenness, and see the Palestinians as the full human
beings that they are. Even if to do so seems to require us to walk out
again into the wilderness with no outstretched hand nor hope of a promised
land to guide us. For if we admit the Palestinians' full humanity, if we
admire their knowledge and appreciate their culture and cherish their
children, then all the justifications of conquest fall away. No God, no
superior virtue or inherent right, has granted us dominion. We have the
land because we were able to take it.
And while that admission might seem to threaten Israel's very right to
exist, it is not nearly as much of a threat as clinging to the
justifications and rationalizations that prevent us from seeing the Other
as human. For full human beings placed in a situation of utter despair may
turn to suicide bombs and retribution. Human beings, humilated beyond
bearing, may turn to revenge. But full human beings are not mindless agents
of hate. Given hope and dignity and a future to live for, human beings will
tend to choose life. And full human beings can be reasoned with, bargained
with, made peace with. The wilderness, the desert, has always been the
place where our people have heard the still, small voice of God.
Religion is supposed to call us away from our most brutal possibilities, to
challenge us to act from compassion and love. Right now in the Middle East,
religion is not doing its job.
I know well that to equate the actions of the Israeli government with
Judaism is to risk feeding anti-Semitism and to erase the great spectrum of
political and spiritual diversity that exists in the world Jewish
community. And yet the question of Israel cannot be separated from Judaism.
Our prayers for rain are timed to coincide with cloudbursts over the Sea of
Galilee. We count the 'omer', the successive gathering in of the harvest
from ancient fields bordering the Jordan. Fundamentalist Jews have
established the contested settlements in the Occupied Territories and
resist any concessions to the Palestinians. And the mainstream Jewish
community stands firmly behind the Israeli government's rule of force.
The current crisis represents a great spiritual crisis within Judaism. I
write as an admitted heretic, yet it's clear to me that the Orthodoxies of
all three Great Religions, along with atheists, pragmatists and secularists
of many political persuasions, are embroiled in a blasphemy that far
outweighs any naked dancing around a bonfire. They are united in the
worship of the God of Force.
The God of Force says that force is the ultimate answer to every dilemma,
the resolution of every conflict, the 'only thing they understand.' The God
of Force makes His appearances in the Old and New Testament, the Koran, and
other sacred and secular scriptures. The God of Force licenses his agents
to kill, unleashes the holy war, the jihad, the crusade, the inquisition.
The God of Force says, "Go unto the land and kill all the inhabitants
thereof."
Now, I'm a polytheist. I recognize many Powers, many constellations of
energies and forces in the universe, that arise from a deep
interconnectedness and unity but have their own flavors, characters and
names. One advantage of being a polytheist is that you can choose your gods
or goddesses, acknowledging that bloodthirsty and cruel powers exist, but
turning resolutely away from them. When God tells you to commit some
horrific atrocity, you have somewhere to go for a second opinion.
But monotheism is, of course, the heart and essence of Judaism as it is of
Islam and Christianity. I submit that the God of Force is incompatible with
the oneness of God. For if God is one, s/he must by definition be God of
All, not of any one people exclusively. He cannot simultaneously encourage
callousness and cruelty and be Christ the God of Love, Allah the Merciful,
or El Maleh Rahamim, God Who is Filled with Compassion. And if he chooses a
people, he does it in the same spirit in which my partner confides to each
of his four daughters that she is his favorite.
The current situation is a call both to God and to us to evolve. Judaism
has always had within it a tradition of wrestling with God, as Jacob did
with the angel, of arguing with God, as Abraham did when God wanted to
destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. To see God as fixed, eternally and unchangingly
rigid is indeed to worship a graven image. Instead, we might see God as a
dynamic process in which we are cocreators of the world we inhabit. We are
actively engaged in shaping who God becomes.
We are commanded not to make images of God because our human imaginations
are always limited and will reproduce our own faults and lacks and
prejudices. God the General, God the Ruler, God the King, God the
Distributor of Real Estate, God the Avenger, God of Holy War, God of
Punishment, Retribution and Revenge, God Who Favors One People Above All
Others, may in reality be that very idol, that truncated image, we are told
to turn from. The worst heresy of all may be to limit our conception of the
great force of compassion that underlies the world.
Judaism can march lockstep with the Israeli authorities deeper into the
domain of force. Israel could conceivably exterminate the Palestinians
utterly, and that is the trend of the current policies. Nothing less will
crush their aspirations for independence and freedom. A Jewish community
that supported that final solution would lose its soul and any claim to
moral authority. An Israel that carried out the genocide would be no fit
homeland for any person of conscience. The dream of Israel would become an
utter and complete horror show. And genocide would not bring security to
Israel: it would simply inflame the hatred of the entire Arab world and
jettison the rest of the world's support. Given all the nuclear weapons
floating around in the Middle East, that road is likely to lead straight to
the fulfillment of Christian prophecies of apocalypse.
One of the agonies in the current crisis is that nobody seems to have much
hope or vision of how to resolve it. We can see where the road leads, but
we don't know how to step off of it.
"If only the Palestinians would practice nonviolence, embrace the
principles of Gandhi and King," I hear from some of my Jewish allies.
Of course, there are Palestinians, and Israelis, and many others who have
stepped forward to be a nonviolent presence in refugee camps, who have
accompanied ambulances and attempted to deliver medical supplies, who have
written their own eyewitness accounts and spoken their truth.
But I find myself thinking "Wouldn't it be quicker if Gandhi or King
reappeared among the Israeli leadership and their supporters? Are they not
in an even better position to change this situation?" If the Israeli
leadership were to abandon the idea that force will resolve this conflict
in any positive way whatsoever, the solution becomes stunningly, obviously
clear. Any mind not clouded by fear or hate or self righteousness or utter
religious certainty can see it in ten minutes of serious thought: The
Palestinians need their own state. And it needs to be a viable, coherent
state with the potential for prosperity and beauty, not a Bantustan, not a
few scraps of unwanted land the Israelis have decided to discard. A
Palestine of milk and honey, of bread and roses, of the vine and the fig
tree, of olive groves and red anemones, of health clinics and universities,
of a new renaissance of Arabic culture, science, learning and art.
Anything less will be an eternal festering sore, and there will be no
peace. An Israel that gave up the delusion that force will win all of
Israel's demands while conceding the Palestinians nothing might recognize
that a flourishing and happy Palestine would be Israel's best security
measure, might even become her closest trading partner, best friend. Such a
Palestine would offer its youth a better future than becoming human bombs..
It is utterly in the best interests of Israel to nourish and support and
foster the creation of the Palestinian state, to be surrounded by friends
instead of enemies. And while that might seem impossible at the moment,
consider the friendly relations between the U.S. and our former deadly
enemies, Germany and Japan.
Those who love and care for Israel need to stand with her true interests
now, by demanding an end to the occupation, the dismantling of the
settlements, by calling for the intervention of a neutral, peacekeeping
force, and by pressuring the United States government to stop covertly
supporting and funding Israeli aggression.
The grip of the God of Force is strong, so strong that even though we can
clearly see what the solution might be, we may despair at actually bringing
it about. To pry that grip loose, we need to use all the tools of political
activism, from writing letters and making phone calls to demonstrating,
doing nonviolent civil disobedience, or even joining the peace witnesses on
the front lines.
On a spiritual level, we can look into the dark mirror that reveals our own
prejudices and reject them. We can believe that the force of intelligent,
embodied love, as feminist theologian Carol Christ describes the Goddess,
is indeed stronger than stupid, disembodied hate.
One last Pagan heresy is the belief that we can prod a sluggish God into
producing a miracle or two by performing an action with conscious, focused
intention. So, as a spell for peace, make peace with someone you think you
can't make peace with. Notice what resistance arises even at the thought,
how you build your case against your enemy, how you marshall your allies
and ready your weapons. Note what it takes to give them up, what you must
sacrifice and what you gain.
Maybe, in this process, we can all learn something. Maybe we can begin a
turning, a transformation that will leave the God of Force starved of his
blood sacrifices and burnt offerings, and feed gentler fruit to a kinder
God. So that the children of Israel and Palestine can both grow up to
enrich the land not by the blood of corpses but by the songs of poets, the
works of artists, the healing of doctors, the fruit of farmers, the
knowledge of teachers, the wisdom of mystics. And this corner of land,
battleground for so many years, might become for all people a place of
refuge, vision and hope.
http://www.starhawk.org
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Chicken Hawks as Cheer Leaders
By Jim Lobe
September 6, 2002
Editor: Tom Barry, Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC)
A high-ranking State Department official was speaking to a room full of
senior military officers last month when he cracked, "there's more
combat experience on the 7th floor of the State Department than in the
entire Office of the Secretary of Defense."
"The remark generated riotous applause," according to an eyewitness who
recounted the incident to Chris Nelson, publisher of the Nelson Report,
a private newsletter that circulates to embassies and Capitol Hill
offices.
The anecdote illustrates what some are now calling the "Chicken Hawk"
factor, which could play an important role in the increasingly intense
and personalized debate over the Bush administration's push toward war
with Iraq.
Maureen Dowd raised this issue last week in her New York Times column
entitled "Coup de Crawford," in which she noted that those who were
huddling at Bush's ranch planning war against Iraq were mostly civilians
with no wartime experience. "We used to worry about a military coup
against civilian authority. Now we worry about a civilian coup against
military authority," she pointedly observed.
Hawks Who Avoided Military Service
Indeed, the fact that the greatest opposition to the war is centered in
the military brass, the source of the most damaging leaks of the
administration's battle plans--as well as in the upper reaches of the
State Department and among the foreign policy veterans of the first Bush
administration--has made the hawks extremely sensitive to the question
of their own military service, or, rather, lack of it.
"It is interesting to me that many of those who want to rush this
country into war and think it would be so quick and easy don't know
anything about war," observed Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, a Republican
Vietnam veteran whose skepticism about an Iraqi adventure has made him
persona non grata to the neoconservatives who are leading the charge,
now popularly called Chicken Hawks. According to the New Hamsphire
Gazette (online at www.nhgazette.com), which maintains a database on the
subject, this "is a term often applied to public persons--generally
male--who (1) tend to advocate … military solutions to political
problems, and who have personally (2) declined to take advantage of a
significant opportunity to serve in uniform during wartime."
That description applies to most senior administration officials in
their fifties who were subject to the military draft during the Vietnam
War. George W. Bush himself, instead of being drafted for the war,
received a posting to the Texas National Guard. It was the kind of dodge
from military service that, according to Secretary of State and former
Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Colin Powell's memoirs, was generally
reserved for "the sons of the powerful."
Cheney, however, avoided the uniform altogether, insisting to one
inquiring reporter that he "had other priorities in the 1960s than
military service." Rumsfeld, the other leading Cabinet hawk, flew Navy
jets between the Korean and Vietnam wars but saw no combat. Indeed, the
only cabinet member with combat experience is Powell.
The record at the sub-cabinet level is worse. Cheney's hawkish and
powerful chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, spent the Vietnam War at Yale
and Columbia universities. Rumsfeld's top deputies in the same age
group--Paul Wolfowitz and Peter Rodman--were similarly engaged, while
Dougas Feith, the Pentagon's most enthusiastic war booster, turned 18
only after the draft ended but then opted for law school.
Other major administration hawks--such as Elliott Abrams on the National
Security Council staff and Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and
International Strategy John Bolton--also avoided military service during
the height of the Vietnam War, reportedly due to medical problems.
Even more remarkable, the major agitators for war outside the
administration also lack direct military experience. Of the 32 prominent
signers of a now-famous September 20 letter from the Project for the New
America Century (online at www.newamericancentury.org ) to Bush urging
him to include Iraq, as well as Syria, Lebanon, Iran, and the
Palestinian Authority, as targets in the war on terrorism, only three
have ever donned a uniform.
Indeed, one of the key members of that group, who is also chairman of
Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board (DPB) and one of the most visible
advocates for military action to oust Saddam Hussein, Richard Perle,
spent Vietnam at the University of Chicago (alongside Wolfowitz) and
later joined the staff of Sen. Henry Jackson, virtually the last
Democrat in the Senate to support that war.
Because of his visibility and reputation as the hub of a pro-Likud
network of national-security experts and media commentators, Perle was
the target of a particularly sharp remark by Hagel, one of several
prominent lawmakers decorated for their Vietnam service who oppose the
rush to war. "Maybe Mr. Perle would like to be in the first wave of
those who go into Baghdad," he said recently, earning him an outraged
rebuke in a Wall Street Journal editorial.
"They come at it," Hagel said of the Chicken Hawks, "from an
intellectual perspective versus having sat in jungles or foxholes and
watched their friends get their heads blown off. I try to speak for
those ghosts of the pasts a little."
Another highly visible hyper-hawk and Perle protégé, Frank Gaffney, head
of the Center for Security Policy (CSP), also avoided military service
during Vietnam. Powell's chief deputy, Richard Armitage, a U.S. Naval
Academy graduate who served in Vietnam, has reportedly referred to
Gaffney, as well as other members of the war party who dodged the draft,
as a "pissant."
"It's pretty interesting that all the generals see it the same way, and
all the others who have never fired a shot and are hot to go to war see
it another," noted ret. Gen. Anthony Zinni, former chief of the Central
Command that includes the Gulf region, just last week. Gulf War hero
ret. Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf has also expressed strong doubts about a
new war.
It is not so much that they believe Iraq represents a serious threat to
U.S. military might, although they have openly scorned the notion put
forward by Perle and another influential DPB hawk close to Rumsfeld,
Kenneth Adelman, that a military campaign would be a "cakewalk." Rather,
they are mainly worried about the war's aftermath and the degree to
which it will burden the military with an impossible political task with
no clear exit. "Do we really want to occupy Iraq for the next 30 years?"
asked former Navy Secretary and Vietnam veteran James Webb in a
Washington Post column Wednesday.
Chicken Hawks Strike Back
The Chicken Hawks have already begun a counterattack, arguing, like
Clemenceau that "war is too important to be left to the generals." The
editor of The New Republic, an influential neo-conservative weekly,
Peter Beinert argued that "over and over during the '90s, the generals
with firsthand battlefield experience guessed wrong--and the civilians
without it guessed right--about what would happen when the United States
went to war." He singled out Powell for opposing carrying the Gulf War
from Kuwait to Baghdad and the U.S. intervention in Bosnia.
Beinert argued that civilians better understood the political context
for both wars and that the brass has tended to overestimate the enemy
since the Vietnam War.
Defense analyst Eliot Cohen, who proudly notes that he served as an
officer in the Army Reserve, is one of the leading proponents of an
attack on Iraq and an embrace of a new militarism in U.S. foreign
policy. In a Washington Post op-ed, "Hunting Chicken Hawks," he makes
the case clearly that civilian strategists like himself should be the
ones shaping U.S. military interventionism. At a time when the moderate
multilateralists and realists in the Republican camp are already balking
at the crusading mentality of the administration's neoconservative
strategists, Cohen's comments may serve to push U.S. veterans toward the
"justice not war" camp on the center and left.
From Cohen's perch at Harvard, he observes, "The expertise of generals
lies chiefly in the operational, not the strategic sphere--how to wage
war, not whether it should be fought." What's more, "There is no
evidence that generals as a class make wiser national security
policymakers than civilians." And when it comes to any decision to wage
war, "Being a veteran is no guarantee of strategic wisdom" and as a
consequence "in matters of war and peace veterans should receive no
special consideration for their views."
The Chicken Hawks are warning the uniformed military to keep their
reservations to themselves. Eliot Cohen, an academic close to Perle and
one of the signers of the influential Project for a New American Century
document outlining the U.S. supremacy agenda, made that point in a Wall
Street Journal column two weeks ago entitled "Generals, Politicians and
Iraq" in which he reminded the brass of their "obligation to present
their views with utter honesty in private, but to maintain silence in
public."
The central message of Cohen's latest book, Supreme Command, stresses
the importance of civilian supremacy in wartime and argues that the
military brass are habitually over-cautious. Cohen's fellow-hawks are
making much of the fact that Bush told reporters during his summer
vacation in Texas that he was reading the book. Next on the recommended
reading list is Cohen's essay in the New Republic, whose title puts
matters plainly: "Make War, Not Justice-How to Fight." Not having
themselves killed or been bloodied in the misadventures in Vietnam or
Korea, the Chicken Hawks are now leading the nation to a new ill-defined
and morally ambiguous war.
(Jim Lobe is a contributor and member of the
Advisory Committee of Foreign Policy In Focus (online at www.fpif.org).
He also writes regularly for Inter Press Service.)
For more information:
Project for the New American Century
http://www.newamericancentury.org/
U.S. Foreign Policy-Attention, Right Face, Forward March
By Tom Barry and Jim Lobe
http://www.fpif.org/papers/02right/index.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Subject: Collateral Damage at Home from 9/11
Friends, as we remember all those directly affected in the tragic and
terrible events of 11 September 2001, let's keep in mind all those in
this country whose constitutional and human rights are being
violated by our own government.
(*Editors Note | Remember as you read; this report was published by
the Associated Press.)
Overview of Changes to Legal Rights
By The Associated Press
September 5, 2002
Some of the fundamental changes to Americans' legal rights by the
Bush administration and the USA Patriot Act following the terror
attacks:
* FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION:
Government may monitor religious and political institutions without
suspecting criminal activity to assist terror investigation.
* FREEDOM OF INFORMATION:
Government has closed once-public immigration hearings, has secretly
detained hundreds of people without charges, and has encouraged
bureaucrats to resist public records requests.
* FREEDOM OF SPEECH:
Government may prosecute librarians or keepers of any other records
if they tell anyone that the government subpoenaed information
related to a terror investigation.
* RIGHT TO LEGAL REPRESENTATION:
Government may monitor federal prison jailhouse conversations between
attorneys and clients, and deny lawyers to Americans accused of
crimes.
* FREEDOM FROM UNREASONABLE SEARCHES:
Government may search and seize Americans' papers and effects without
probable cause to assist terror investigation.
* RIGHT TO A SPEEDY AND PUBLIC TRIAL:
Government may jail Americans indefinitely without a trial.
* RIGHT TO LIBERTY:
Americans may be jailed without being charged or being able to
confront witnesses against them.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving the included information for research and educational
purposes.)
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> > Subj: April 20th - Breaking the "Consensus"
> > Date: 4/23/02 8:41:09 PM Hawaiian Standard Time
> > From: portsidemod@yahoo.com (portsideMod)
> >
> > The day's events dealt a lethal blow to the notion - stoked by media
> > and government alike -- that all Americans uncritically support Bush's
> > policies, and value Israeli lives over those of Palestinians. NSYPC's
> > Lawson-Remer says "It's a demonstration that the consensus is not what
> > they say it is."
> >
> > * John Nichols: Tens of Thousands Protest Bush Administration Policies
> > * Liza Featherstone: Breaking the "Consensus"
> >
> > ==============
> >
> > JOHN NICHOLS: Tens of Thousands Protest Bush Administration Policies
> > http://www.thenation.com/thebeat/
> >
> > Tens of Thousands Protest Bush Administration Policies 04/21/2002 @
> > 12:18am "I think the movement is beginning to wake up," Valerie
> > Mullen, an 80-year-old anti-war activist from Vermont, exclaimed as
> > she surveyed the swelling crowd of people protesting against the
> > economic, international and military policies of the Bush
> > Administration.
> >
> > While activists always like to declare victory when a decent crowd
> > shows up to demonstrate for causes dear to their hearts, Mullen was
> > not alone in expressing a sense of awe at the size of the crowds that
> > showed up in Washington for weekend protests against corporate
> > globalization, a seemingly endless "war against terrorism" and US
> > military aid to Israel.
> >
> > District of Columbia police officials estimated that 75,000 people
> > from across the country joined four permitted protest marches in
> > Washington Saturday, while San Francisco police estimated that close
> > to 15,000 people took part in what local officials identified as one
> > of the largest peace rallies that city has seen in years. Thousands
> > more joined demonstrations in Seattle, Houston, Boston, Salt Lake City
> > and other communities.
> >
> > Official estimates are invariably more conservative than those of
> > organizers, but there was a rare level of agreement among organizers
> > and police chiefs that the weekend of diverse activism against US
> > policies abroad had far exceeded expectations. "I'm just floored by
> > the amount of people here today," said Mark Rickling, an organizer
> > with the Mobilization for Global Justice that brought thousands to
> > Washington to protest corporate globalization in general and the
> > spring meeting of World Bank and International Monetary Fund mandarins
> > in particular. Not far away, DC Police Chief Charles Ramsey agreed
> > that the size of the crowds was far greater than had been anticipated.
> >
> > The size of the protests is notable because they come at a time when
> > most political leaders and media commentators remain cautious about
> > criticizing US policies. Organizers across the country argued that the
> > turnout at marches and demonstrations was evidence that there is far
> > more opposition to US policy among the American people than the
> > relative silence of official Washington would indicate.
> >
> > "We cannot have peace without justice," the Rev. Robert Jeffrey of
> > Seattle's New Hope Baptist Church told a rally in that city. "That
> > people who are left out should just keep quiet and accept what happens
> > to them, that just won't happen."
> >
> > The demonstrators who came to Washington sought to deliver many
> > messages. The Mobilization for Global Justice protests against the
> > World Bank, the IMF, corporate globalization and third-world debt are
> > a rite of spring in Washington. The A20 Mobilization to Stop the War
> > at Home and Abroad -- a coalition that included hundreds of groups
> > ranging from the United States Student Association to the American
> > Friends Service Committee, Peace Action, the Women's International
> > League for Peace and Freedom, and the Amarillo, Tx., Citizen for Just
> > Democracy -- chose the weekend to mount the first large-scale protest
> > in the US against Bush's proposals to dramatically expand the "war on
> > terrorism," and with it an already bloated Pentagon budget. Opponents
> > of US policies in Latin America marched in opposition to "Plan
> > Colombia" aid to that country's military. The messages of the multiple
> > movements came together in banners that read, "Drop debt, not bombs."
> >
> > A surprise for many organizers in Washington and San Francisco,
> > however, came in the form of the dramatic turnout of Arab Americans
> > and others angered over continued US military aid for Israel at a time
> > when Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is ordering attacks on
> > Palestinian communities on the West Bank. The Washington demonstration
> > was described by organizers as the largest show of support for
> > Palestinian rights ever in the nation's Capitol, perhaps in the US.
> >
> > Referring to US military aid to Israel, demonstrator Amal K. David
> > said, "My beloved country is financing such death and destruction. I
> > am so ashamed."
> >
> > David, a Palestinian American, arrived on one of the more than 20
> > buses that came to Washington from Detroit for the weekend
> > demonstrations. As many as 50 buses came from New York, and large
> > contingents showed up from as far away as Minnesota and Texas. They
> > were joined by a substantial number of Jews - including several dozen
> > Orthodox rabbis from New York - who marched behind banners that read
> > "Not In My Name" and "Jewish Voice for Peace." "We're here as Jews
> > saying that the values of Judaism do not support what Ariel Sharon is
> > doing," said marcher Jacob Hodes.
> >
> > Arab-Americans and Jews intermingled along the line of march, which
> > eventually merged with anti-war and anti-corporate globalization
> > marches and rallies. Organizers acknowledged that they often did not
> > know where one protest ended and the next began. "There's a great deal
> > of anger at Bush administration policies. Different people are angry
> > about different policies," said Ben Manski, an organizer who was
> > active with the Green Party's efforts to build support for various DC
> > demonstrations. "What's exciting is that a lot of people are
> > recognizing that when we get together we send a loud message."
> >
> >
> >
> > Breaking the "Consensus"
> >
> > by Liza Featherstone
> >
> > Yesterday morning, in the nation's capital, activists held two anti-
> > war rallies, each of which drew thousands, almost within sight of one
> > another. One, organized by ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End
> > Racism), was on the Ellipse, near the White House. The other,
> > sponsored by the National Youth and Student Peace Coalition (NYSPC)
> > and other groups, was held at the Washington Monument. (At the same
> > time, the Committee for Palestinian Solidarity protested the meeting
> > of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) at the
> > Washington Hilton, while the Mobilization for Global Justice and
> > numerous anarchists protested the IMF/World Bank meetings.)
> >
> > At first glance, the morning seemed like a depressing case study in
> > that old left affliction: the narcissism of small differences. But
> > there was a history behind it. ANSWER had originally planned a march
> > for April 27, while students were planning one for April 14, and
> > groups opposing the IMF had, of course, long been planning a show of
> > opposition at its meeting this weekend. Both ANSWER and the student
> > coalition moved their events to April 20 to avoid the turnout disaster
> > of conflicting marches in one month. Why not, then, hold one big rally
> > and march? Organizers of the student coalition cited many reasons for
> > their desire to maintain independence from ANSWER, which is closely
> > related to the Workers World Party, including the coalition's
> > politics, its undemocratic structure, as well its reputation for
> > taking credit for work done by other groups and other bad behavior.
> >
> > Jessie Duvall, a recent Wesleyan graduate who was organizing the NYSPC
> > rally, said diplomatically that the separation of the two rallies were
> > "important for the integrity of both coalitions." ANSWER's rally - and
> > pre-rally publicity -- focused entirely on Palestinian solidarity. As
> > a result, to ANSWER's credit, that event drew thousands of Middle
> > Eastern immigrants (fifty buses came from New Jersey mosques alone,
> > according to ANSWER's Tony Murphy). By contrast, while most speakers
> > at the NYSPC rally addressed the plight of the Palestinians, the pre-
> > rally publicity had emphasized the coalition's major concerns: Bush's
> > "war on the world" and its effects at home, particularly on students
> > and young people. Student organizers cited military recruitment on
> > campus and in high schools, and government targeting of immigrant
> > students. Thus the event drew mainly students, youth and crunchy-
> > looking peaceniks. While the NYSPC rally did not draw nearly as many
> > immigrants as ANSWER's did, the youth arm of the Black Radical
> > Congress, as well as the Muslim Student Association, had played a
> > significant role in the organizing. As a result it was hardly a white-
> > bread event. Speakers included Martin Luther King III of the Southern
> > Christian Leadership Conference, Rania Masri of the Iraqi Action
> > Network, Erica Smiley of the Black Radical Congress Youth Caucus and
> > Hussein Ibish of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee.
> >
> > In addition to the folky entertainment more typical of peace rallies,
> > performances included a rap group, Division X, whose lead rapper,
> > Lordstar, said from the stage that as a black man in America, he
> > sympathized with immigrants enduring government persecution here and
> > Palestinians under Israeli occupation. The protest, he said, "is about
> > racial profiling. I can relate to that. It's all about not ducking
> > from 41 shots, whether in New York or Palestine. It's about being
> > afraid the authorities are going to come into our house and kill us. I
> > can relate to that."
> >
> > In the afternoon, all the morning rallies converged in a march, ending
> > in a rally by the Capitol of roughly 75,000 protesters, more than were
> > in Seattle in 1999, and what was being called the largest pro-
> > Palestinian gathering ever in the United States. Middle Eastern
> > families -- women in headscarves, strollers in tow -- marched
> > alongside pink-haired, pierced 19-year-olds.
> >
> > And while the separation of the morning anti-war rallies may have
> > looked petty and sectarian from the outside, it made complete sense to
> > me once I witnessed the thuggish behavior of ANSWER organizers at the
> > Capitol rally. "I'll make a deal with you," said one ANSWER organizer
> > to Terra Lawson-Remer of Students Transforming and Resisting
> > Corporations (STARC), who was coordinating media outreach for the
> > NSYPC event. "We won't play the Mumia tape again" - ANSWER had already
> > broadcast a taped speech by Mumia at the Ellipse - "if you'll tell the
> > press we had 150,000 people here." Lawson-Remer was in a bind; she
> > clearly didn't want them to carry out this threat (torture by Mumia!)
> > but, she said, "I'm an honest woman. I think there are 50-75,000
> > people here and I'm going to say that." The ANSWER organizers pressed
> > the point, arguing that whatever they said, the media would report
> > fewer. This was not a difference of opinion about the truth. "It's not
> > about accuracy. It's about politics. It's not about counting," said
> > ANSWER's Tony Murphy. "It's us vs. them. [The pro-Israeli]
> > demonstrators had 100,000 here last week." (ANSWER always wildly
> > inflates its rally numbers, claiming 20,000 at a September 29 rally of
> > less than 10,000.)
> >
> > Clearly ANSWER are a gang of liars who don't play well with others.
> > Yet they are also very good at calling a rally on the right issue at
> > the right time, and publicizing it widely. Both coalitions played an
> > essential role in attracting very different constituencies, and
> > turnout far exceeded organizers' expectations. Organizers on both
> > sides of the ANSWER/NSYPC divide acknowledge that working together was
> > difficult, and neither looks forward to doing it again. Yet the
> > numbers and diversity of the Capitol rally represented an incredible
> > step forward for the anti-war movement. The day's events dealt a
> > lethal blow to the notion - stoked by media and government alike --
> > that all Americans uncritically support Bush's policies, and value
> > Israeli lives over those of Palestinians. NSYPC's Lawson-Remer says
> > "It's a demonstration that the consensus is not what they say it is."
>
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Published on Monday, July 15, 2002 in the Sydney Morning Herald
US Planning to Recruit One in 24 Americans as Citizen Spies
by Ritt Goldstein
The Bush Administration aims to recruit millions of United States citizens
as domestic informants in a program likely to alarm civil liberties groups.
The Terrorism Information and Prevention System, or TIPS, means the US will
have a higher percentage of citizen informants than the former East Germany
through the infamous Stasi secret police. The program would use a minimum
of
4 per cent of Americans to report "suspicious activity".
Civil liberties groups have already warned that, with the passage earlier
this
year of the Patriot Act, there is potential for abusive, large-scale
investigations of US citizens.
As with the Patriot Act, TIPS is being pursued as part of the so-called war
against terrorism. It is a Department of Justice project.
Highlighting the scope of the surveillance network, TIPS volunteers are
being recruited primarily from among those whose work provides access to
homes, businesses or transport systems. Letter carriers, utility employees,
truck drivers and train conductors are among those named as targeted
recruits.
A pilot program, described on the government Web site www.citizencorps.gov,
is
scheduled to start next month in 10 cities, with 1 million informants
participating in the first stage. Assuming the program is initiated in the
10 largest US cities, that will be 1 million informants for a total
population of almost 24 million, or one in 24 people.
Historically, informant systems have been the tools of non-democratic
states. According to a 1992 report by Harvard University's Project on
Justice, the accuracy of informant reports is problematic, with some
informants having embellished the truth, and others suspected of having
fabricated their reports.
Present Justice Department procedures mean that informant reports will
enter
databases for future reference and/or action. The information will then be
broadly available within the department, related agencies and local police
forces. The targeted individual will remain unaware of the existence of the
report and of its contents.
The Patriot Act already provides for a person's home to be searched without
that person being informed that a search was ever performed, or of any
surveillance devices that were implanted.
At state and local levels the TIPS program will be co-ordinated by the
Federal Emergency Management Agency, which was given sweeping new powers,
including internment, as part of the Reagan Administration's national
security initiatives. Many key figures of the Reagan era are part of the
Bush Administration.
The creation of a US "shadow government", operating in secret, was another
Reagan national security initiative.
======
Ritt Goldstein is an investigative journalist and a former leader in the
movement for US law enforcement accountability. He has lived in Sweden
since
1997, seeking political asylum there, saying he was the victim of
life-threatening assaults in retaliation for his accountability efforts.
His
application has been supported by the European Parliament, five of Sweden's
seven big political parties, clergy, and Amnesty and other rights groups.
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U.S. Has a Plan to Occupy Iraq, Officials Report By DAVID E. SANGER and
ERIC SCHMITT
WASHINGTON, Oct. 10 - The White House is developing a detailed plan,
modeled on the postwar occupation of Japan, to install an American-led
military government in Iraq if the United States topples Saddam Hussein,
senior administration officials said today.
The plan also calls for war-crime trials of Iraqi leaders and a transition
to an elected civilian government that could take months or years.
In the initial phase, Iraq would be governed by an American military
commander - perhaps Gen. Tommy R. Franks, commander of United States forces
in the Persian Gulf, or one of his subordinates - who would assume the role
that Gen. Douglas MacArthur served in Japan after its surrender in 1945.
One senior official said the administration was "coalescing around" the
concept after discussions of options with President Bush and his top aides.
But this official and others cautioned that there had not yet been any
formal approval of the plan and that it was not clear whether allies had
been consulted on it.
The detailed thinking about an American occupation emerges as the
administration negotiates a compromise at the United Nations that officials
say may fall short of an explicit authorization to use force but still
allow the United States to claim it has all the authority it needs to force
Iraq to disarm.
In contemplating an occupation, the administration is scaling back the
initial role for Iraqi opposition forces in a post-Hussein government.
Until now it had been assumed that Iraqi dissidents both inside and outside
the country would form a government, but it was never clear when they would
take full control.
Today marked the first time the administration has discussed what could be
a lengthy occupation by coalition forces, led by the United States.
Officials say they want to avoid the chaos and in-fighting that have
plagued Afghanistan since the defeat of the Taliban. Mr. Bush's aides say
they also want full control over Iraq while American-led forces carry out
their principal mission: finding and destroying weapons of mass destruction.
The description of the emerging American plan and the possibility of
war-crime trials of Iraqi leaders could be part of an administration effort
to warn Iraq's generals of an unpleasant future if they continue to support
Mr. Hussein.
Asked what would happen if American pressure prompted a coup against Mr.
Hussein, a senior official said, "That would be nice." But the official
suggested that the American military might enter and secure the country
anyway, not only to eliminate weapons of mass destruction but also to
ensure against anarchy.
Under the compromise now under discussion with France, Russia and China,
according to officials familiar with the talks, the United Nations Security
Council would approve a resolution requiring the disarmament of Iraq and
specifying "consequences" that Iraq would suffer for defiance.
It would stop well short of the explicit authorization to enforce the
resolution that Mr. Bush has sought. But the diplomatic strategy, now being
discussed in Washington, Paris and Moscow, would allow Mr. Bush to claim
that the resolution gives the United States all the authority he believes
he needs to force Baghdad to disarm.
Other Security Council members could offer their own, less muscular
interpretations, and they would be free to draft a second resolution,
authorizing the use of force, if Iraq frustrated the inspection process.
The United States would regard that second resolution as unnecessary,
senior officials say.
"Everyone would read this resolution their own way," one senior official said.
The revelation of the occupation plan marks the first time the
administration has described in detail how it would administer Iraq in the
days and weeks after an invasion, and how it would keep the country unified
while searching for weapons.
It would put an American officer in charge of Iraq for a year or more while
the United States and its allies searched for weapons and maintained Iraq's
oil fields.
For as long as the coalition partners administered Iraq, they would
essentially control the second largest proven reserves of oil in the world,
nearly 11 percent of the total. A senior administration official said the
United Nations oil-for-food program would be expanded to help finance
stabilization and reconstruction.
Administration officials said they were moving away from the model used in
Afghanistan: establishing a provisional government right away that would be
run by Iraqis. Some top Pentagon officials support this approach, but the
State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency and, ultimately, the
White House, were cool to it.
"We're just not sure what influence groups on the outside would have on the
inside," an administration official said. "There would also be differences
among Iraqis, and we don't want chaos and anarchy in the early process."
Instead, officials said, the administration is studying the military
occupations of Japan and Germany. But they stressed a commitment to keeping
Iraq unified, as Japan was, and avoiding the kind partition that Germany
underwent when Soviet troops stayed in the eastern sector, which set the
stage for the cold war. The military government in Germany stayed in power
for four years; in Japan it lasted six and a half years.
In a speech on Saturday, Zalmay Khalilzad, the special assistant to the
president for Near East, Southwest Asian and North African affairs, said,
"The coalition will assume - and the preferred option - responsibility for
the territorial defense and security of Iraq after liberation."
"Our intent is not conquest and occupation of Iraq," Mr. Khalilzad said.
"But we do what needs to be done to achieve the disarmament mission and to
get Iraq ready for a democratic transition and then through democracy over
time."
Iraqis, perhaps through a consultative council, would assist an
American-led military and, later, a civilian administration, a senior
official said today. Only after this transition would the American-led
government hand power to Iraqis.
He said that the Iraqi armed forces would be "downsized," and that senior
Baath Party officials who control government ministries would be removed.
"Much of the bureaucracy would carry on under new management," he added.
Some experts warned during Senate hearings last month that a prolonged
American military occupation of Iraq could inflame tensions in the Mideast
and the Muslim world.
"I am viscerally opposed to a prolonged occupation of a Muslim country at
the heart of the Muslim world by Western nations who proclaim the right to
re-educate that country," said the former secetary of state, Henry A.
Kissinger, who as a young man served as a district administrator in the
military government of occupied Germany.
While the White House considers its long-term plans for Iraq, Britain's
prime minister, Tony Blair, arrived in Moscow this evening for a day and a
half of talks with President Vladimir V. Putin. Aides said talks were
focused on resolving the dispute at the United Nations. Mr. Blair and Mr.
Putin are to hold formal discussions on Friday, followed by a news conference.
Mr. Blair has been a steadfast supporter of the administration's tough line
on a new resolution. But he has also indicated that Britain would consider
France's proposal to have a two-tiered approach, with the Security Council
first adopting a resolution to compel Iraq to cooperate with international
weapons inspectors, and then, if Iraq failed to comply, adopting a second
resolution on military force. Earlier this week, Russia indicated that it,
too, was prepared to consider the French position.
But the administration is now saying that if there is a two-resolution
approach, it will insist that the first resolution provide Mr. Bush all the
authority he needs.
"The timing of all this is impossible to anticipate," one administration
official involved in the talks said. "The president doesn't want to have to
wait around for a second resolution if it is clear that the Iraqis are not
cooperating."
@@@@@@@@@@@@
October 13, 2002
Texas on the Tigris
By MAUREEN DOWD
[]ASHINGTON — This has always been a place where people say the opposite of
what they mean. But last week, the capital soared to ominous new Orwellian
heights.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton voted to let the president use force in Iraq
because she didn't want the president to use force in Iraq.
Giving Mr. Bush bipartisan support, she said, would make his success at the
U.N. "more likely, and, therefore, war less likely."
The White House feigned interest in negotiation while planning for
annexation without representation.
The Democrats were desperate to put the war behind them, so they put the
war in front of them.
They didn't want to seem weak, so they made the president stronger, which
makes them weaker.
Mr. Bush said he needed Congressional support to win at the U.N., but he
wants to fail at the U.N. so he can install his own MacArthur as viceroy of
Iraq. (Poor Tommy Franks may finally have to leave Tampa.)
Mr. Bush says he's in a rush to go to war with Iraq because it's so strong,
but he's in a rush to go to war with Iraq because it's so weak.
In his Cincinnati speech, he warned of a menacing Iraqi drone that could
fly across the ocean and spray germs or chemicals on us. But Pentagon
experts say the drone could not make the trip and would have to be
disassembled, shipped over, sneaked in and reassembled.
Mr. Bush said he wanted an independent 9/11 commission to investigate more
broadly what went wrong with the government before 9/11. But now he's
trying to kill the panel because he already knows just about everything
went wrong before 9/11. He doesn't want us to know. Doesn't he know that we
already know?
The president's father lamented in his diary in 1991 that his Persian Gulf
war didn't have a clean end because "there is no battleship Missouri
surrender." Now the son wants to skip the surrender and turn Baghdad into
Houston East, putting a branch of the Petroleum Club at the intersection of
the Tigris and the Euphrates.
Tom Daschle, Dianne Feinstein and other doubters came around on Thursday to
the view that Iraq is an urgent threat after the C.I.A. director, George
Tenet, sent Congress a memo on Monday stating that Iraq is not an urgent
threat.
Mr. Tenet, a Clinton holdover, is desperate to please Mr. Bush. Senators
joke that he gives the president intelligence briefings while polishing Mr.
Bush's shoes. So the C.I.A. chief was embarrassed to find himself
insinuating that W. is hyping his war.
After providing the smoking gun to show that Mr. Bush has no smoking gun,
the usually silent top spook was frantically calling reporters on Tuesday
night to insist that there's no daylight between him and the president on
Iraq.
Let's see: Mr. Tenet says Saddam is unlikely to initiate a chemical or
biological attack against us unless we attack him, and Mr. Bush says Saddam
is likely to initiate a chemical or biological attack so we must attack him.
The C.I.A. says Saddam will use his nasty weapons against us only if he
thinks he has nothing to lose. So the White House leaks its plans about the
occupation of Iraq, leaving Saddam nothing to lose.
The president says Iraq is linked to Islamic terrorists so we must attack,
while the C.I.A. says that Iraq will link up with Islamic terrorists only
if we attack.
Mr. Bush says the war on Iraq will help us in the war on terrorism. But
somebody forgot to tell the Osama lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahiri, who says
the war on Iraq justifies more terrorist attacks. Mr. Zawahiri's taped
message has incited Al Qaeda warriors to new attacks while we're
preoccupied with our post-occupation.
When asked if Iraq in 2003 would look like Japan in 1945, Ari Fleischer
said no, it would look like Afghanistan in 2002. But Afghanistan is now
even more dangerous than the suburbs of Washington. We have lost interest
in Afghanistan because we are too busy trying to turn Iraq into Japan.
The Nobel committee gave Jimmy Carter the peace prize as a way of giving W.
the war booby prize.
Still, George Bush, the failed Harken oil executive, and Dick Cheney, the
inept Halliburton chairman, will finally get their gusher.
One day, the prez was shootin' at a dictator bein' rude, and up from the
ground came a bubblin' crude. Oil, that is. Black gold. Baghdad tea.
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http://etan.org/et2000a/march/01-9/05sex.htm
The Age March 5 2002
Sex slave protests confront Japanese army
By Jill Jolliffe
An advance party of 24 Japanese peacekeepers landed in East Timor yesterday to protests by local and Japanese activists and two elderly women demanding compensation for their use as sex slaves during World War II.
The Japanese team, led by Colonel Shoichi Ogawa, arrived in a Hercules military aircraft a little over 60 years after Japan invaded East Timor on February 19, 1942. The remainder of the battalion-strength engineering group will arrive later this month.
Colonel Ogawa refused to answer journalists' questions on whether Japan should apologise to or compensate an estimated 800 Timorese survivors of sexual slavery, known as "comfort women". He said only "we came here on a request from the UN and East Timorese leaders to assist in the country's restoration, so we will do the best we can". His group avoided a confrontation with the protesters by leaving the airport VIP lounge by a rear door.
Helena Guterres and Sara da Silva, who had travelled from the countryside for the protest, said they were disappointed that they could not meet the Japanese to demand compensation.
Mrs Guterres, given the Japanese name "Misiko" during the war, said she had been raped by Japanese soldiers in 1942 when she was 12 years old, in her home town of Baucau. She was forced to live in a barracks with six other women to service the Japanese army for the remaining three years of the occupation, in which an estimated 40,000 East Timorese are thought to have died. She was pregnant at the time of Japan's surrender and gave birth to a son.
Sara da Silva said she was captured in Dili in 1943 when she was 19, and taken to Baucau and other eastern villages with two other women and held in barracks in similar conditions until war's end.
There were also some elderly male survivors of the war in the crowd. A spokesman for the Foundation for Compensation of Victims of Colonialism in East Timor said it had a register of 3450 surviving victims.
The Japanese troops will work on road building during their six-month mission. Although they are officially known as a "Self-Defence Force", this will be the first time a contingent will carry arms abroad.
---------------------------------
UN plays down protest in E. Timor over Japan troops
DILI, East Timor, March 5 (Reuters) - The U.N. on Tuesday played down protests against Japanese military engineers in East Timor, the advance party of a contingent that will eventually comprise Japan's biggest ever peacekeeping force.
On Monday around 20 Timorese greeted the arrival of the two dozen engineers in the capital Dili with placards decrying Japan's occupation of the tiny territory during World War Two when thousands of East Timorese were killed. The overseas dispatch of Japanese military forces has long been a sensitive topic in Japan and throughout Asia, where memories of the country's past militarism run deep.
"In the new East Timor, freedom of expression and speech are one of the core principles," said Barbara Reis, spokeswoman for the U.N. administration in East Timor.
"The protesters decided in a peaceful way to let the people know they were unhappy, and that is their right. The Japanese engineers are well respected and we do not believe it will affect any of their work."
The demonstration broke up without incident. The engineers will help prepare for the arrival of nearly 700 Japanese troops.
East Timor came under U.N. administration not long after it voted in a 1999 referendum to break free from Indonesian rule, an act that triggered a wave of violence from pro-Jakarta militias backed by elements in the Indonesian army.
The territory will become formally independent on May 20, although a smaller peacekeeping force is expected to remain for several years. The current number of peacekeeping troops in East Timor was unclear, although they once totalled 8,000.
The Japanese troop contingent will be the first to take part in U.N. peacekeeping operations since Japan approved a bill late last year to ease restrictions on the use of weapons during such missions, allowing its military to play a broader role.
Under its pacifist constitution, Japan is barred from settling international disputes by military means.
The engineers will also help rebuild roads and bridges that were destroyed by pro-Jakarta militias.
----
MEDIA RELEASE OFFICE OF NOBEL LAUREATE JOSE RAMOS-HORTA
Tuesday March 5 2001
For Immediate Release
EAST TIMOR MUST FORGET THE TRAGIC EVENTS OF WORLD WAR II
The following is a statement issued by Senior Minister, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation of the Second Transitional Government of East Timor, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Dr Jose Ramos-Horta:
No chapter in Japan's great and rich history than the 1940-1945 chapter, has scarred more the Japanese for the suffering it caused to millions of peoples in Asia, including in East Timor, and to its own people. The great and proud nation was reduced to ashes by the first atomic bombs ever dropped on humankind and the Japanese people endured the humiliation of defeat and surrender and extreme poverty.
Within a short period of time Japan recovered from the ashes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to become again a proud nation thanks to the extraordinary resilience and determination of its people, and becoming yet again a world economic superpower. With its vast wealth and know-how in almost every field of human endeavour it has made enormous contributions towards the well being of many countries in the Asia region, Africa and Latin America. It is the single largest contributor to UN humanitarian agencies such as the UNHCR, UNICEF, UNESCO, WHO, etc.
Japan has been in the forefront of East Timor recovery efforts since 1999. Now in response to United Nations appeals and with the full support of the entire East Timorese leadership, the Japanese government has agreed to dispatch to East Timor an army engineering battalion, one of the most competent in the world. East Timor urgently needs this very important Japanese technical contribution.
Overall, Japan must engage more and more with UN peace-keeping missions. East Timor is a first major step after a smaller but significant mission in Cambodia.
On the question of compensation and apologies, nations have different ways of approaching this issue. Japan has atoned in many different ways for its past.
On the other hand if the East Timorese people were to heed the calls by a small group of people, local and foreigners, whom we now also care about the East Timorese, we would have to spend the next decades expecting apologies from a too long list of countries that one way or another, directly or indirectly, have contributed to our suffering.
The events of World War II have long passed. Its tragic consequences have receded in the collective memory of our people and overtaken by a much greater calamity that took place during the past quarter of a century and that have affected the entire nation and from which our people haven't recovered.
But the same time greater and more glorious days have arrived. Let's celebrate these great days of triumph and freedom, focus on the present and build a better, more prosperous and peaceful future.
East Timor warmly welcomes the Japanese army engineer battalion. Their presence and vital contribution will greatly contribute to consolidating East Timor-Japan friendship.
Jose Ramos-Horta Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
- ends -
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> "A world of justice and peace would be different"
>
> A response to the manifesto "Propositions: What We're Fighting For"
>
> by 60 American intellectuals*
>
>
>
>
> Ladies and gentlemen,
>
> The mass murder by the terrorist attack on September 11th in your
> country, and the U.S. war in Afghanistan as a reaction to that terror
> also affects Europe, the Islamic world, and the future of all of us.
> We think it especially important that an open and critical dialogue
> take place throughout the world among intellectuals of civil
> societies about the causes and consequences of these events, to
> assess them and judge their significance. Please consider our
> response to your "Propositions: What we are fighting for" as a
> contribution to this.
>
> There can be no moral justification for the horrible mass murder on
> September 11th. We agree with you wholeheartedly about that. We also
> share the moral standards that you apply, namely that human dignity
> is inviolable, regardless of sex, color of skin, or religion, and
> that striving for democracy is an important foundation for the
> protection of human dignity, of individual freedoms, of freedom of
> religion, and of the human rights specified in the UN Charter.
>
> But it is precisely these moral values, which are universally valid
> in our eyes, that cause us to reject the war that your government and
> its allies (us included) in the "alliance against terror" are waging
> in Afghanistan-and which has cost the lives of more than 4,000
> innocent bystanders to date, including many women and children-with
> the same rigorousness with which we condemn the mass murder of
> innocent bystanders by the terrorist attack. There are no universally
> valid values that allow one to justify one mass murder by another.
> The war of the "alliance against terror" in Afghanistan is no "just
> war"-an ill-starred historical concept that we do not accept-on the
> contrary, it flagrantly violates even the condition you cite, "to
> protect the innocent from certain harm". Democratic states possess
> sufficiently developed means under the rule of law to combat crime
> within their sphere of influence, and to call the guilty to account.
> What we need to do is to extend these proven means globally, in close
> cooperation with other states.
>
> We cannot understand why you do not devote a single word of your
> appeal to the mass murder of the Afghan civilian population resulting
> from the bombing campaign conducted with the most modern weapon
> systems. The inviolability of human dignity applies not only to
> people in the United States, but also to people in Afghanistan, and
> even to the Taliban and the al-Qaeda prisoners at Guantanamo. In your
> appeal, you invoke the universality of your moral standards, while at
> the same time applying them only to yourselves. By this selective
> usage, you call precisely their universal validity into question
> drastically, thus evoking great doubts about the genuineness of your
> own avowal. How can the doubts raised about these moral standards in
> other cultures be dispelled, if-of all people-the elites of U.S.
> civilization, who see themselves as advocates and guardians of these
> values, bring the belief in the universality of these values into
> discredit? Can we expect other nations and cultures to perceive the
> application of dual standards as anything but the expression of
> continuing Western arrogance and ignorance?
>
> And, in view of the overwhelming evidence of the historical facts, we
> cannot follow you when you write that your country "At times ... has
> pursued misguided and unjust policies". The United States made an
> outstanding contribution to the liberation of Europe from the yoke of
> Naziism. However, as a leading superpower during the period of
> East-
> West confrontation, it was also largely responsible for grave abuses
> in the world. By numerous covert to directly military interventions,
> such as in Iran, Indonesia, Chile, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua,
> in the Iran-Iraq war on the Iraqi side, and many others, the United
> States supported regimes which ruled by state terrorism and
> million-
> fold murder of opposition forces, and prevented democratization
> processes. Frequently enough, freely elected governments fell victim
> to these interventions.
>
> Many of the undersigned hoped that, after the collapse of the Soviet
> Union, a new era of disarmament, international understanding, dialog
> between cultures, and hope for the billions of people suffering from
> and humiliated by hunger and disease would begin. After four decades
> of hate, mutual threats, and the arms race, we expected and worked
> for the Western industrialized nations to put their creative
> potential in the service of overcoming poverty and environmental
> destruction, and developing democracy. But these expectations were
> disappointed. Instead, the United States concentrated its imagination
> and its scientific, technical, and economic capacities on
> strengthening its position as the sole remaining superpower in the
> world, and establishing a unipolar world order. In that order, it
> attempts to decide the fate of peoples largely on its own authority.
> Much evidence, such as the systematic establishment of U.S. military
> bases in the Balkans, the Middle East, and Central Asia, supports
> this assessment.
>
> This makes analyses seem plausible according to which the United
> States, contrary to official proclamations, is not mainly pursuing
> humanitarian goals, combating terrorism, or seeking to prevent the
> spread of weapons of mass destruction, in the Middle East and in
> Central Asia, including Afghanistan, but rather is guided by
> geostrategic motives. Indeed, its access to the oil wells of this
> region, that are essential to the world economy, and to the oil
> transportation routes, considerably increases the United States'
> geostrategic options for strengthening its hegemonic position not
> only vis-à-vis the weakened superpower Russia and the rising regional
> power China, but also vis-à-vis Europe and Japan, for the next few
> decades.
>
> Despite disputes about such assessments, we all largely agree that
> the concentration of vast power potentials in a single country, and
> the military capability of imposing one's own will on others are an
> important source of instability in transnational and transcultural
> relations. It has also become a source of the feeling of impotence
> and of humiliation in particular for those people who feel themselves
> to be victims of this imbalance of power. The presence of U.S. troops
> within reach of Islamic holy sites in Saudi Arabia, for example,
> which is obviously regarded by many Muslims as a thorn in their flesh
> and an attack on their own culture and self-esteem, symbolizes this
> imbalance of power that is felt to be a threat. Their own
> inferiority, perceived as unjust, evokes an affective loss of
> inhibitions, mobilizing a huge potential for reaction, up to the
> willingness to sacrifice one's own life, too, in suicide
> assassinations. Such reactions, as a consequence of the instability
> of the balance of power in the present unipolar world order, are not
> specific to one culture. They could be triggered in any other part of
> the world and at any other time in new forms. A war of the winners
> against the suicide attacks of the losers is an anachronism. It
> eliminates scruples and mobilizes even greater willingness for
> terroristic attacks and terroristic military operations, as in the
> Israel-Palestine conflict. The current form of globalization, which
> heightens social inequalities and destroys cultural differentiation,
> contributes to the instabilities and tensions that erupt in violent
> reactions.
>
> We are concerned to see that prominent persons in your President's
> entourage are demanding more and more aggressively from Europeans
> total obedience to America, and seeking to stifle any criticism from
> Europe by means of blackmail, with statements such as "Europe needs
> America, but America does not need Europe". The "unlimited
> solidarity" of our, and many another European government with the
> United States, and their willingness to support the War on Terror
> uncritically, is perceived by many people here as weakness and a
> deprivation of the right to decide for oneself. The political class
> in Europe has obviously not grasped that its obsequious submission to
> the superior and sole superpower is not only a policy without
> prospects, but is also creating a favorable climate for agitation by
> forces of the radical Right. And, to our regret, the governments of
> the EU member states have until now neglected to develop an
> independent EU foreign, security, and peace policy for the Near and
> Middle East, for Central Asia, and for their relations to the Islamic
> world, based on cooperation, and on the indivisibility of human
> dignity and human rights. Indeed, we must fear that, due to their
> lack of any clear vision, and despite their criticism, they will in
> the end be willing to give moral legitimacy to an American war on
> Iraq, or even participate actively.
>
> Many of us feel that the growing influence of fundamentalist forces
> in the United States on the political elite of your country, which
> clearly extends all the way to the White House, is cause for concern.
> The division of the world into "good" and "evil", the stigmatization
> of entire countries and their populations, will tend to incite
> racist, nationalistic, and religious fanaticism, and to deprive
> people of their ability to perceive living reality in a
> differentiated way, and of the insight that differences and cultural
> variety are not a misfortune, but a blessing for all, and that even
> the most powerful persons on earth will only prosper in the long run
> if the world is seen as a whole, whose richness and beauty consists
> in the differences. Fundamentalism begins with declaring one's own
> culture to be the only true, good, and beautiful one. Fundamentalist
> reactions to the real conflicts in our world close our eyes to
> civilian and nonviolent solutions for these conflicts, and only speed
> up the mutual escalation of terrorism and war.
>
> With dismay, we have also heard from our American friends and
> professional colleagues that scholars and journalists are being put
> under pressure and denounced as traitors if they discuss critically
> or reject their government's war policy. Make sure that the pluralism
> of thought and liberal tradition of your country are not impaired
> under the pretext of combating terrorism. Help to halt the advance of
> the fundamentalist mentality in the United States. Those American
> values which you refer to with pride are being tested.
>
> There are certainly various ways to combat terroristic suicide
> attacks. We have different opinions on the subject. But we are all
> deeply convinced that respect for human dignity is a basic
> precondition for all approaches to a solution. Only if the view that
> the West, as the most economically and militarily powerful group of
> cultures, is serious about the universality of human rights and
> dignity, that this is not merely a phrase trotted out when it is
> convenient, becomes accepted throughout the world, and in the
> economically and militarily weaker nations and cultures, only then
> will the likelihood increase that terrorist suicide bombings will not
> find the intended response, but encounter vehement rejection in all
> countries. Only if the weaker people of this world feel certain that
> no state, no matter how powerful, will injure their dignity,
> humiliate them, or arbitrarily harm their living conditions, only
> then will these people find the strength and willingness to open
> their eyes and hearts to the moral values of other cultures. And only
> then will the preconditions exist for a genuine dialogue between
> cultures to begin.
>
> We need morally justified, globally acceptable, and universally
> respected common rules of play for the way people live together,
> which emphasize cooperation instead of confrontation, and undermine
> the anxieties created by the accelerating changes in our surroundings
> and the constantly growing potentials for violence, as well as the
> security obsessions resulting from them. This will provide
> opportunities to structure the mainly business-oriented globalization
> more justly, to tackle worldwide poverty effectively, to defuse the
> global environmental hazards together, to resolve conflicts by
> peaceful means, and to create a world culture that can speak in not
> just one, but many tongues.
>
> We call on you to engage in an open dialogue with us and with
> intellectuals from other parts of the world about this and other
> perspectives for our common future.
>
> [Translated from the German by Timothy Slater]
>
>
> Legally responsible: Hans Peter Dürr, Mohssen Massarrat, Heiko
> Kauffmann, Frank Uhe, c/o IPPNW, Körtestr. 10, 10967 Berlin
>
>
> * This manifesto was originally published in English in February 2002
> as a position paper of the Institute for American Values. In the
> German media, this position paper was published in translation under
> the title "Just War Against Terrorism" ["Gerechter Krieg gegen den
> Terror"].
>
>
> Signatories:
>
> Prof. Hans Ackermann, Marburg
> Dr. Stephan Albrecht, Hamburg
> Dr. Franz Alt, Baden-Baden
> Prof. Elmar Altvater, Berlin
> Carl Amery, Munich
> Prof. Klaus J. Bade, Osnabrück
> Prof. Hans-Eckehard Bahr, Bochum
> Tobias Baur, Berlin
> Franz J. Bautz, Munich
> Prof. Jörg Becker, Solingen
> Dr. Peter Becker, Marburg
> Dr. Wolfgang Bender, Kronberg
> Prof. Adelheid Biesecker, Bremen
> Michael Bouteiller, Lübeck
> Prof. Elmar Brähler, Leipzig
> Dr. Dieter Bricke, Bergen
> Dr. Nikolaus und Nedialka Bubner, Berlin
> Annelie Buntenbach, Berlin
> Prof. Andreas Buro, Grävenwiesbach
> Prof. Wolfgang Däubler, Dusslingen
> Gerhard Diefenbach, Aachen
> Hermann H. Dieter, Trebbin-Blankensee
> Prof. Klaus Dörner, Hamburg
> Tankred Dorst, Munich
> Prof. Hans-Peter Dürr, Munich
> Dr. Matthias Engelke, Trier
> Prof. Andreas Flitner, Tübingen
> Helmut Frenz, Hamburg
> Prof. Georges Fülgraff, Berlin
> Prof. Bernhard Glaeser, Berlin
> Prof. Ulrich Gottstein, Frankfurt
> Dr. Franz-Theo Gottwald, Munich
> Jürgen Grässlin, Freiburg
> Bernd Hanfeld, Hamburg
> Dr. Dirk-Michael Harmsen, Karlsruhe
> Prof. Bodo Hambrecht, Berlin
> Prof. Heinz und Brigitte Häberle, Herrsching
> Irmgard Heilberger, Neuburg
> Christoph Hein, Berlin
> Prof. Peter Hennicke, Wuppertal
> Detlef Hensch, Berlin
> Prof. Wolfgang Hesse, Marburg
> Prof. Helmut Holzapfel, Kassel
> Ina Hönninger, Weßling
> Prof. Willi Hoss and Heidemarie Hoss-Rohweder, Stuttgart
> Prof. Ferdinand Hucho, Berlin
> Prof. Jörg Huffschmid, Bremen
> Otto Jaeckel, Wiesbaden
> Prof. Siegfried and Dr. Margarete Jäger, Duisburg
> Prof. Walter Jens, Tübingen
> Heiko Kauffmann, Meerbusch
> Prof. Wolfgang Klein, Berlin
> Irmgard Koll, Müllheim
> Hans Krieger, Munich
> Prof. Ekkehart Krippendorff, Berlin
> Helmar Krupp, Weingarten
> Nils Leopold, Berlin
> Herbert Leuninger, Hofheim
> Frauke Liesenborghs, Munich
> Volker Lindemann, Schleswig
> Prof. Dieter S. Lutz, Hamburg
> Prof. Birgit Mahnkopf, Berlin
> Prof. Mohssen Massarrat, Osnabrück
> Prof. Ingeborg Maus, Frankfurt
> Prof. Klaus Michael Meyer-Abich, Essen
> Prof. Klaus Meschkat, Hannover
> PD Dr. Klaus Metz, Berlin
> Prof. Dietmar Mieth, Tübingen
> Reinhard Mokros, Mönchengladbach
> Dr. Till Müller-Heidelberg, Bingen
> Prof. Norman Paech, Hamburg
> Gunda Rachert, Osnabrück
> Prof. Horst-Eberhard Richter
> Dr. Fredrik Roggan, Bremen
> Prof. Rolf Rosenbrock, Berlin
> Prof. Werner Ruf, Kassel
> Peter Rühmkorf, Hamburg
> Prof. Fritz Sack, Hamburg
> Dr. Gerd Dieter Schmid, Fischbachau
> Horst Schmitthenner, Frankfurt
> Prof. Jürgen Schneider, Göttingen
> Dr. Schiltenwolf, Heidelberg
> Friedrich Schorlemmer, Wittenberg
> Prof. Herbert Schui, Buchholz
> Prof. Randeria Shalini, Berlin
> Tilman Spengler, Ambach
> Prof. Dorothee Sölle, Hamburg
> Eckart Stevens-Bartol, Munich
> Prof. Harmen Storck, Hannover
> Frank Uhe, Berlin
> Peter Vonnahme, Kaufering
> Dr. Reinhard Voß, Bad Vilbel
> Peter Wahl, Bonn
> Günter Wallraff, Cologne
> Dr. Rainer Werning, Frechen
> Christa Wichterich, Bonn
> Walter Wilken, Hannover
> Frieder-Otto Wolf, Berlin
> Dr. Herbert Wulf, Pinneberg
Note:
"Propositions: What We're Fighting For" can be found at:
http://www.propositionsonline.com/html/fighting_for.html
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LA TIMES: COMMENTARY
Camps for Citizens: Ashcroft's Hellish Vision
Attorney general shows himself as a menace to liberty.
By JONATHAN TURLEY
Jonathan Turley is a professor of constitutional law at George Washington
University.
Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft's announced desire for camps for U.S. citizens he
deems to be "enemy combatants" has moved him from merely being a political
embarrassment to being a constitutional menace.
Ashcroft's plan, disclosed last week but little publicized, would allow him
to order the indefinite incarceration of U.S. citizens and summarily strip
them of their constitutional rights and access to the courts by declaring
them enemy combatants.
The proposed camp plan should trigger immediate congressional hearings and
reconsideration of Ashcroft's fitness for this important office. Whereas Al
Qaeda is a threat to the lives of our citizens, Ashcroft has become a clear
and present threat to our liberties.
The camp plan was forged at an optimistic time for Ashcroft's small inner
circle, which has been carefully watching two test cases to see whether
this vision could become a reality. The cases of Jose Padilla and Yaser
Esam Hamdi will determine whether U.S. citizens can be held without charges
and subject to the arbitrary and unchecked authority of the government.
Hamdi has been held without charge even though the facts of his case are
virtually identical to those in the case of John Walker Lindh. Both Hamdi
and Lindh were captured in Afghanistan as foot soldiers in Taliban units.
Yet Lindh was given a lawyer and a trial, while Hamdi rots in a floating
Navy brig in Norfolk, Va.
This week, the government refused to comply with a federal judge who
ordered that he be given the underlying evidence justifying Hamdi's
treatment. The Justice Department has insisted that the judge must simply
accept its declaration and cannot interfere with the president's absolute
authority in "a time of war."
In Padilla's case, Ashcroft initially claimed that the arrest stopped a
plan to detonate a radioactive bomb in New York or Washington, D.C. The
administration later issued an embarrassing correction that there was no
evidence Padilla was on such a mission. What is clear is that Padilla is an
American citizen and was arrested in the United States--two facts that
should trigger the full application of constitutional rights.
Ashcroft hopes to use his self-made "enemy combatant" stamp for any citizen
whom he deems to be part of a wider terrorist conspiracy.
Perhaps because of his discredited claims of preventing radiological
terrorism, aides have indicated that a "high-level committee" will
recommend which citizens are to be stripped of their constitutional rights
and sent to Ashcroft's new camps.
Few would have imagined any attorney general seeking to reestablish such
camps for citizens. Of course, Ashcroft is not considering camps on the
order of the internment camps used to incarcerate Japanese American
citizens in World War II. But he can be credited only with thinking
smaller; we have learned from painful experience that unchecked authority,
once tasted, easily becomes insatiable.
We are only now getting a full vision of Ashcroft's America. Some of his
predecessors dreamed of creating a great society or a nation unfettered by
racism. Ashcroft seems to dream of a country secured from itself, neatly
contained and controlled by his judgment of loyalty.
For more than 200 years, security and liberty have been viewed as
coexistent values. Ashcroft and his aides appear to view this relationship
as lineal, where security must precede liberty.
Since the nation will never be entirely safe from terrorism, liberty has
become a mere rhetorical justification for increased security.
Ashcroft is a catalyst for constitutional devolution, encouraging citizens
to accept autocratic rule as their only way of avoiding massive terrorist
attacks.
His greatest problem has been preserving a level of panic and fear that
would induce a free people to surrender the rights so dearly won by their
ancestors.
In "A Man for All Seasons," Sir Thomas More was confronted by a young
lawyer, Will Roper, who sought his daughter's hand. Roper proclaimed that
he would cut down every law in England to get after the devil.
More's response seems almost tailored for Ashcroft: "And when the last law
was down and the devil turned round on you, where would you hide, Roper,
the laws all being flat? ... This country's planted thick with laws from
coast to coast ... and if you cut them down--and you are just the man to do
it--do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would
blow then?"
Every generation has had Ropers and Ashcrofts who view our laws and
traditions as mere obstructions rather than protections in times of peril.
But before we allow Ashcroft to denude our own constitutional landscape, we
must take a stand and have the courage to say, "Enough."
Every generation has its test of principle in which people of good faith
can no longer remain silent in the face of authoritarian ambition. If we
cannot join together to fight the abomination of American camps, we have
already lost what we are defending.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Rumsfeld Weighs New Covert Acts by Military Units
By Thom Shanker And James Risen
New York Times | International
Monday, 12 August, 2002
WASHINGTON, Aug. 11 < Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is
considering ways to expand broadly the role of American Special
Operations forces in the global campaign against terrorism, including
sending them worldwide to capture or kill Al Qaeda leaders far from the
battlefields of Afghanistan, according to Pentagon and intelligence
officials.
Proposals now being discussed by Mr. Rumsfeld and senior military
officers could ultimately lead Special Operations units to get more
deeply involved in long-term covert operations in countries where the
United States is not at open war and, in some cases, where the local
government is not informed of their presence. This expansion of the
military's involvement in clandestine activities could be justified,
Pentagon officials believe, by defining it as "preparation of the
battlefield" in a campaign against terrorism that knows no boundaries.
Some officials outside the Pentagon express concerns that the proposals
ultimately could lead the military into covert operations that have
traditionally been conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency under
tightly controlled legal conditions; these are set out by the president
in secret "findings," which are then closely monitored by Congress.
The discussion whether to give Special Operations forces missions to
capture or kill individual Qaeda leaders may at some point conflict with
the executive order prohibiting assassinations.
In past administrations, there was a clear effort to distinguish between
the combat activities conducted by Special Operations forces and
missions handled by the C.I.A. But the line has gradually blurred as the
campaign against terrorism required greater cooperation among United
States law enforcement, intelligence and military officials.
Indeed, some senior advisers to Mr. Rumsfeld say a legal finding
allowing lethal force to be used as part of a mission against a
terrorist leader may not be necessary to send Special Operations forces
to hunt, capture or kill Al Qaeda leaders in any country < especially
since the terror network attacked the United States on Sept. 11,
creating a state of armed conflict.
"We're at war with Al Qaeda," a senior adviser to Mr. Rumsfeld said. "If
we find an enemy combatant, then we should be able to use military
forces to take military action against them."
No formal plans have yet been written for Mr. Rumsfeld, and the
discussions remain far from any form that might be presented to
President Bush for his approval.
Mr. Rumsfeld is described by aides as frustrated that military
operations in and around Afghanistan have reached a plateau without the
elimination of Al Qaeda.
A classified directive issued recently by the Pentagon to the Special
Operations Command ordered it to come up with fresh thinking on how
elite counterterrorism units could be sent to "disrupt and destroy enemy
assets," according to three Pentagon and administration officials who
have seen the document.
The directive made clear that proposals for increased funds, new
equipment and more personnel would be considered if Special Operations
forces were cleared by the president and Mr. Rumsfeld to take the lead
in attacking terrorist leaders far beyond the Afghan theater, those
officials said.
More broadly, officials outside the Pentagon say that as Mr. Rumsfeld
tries to stretch the limits on Special Operations activities, he may be
moving them into areas of political intelligence-gathering and related
clandestine operations traditionally conducted by C.I.A. case officers.
Mr. Rumsfeld was said to be dissatisfied that it was the C.I.A. that
first developed ties to Afghan warlords as early as two years before
Sept. 11, which put them in a position to introduce those warlords to
American military personnel after the war in Afghanistan began. And it
was the C.I.A. that paid off local warlords in order to obtain their
cooperation with the American-led military campaign against Al Qaeda and
the Taliban.
In some cases, efforts by American Special forces working with
anti-Taliban commanders in Afghanistan to buy back Stinger missiles were
slowed by the fact that they had to await payments to those Afghan
fighters by C.I.A. field officers, because the American soldiers were
not allowed to hand out cash.
George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, is described as
not opposing the proposals, and at least one Pentagon official said
discussions were under way with the intelligence sector on how to work
out new arrangements between Special Operations forces and American
intelligence. This would "optimize each other's capabilities" in ways
that have not been possible up to now, the official said.
In fact, American troops have over the years been assigned to C.I.A.-led
operations, with Vietnam being an often-cited example. Likewise, a
traditional unconventional warfare mission for Army Special Forces, the
Green Berets, has been to develop relationships and train foreign armies
or guerrilla groups sharing goals with the United States.
In Afghanistan, a senior Defense Department official said, there was "an
ad hoc relationship that was operationally driven" and that forced
Special Operations forces and C.I.A. officers to cooperate and work
together more closely, but with bumps and glitches in the process. Now,
the official said, the idea is to formalize a closer relationship, with
Special Operations forces playing a greater role in intelligence and
"direct action" operations < that is, those that use lethal force.
A number of Pentagon and administration officials said a central goal of
stepping up Special Operations missions would be to seek out terrorist
leaders themselves in their safe houses or as they travel the world to
coordinate attacks or seek havens.
In the United States military, two highly secretive groups are
designated for counterterrorism missions: the Army Special Operations
unit known as Delta Force, also called the Combat Applications Group;
and the Naval Special Warfare unit known as SEAL Team 6, also called the
Development Group, senior Pentagon and military officials said.
Those two units have a second specialized mission <
counter-proliferation < that is important to a Bush administration that
has given greater emphasis in its national security policy to combating
biological, chemical and nuclear weapons that may fall into the hands of
terrorists or their state sponsors.
While the American military does not deny the existence of those units,
it also does not officially confirm their existence or provide details
on their operations.
"The people in these units are available 24 hours a day, seven days a
week, anywhere around the world," a military officer said. "They are
very highly trained, with specialized skills for dealing with
close-quarters combat and unique situations posed by weapons of mass
destruction."
According to a definition supplied by one former senior lawyer for the
C.I.A., a covert action is "an activity or activities of the United
States government to influence the political, economic or military
conditions abroad, where it is intended that the role of the United
States will not be apparent or acknowledged publicly."
Some years ago, a State Department counsel issued an opinion that stated
that the president, as commander in chief, had the power to order Delta
Force to capture terrorists overseas and then bring them back to the
United States, the former C.I.A. lawyer recalled.
"So there are legal theories that would support the president simply
doing this on his own, as commander in chief," the lawyer observed.
"Frankly, it is a question of what Congress will accept."
Mr. Bush, like President Clinton before him, authorized "lethal" covert
action findings against Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, allowing the use
of deadly force in the C.I.A.'s covert operations intended to destroy
the terrorist network.
A senior administration official argued that having vowed war on Al
Qaeda, on terrorists with global reach and nations that assist them, "If
we find a high-value target somewhere, anywhere, in the world, and if we
have the forces to get there and get to them, we should get there and
get to them."
With a stealthy, mercurial adversary like Al Qaeda, which learns quickly
and adapts its tactics to the American response, the military has to be
allowed to react just as quickly, this official said.
"Right now, there are 18 food chains, 20 levels of paperwork and 22
hoops we have to jump through before we can take action," the official
said. "Our enemy moves faster than that."
The head of the United States Special Operations Command, Gen. Charles
R. Holland, has briefed Mr. Rumsfeld and a very small group of senior
Defense Department and military officers on initial thinking. While some
of the missions could be conducted under the direction of regional
war-fighting commanders, others could be the sole mission of the Special
Operations Command working independently around the world, which also
would break new ground in the military, officials said.
Special Operations forces played a central and highly celebrated role in
toppling the Taliban government in Afghanistan and routing Al Qaeda.
But today, a number of Defense Department and military officials say
some of those elite units have been deployed for too long in the more
traditional of their unconventional roles, especially in support of the
time-consuming, if still important, sweeps for pockets of enemy fighters
and arms caches.
"They've become distracted by conventional uses," a Pentagon official
said.
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