People Before Profit blog

The Search for Justice for Haiti’s Yvon Neptune and His Fellow Inmates: All Political Prisoners

Fri, 30 Jun 2006 02:28:00 +0000

6-29-06,9:49am

René Préval has an enormous task ahead of him, as he picks up the reins of a battered and demoralized nation – one that is in the ER, almost terminal. Reforming the Haitian judicial system, however, is perhaps the most critical of his multiple burdens due to its near ruinous condition. To this day, disgracefully enough, many political prisoners, including former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune, under President Jean Bertrand Aristide, remain in jail, along with a number of his senior colleagues, while they wait for the democratic transition to eventually provide a fair judicial outcome. Numerous publicly-spirited lawyers and human rights workers, outraged by the arbitrary and vindictive behavior of Bernard Gousse, the former justice minister under the now replaced hapless interim Haitian government, have attempted to prevent scores of innocent individuals associated with former President Aristide and his Lavalas party from being persecuted in the aftermath of the U.S., French, UN, and Canadian-sanctioned February 2004 de facto coup.

Before Haiti can truly move forward and President Préval can begin to consolidate the fleeting prospect for democracy offered by his victory at the polls, the question of injustice under the ill-reputed, U.S.-backed Latortue interim government must be addressed. For Préval, it is of utmost importance, for both his own legitimacy and his country’s dignity, that worthy public figures, such as Prime Minister Neptune and some of his immediate associates, have all charges against them immediately dropped. Washington and Ottawa were integral participants in the process that divested Haiti of its democratic rule, for they legitimized Aristide’s illegal ouster. Disgracefully enough, the Aristide-era prisoners have been and mostly remain today imprisoned under harsh conditions.

No Picture in the Dungeon Neptune began his incarceration in June 2004, after being accused, but not formally charged, with participating in a massacre in the neighborhood of La Scierie, shortly after Aristide’s fall in February 2004. In fact, UN human rights expert Louis Joinet has declared that the deaths at La Scierie were a result of a clash between pro and anti-Aristide factions. One year later, Neptune was placed under the charge of UN peacekeeping forces, but was later, upon his insistence, transferred back to the custody of Haitian officials. His position at the time was that he didn’t want to receive any special treatment from what he considered an illegal government. In April 2005, still under Latortue rule, Neptune began a hunger strike, demanding the full lifting of all charges against him.

Neptune had little hope of release or a fair trial under Latortue and Gousse. Attorney Brian Concannon, a highly regarded human rights proponent during Aristide’s rule and director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, has reported that Neptune is refusing to be represented by counsel, or otherwise to cooperate with the Latortue-Gousse justice system, which had persecuted him in violation of its own rules. Neptune has also refused any presidential pardon, instead insisting that all spurious claims against him being dropped. Given the demonstrable failings of Haiti’s judicial system, as well as the baleful legacy of the Gousse-era, Neptune has refused to cooperate with the former regime, and has limited himself to working with co-defendants to apply political pressure, including writing a letter to President Préval.

On May 9, 2006, an appeal process initiated in September by Neptune and his co-defendants was heard by the Haitian courts, and finally on May 23, the appeals process was concluded. Mario Joseph, representing the political prisoners, asked that the charges be dropped, while calling for their immediate provisional release on their personal recognizance. Even though the government prosecutor acquiesced to the release request, the justices hearing the case did not reach a decision until one month after the appeal, despite the obvious straightforward nature of the petition. Such rank judicial incompetence is more than appalling, particularly because of all the suffering that the defendants had to go through over their protracted ordeal.

On June 13, the justices granted a provisional release to another inmate, former Minister of Interior Jocelerme Privert; however, Neptune was denied release based on the notion that his request was not made on time. Any conceivable justification for the denial is beyond being contrived; it was simply a matter of insolence, as there was no reason to believe Neptune was a flight risk, since his concern for justice above all else is indisputable. For example, Neptune turned himself in during the month of June in 2004 and then again in February 2005, after he was forced out of prison at gunpoint during a jailbreak attempt instigated by others. Furthermore, Neptune once refused the government’s offer to fly him out of the country for medical treatment (with the obvious implication that he could fade into the countryside whenever he wanted) because the offer did not include dropping charges against him. Sadly, the kind of personal integrity that Neptune has demonstrated is in such scarce supply when it comes to Haiti’s courts, with it all too often being found concentrated in the defendants, rather than in the judges.

RNDDH: In-Humane, not Human Rights Many of the deep flaws surrounding Neptune’s case, including the protracted delay in the opening and resolution of the appellate trial, can be traced to the Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains (RNDDH), a sinister organization that continually has pressured the government to retain its political prisoners in jail, perhaps because it facilitated some of their arrests four years ago. The RNDDH used to be known as the National Coalition for Human Rights in Haiti (whose parent organization NCHR is based in New York) and ostensibly was originally committed to the promotion of human rights. By 2004, however, the Haitian branch of the organization had become increasingly politicized and fell under the influence of anti-Aristide Haiti-hardliners in the Canadian and U.S. governments.

During and after the 2004 coup, in which Canada and the U.S. played a defining part, the NCHR-Haiti denounced many individuals, and even had an arrangement with the head prosecutor in Port-au-Prince, by which any individual accused by the NCHR-Haiti would be subject to prosecution. Yvon Neptune was one of those who was unfortunate enough to be on that list. Countless individuals, many whose only crime was a loose affiliation with Aristide’s Fanmi Lavalas party, were arrested by the interim government based on false accusations entered by the NCHR-Haiti. When the NCHR-Haiti’s parent organization responded to the mounting number of accusations by forcing the abusive faction within its organization to be separated from the parent body, the former NCHR-Haiti became the RNDDH, a body which is now mainly funded by the Canadian government, specifically for the La Scierie case.

Foreign Disservice Canada’s backing of the RNDDH could not be more bizarre. Recently, Canada gave over $15 million to Haitian NGOs to improve the government and justice system, most likely involving the RNDDH. According to Concannon, the highly compromised “human rights” organization receives Ottawa funding, and additional revenue from the U.S. It was these three countries, together with Kofi Anan and the UN mechanism, which legitimized the notorious rump interim regime of Gerard Latortue, and which also arranged for the de facto ouster of constitutionalist Haitian president—President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February of 2004. Shortly after the accusations against Neptune were released by the NCHR-Haiti, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) announced an additional $100,000 in funding to the organization to specifically pursue the La Scierie case. Such international support was particularly distressing, when considering how Aristide, in the months before his end, was cut off from most foreign assistance, which led to the economic asphyxiation of his government and the truncation of its political options.

Collective Outrage The Haitian government’s squalid handling of Neptune’s case has attracted outrage from a number of quarters. One year ago, UN Special Envoy Juan Gabriel Valdes took up Neptune’s cause, saying to Reuters, “Our appreciation of the legal system and the procedures followed indicate to us that it would be perfectly possible to release Mr. Neptune from prison even if his case continued to be processed…We believe that serious attention should be given to Neptune's release.” Even Roger Noriega, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemispheric Affairs wrote a letter to the St. Petersburg Times in May 2005 stating, “The United States has repeatedly expressed its concerns about the health and well-being of former Haitian Prime Minister Yvon Neptune. We have also repeatedly expressed our concerns to Haiti's Interim Government that Mr. Neptune's case has not been processed expeditiously in accord with the Haitian constitution.” Fifteen congressmen and the Caribbean Community regional bloc (CARICOM) have all called for Neptune’s immediate release.

Haiti’s Judicial Ineptness Branches Out The former Haitian regime’s judicial misdemeanors extend far beyond the inexcusable treatment of prominent former Aristide officials. Other dignitaries jailed include Annette August; a grandmotherly activist nicknamed “Sister Anne” by her neighbors. The Village Voice reported shortly after Aristide’s ouster, that a detachment of U.S. Marines showed up at August’s Port-au-Prince home and arrested her along with her four children. In addition, Lavalas leader Father Gerard Jean-Juste remained in prison indefinitely, charged with the July 2005 murder of journalist Jacques Roche, even though Amnesty International has pointed out that Jean-Juste was in Miami at the time. Charges are still being ledged against Jean-Juste, however, he was released in January under a humanitarian exception for leukemia treatment.

Last-call for Justice René Préval, in his short time in office, has already made important strides towards reforming the judicial system. Préval purged the corrupt, former interim cabinet, and replaced it with a new one made up of ministers experienced in democratic processes. On June 8, 2006, the Haitian parliament approved the new cabinet, including a new minister of justice, with the deplorable Justice Minister Gousse now a distant, if execrable memory. Préval, however, has so far failed to take a stand against the ongoing judicial ineptness in Haiti. As Attorney Concannon notes, all the cases of the political prisoners are before the judges, who were put in place by the former interim government, leaving Préval little room to maneuver. The new Haitian president must work with the judicial system in order to achieve fair results, instead of pulling everyone out of prison, an illegal interference on the judicial system, which would greatly tarnish Préval’s image. Any reforms, however, must be coupled with the instant release of all political prisoners, with Washington and Ottawa partially redressing their past sins by immediately throwing their support behind such a move. Préval’s efforts at introducing civic rectitude to the country will be neutralized as long as Canada and the U.S. continue to fund the RNDDH and tacitly consent to the continued support of the imprisonment of Neptune and his co-defendants. Under any circumstances, Neptune and all the other political prisoners must not spend an additional moment in jail, if justice is to be served.

This analysis was prepared by COHA Research Associate Ashley Dalman

June 23, 2006

Cuba Slams European Union(EU) Servility to US

Fri, 30 Jun 2006 02:02:00 +0000

6-29-06,9:22 am

Havana, June 23 (Prensa Latina) Cuba condemned the European Union for its lackey attitude toward hostile US Cuban policy and said their alliance lacks moral authority and capacity to impose conditions.

In an editorial published Friday, Granma analyzed the recent EU-US summit in Vienna, saying the power of Washington´s cronies is not enough to impose on Cuba what the 'Empire' has been unable to do itself.

The US and its European allies, once more, have made themselves into international judges and take pleasure in invading other sovereign nations, dictating policies and filling the White House´s black list, said the daily.

The greatest scandal is that they ignore the critical situation of prisoners illegally held at the Naval Base in the Cuban province of Guantanamo, it contends.

Granma said they failed to mention the hundreds of clandestine US flights to render blind-folded drugged-prisoners across Europe, with stopovers in various states.

According to the newspaper, some days before the summit, European officials had asserted they would request that US President George W Bush shut down the detention and torture camp at Guantanamo.

But when he showed up, their enthusiasm vanished and it was Bush who referred to the issue, it added.

The daily made it clear that Bush was totally wishy-washy on the issue and incredibly, the Europeans only said 'we should not be naive against the new threat of terrorism.'

In 2005, the EU precluded the Human Rights Commission from investigating into flagrant and continuous human rights violations at that naval base.

The news in this summit is that the ancient policy of subordination and double standards has become official in the EU, and 'all of Europe has cowardly yielded to US dictates,' it said.

Granma assured issues such as energy cooperation, the US economic, financial and commercial blockade of Cuba and its extraterritorial implementation in Europe, the unjust imprisonment of The Five and the sanctuary created for notorious terrorist Luis Posada Carriles in the US were left out of the agenda in Vienna.

Cuba is not surprised about the submissive stance of the European Union, which has been strongly criticized in some countries and constitutes an example of a critical crisis of legitimacy and identity.

Today, more than ever, it is weaker and more servile to the US, Granma concluded.

Gay Pride Month: Communists stand in solidarity

Fri, 30 Jun 2006 01:48:00 +0000

6-29-06, 9:14 am

The following statement was issued June 21 by the Communist Party USA and Young Communist League in honor of Pride Month.

The month of June has been designated as Pride Month in celebration of the struggles and achievements of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the United States. This coming weekend marks the anniversary of the uprising that occurred at the Stonewall Inn on June 27, 1969, in New York City. The uprising, in response to bar raids and attacks by the police, was led by working-class gay and transgender people, many of whom were Black or Latino, and became a rallying point for LGBT people in the United States and around the world.

Every year since, LGBT people and their allies have been holding parades and rallies to highlight the discrimination that LGBT people face and to struggle forward for equality and liberation.

In 2006, we still have a long ways to go. This year marks the 25th year of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Today, millions of people are still denied access to life-saving drugs and medical help because of profit-driven drug corporations. In our schools, the ultra-right and religious conservatives deny students access to scientifically accurate sex education while more young people are becoming infected with HIV every year.

In our schools, in our workplaces and in our streets, LGBT people are faced with discrimination, hatred and violence.

Last week Kevin Aviance, a famous gay performer, was attacked and beaten in what is considered a “gay friendly” area in NYC. In Moscow, 50 LGBT people were arrested for attempting to hold the city’s first-ever Gay Pride Parade. In Australia, the president overturned a law that would allow same-sex marriage and the conservative government now in power in Canada is also seeking to overturn its law that allows gay marriage.

Here at home, Bush and the ultra-right continue to push the anti-gay button in order to drum up support in the 2006 elections. Just as in 2004, Bush is using gay marriage as a rallying cry for his conservative base that has started to turn against him because of his disastrous handling of the Iraq war and domestic issues.

We at the Communist Party USA and the Young Communist League USA stand in solidarity with our LGBT brothers and sisters in the fight for full equality. We demand an end to the violence and discrimination against LGBT people in our schools, workplaces and communities. We will be marching, rallying and celebrating this weekend in Pride Parades across the country and invite all readers of the People’s Weekly World to join us in the struggle for LGBT equality.

For more information about the Communist Party, go to . For the Young Communist League, go to .

A resource in the fight for single-payer health care

Fri, 30 Jun 2006 01:45:00 +0000

6-29-06, 9:11 am

Just what is The United States National Health Insurance Act, HR 676, introduced into Congress by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.)?

The brief answer is that it is a proposed law in Congress to extend enhanced “Medicare to All,” creating — finally — a single-payer health system providing all Americans with comprehensive health care and lowering medical costs for 95 percent of households.

“It would be publicly financed health care, privately delivered, and will put patients and doctors back in control of the system,” says Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio). “Coverage will be more complete than private insurance plans; encourage prevention; and include prescription drugs, dental care, mental health care, and alternative and complementary medicine.”

If enacted, the bill would guarantee medically necessary services for everyone, at no cost. By eliminating much of the health insurance bureaucracy and profits, the national cost of health insurance would be significantly decreased. Currently, under our for-profit system, the U.S. spends more than other countries per patient, but is ranked only 37th in health care service worldwide.

While there is not enough space here to fully explain the bill, or single-payer health care in general, it is all fully explained in “Medicare For All!” a pamphlet written by B.S. Rosen, illustrated by Peggy Lipshutz, and published by this paper.

Of course, with Republican ultra-right control of the Congress, it is extremely difficult for such a bill to become law, and the only way to gain traction for it is to build a nationwide movement. This is just what labor, health care and community activists have done.

Well over 100 hundred union locals, state and central labor councils have passed resolutions of support for HR 676, which are now listed in the back of the “Medicare for All” booklet’s new edition. The Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, representing 900,000 workers, recently endorsed the bill. It already has 72 backers in the House.

Across the country, union activists are pushing their locals to do the same. In addition, church groups, doctors, health care advocates and many others are becoming involved in the fight.

This newspaper is part of that fight—that’s why it recently ran a second printing of the “Medicare for All!” pamphlet.

“The People’s Weekly World,” says the introduction, “offers this booklet as part of the struggle for affordable and accessible health care for working families and all Americans.”

PWW Editor Terrie Albano said there were two reasons for the publication. Though the paper has been covering the growing movement around the bill, she said, there is not enough space each week to explain it fully. She added, “We also want to expose the profit motive behind the lack of decent, affordable health care in this country.”

Another reason, Albano said, “is to be part of the national fight for health care. It’s a huge crisis in our country. More than 45 million people are without health insurance — many of them are children. It’s a national disgrace that we have such a situation in a country as rich as ours.”

The World encourages everyone to order the pamphlet so they may fully understand the bill and single-payer health care in general. Just as importantly, the World is encouraging its use as a tool to help get resolutions passed in support of HR 676 in unions, churches, community groups, city councils and elsewhere. For this purpose, “Medicare for All!” includes a sample resolution.

From People's Weekly World

Congress Begins Moving: Our Work Is Far From Over

Fri, 30 Jun 2006 01:39:00 +0000

6-29-06, 9:05 am

Congress Begins Moving: Our Work Is Far From Over ACTION ALERT UNITED FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE June 27th, 2006 www.unitedforpeace.org

While both houses of Congress still lag dramatically behind the people of this country and Iraq in opposing the war, we've recently seen a sharp rise in Congressional willingness to talk about peace. Votes in both the House and the Senate have forced members to go on record on troop withdrawal, permanent bases, and other war-related issues. More members than ever before went on record for peace, or at least against the war without end that Bush has been peddling. Your calls, faxes and emails, your participation in public protests have all helped to create significant movement in Congress. They voted; now we have to hold them accountable. It is critical that our elected representatives know we are paying attention, and that we will continue to pressure them to take action to end the war in bring all the troops home, now!

Email or phone your Senators and Representative today!

No Permanent Bases For the second time this year, both the House and Senate have voted overwhelmingly against permanent bases in Iraq. It was a huge victory for the peace movement, with a majority of Republicans voting against the Bush administration. Even one pro-war Republican, Rep. Bill Young (R-FL), had this to say about the bases:

'It sends the wrong message. Not only to the people of Iraq, not only to the people of America, but to the people of other Muslim nations who might say ... hey, are we next? Are we going to be occupied? Are we going to have American troops in our streets?'

Bring the Troops Home On June 15, the House leadership responded to the peace movement's calls for a debate on the war. They gave us a carefully orchestrated series of speeches on a bill that was pure propaganda for the war. The Republican leadership is so afraid of the antiwar movement that they refused to let even Republicans offer alternative proposals to the Bush policy. The only vote they allowed was on a simplistic piece of propaganda in support of the war, freedom and the U.S. troops.

In spite of the war mongers' best efforts, we can take heart in the fact that 158 members of Congress voted 'no' (or lodged a protest 'present' vote) to this outrageous political maneuver. Still, 256 members of Congress proved how out of touch they are with the rest of the country by voting to support war without limit.

See if your Representative voted for war without end.

What Does This All Mean? If you just took the word of the mainstream media, you might think there's been no movement in Congress. But in fact, the change in the Senate has been phenomenal. To understand how far we have come, it is helpful to see where we were just a few months ago, when the only antiwar legislation was a very weak measure asking Bush to come up with a plan on Iraq. That's all, just a plan ... and only two Senators dared to support it!

Two weeks ago, we asked you to contact your Senators and ask them to vote to end the war. Since then, the Senate has voted on three different amendments calling for the withdrawal of troops. Even the weakest of these amendments was stronger than what we have seen previously.

The strongest stand was taken by Senators Feingold, Kennedy, Boxer, Kerry, Harkin and Byrd, who voted to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq by the end of the year. A weaker amendment sponsored by Boxer, Kerry and Feingold, calling for the withdrawal of all troops by next summer, got 13 votes. Although neither of these amendments supports the UFPJ position of 'out now,' Senators who voted for them should be thanked, and encouraged to work for an immediate end to the war.

Sen. Levin's non-binding resolution calling for the troops to begin to withdraw by the end of this year got the support of 38 Democrats and one Republican. This considerably weaker amendment still takes the Senate closer to ending the war. Most Senators who supported this amendment will now consider their work on the war done. It is not. They need to be told that a vote for the Levin amendment was not nearly enough.

The votes in the Senate and the House over the last weeks leave the door open to us to push them farther than they have been willing to go before to end the war. We have to make the most of this opportunity to let them know that the peace movement is watching them, and we are not satisfied with theatrics and rhetoric. We will only be satisfied with an immediate and complete withdrawal of U.S. troops.

Write or call your Senators today.

Background For a more complete summary of Congressional actions on Iraq in the last 2 weeks, please visit our website. www.unitedforpeace.org

Revolutionary Radio in Venezuela

Fri, 30 Jun 2006 01:37:00 +0000

6-29-06, 9:03 am

Over the course of forty years, Venezuela’s wealthy oligarchy plundered the nation’s wealth and turned a relatively prosperous country into one with 80 % of its people living in poverty.

Finally, in 1998 Hugo Chavez was elected president, with a mandate to make big changes. Since then he and his supporters have won solid and consistent majorities in one election after another.

But the oligarchs have not accepted the fact that the majority of Venezuelans do not trust them to run the government. They have used deception, violence, and sabotage to try to destroy the elected government. None of those tactics have succeeded. Now they are carrying on a propaganda offensive, claiming that President Chavez is a 'dictator.'

Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution is not the kind of thing that any dictator could decree. In reality, it involves a mass movement of people who have taken the initiative to make it happen. The story of the revolution is only partly the story of Hugo Chavez. It is also the story of all of the organizations and campaigns of the Venezuelan people, more stories than will ever be written. This is the story of one of those countless organizations that make up what Venezuelans call 'the process.'

Merida is a city of 250,000 people in a beautiful Andean valley at the foot of Venezuela’s highest mountain, Pico Bolivar. The University of the Andes has about forty thousand students, and the charming setting makes the city a magnet for tourists. It is the capital and commercial center of the mountainous state of Merida, population about 750,000.

In March of 2002 the oligarchy used their control of the mass media to create huge demonstrations of mostly upper and middle class people in Caracas to demand that President Hugo Chavez resign. According to television news, the vast majority of people were against him.

People in Merida, three hundred miles to the west, were in contact with friends and relatives in Caracas and in the army. (In Venezuela there is one cell phone for every two people.) They knew that what the media were telling them was not the whole story, but they needed information about what really was going on.

A few friends decided to set up a low power FM transmitter in Merida and broadcast whatever reliable information they could gather. This was not unique. Around that time radio stations were being set up all around Venezuela for similar reasons.

The first problem was getting the equipment. There was a young man in the neighborhood who had only finished sixth grade, but he had a reputation as an electronic genius. He managed to construct a transmitter that worked very well. In fact it is still working, and the people at the station worry about it, because the young man has gone off to seek his fortune in Brazil, and if it breaks down they won’t know how to fix it. You can’t just buy parts for a piece of equipment that is, as they put it, 'artisanal.'

The next problem was building an audience. They found a frequency that was not being used in Merida, and they set up an intermittent schedule. Given the thirst for reliable news, the word spread quickly.

They had to keep this work clandestine, so the current director of the station, Jorge Luis Hernandez, hid the transmitter in an old fashioned washing machine in a corner of his kitchen. They were not worried about any Venezuelan equivalent of the FCC tracking them down, but there are about eight commercial radio stations in Merida, and they were concerned that someone from one of those stations would get the police to hassle them.

They decided to call their station Radio Zamorana, after General Ezequiel Zamora, a revolutionary hero of the 1800’s whose slogans were 'Tierras y hombres libres, Eleccion Popular, and Horror a la Oligarquia.' (Free land and free men, Election by the people, and Horror to the Oligarchy.)

On April 11, 2002, the coup d’etat finally came, Chavez was kidnapped, and the constitution that had been ratified in 1999 by a vote of 72 % was declared null and void. The commercial media presented their usual one sided version, and the upper classes of Merida, wild with joy, were demonstrating in the Plaza Bolivar.

The next day, Radio Zamorana broadcast the follow up story: that huge crowds of people were pouring into the center of Caracas from the poor neighborhoods in the hills, even coming by bus and car from other cities. The oligarchs lost the support of the army when the soldiers learned that their generals and the media had lied. The self appointed 'government' of the oligarchy fled from the presidential palace. After 47 hours in captivity, Chavez was back in charge.

These developments were not reported by the big Caracas media, who put routine programming on TV and music on the radio, and pretended that the oligarchy was still running the government. Finally, with community radio stations broadcasting, and the government TV station back on the air, people learned that the president and the constitution were safe.

People in Merida took heart when they heard the truth, came out in great numbers, and drove the upper class supporters of the coup out of Merida’s Plaza Bolivar and city hall.

Similar things happened in cities and towns all across Venezuela. Afterwards, there was a lot of pressure on Conatel, the government agency, to issue regular licenses to community stations. Radio Zamorana came out of the washing machine and is now housed in the city’s cultural center, a large concrete building downtown. There is a full day’s worth of varied programming, with a lot of flexibility to allow people from the community to have their say. Often they contribute information, like the professor from the medical school who has presented programs about health, or a bright young boy of seven who has a Sunday morning program of Andean legends.

The station also provides a forum for controversy. One example of that was a group of hospital workers who came to the station with well documented evidence that certain members of management were stealing and reselling hospital supplies.

The station has maintained its role in mobilizing people by providing up to date news. For example, some months after the coup failed, the opposition tried to create chaos in the country by a general strike, and by staging what Venezuelans call guarimbas, where people set fire to tires and trash in the streets to disrupt things. When this would happen, Radio Zamorana would broadcast the news, and large numbers of people would go to the scene with banners, put out the fires, and take back the streets.

The University of Latin America is a private university, with a student population drawn largely from the upper classes. Therefore it is not surprising that right wing student organizations are very strong on the campus. In the fall of 2005 a student was killed in a mugging, and some students called a demonstration to demand more police protection. The radical right wing groups on the campus managed to turn the demonstration into a rampage, with fires, looting of stores, and battles in which several police were injured. Most people in town had no idea what was going on, so people turned to Radio Zamorana for an explanation and updates.

I had a demonstration of how quickly the station responds to the community on December 4, the day of the elections for the National Assembly. I happened to be walking through the Plaza Bolivar in the late afternoon. As I passed the cathedral I saw that a crowd was watching police and firemen going in and out. A bystander told me that a tear gas bomb had been set off in the sanctuary, presumably by the opposition, some of whom had threatened to disrupt the election by violence. I went to a phone to call Jorge, and when I said I had just come from the cathedral he said, 'You mean the bomb? We have someone there now, reporting.'

Even though the station is officially recognized, the struggle goes on. The previous director of the community center had been a friend of the station and established them in their current home. He was a popular community leader, and he was planning to run for an elective office, when he was shot to death by someone on a motorcycle who was never caught. There is a portrait of him in the mural of national and local heroes on the wall across from the cultural center.

The next director was different. He claimed to be a supporter of Chavez and the Bolivarian revolution, but when people from the neighborhood came on the station to complain about the way he was running things, he had someone go up on the roof and cut the wire that runs to the station’s antenna.

A group of friends of the station—campesinos, artisans, neighbors—got together to figure out what to do. They decided that they would do just what their station’s namesake Ezequiel Zamora would do in a similar situation. They notified the director of the center that if he ever did that again, they would beat him with the flat of their machetes. There has been no further trouble.

This is not the picture of people living under a dictatorship. Radio Zamorana is an independent entity that answers only to the people who it serves; nobody tells them what to do except their community.

Nor are they bribed with lavish gifts from the government. Conatel does not hassle them, but while it promises material aid, it does not always get around to providing it. Jorge is really worried about the transmitter, and he wishes he could afford a good omni-directional microphone. Their signal reaches out beyond the valley now that they have more power, but the studio is a barely adequate space in the basement.

The Bolivarian revolution includes countless independent organizations. Some have to do with communication, like Radio Zamorana, or like the motorcyclists who rode between the barrios like Paul Reveres to mobilize people to fight the coup. Others are cooperatives, or cultural organizations, or they are set up to deal with a wide range of community problems. Some are political; there are several different parties in the governing coalition in the National Assembly.

Participation goes beyond people who support Chavez. For example, the committees on urban lands handle the process by which people in certain neighborhoods acquire titles to the houses that they have built on public land around the cities. A community organization settles all the details of who owns what, and then contracts for basic services to the neighborhood. Everybody, regardless of their political opinions, has an interest in seeing that things are handled efficiently and honestly, so they get involved.

The government provides micro-loans, technical advice, and oversight to the coops, and funding to neighborhood organizations that have a budget and transparent accounting. But the main role of the government has been to enable people to get things done by getting the bureaucracy to work with them instead of against them. Since Chavez, they are sailing with the wind at their backs.

Taken all together, these coops, neighborhood associations, radio stations, political groups, and other organizations are making the Bolivarian revolution happen. Many of them started long before Chavez was president, and they haven’t needed him or anyone else to 'dictate' to them how to do it. Venezuelans are creating what they call 'participatory democracy,' where the lower classes who make up the majority of the population are actively taking control of their government, their society, and their own lives.

From

The State Department Human Trafficking Report: Raw Ideology Rather Than Bona Fide Research

Fri, 30 Jun 2006 01:34:00 +0000

6-29-06, 9:00 am

In evaluating the standards used to assess the performance of ideological foes in such areas as human rights observance, narcotics, terrorism, respect for religious freedom, and human trafficking, the State Department’s certifications (compiled annually as mandated by U.S. Congress) are little better than fabrications to meet the political requirements of Secretary of State Rice. Depending upon whether the Secretary of State wants to complain about an ideological adversary or praise a loyal ally, the architects of the reports are prepared to spotlight phantom offenses or ignore arrant abuses. Venezuela, which received a Tier 3 (serious offender) rank on Washington’s human trafficking list, could have faired no better at the hands of the Bush administration’s operations. The State Department’s human trafficking methodology is to rank countries on a three tier system. Tier 3 is comprised of countries that are the most egregious participants in trafficking and are thus subject to heavy sanctions. Tier 2 includes countries complicit in trafficking, but which, from the State Department’s perspective, are making significant efforts to counter the problem; finally, Tier 1 is comprised of countries not significantly engaged in the industry. The problem with this methodology is that a country’s ranking appears to be based far less on well-defined evidentiary standards than on Washington’s readiness to launch a rant against the likes of Chávez.

In its ongoing crusade to impugn the government of Chávez, the Bush administration, during both the Powell and Rice eras, has blacklisted Venezuela. These findings have become famously known in Washington as contrived, spurious, and worthless exercises. Out of all these negative ratings, the one awarded to Venezuela regarding human trafficking has generated perhaps the most moral outrage among independent scholars and may represent one of the more gross cases of faulty research developed by the State Department.

Human Trafficking: Definition and State Department Report

Human trafficking is one of the world’s most reprehensible crimes. Defined in 2000 by the UN as “the recruitment, transfer,harboring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion,” human trafficking frequently encompasses sexual exploitation or forced labor. Until recently, governments and NGO’s did not systematically track information on human trafficking, and only rough anecdotal estimates have been available from the past.

In 2000, the United States passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, a measure designed to prosecute traffickers, protect victims, and provide yearly benchmarks on a given country’s effort to minimize human trafficking. The annual assessments mandated by the act were based on information coming from a variety of sources, including U.S. embassies, foreign government officials, NGOs and international organizations. Based on a threshold of 100 or more victims, State Department officials endeavor to determine whether a given country serves as a source, transit point, or destination for trafficking victims. State Department officials, monitoring human trafficking under Director John Miller, offered up their own rather discretionary interpretations of the already highly fluid standards and loose evidentiary arguments to validate the given country. Needless to say, the evaluation of Venezuela – given that Hugo Chávez has been one of the Bush administration’s chosen anti-Christs – was preordained. Critical to the integrity of the process is that judgments now being made must not be politically driven. On this score, the State Department has woefully failed.

In many instances, impartial analysis in today’s State Department has fallen by the wayside. There is simply no way that the human trafficking document, in its reference to the Chávez administration, is delivering anything more than desultory gibberish aimed more at pleasing special interests in Coral Gables, where large numbers of wealthy Venezuelans have second homes, rather than to draft a truly professional evaluation of Caracas’ performance.

A Biased Gavel

In 2005, the United States once again ranked Cuba as Tier 3. The judgment represented Cuba’s third year on the list, and it hardly took any effort at all for the U.S. to deliver its verdict. The initial decision to include the island in the most negative category came about without any new evidence being presented that Havana had committed any offenses since the last reporting period. In fact, Cuba was not even mentioned in either the 2001 or 2002 report, and its reappearance had more to do with the zealotry of the Representative Ros-Lehtinen-led hard-right Miami delegation in the House, than respectable scholarship. The island’s abrupt reappearance on Washington’s rogue list casts severe doubt upon the document’s integrity. Like other annual certifications, the Human Trafficking Report is now subject to ideology, and its chronic lack of objectivity appears to confirm the politicized manipulation and the routine use of selective data.

The 2005 Human Trafficking Report on Cuba illustrates this debauched process. The document relies heavily on hearsay. For example, it notes that “there are no reliable estimates available on the extent of trafficking in the country; however, children in prostitution (are) widely apparent, even to casual observers.” Since U.S. “casual observers” are not permitted by Washington to travel to Cuba, one wonders whether there are members of the U.S.-Cuba interest section in Havana. These are pathetically weak grounds for Cuba’s Tier 3 placement, yet such qualms do not appear to trouble the thoroughly unprofessional State Department personnel working on the project, including, Director John Miller of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, and Secretary of State Rice.

The Venezuelan Finding

Venezuela was also ranked Tier 3 in the human trafficking category, yet this classification, if anything, represents an even worse perversion of scholarship. Following the release of its latest report, the State Department was forced to admit that its claim that Caracas had failed to prosecute a single human trafficker may have been wrong, since the Chávez government asserted that it had, in fact, prosecuted 21 individuals. Nevertheless, as a result of the ranking, predicated as it was on a very narrow or nonexistent foundation, the South American nation has suffered sanctions involving the blockage of $250 million in international loans in 2005. While Caracas is cited as having a poor preventative anti-trafficking process in place, the State Department report cannot point to a single stated complaint against Venezuelan authorities.

Furthermore, this heavy-handed U.S. designation flies in the face of quality analyses done by other organizations. For example, according to a study recently issued by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Trafficking in Persons: Global Patterns, there are, in fact, more reports on human trafficking incidents applying to a major U.S. ally, Colombia, than Washington’s major adversary, Venezuela; yet the former received only a Tier 1 classification from the State Department, while the book was thrown at Caracas. This discrepancy reveals how much sway political factors have in the methodology behind producing the agency’s annual report. Colombia is one of Washington’s closest regional allies; thus the country’s endemic corruption and the tempo of human trafficking are systematically overlooked or downplayed by U.S. officials. Numerous cases of Colombian women being trafficked into Japan’s sex industry have been cited by entities such as the UN, and the attribution process is cited as an area in need of major improvement.

Venezuela, one of Washington’s chief hemispheric antagonists, is subject to harsh sanctions as a result of these bogus allegations. The Bush administration’s use of a heinous crime like human trafficking as merely another weapon in its anti-Chávez crusade, is nothing more than an example of grossly self-indulgent behavior, worsened by the fact that it degrades the usefulness of the reporting process, as well as the administration’s repeated invoking of lofty rhetoric referring to the importance of building an international community to advance the public good. In fact, the question should be asked whether the entire certification process, in all of its manifestations, should be dropped, because it is obvious, that what is now being done in the name of high-minded reform, is simply shameless self-serving pandering to the White House’s reigning ideological biases.

A Distinguished Report?

In the years since the State Department’s annual report was created, it has received abundant criticism from NGOs and other governments. In 2003, Human Rights Watch observed that the report lacked adequate analysis backed by concrete data and noted that the U.S. document did not include facts about tried, prosecuted, and the conviction rate of traffickers in countries with which it has close ties. Another common complaint has been that some countries are placed in tiers that do not correspond with the relative weight of their alleged human trafficking records. For example, many officials believe Japan’s extensive human trafficking activity and weak legislation to combat it should have landed it in a Tier 3 ranking, but clearly that nation is too important an ally and trade partner to allow for such a designation. Such appellations have their foundation in the White House’s irresistible ideological propellant that leads to the hand out of negative classifications for countries such as Cuba and Venezuela — rankings which are based more on politicized prejudice then on facts.

Beyond Ideology

Unfounded allegations by the State Department are perversions which have further sullied its fast vanishing integrity under its present leadership. While Secretary of State Rice has perfected a techno-babble style of public utterance that seems to say far more than actually is the case, the fact is that if the U.S. intends to be a key player in the fight against human trafficking, its research and reports must be impeccable. Using doctored official findings as handy political weapons, as in the case of Venezuela, will only discourage international cooperation on the issue and result in global derision due to the use of tainted documents, which deserve to be considered almost worthless. If Washington is serious about confronting the problem of trafficking, and not just using it as a vehicle for anti-Chávez propaganda, it must do better than simply continue to push a self-serving political agenda on such an important issue.

From Council on Hemispheric Affairs

War is War, and Captured Soldiers are Captured Soldiers

Thu, 29 Jun 2006 04:13:00 +0000

6-28-06,11:32 am

by Dave Lindoff

I don't pretend to be an expert on the Israel/Palestine conflict, but I do know biased reporting when I see it, and the reporting here in the U.S. on that ongoing bloodletting in Palestine is certainly biased in the extreme.

Just look at the latest story, about the capture of an Israeli soldier. Palestinian fighters, allegedly linked to Hamas, in a daring raid, attacked a group of Israeli soldiers near the border of Gaza, killing two and capturing one.

This incident came after a period when the Israeli military has been shelling and rocketing Gaza, quite likely killing a whole family of beachgoers (though the Israeli military claims rather improbably that this was the result of a Hamas mine, not of a shell), and a number of other civilians.

Almost universally in the U.S. media, including on National Public Radio, the captured Israeli soldier is being referred to as a hostage and his capture is referred to as a 'kidnapping.'

Note that Israeli jails are brimming with captured Palestinian fighters, but this is not called kidnapping, nor are they called 'hostages,' though they often end up getting their freedom in in exchange for the return of captured Israeli soldiers who are referred to as 'hostages,' not prisoners.

Take this story in the June 27 issue the New York Times, which states:

'The Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, ordered his security services on Monday to find a kidnapped Israeli soldier in the Gaza Strip...

'...The groups holding him said that before any information would be disclosed, israel must release all Palestinian women in its jails and all Palestinian prisoners under the age of 18.'

The same linguistic bias occurs with regularity in the coverage of the Iraq War and occupation, with resistance fighters in Iraq routinely referred to in the U.S. media as 'terrorists.' On the rare occasions when those 'terrorists' have managed to capture a U.S. soldier, those incidents are referred to as 'kidnappings,' too.

Meanwhile, captured Iraqi fighters are often referred to as criminals when caught, not as prisoners of war.

It is no accident that this perversion of language is occurring. The Pentagon and the Israeli government both use this biased language in their briefings to reporters, and the U.S. media lap it up and recite it uncritically.

The problem with this is that the average American then has a warped perspective on two important conflicts that are profoundly affecting the political and economic situation here at home in the United States. These readers and viewers, by uncritically accepting the abased terminology that is presented to them, end up assuming that the U.S. and Israel are fighting crime and terror in Palestine and Iraq, when in fact both nations are fighting wars against people who, far from being criminals, are for the most part committed fighters who believe they are fighting in defense of their own nations. That is why they fight so hard and so courageously against such overwhelming odds.

How are Americans going to understand the depth and passion of the resistance to U.S. aggression in Iraq, if they are led by the media's misuse of language to believe that our troops are simply fighting bandits and criminals? How are we to understand the interminable horrors of the Israel/Palestine conflict if we are told that it is simply a battle between the good guys (the Israeli Defense Force), and the bad guys (a bunch of Palestinian hoodlums)?

The media should at least be forced to be even-handed. If Palestinians are 'kidnapping' Israeli soldiers when they capture them, then the Israelis are 'kidnapping' Palestinians when they do the same. Otherwise, let's concede that both are capturing their opponents and holding them prisoner.

And while we're at it, let's start calling Iraqi fighters what they are: resistance fighters, not terrorists.

Award-winning investigative reporter Dave Lindorff has been working as a journalist for 33 years. Author, with Barbara Olshansky, of the forthcoming book The Case for Impeachment: Legal Arguments for Removing President George W. Bush from Office (St. Martin's Press, April 2006), he is also the author of three earlier books--This Can't Be Happening! Resisting the Disintegration of American Democracy (Common Courage Press, 2004), Marketplace Medicine: The Rise of the For Profit Hospital Chains (Bantam, 1992), an investigative report on the for-profit hospital industry, and Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal (Common Courage Press, 2003), the only independent examination of this important capital case.

Pakistan: New health units established in quake zone

Thu, 29 Jun 2006 03:34:00 +0000

6-28-06,10:57am

MUZAFFARABAD, 20 Jun 2006 (IRIN) - The World Health Organization (WHO) handed out 23 newly constructed Basic Health Units (BHUs) on Saturday to health authorities in earthquake-affected Pakistani-administered Kashmir.

“All these BHUs - equipped with medicine, supplies and furniture are currently operational, but we are giving [them] officially to the government to take care of the maintenance and staffing process,” Dr Khalif Bile, WHO representative in Pakistan, told reporters in Muzaffarabad, capital of the Pakistani-administered Kashmir.

“The 23 BHUs will provide basic health services for some 400,000 people in Muzaffarabad, Nelum, Bagh and Poonch districts,” Bile explained.

Over 75,000 people were killed and thousands more injured after the powerful quake of 7.6 magnitude ripped through Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Pakistani-administered Kashmir on 8 October last year. In addition, over 3.5 million people were rendered homeless across the region by the disaster.

“We have to provide 50 prefabricated BHUs in Azad Jammu and Kashmir [Pakistani-administered Kashmir]). The [first] 23 BHUs are to be completed in the first phase and the remaining would be built in the next phase,” Jafer Ilyas, public health officer at the WHO, told IRIN in Muzaffarabad.

The earthquake has caused widespread damage to infrastructure: in Muzaffarabad alone 79 percent of health service buildings were badly damaged, with only 7 percent untouched by the quake, according to WHO statistics.

”There are no proper medicines or clinics in our village…I arrived here after a three-hour walk with my ill son,” said Zarina Bebi, 40, who was waiting in a long queue outside a WHO-funded BHU in Dullai village in Muzaffarabad.

The BHUs will carry out various health services in the quake-hit areas, including maternal health, communicable disease control, vaccinations, treatment of common diseases, transfer of serious patients to the hospitals and reporting of any outbreaks in the region.

“They have to report within 24 hours on any suspicious cases,' Bile remarked, adding that the rapid response team would investigate the area and would carry out strict measures for the prevention of the disease if an outbreak were discovered.

The WHO is also in the process of providing 12 larger prefabricated Rural Health Centres (RHC) in Pakistani-administered Kashmir. Out of these, seven will be established in Muzaffarabad district in the near future, according to Ilyas.

Meanwhile, the WHO, in collaboration with other aid organisations such as the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), the International Rescue Committee (IRC), the International Committee of the Red Crescent (ICRC), the UK-based medical relief organisation, Merlin, and government health authorities, is planning to establish nine cholera camps in Muzaffarabad and Neelum districts in case of an outbreak of the disease.

According to the WHO, there were at least 29 deaths from cholera among 20,000 reported cases in quake-struck Pakistani-administered Kashmir last year.

“The significance of this cholera prevention preparedness plan is to be able to manage the cases reduce mortality,” Ilyas told IRIN.

Despite widespread efforts to assist those affected and provide them with health services, many are still suffering from lack of access to proper medicine and healthcare, particularly in remote parts of Muzaffarabad.

Afghanistan: Interview with UN Humanitarian Coordinator Ameerah Haq

Thu, 29 Jun 2006 03:23:00 +0000

6-28-06,10:43 am

KABUL, 27 Jun 2006 (IRIN) - Ameerah Haq is one of the two Deputy Special Representatives for Afghanistan appointed by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan. She is responsible for Relief, Recovery and Reconstruction (RRR), as well being Humanitarian Coordinator in Afghanistan.

Haq highlighted concerns over the impact of ongoing violence in the country, including civilian deaths, displacement and a lack of basic needs such as food and shelter. But Haq was hopeful that the situation would improve in July when NATO-led troops were deployed, allowing the UN to push forward with humanitarian relief. Her comments come a day ahead of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s visit to Kabul, where she is expected to discuss the rising tide of violence with President Hamid Karzai.

QUESTION: Is the UN concerned that civilians are not being protected in this new upswing in conflict, particularly in the south and east?

ANSWER: Certainly the UN is always concerned about the protection of civilians, it is our humanitarian mandate to protect civilians. Unfortunately, we don’t really have proper and accurate information about the number of civilian casualties in the recent upsurge in the south.

I think it will be very useful for us to get the figure from the government or other sources on what the civilian casualties are but certainly it’s the UN’s humanitarian mandate more than anything else that we must advocate on behalf of civilians.

We will always try to provide humanitarian assistance to civilians in conflict but I think our frustration is, as I said before, that we really don’t know the number of civilian casualties. The BBC estimate is about 900 - that is the number I have seen but I don’t know the real number.

Q: Do you have information on the number of civilians displaced currently in the south by the violence?

A: We don’t have a number for those who are mostly at risk in the south, but we are monitoring through the UN agencies who have operations in those areas - for example on refugees and internal displacements we know that there have been some internal displacements as a result of Operation Mountain Thrust [coalition anti-Taliban operation] three weeks ago.

It’s probably in the hundreds but the difficulty with these kinds of displacements is that we know people have come to [the southern city of] Kandahar but they have moved in with their friends and relatives so you don’t really see a large block of displaced people where you can identify them in camps. Some of them were from Panjwai district of Kandahar [province]; there is another group in Helmand that has moved and another group in Uruzgan, so there have been some movements in various provinces in the south.

Q: What are the immediate humanitarian needs of those affected by the conflict?

A: Obviously there has been some displacement. Whenever there is displacement there is always the need for basic food supplies, children are not able to go to school, normal economic activities are disrupted. When they go back to their places of origin they will again need some support to start up their lives. With the UN there are always the humanitarian imperatives and we must provide people with basics - food, shelter and then after that it is getting back to their livelihoods.

We had a meeting with UNHCR [the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees] and the IOM [International Organization for Migration] yesterday [Monday] but they were not able to tell us the figures because those who have been displaced are now with their families and friends. So we don’t have a group that has been dislocated under normal humanitarian circumstances, we don’t have such a situation in the south.

Certainly, there is a military operation in the south and we all know that there are a great deal of anti-government activities in the south, so certainly people are not living normal lives in many of those districts.

Q: Many civilians have been accidentally killed in coalition operations in recent months. Has the UN been able to influence the US-led coalition's rules of engagement to try and protect local people during these attacks?

A: I think the UN always has tried. Our aim is always to try to reduce casualties in any effort. But in terms of specific rules of engagement here in Afghanistan we have not had any specific discussion with the coalition on this issue.

Q: Does the UN anticipate the security situation will improve when the NATO-led force deploys in the south by July?

A: The NATO-led takeover will be in July and I think that is part of the reason why the coalition is conducting this operation [Operation Mountain Thrust], so the situation will be less volatile than it is now. We are certainly preparing ourselves to try and go into the south with more reconstruction and development assistance as soon as we can.

There are a lot of discussions about the push to make this one last effort. I think we will have to wait and see. We are certainly hopeful and we are always hopeful that the situation will get better and that’s why we are looking at already preparing plans in terms of how to move in, for example we want to do a polio eradication campaign.

[Indeed], yesterday I heard that whilst we thought that we had reduced the number of cases of polio in fact we had reduced the number of polio cases last year to nine and this year it’s increased to 14 because we were not able to undertake the campaign in May and June. So we are certainly very hopeful that we would be able to undertake the campaign in July and August and try to stem this.

Q: What are the main reasons behind the deteriorating humanitarian situation in the country, particularly in the south?

A: I would say that the humanitarian situation in the south is a combination of factors. One is that I think traditionally if one looks at the pattern of development and reconstruction assistance, we have not been able to access many of the areas in the south.

Then of course as you know a lot of anti-government activities have been taking place in the south so one feeds into the other and I think the reach of humanitarian assistance and governance has not been at the same level.

Q: Is the level of aid activity in the south less than it was last year?

A: It is less right now than it was last year, but there is work going on and it does not mean that the work has stopped but I can say it is much less right now than it was this time last year.

Q: What concerns do you have about the humanitarian situation across the country?

A: We are very concerned right now, particularly in northern provinces where there has not been enough rain for agriculture this year, so there is a shortage in the production of wheat. [Also] through the World Food Programme (WFP) we distribute food to vulnerable people. We try to pre-position the food by August but this year, for example, WFP has only received 20 percent of the food from donors so we are very worried that we will not be able to pre-position [food] by August to some of the areas where it’s needed before the snow starts.

Republicans and the Voting Rights Act of 1965

Thu, 29 Jun 2006 03:05:00 +0000

6-28-06, 10:23 am

Many Americans were shocked to discover a week ago that House Republicans had apparently rebelled against their own leaders by voting to delay the renewal of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, an obvious ploy to give the misleading impression that the GOP generally supports the law's renewal. The act established federal regulatory procedures that finally enabled the government to end the de facto disenfranchisement of millions of African Americans, often sustained by state-sanctioned KKK terror that had been in effect since the end of Reconstruction.

What is going on here? First, most people don't know that the Voting Rights Act has to be periodically renewed, which itself is fairly outrageous, since it brings with it the possibility that the rights that so many people paid so much to gain could be simply cancelled by a right-wing Congress using one pretext or another to achieve that end.

Actually, segregationists have dreamed of eliminating the act from the first moment it was past, the way corporate leaders dreamed of eliminating the National Labor Relations Act when it was first passed in 1935.

The late Strom Thurmond supported Richard Nixon over Ronald Reagan in 1968 and lined up the segregationists who had followed him into the GOP to support Nixon, because he thought he had a pledge from Nixon to oppose renewing the act if he became president. Fortunately, Nixon double-crossed Thurmond, which was one trick that Tricky Dick pulled that was for, not against the people.

Although Ronald Reagan began his presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi (the town where three civil rights workers were brutally murdered in 1964) with a crudely-coded racist appeal to 'states rights,' and did everything in his power to undermine enforcement of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, particularly the later affirmative action directives which stemmed from it, neither his nor subsequent administrations have openly sought to repeal the Voting Rights Act.

Actually, the Southern Republicans who challenged the renewal last week have focused on a provision aimed mostly at Southern states that requires these states to gain 'pre-clearance' from the Justice Department for any amendments to their voting laws. 'The pre-clearance portions of the Voting Rights Act should apply to all states or no states,' says Representative Lynn Westmoreland (R Ga.), sponsor of an amendment that would 'update' the list of states based on voter turnout every four years.

Actually Westmoreland has a point, but not the one he is pushing. All states should be compelled to comply with Justice Department oversight regularly on voting rights, since the forces of disenfranchisement today use computer checks rather than burning crosses and death threats to purge the voter rolls of people (the present term is 'scrub the voter lists'). These policies in Florida in 2000 and a number of states in 2004 were an important part of Bush's Supreme Court appointment to the Presidency in 2000 and his very questionable narrow victory in 2004.

In Florida, for example, thousands of African American voters (but not Cuban American voters likely to vote Republican) were the targets of a 'felon scrub' of the voting rolls, even though there were questions about the 'felonies' that many had supposedly committed. Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris was able to hustle this racist tactic past the Clinton Justice Department to the detriment of Al Gore.

In 2004, the GOP greatly expanded their voter challenges nationwide from 2000. Of the estimated three million 'voter challenges,' 88% were laid against minority voters, African American voters particularly. To some analysts, these and other actions, particularly in Ohio, are evidence that the 2004 election was as much stolen as the 2000 election, albeit in a way that was much more effective in regard to public opinion. Studies of the 20004 election even show that GOP leaders referred to their computerized lists as 'caging lists,' an incredible expression of racist language, although they have formally and vehemently denied that such lists existed.

The Republicans have to deny that they are targeting people in large numbers because of their race or color, because that is a crime under the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Today the Act is an important guardian of our diminishing democracy. It must be both maintained and strengthened by giving Civil Rights attorneys the right to challenge the 'consulting firms' that the GOP has hired in recent years to carry out the targeted disfranchisement of voters both South and North who are most likely to vote against the Republican Right in federal elections.

In the case of the NLRB, reactionary forces eventually enacted the Taft-Hartley Law (1947), amending the National Labor Relations Act to give states the right to pass anti-union shop 'right to work' laws. Reactionaries probably hope to amend the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to give states like Florida the 'right' to enact anti-civil rights election laws that will accomplish the disenfranchisement of large numbers of voters.

That the Republicans have even raised the issue of blocking and/or amending the act's renewal is an example of the extreme hypocrisy of an administration and a party that proclaims that it is fighting to bring 'democracy' to Iraq and other countries, while it is engaging in updated versions of racist disenfranchisement to trample on the democratic rights of the American people.

--Contact Norman Markowitz at

Kyrgyzstan: Youth mark world day against drugs

Thu, 29 Jun 2006 02:56:00 +0000

6-28-06,10:18 am

BISHKEK, 27 Jun 2006 (IRIN/PLUSNEWS) - Hundreds of young people gathered in the northern Kyrgyz town of Kant to mark the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking on Monday.

'We vote for health' and 'Kyrgyzstan: future without drugs' were their main slogans.

'Narcotics are a big evil, which spares neither young nor old people. The more people know about it, particularly young people, the more lives will be saved,' Alena, a schoolgirl activist, said at the event organised by the Kyrgyz Drug Control Agency, the European Union (EU) Border Management and Drug Action Programmes in Central Asia (DCA) and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), along with other organisations.

According to the Republican Narcology Centre in the capital Bishkek, there were 7,290 officially registered drug addicts in the country as of 1 January 2006, of whom 5.4 percent were children. But, officials at the centre conceded that the real number of drug abusers could be considerably higher - several times the official figure.

The event coincided with the launch of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)’s World Drug Report 2006. Although global opium production, with 90 percent of it coming from Afghanistan, had reduced by 5 percent in 2005 compared to the previous year, the head of UNODC, Antonio Maria Costa, warned that Afghan opium production could increase this year.

Drug abuse of mainly Afghan heroin goes hand-in-hand with the growing problem of HIV/AIDS in the country and the region. The main mode of transmission is injecting drug use, accounting for almost 90 percent of those registered with HIV in the former Soviet republic, centre officials said.

DCA experts said that the capital, northern Chui province and the southern city of Osh were the areas where drug abuse was mainly concentrated because they were transit hubs for drug traffickers shipping Afghan heroin from Tajikistan to Russia and western Europe. 'The proliferation of transit narcotics has turned those places into major drug abuse areas,' they explained.

In Osh, where a dose of heroin costs less than a bottle of beer, some school teachers admitted that drug abuse among their students was their biggest concern.

'One of my former students died of an overdose recently. Another high school student was found dead in his bed. Although relatives said that he fell asleep and did not wake up, everybody knows that he died of drugs. It is really scary,' Galina Valentinovna, an English teacher in Osh, said earlier.

Survey Says: Republicans Out of Touch with Americans, Swing Voters

Thu, 29 Jun 2006 01:55:00 +0000

6-28-06, 9:20 am

On the heels of a disingenuous Republican effort to block a Democratic plan calling for withdrawal from Iraq, a USA Today poll released yesterday showed that a majority of Americans support the Democratic proposal or one like it.

According to the survey 57 percent of Americans want Congress to provide a plan for ending the occupation of Iraq and withdrawing US troops. Most of them say do it within 12 months.

Only about 3 in 10 believe George W. Bush's vague talk about 'standing down when the Iraqis stand up' constitutes a clear plan for handling the war.

The results of a poll of 'swing voters' released this week commissioned by the public advocacy group USAction and conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research indicates much broader discontent with the Republican-controlled Congress and the Bush administration's handling of issues of deep concern to most Americans.

According to this survey of likely voters, 73 percent of swing voters view things as having 'gotten pretty seriously off on the wrong track.' Only one-third described the state of the economy as 'excellent' or 'good.'

More than 80 percent expressed serious concern with the federal budget deficit, and 74 percent accused the Republican-controlled federal government of putting the needs of the wealthy and of corporations ahead of average working families and the underprivileged.

Only 29 percent of the survey's respondents approved of George W. Bush's handling of his job as president. Sixty-six percent expressed disapproval.

When it came to the issue of increasing government investments in education, health care, and technologies that would aid our energy independence, swing voters overwhelmingly said they would support congressional candidates who promised to do so. According to the poll, more than three-quarters of swing voters wanted more investment in public education programs such as school improvements, Head Start, and college aid.

More than 6 out of 10 swing voters also said they would support candidates who fight the culture of corruption in Washington. More than 70 percent said they would support candidates who would reverse huge Republican tax cuts for the rich and the trend of paying for those tax giveaways by gutting health care programs and spending on public education.

More than 60 percent of swing voters view current spending on the war in Iraq as a wrong priority and would rather see that money spent on social programs like public education, health care, and advances in technology. Large majorities also said they would support candidates who would roll back tax cuts for large corporations and the very rich in order to help pay for these investments.

About 7 in 10 swing voters view the Republican-controlled federal government as too intrusive in their personal lives.

Only four percent of the respondents in the USAction poll identified strongly with either major political party, about 13 percent identified 'weakly' with either of the two major parties, and 80 percent described themselves as independent voters. More than 9 in 10 voted in the 2002 mid-term congressional elections, and 99 percent voted in the 2004 presidential election.

The results of these polls are clear. Republicans are simply out of step with what the people want. Most Americans generally reject the Republican Party's nonsense about troop withdrawal as 'cut and run.' They want Congress to set a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq.

The poll of swing voters turns the tables on pundits who view independent voters as leaning toward the right. In real life, independent voters, like most Americans. are tired of Republican policies.

Clearly, they view the Bush administration's war in Iraq as wrong and would rather see the money currently being spent on the war invested in social programs and used to reduce the deficit. Swing voters seem to believe the Republicans aren't doing anything about the culture of corruption that has become identified with their party as attested to by the Abramoff scandal, the indictment of Tom DeLay, and the host of Republicans indicted and convicted on charges ranging from bribery and influence peddling to fraud, embezzling, and perjury.

Swing voters are saying that under Republican Party control, the government has become a government of the rich, for the rich, by the rich. They have given huge subsidies to wealthy corporations and tax cuts to the richest individuals, while gutting public programs such as Medicare, public education, and college aid.

In addition to these policies, Republicans have used their control of the federal government to increase its power and intrusiveness on the private lives of Americans with domestic spying programs and Constitutional amendments on marriage. While literally giving away billions of taxpayer money to oil companies, Republicans have blocked, hampered, and harassed sound alternative energy policies that would increase energy independence and help turn the tide against climate change.

The results of the USAction survey suggest that swing voters more closely identify with policies that Democratic candidates for Congress are more likely to support. If they want to win on November 7th, Democratic candidates should be emboldened, the survey's results suggest, to vow to end the occupation of Iraq, dismantle the Republican culture of corruption, and invest in our public schools, affordable health care, and a sound alternative energy policy.

These results also suggest that voters are tired of Republican-lite candidates who feel they have to lean to the right in order to win swing votes. Swing voters want candidates who will take a stand for their interests.

--Joel Wendland can be reached at

Re-Interpreting Iraq: Propaganda Campaign Underway

Thu, 29 Jun 2006 01:34:00 +0000

6-28-06, 9:00 am

To their credit, top US Pentagon officials cautioned journalists and the public, since the Iraq war’s early days, that the dissemination of misinformation would be a vital weapon in their war strategy. Needless to say, they have certainly held true to their word.

But what the mainstream media – seemingly little alarmed by the administration’s clear intent to supply journalists with false information – is neglecting to convey is the fact that misinformation is still the name of the game for the US government, its well-paid experts and media allies. The fact is that the administration’s propaganda machine was hardly turned off following the historic, albeit staged toppling of Saddam’s statue near the Palestine Hotel in March 2003. A renowned journalist and a trusted colleague of mine was, among others, a witness to the intricate pre-toppling show. 'It was all an act,' he declared as we both dined in a Seattle restaurant days upon his return from Iraq, nearly three years ago. His reports however, failed to make mention of that seemingly valuable note. 'The End of a Tyrant', was more or less the flashing headline everywhere.

To achieve its objectives, the advancing US military started a makeshift Arabic radio station near Baghdad’s airport, made possible with the cooperation of Arab broadcasters seeking a quick buck. Meanwhile, millions of fliers descended upon weary Iraqis throughout the country, urging them to give up the fight if they wanted a better future for their children: that of freedom, democracy and an end to their suffering.

Though access to electricity and clean water are still major challenges facing ordinary Iraqis to this day, over three years later, US media specialists in hushed, yet official cooperation with a Lebanese television station took on the task of converting Iraq’s television station from Baath Party propaganda to American propaganda in a matter of weeks. Saddam himself would be shocked to realize that his well-knitted, decades-old media apparatus still had awesome room for improvement.

A military strategist would defend state-sponsored half-truths and misinformation in times of war as a justifiable war tactic; not only did it bring a quick end to the war – or so it seems – but it has also minimized American causalities.

But things have hardly changed since those early days, though the situation on the ground has been fundamentally altered, in favor of no one. The Pentagon’s latest figures have put America’s dead at 2500, while the number of wounded has passed the 18,000 mark. The post Vietnam war experience can tell us a great deal of the physiological scars that wars inflict, and nothing can heal. Moreover, the negative, even debilitating harms caused by the US army’s use of Depleted Uranium in its war and daily combat against Iraqi fighters requires another article, if not its own volume. Their long-lasting impairments however, are no longer mere speculation.

Considering the devastating outcome of Bush’s military adventurism in Iraq, one would imagine that sincerity and transparency are required now more than ever before; after all, there seems to be no particular enemy to baffle: Saddam Hussein is in prison, the so-called insurgency has no central command, thus no central strategy – a fact that renders state propaganda ineffective, if at all necessary. Moreover, the campaign of lies and deceit cannot possibly be targeting the Iraqi people for they were never even taken into consideration since the systematic campaign of sanctions started in 1991, which killed – according to the most modest estimates, nearly one million persons, mostly children. The daily and wholesale murder, organized torture and Haditha-like executions since then are further illustrations.

It’s clear that the US state propaganda – which has been achieved with the willing cooperation of the mainstream ‘liberal’ media – has one prime target: the American public, for without their full acknowledgment and support, military adventurism can be a huge political burden; coupled with a dwindling economy and mounting debt, it could sway the political pendulum to unfavorable directions.

Indeed, the recent announcement of the killing of al-Qaeda’s supposed strong-man in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has unleashed a major PR campaign by the Republican president to reclaim some of his lost credibility among Americans. To save a possible major setback to the Republican Party in the November elections – and considering that his faltering ratings stand at an all time low- President Bush’s camp is turning the inconsequential death of al-Zarqawi into a major turning point in Iraq. Though the President insists that al-Zarqawi’s death doesn’t mean an end to violence in Iraq – a clever attempt to avoid another ‘mission accomplished’ fallout – the PR campaign led by his administration immediately after the Jordanian militant’s death, suggests a desperate, yet determined attempt at political recovery. Otherwise, how else can one explain the timing of the following events: Bush’s ‘surprise’ visit to Iraq, the announcement of a major military ‘sweep’ meant to parade and present US-trained Iraqi military and police as a strong ‘partner’ in quelling the insurgency, the Iraqi government’s announcement that ‘this is the beginning of the end’ for al-Qaeda in Iraq, the call for ‘national reconciliation’ and release of a few hundred Iraqi prisoners, President Bush’s two-day retreat in Camp David to consult with his advisors – sold by CNN as the president’s way of sharing the war responsibility with the people - and so on and so forth.

The reality on the ground points to the fact that if al-Zarqawi’s death was of any value, it freed the Iraqi resistance from its burdensome affiliation with a foreign leadership. Aside from that, nothing has changed: bombs continue to blast throughout the country; tortured and mutilated bodies continue to mysteriously appear in ditches and alleyways, daily gun battles persist, new militant groups with confusing names spring unabashed. Post invasion Iraq has not changed and it is unlikely that it will change any time soon, even if the new Iraqi Prime Minister has finalized his cabinet and has made an impressive speech or two.

What began as a focused campaign of misinformation aimed at defeating Saddam’s forces, has turned into a much more intense campaign of deceit and trickery aimed at salvaging Bush’s political reputation and that of his Republican Party. Thus, what has really changed in Iraq is that the administration and the media have suddenly decided to re-interpret the ongoing conflict for political ends. It has little to do with Baghdad and its Green Zone and much to do with Capitol Hill and its discontented politicians. Simply put: it’s politics as usual.

--American-Arab journalist Ramzy Baroud is the author of The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle (Pluto Press, London), now available at Amazon.com.

Book Review: Cold War Triumphalism

Thu, 29 Jun 2006 01:25:00 +0000

6-28-06, 8:51 am

Book Review: Cold War Triumphalism Edited by Ellen Schrecker The New Press, 2006

In the bulk of the Western media, the free market and its associated 'values' are portrayed as carrying all before them. The cold war was won by the forces of righteousness and that's the end of the matter. Or is it?

This book carries 10 well-researched essays designed to challenge the conventional right-wing interpretation of the post-WWII period.

Ellen Schrecker, professor of history at Yeshiva University, is best known for her books on McCarthyism. Here, she assembles experts on a range of disparate subjects and herself contributes to one of these, on the past activities of US communists.

Topics dealt with include moral judgements about the cold war, the impact of US hegemony on the US economy, the scale of 'subversive' activity within the United States, the character of the Berlin blockade, the relationship between Washington and the United Nations and the shaping of events after September 11 2001. It is heartening to be offered fresh evidence that there is no consensus of academic opinion in the United States, that there is a thriving body of dissent that is immune to the lies and propaganda of the Bush administration and its profiteering cronies. Thus, Esserman and Schrecker note that right-wing websites regard dissenting academic voices as a 'fifth column' and that Bush branded those who question his explanations for the invasion of Iraq as 'revisionist historians.'

In the same vein, Carolyn Eisenberg notes the persistent academic analysis, uncongenial to capitalist propaganda, that is tactically frozen out of mainstream discourse.

'Within the field of diplomatic history, critical historians have received substantial recognition for the quality of their work. However, the constraints of commercial publishing, book reviewing and textbook writing and the unwillingness of the mass media to incorporate dissenting perspectives has limited their access to audiences outside the colleges and universities.'

In short, there is substantial academic criticism in the US of the capitalist agenda, but, for various reasons, it receives little exposure in the popular media.

Here, for example, we are reminded that the cold war damaged the US economy, that, during the Berlin 'blockade,' substantial goods were allowed transit through Soviet-controlled territory and that the Korean and Vietnamese wars were manifest reverses for US imperialism.

Some of the details included here will be well-known to Star readers. For example, the issue of 'blowback,' whereby Washington's military aggressions inevitably generate an increased 'terrorist' response against the US. So much seems obvious, despite all the efforts of the mainstream media to disguise the fact.

We also recall the fact noted here that, because of the pressures of the market, US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan were forced to spend their own money on such much-needed personal items of war as 'night-vision goggles, desert camouflage boots, baby wipes, better radios and communications equipment and bigger rucksacks.' It is typical of capitalism that, while companies like Halliburton and Bechtel are grabbing billions of dollars through US military aggression, the sacrificial cannon fodder on the front line is starved of funds.

In a concluding essay, Corey Robin suggests that the political order projected by Bush and his advisers is a 'jerry-built structure' that can only survive as long as the US can put down any challenge to its power. And there is a fragility about this global posture.

This book is eminently worthwhile in helping us to see the tensions and dislocations within the US empire.

From Morning Star

Australia: Closing down democracy

Thu, 29 Jun 2006 01:16:00 +0000

6-28-06, 8:42 am

More steps were taken last week in the Howard Government’s erosion of the democratic processes of Parliament and attempts to force acceptance of its conservative and extreme right-wing policies.

The Federal Government announced that it will reduce the number of Senate Committees from 16 to 10 and that each of the Committees will be chaired by a representative of the Liberal Party.

The practice of these committees being chaired by a member of the ALP or alternating the chairs between Liberal (and possibly a National Party) and Labor Party members is to be abandoned. The many fewer committees will have their terms of reference determined by the Liberal Party while the Committee reports will also be written by the Liberal Party representatives. The Liberal Party will also determine what issues are to be considered by a Senate Committee which means that important or contentious issues will not be investigated unless the Liberal Party can gain some benefit out of it.

In the past, Senate Committees have played an important part in making the government accountable as a house of review. Not any more!

The Senate was initially established to look after the interests of the States and that is the reason why the number of Senators elected from each state is the same, irrespective of the population of the State. With the Liberal and National Parties now exercising a majority in the Senate it is being turned into a tool in the hands of the government to expedite its reactionary agenda, or at least, that is what the Prime Minister hopes.

The changes to the electoral laws — which are intended to cover up the huge donations by companies to both the Liberal and Labor Parties — are another aspect of the emasculation of democratic rights. Those in prison will no longer have the right to vote. Electoral rolls will close immediately following the declaration of a poll giving no time to register to vote. These measures are nothing more than a further attack on democratic processes. As time goes on there will be further restrictions.

Make no mistake about it, even the limited democratic rights established in capitalist states are no longer acceptable to the present rulers who are fearful of the far-reaching changes and revolutionary developments now taking place in a number of countries.

Other aspects of Howard’s anti-democratic agenda include the IR legislation which has already been well described in a number of Guardian articles. Suffice to say again that this legislation is not simply an attack on the economic interests of the working people of Australia. It also takes away the long held rights of trade unions to operate in the interests of their members. The virtual outlawing of the right to strike, the severe restrictions on the right of trade union officials to enter workplaces, the abolition of the right to remain silent before a court or face long jail terms and the huge penalties which will be imposed on workers and trade union officials, are all attacks on democratic rights.

The so-called 'anti-terror' laws, claimed to be directed against terrorism, will sooner or later be used to attack other organisations as well. The listing of suspect organisations and the banning of assistance to a listed organisation can very easily be extended to any organisation that the Attorney-General and the Prime Minister decide to add to their list. The recent conviction of an alleged 'terror' suspect, not for what he has done but for what it is claimed he might do, is a good example of what is to come. It is no longer in the realm of the future, it is already happening.

On the background of all these developments it will have come as an unpleasant surprise to Howard to find that a number of Liberal and National Party Senators have begun to dig their heels in on some issues, in the first place the government’s refugee legislation. Such opposition to Howard’s rush to dictatorship is likely to spread as time goes on.

The working class movement must assume the leadership of the resistance to Howard’s dictatorship. The time is about five minutes to midnight!

From The Guardian

'Cut and Run': A Winning Slogan and Strategy if the Democrats are Serious About Wanting to Win

Wed, 28 Jun 2006 03:42:00 +0000

6-27-06, 11:04am

The Democrats in Congress are having trouble coming up with a position on the War in Iraq because they are so afraid of Republican charges that they are the 'cut and run' party.

It's a pathetic spectacle, and they should give it up. The way I see it 'cut and run' is the slogan the Democrats should adopt as their own for the 2006 election year.

Democrats: the party of cut and run.

But I'm not talking about the war.

The 'cut' should be for cutting the defense budget.

It makes no sense for the U.S. to be spending more money than the rest of the world combined on the military. All that taxpayer dough certainly doesn't do anything to combat terrorism. As the insurgents in Iraq are demonstrating daily, all that heavy equipment and those billion-dollar supersonic aircraft, and those guys bundled up like it's the North Pole running around with heavy artillery in their hands aren't doing much about catching guys armed with creaky AK-47s and home-made explosive devices. And they sure aren't catching Osama bin Laden.

Meanwhile, all that money is just providing excuses for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their gang of yes-men generals to get the country and its out-of-work young men and women into bloody, pointless messes like Iraq.

The answer is to take the toys away. Just think what could be done with the $250 billion a year that would be freed up instantly if the $500-billion military budget were cut in half! And it would be easy to do. Close all the bases that are just sitting around the U.S. to give members of Congress places to give 4th of July Day speeches, cancel spending on fancy new weapons programs to fight imaginary enemies, decommission half the soldiers, marines, sailors and pilots on the payroll—and of course bring the troops home from Iraq, not next year but now. (Surely a nation that was still spending half as much as the rest of the world combined wouldn't be at the mercy of anybody, though it might be a little harder to be an out-of-control imperialist bully.)

That gets us to the second part of the slogan: the “run” part.

And here's where the real fun starts.

For the last five years, we've had an administration that has proven it can't run anything. Look at the record: Bush has run the government into the ground, run the military into a ditch, run the nation's international reputation into the sewer, run our schools into crisis, run the budget off the rails, run away from his responsibility to protect the nation, and literally run away from taking the blame for any of his countless mistakes.

How inspiring it would be--and what a blessed relief--to have a party that was committed to actually 'running' the government for a change.

With all the money saved by 'cutting' the military budget back to a level appropriate for a nation that is not at war (and in case you haven’t heard, the U.S. is not at war even today, given that the so-called War on Terror is no war at all, the War in Afghanistan is a U.S. effort in which the U.S. is merely a participant there at the invitation of the Afghan government, and the troops currently in Iraq, who would be withdrawn in any case under this proposal, are merely guests of the Iraqi government, serving in a police function to help support the government, which according to the Bush administration, already has over 200,000 of its own troops--ten times the estimated number of rebels, terrorists and criminals opposing it), all things would be possible.

Democrats, with all that money saved from 'cutting' the military budget, could actually 'run' a government. They could provide funding for significantly smaller classroom sizes--the one reform that is guaranteed to improve the nation’s dismal education system. They could restore all the cuts in child welfare programs and rebuild the network of free-access community health clinics that years of Republican and Clintonian cuts have virtually eliminated. They could build a state-of-the-art flood control system to protect New Orleans, and a WPA-like program to help all New Orleans residents get back to their city. They could provide real assistance where it's needed in poor countries of the world that are suffering from lack of sanitation, clean water and basic health care.

If the Democrats came back into power and 'cut' the massive tax giveaways of the Bush years out of the tax code, they could even do more. They could run the country back out of bankruptcy. They could provide real tax relief where it's needed: those working people who are barely getting by on $30-60,000 a year. They could make serious investments in public transportation to get the country out of polluting and oil-guzzling cars. They could fund research into non-polluting energy alternatives, and into developing a crash program to slow or prevent global warming.

The list is almost endless.

All the Democrats need to do is adopt a policy of cut and run, and take it to the people of the United States.

The first step would be for the American people--the ones who are fed up with the mendacity and rank incompetence of this administration and its backers in Congress--to get of their couches and to demand that the supposed opposition party stop diddling around with deadlines, and get serious about being in opposition.

My message for Democrats: Cut the crap. Run like you want to win. Cut the military. Run a real government.

Cut and Run.

It's a winning slogan.

White House Deliberately Ignored CIA Warnings on Intelligence Fabrications

Wed, 28 Jun 2006 02:17:00 +0000

6-27-06, 9:42 am

In an effort to defend itself from criticism that it misled the country into war with Iraq, the Bush administration has consistently blamed what it calls 'intelligence failures' on the CIA. New revelations this past weekend show, however, that CIA analysts repeatedly warned against using much of the faulty 'evidence' with which the administration made its case for war. CIA agent Tyler Drumheller, former European operations chief for the CIA, told the Washington Post recently that he personally had on a number of occasions warned top CIA officials directly that many of the administration's claims were inaccurate.

One of the most famous speeches that helped prepare for war was the presentation made by former Secretary of State Colin Powell at the UN in January 2003. Drumheller told the Post that prior to giving the speech, he had crossed out a paragraph referring to claims about mobile biological labs, but that information was re-inserted and used in one of the most horrific public displays of an administration bent on war.

Drumheller tried to eliminate this information because he knew the source for that claim was the infamous defector code-named 'Curveball.' At the time of Powell's speech, Drumheller says he had come to believe that Curveball was a con artist and had misrepresented himself to German authorities. In real life, Curveball was a taxi driver who had claimed to be a chemical engineer with important knowledge about Iraq's WMD in order to gain special treatment from the German government.

By October 2002, the same time Bush administration officials, including the President himself, were spreading hysterical, but false rumors about Iraq's capability of making and its desire for using biological weapons in order to convince Congress to pass a blank check for war, Drumheller's counterparts in German intelligence told him they no longer trusted Curveball. Drumheller passed along this seemingly vital information to his superiors.

Drumheller could not have known that months prior to his October conclusions, the administration had already decided that it was intent on war and that it would use and 'fix' any bit of information, no matter how faulty, misleading, or erroneous, in a public relations barrage to drag the country into war. (See stories on the Downing Street memos: here and here.)

Despite Drumheller’s constant nagging about getting intelligence right, he was asked to sign off on some parts of Bush's infamous 2003 State of the Union Address claiming that Iraq possessed mobile labs for making chemical and biological weapons. As this information could have only come from Curveball’s fabrications, he refused.

Drumheller wasn’t in a position to reject other erroneous claims Bush made in this speech, such as the allegation that Iraq sought to buy uranium from Niger, information that had already been discredited several times by other CIA analysts, US diplomats, and State Department analysts, and which Colin Powell would refuse to use in his upcoming UN presentation.

Drumheller told the Post, that when he was asked about Curveball's claims, he told his superiors that he would not use information about the mobile labs because of the complete lack of faith German intelligence had expressed in Curveball's accounts. Nevertheless, several days later, the false information – both about mobile labs and the uranium claims – was in Bush's speech.

Soon after this, Drumheller was asked to approve information about mobile labs in Powell's speech to the UN. Drumheller again raised his doubts about Curveball’s credibility, telling his superiors that any information they had from Curveball was fabricated. Drumheller was then approached by CIA boss George Tenet personally to sign off on the mobile weapons lab claims for the Powell speech. Drumheller told the Post that he warned Tenet not to include the information. Both Drumheller’s direct superiors and Tenet himself ignored his advice.

Conveniently, the Bush administration used these divisions in the CIA between actual intelligence analysts and political appointees to claim they had failed to provide good intelligence.

But as we reported before, on numerous occasions, the administration's insiders in the Pentagon at the so-called Office of Special Plans, had pressured both CIA political appointees and Pentagon intelligence operatives to continue to use information known to have been discredited, such as Curveball's fabrications, the Niger uranium forgeries, as well as discredited information about the Iraqi government's links to Al Qaeda.

The systematic effort to bully the intelligence community and mislead the public and Congress about the need for war was a White House operation. That people like George Tenet, Colin Powell and most of Congress caved into that pressure doesn't relieve the administration of its responsibility for taking the country into an illegal, aggressive war.

Unfortunately, as information about these White House operations came to light just weeks after the launch of the Iraq war, the Republican-controlled Congress abdicated its Constitutional obligation to investigate on a serious level. While Congress rubber-stamped a report that essentially endorsed the Bush administration’s view of blaming the CIA, it failed to thoroughly examine the political pressure and maneuvering White House insiders used to get the 'intelligence' they wanted no matter how many times it had been discredited.

Congressional Republicans cannot be trusted to uphold their oath to defend the Constitution. They do not deserve our trust and should be replaced in the November 7th elections.

--Joel Wendland can be reached at

The One Percent Doctrine and Guantanamo (Book Round-Up #18)

Wed, 28 Jun 2006 02:17:00 +0000

6-27-06, 9:37am

Here is another of our occasional book previews or 'meta-reviews', reviews of reviews of books of interest to the progressive community. PA needs book reviewers so if any of our readers would like to review any of the works previewed here please contact me. You will find the previous 17 Book Round Ups archived on our website.

THE ONE PERCENT DOCTRINE: DEEP INSIDE AMERICA'S PURSUIT OF ITS ENEMIES SINCE 9/11 by RON SUSKIND , Simon & Schuster, 367 pages, reviewed by Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times, 6-20-2006.

Kakutani's review of this book shows how deep is the trouble we are in due to the irresponsible behavior of the Bush administration. The book gets its title, the reviewer says, from Dick Cheney's view, after 9/11 that 'in Mr. Suskind's words, 'if there was even a 1 percent chance of terrorists getting a weapon of mass destruction-- and there has been a small probability of such an occurrence for some time-- the United States must now act as if it were a certainty'.' This is a rather incoherent way of expressing it. Is Cheney, or Suskind confused? The quote literally says there is a 'small probability' that terrorists might have a '1 percent chance' (it self a probability) to get a WMD. So we have a small probability of another small probability and so we must act as if we have a 'certainty,' This is the kind of idiocy that has been fueling the 'war on terror'

Suskind appears to be basing the info in his book, according to Kakutani, on 'wide access' to sources within the FBI and the departments of Defense (War), State and Treasury, especially to sources within the CIA including its former head George Tenet. So this is an insider's book. We should take it as a warning to get the Republicans out of office as soon as possible!

Here are a few choice tidbits. The real reason for invading Iraq, the review quotes the author 'was 'to make an example ' of Saddam Hussein. to 'create a demonstration model to guide the behavior of anyone with the temerity to acquire destructive weapons [are there any other kind?--tr] or, in any way, flout the authority of the United States.'' So much for wanting to 'spread democracy' in the Middle East. The war was just a power trip by White House goons!

Experts were called in by the Bush gang, the reviewer reports, 'not to help formulate policy, but simply to sell predetermined initiatives to the American public.' These initiatives were cooked up in the Bushite's brains (and consequently half baked at best). Suskind writes: 'The public, and Congress, acquiesced with little real resistance, to a 'need to know' status-- told only what they needed to know, with that determination made exclusively, and narrowly, by the White House.' In other words, Congress completely failed in its duties to the American people.

Bush appears to be both 'incurious' and 'uninformed' and the CIA people seem to have considered him to be a dummy as they nicknamed Cheney 'Edgar (as in Edgar Bergan.' thus implying that Bush was Charlie McCarthy, Kakutani reports. Not only did Bush not even read his briefings, some times they went directly to Cheney and the President never even saw them. This is great leadership indeed. There is a lot more in this book, including how 'intelligence' was manipulated to provide 'evidence' for what Bush and his handlers wanted the American people to think in complete disregard of the truth. The voters need to know all this so they can vote the ultra-right out in November.

GUANTANAMO AND THE ABUSE OF PRESIDENTIAL POWER by Joseph Marguiles, Simon & Schuster, 2006, reviewed by Steve Weinberg in In These Times, July 2006.

Weinberg likes this book, finding it a 'convincing indictment' of the Bushite abuse of power written by a lawyer who represents some of the detainees at the US concentration camp at Guantanamo. He also finds the book 'difficult to complete' because it is technical (legal theories and terms, etc.,) and depressing. Nevertheless it 'repays' the effort it takes. Marguiles is quoted summing up Bush's assertions of what he can do to anyone he feels like in his bogus war on 'terror:' people 'maybe taken-- kidnapped if necessary-- from any location in the world, even thousands of miles from any battlefield, without the knowledge or participation of the host government and without any judicial process. ... They may be held for the rest of their lives, based solely on the president's self-asserted authority. At the prison, they can be subjected to any conditions or treatment the military devises. And throughout their imprisonment, they may be held incommunicado and in solitary confinement, without access to courts or counsel, without charges of any kind, unknown to the world, and without the benefit of the Geneva Conventions, an international treaty signed and ratified by the United States and designed to protect people seized during armed conflict.'

That the president thinks he has a right to do this is nuts. It shows what he really thinks of human rights and democracy and what kind of 'freedom' he wants to impose upon the people's of the Middle East. No wonder they are fighting back! It is to the credit of the US Supreme Court that it struck down Bush's grab for absolute power in Rasul v. Bush in 2004, a case in which Marguiles participated.

The decision means that anyone put into Guantanamo must have his or her rights to be judged by a 'neutral tribunal' respected. But, Marguilies, writes, 'Enforcing this decision in another matter.' The only justification Bush came up with for his extraordinary claims was that the prisoners being sent to Guantanamo were the 'worst of the worst'-- really, really ultra dangerous 'terrorists.' However, the review reveals that most are probably just innocent people. Already 250 have been released with no charges, and 75% of the people still in custody are not even being interrogated anymore. They are just sitting around. 'Even the camp commander,' Margulies writes, 'says many of the 500 who remain could be released tomorrow at no risk to the United States.' Mr. President, tear down that prison!

Thomas Riggins is the book review editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net.

Sudan: Gov’t lifts ban on UN Darfur operations

Wed, 28 Jun 2006 02:04:00 +0000

6-27-06, 9:27am

NAIROBI, 27 Jun 2006 (IRIN) - The Sudanese government has lifted the restrictions it imposed on Monday on United Nations relief operations across the western region of Darfur.

'The Sudanese government decided, effective today, to reverse its decision to suspend UN Mission in Sudan [UNMIS] activities in Darfur,' Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for the UN Secretary-General, told reporters in New York.

The restrictions were lifted following a meeting between the Secretary-General’s Principal Deputy Special Representative, Taye Brook Zerihoun, and the Sudanese undersecretary for foreign affairs, Mutrif Siddiq, in Khartoum.

The Sudanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in a statement issued on Saturday, said it had instructed local authorities in Darfur to suspend all UNMIS activities in the three Darfur states, except those of two affiliated agencies: the UN Children’s Fund (Unicef) and the World Food Programme which provide life-saving aid to millions of people in the region.

The government accused UNMIS of exceeding its mandate in Darfur when it allegedly transported a commander of the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) by helicopter on Saturday and demanded an explanation.

The foreign ministry said it considered the incident, 'a flagrant violation of the country’s sovereignty and a violation of the agreement under which the UN operates in Sudan.'

The rebel commander, Suleiman Mohamed Jamous, was the humanitarian coordinator for the SLM/A before it split in November 2005 and the main rebel contact for the approximately 14,000 humanitarian aid workers in Darfur. Jamous was a member of Minni Minnawi’s SLM/A faction who signed the Darfur Peace Agreement on 5 May, but was imprisoned for his opposition to the peace deal.

Sources in the region said that the government’s decision to suspend UN operations in Darfur had not been formally communicated to UNMIS and had not resulted in the interruption of UN relief operations.