NYCLAW Antiwar Digest
Mon Aug 18, 2008 10:21 am (PDT)
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AFGHANISTAN
GREEN BERET SAYS LEADER SHOT, MUTILATED AFGHAN MAN
“Don’t worry, nothing will come of it. If it does, I’ll just say I was attacked.”
http://www.freep.com/apps/
NATO FORCE DENIES AFGHAN CIVILIAN CASUALTY REPORT
Twelve civilians were killed and 18 wounded when NATO-led forces carried out an airstrike on suspected Taliban militants in Kapisa province on Saturday.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
U.S. COALITION KILL 8 AFGHAN HOSTAGES
A series of clashes and an airstrike in southern Afghanistan killed 25 militants and eight civilians held hostage by insurgents.
http://www.latimes.com/news/
BRITISH KILL 4 CIVILIANS IN AFGHANISTAN
The force “deeply regrets the tragedy.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/
INSURGENCY’S SCARS LINE AFGHANISTAN’S MAIN ROAD
“Dissatisfaction of the people is growing, anger is growing, people are joining the opposition groups”. . . . “The Americans are not looking at us like human beings, but we are also human beings.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/
ROADSIDE BLAST KILLS 10 POLICE IN AFGHANISTAN
Afghan and NATO officials insist that the nearly seven-year effort to bring stability to Afghanistan is progressing.
http://www.nytimes.com/
RESISTANCE SURGE IN AFGHANISTAN
Once a population turns against an occupation (or just decides to stay neutral) there are few places in the world where an occupier is going to come out on the winning side. Afghanistan, with its enormous size and daunting geography, is certainly not one of them.
http://counterpunch.org/
IRAN
A WAR OF SELF-DESTRUCTION
An attack on Iran, which Israeli and Bush administration officials appear set to carry out if Iranian uranium enrichment is not halted, would ignite a regional war in the Middle East and lead to economic collapse and political upheaval in the United States.
http://www.truthdig.com/
IRAQ
US SAILORS ‘ABUSED IRAQI PRISONERS’
The incidents allegedly took place in May at Camp Bucca, a vast desert camp where the US military houses 18,000 of its 21,000 prisoners in Iraq.
http://english.aljazeera.net/
SURGE IN IRAQI FEMALE SUICIDE BOMBERS
One need only recall the famous scene of Algerian women altering their attire to plant bombs among French colons in the astonishingly prescient 1966 film The Battle of Algiers to understand the historical precedents.
http://counterpunch.org/
SADRISTS ARE TOLD TO JOIN UNARMED WING
Thousands of supporters. . . . chanted “No, no to America” and “No, no to occupation.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/
U.S AND IRAQI TROOPS FAIL TO ‘SUBDUE’ DIYALA
Despite repeated offensives and presence of tens of thousands of U.S. and Iraqi troops, the Province of Diyala still remains a major rebel stronghold in Iraq.
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=
WASH. HEIGHTS G.I. KILLED IN IRAQ BLAST
“We’re all so sad. . . . I don’t see any good coming from this war. We just lose more and more people.”
http://www.nydailynews.com/
AS MANY U.S. CONTRACTORS AS TROOPS IN IRAQ
The U.S. has about the same number of private contractors in Iraq as uniformed service members.
http://www.armytimes.com/news/
USE OF IRAQ CONTRACTORS COSTS BILLIONS, REPORT SAYS
“I don’t think there have been any credible cost numbers for the Iraq war. There was so much money spent at the beginning of the war, and nobody knows where it went.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/
WALLS DON’T STOP RESISTANCE
While U.S. forces say the recent battles have helped “decapitate” the Mehdi Army in Sadr City, they acknowledge that many fighters have simply fled to northern parts of the capital, which are controlled by Iraqi forces.
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/
STOP LAUGHING AT YOURSELVES WITH YOUR CLAIMS OF ‘DEMOCRACY’ IN IRAQ
It is the democracy of bombardment, shelling, indiscriminate killing, massive prisoner abuses, turning millions of people into refugees, attacking with warplanes and heavy armor major cities, towns and villages and dividing a unified nation along ethnic and sectarian lines.
http://www.azzaman.com/
OBAMA’S NON-PLAN FOR ENDING THE WAR IN IRAQ
His promise to “end this war now” amounts to little more than propaganda in light of claims that U.S. combat operations will continue for at least the next five years, perhaps indefinitely. It is difficult to see how substantively different this is from Republican presidential front-runner John McCain.
http://counterpunch.org/
INDIANA SENATOR OFFERS OBAMA RISKS AND REWARDS
“The antiwar people cannot define the Democratic Party,” said Al From, a founder of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, of which Mr. Bayh was chairman for four years.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/
PALESTINE
OLMERT REJECTS RETURN OF ANY PALESTINIAN REFUGEES
Some 700,000 people, half the Arab population of Palestine in May 1948, fled or were driven from their homes when Israel was created. Letting them and their families live in Israel now would undermine its nature as a Jewish state, Israel argues.
http://www.nytimes.com/
STATE OF DENIAL: ISRAEL, 1948-2008
For many years, the term Nakba seemed a satisfactory term for assessing both the events of 1948 in Palestine and their impact on our lives today. I think, however, it is time to use a different term: the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.
http://imeu.net/news/
NO FORCE COULD ELIMINATE THE PALESTINIAN RIGHT OF RETURN
“The issue of the [Palestinian Right of Return] is the hard rock that no negotiator could displace simply because it is the issue of two-thirds of the Palestinian people, and no political force, despite its size, could overcome the will of the Palestinian people.”
http://www.palestine-info.co.
POET’S VILLAGE LIVES ONLY IN MEMORY
Darwish was only too aware that he would not be allowed by the Israeli authorities to return to his village — even in death. http://www.thenational.ae/
TRAPPED — COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT IN GAZA
The blockade imposed by Israel on the Gaza Strip over a year ago has left the entire population of 1.5 million Palestinians trapped with dwindling resources and an economy in ruins.
http://www.amnesty.org/en/
ISRAELI VIOLENCE ENJOYS IMPUNITY
Only six percent of probes into offenses allegedly committed by Israeli soldiers and settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank yield indictments.
http://electronicintifada.net/
THE WEST IS HELPING PA TORMENT PALESTINIANS
We all know that the Raison d’être behind the very existence of the PA security apparatus is to repress Palestinian resistance to the Israeli occupation. . . . [T]here is a reign of terror being fostered all over the West Bank under the pretext of “fighting Hamas.”
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=
CAMPAIGN TO SILENCE DISSENT IN WEST BANK, GAZA
The U.S. and Europe have said little about violations in the West Bank, even as they’re spending millions of dollars on police training to help lay the foundations of a democratic Palestine.
http://www.nytimes.com/
PA CONTINUES ITS WEST BANK ARREST CAMPAIGN OF HAMAS SUPPORTERS
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) condemns the attacks on private and civil society organizations and the continued arrests by Palestinian security forces of Hamas members in the West Bank.
http://electronicintifada.net/
ISRAEL CRITICISM OF CHINA — BEYOND CHUTZPAH
[T]he more important question in this context is really whether Israel, a state that has been murdering, enslaving and tormenting another people for the past sixty years, is in a position to lecture or criticize China or any other country on the subject of human rights. http://www.uruknet.info/?p=
DEREK SUMMERFIELD: APARTHEID REVISITED
[T]he Israeli army has killed “more unarmed Palestinian civilians [between September 2000 and 2004] than the number of people who died on 11 September 2001.”
http://www.pacbi.org/boycott_
‘ALL CITIZENS MUST BE EQUAL’
“All citizens must be equal,” agreed Ismail. “It doesn’t need to be a Jewish state; nor must preference be given to the Jewish people. It just needs to be our country; [a country belonging to both Jews and Arabs].”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
ONE STATE WITH EQUAL RIGHTS
Either the Zionist project is defeated by the victory of one secular state for all, or the logic of Zionism slowly starves and kills Palestinians out of their land.
http://socialistworker.org/
GEORGIA
FOR SOUTH OSSETIANS, BITTERNESS FOLLOWS ATTACKS
“It was inhuman to bomb us”. . . . The scale of the destruction is undeniable; some streets summon iconic images of Stalingrad during World War II or Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, which was leveled in two wars between Russian and Chechen separatists.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
DECLARATION OF THE GEORGIAN PEACE COMMITTEE
The Georgian army, armed and trained by American instructors and using also American armaments, subjected the city of Tskhinvali to a barbaric destruction. . . . The entire responsibility for this fratricidal war, for thousands of children, women and elderly dead people, for the inhabitants of South Ossetia and of Georgia falls exclusively to the current President, to the Parliament and to the Government of Georgia.
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.
RATTLING THE CAGE: SYMPATHY FOR THE AGGRESSOR
So what we’ve got here is a bloody war started by Georgia against a small, pro-Russian province it wants to rule — against the will of the people who live there.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/
THIS IS A TALE OF US EXPANSION NOT RUSSIAN AGGRESSION
[U]nderlying the conflict of the past week has also been the Bush administration’s wider, explicit determination to enforce US global hegemony and prevent any regional challenge, particularly from a resurgent Russia.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
CONFLICT NARROWS OIL OPTIONS FOR WEST
The latest struggle over Caspian oil started in earnest in the 1990s under Bill Clinton, after the breakup of the Soviet Union.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/
OIL LINE IN THE SAND
Already, the Pentagon had established its presence in Georgia and Azerbaijan. It posted its officers to these Caucasian republics to train Georgian and Azeri forces to guard the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
BI-PARTISAN US SUPPORT FOR GEORGIA
Since 1997, the U.S. military has spent approximately $277 million in military aid to Georgia. . . . Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama . . . supported the administration’s initiatives in Georgia.
http://www.latimes.com/news/
U.S. TROOPS STILL IN GEORGIA
There are still 127 U.S. trainers in Georgia, where the American forces had been preparing the Georgian army for operations in Iraq.
http://www.stripes.com/
GEORGIA PRESIDENT MIKHEIL SAAKASHVILI’S ‘CALCULATED GAMBLE’
Saakashvili has been the Bush administration’s poster child for pro-Western movements. . . . The United States supplied him with military aid to build his army and he, in turn, sent Georgian troops to Iraq to support the U.S. mission there.
http://www.latimes.com/news/
AFTER MIXED U.S. MESSAGES, A WAR ERUPTED IN GEORGIA
The United States took a series of steps that emboldened Georgia. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/
ON SLOG TO SAFETY, SEETHING AT WEST
“The biggest problem here is [the U.S.], your country. You said that the Soviets were an evil empire, but it’s you that are the empire. Not you personally, of course. But your government.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/
HOW THE U.S. INVITED A WAR IN SOUTH OSSETIA
This is yet another made-in-the-USA war. . . . But it’s also yet another made-in-Israel war.
http://counterpunch.org/
GEORGIAN MP LAUDS ISRAELI MILITARY TRAINING
Georgian Integration Minister Temur Yakobashvili told The Jerusalem Post Monday he “felt proud as a Jew,” thanks to the training Israelis had provided to units in the Georgian military.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/
ISRAELI HAS $1 BILLION INVESTED IN GEORGIA
The Jewish state and private investors have provided military assistance and advisors to Georgia, where pipelines pump oil destined for Israel.
http://www.israelnationalnews.
ARAB WORLD SEES BUSH’S RESPONSE TO GEORGIA-RUSSIA CRISIS AS HYPOCRITICAL
The Iraq war, the sense of drift over the Palestinian question, and Washington’s perceived failure to pay more than lip-service to promoting democracy and human rights have all undermined American standing. It is also widely noted here that Washington stood by uncritically during Israel’s military incursion into southern Lebanon in its 2006 war with Hezbollah.
http://www.latimes.com/news/
PAKISTAN
US BEHIND PAKISTAN ATTACKS
There is increasing pressure from the West on Pakistan’s government to act against Taliban and al-Qaida strongholds in its frontier region with Afghanistan.
http://www.nytimes.com/
9 SUSPECTED INSURGENTS KILLED IN US MISSILE STRIKE
A spokesman for the American military denied that it was behind the four missiles. . . . However, past strikes are believed to have been conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency using Predator drones. . . . Separately on Wednesday, Pakistani forces backed by helicopter gunships pounded militant positions in the Bajur tribal region in an operation that has displaced thousands of people.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/
REPRESSION BREEDS RESISTANCE
The air attack had turned him against the government, Mr. Shah said. “I am now one of them,” he said of the Taliban. “I have lost my nephew, I have no fare to get back. I hate the government very much.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/
GI RESISTANCE
U.S. DESERTER TO APPEAL CANADA DEPORTATION ORDER
“It’s our government acting as an enforcement agent for the Pentagon.” http://www.nytimes.com/
EMUULATING VIETNAM GI RESISTANCE
We see what helped end the Vietnam War was that all these soldiers said, “No. We’re not going to do this anymore. This is screwed up.” That’s what we want to do.
http://www.warresisters.org/
‘WE’RE TRYING TO REACH OUT TO SOLDIERS’
“Ultimately, what’s going to stop it is the GIs standing up and saying, ‘We’re not going to fight anymore’.”
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/
ANTIWAR GROUP BRINGS MESSAGE
Hurd said it was important that members of the military and veterans understand it’s OK to oppose the war. “Look, you’re not alone,” Hurd said. “We’re with you and we’re here to support you.”
http://www.fayobserver.com/
VETERANS AGAINST THE WAR RAIL AGAINST GAME
“Hey, stop taking our money and using it for stupid sh**.”
http://play.tm/story/20207
CIVIL LIBERTIES, IMMIGRANT RIGHTS AND CRIMINAL INJUSTICE
WAR CRIMES SYSTEM IS STILL ON TRIAL
The verdict and the five-and-a-half-year sentence may not have been as severe as the government had hoped for, but it was a green light for a tribunal that the Pentagon plans to use to prosecute as many as 80 detainees, including five men charged as the plotters and coordinators of the Sept. 11 attack.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/
ATTORNEY: TERROR DEFENDANT WITH NY TARGET LIST TORTURED
The attorney for a Pakistani woman arrested on terror charges and accused of possessing a list of New York landmarks to attack said her client had been tortured soon after she was apprehended in Afghanistan on charges of trying to kill U.S. soldiers.
newsday.com/news/local/
PSYCHOLOGISTS CLASH ON AIDING INTERROGATIONS
“American psychology really grew up with the military. It was barely considered a science before the collaboration began, and the entanglement goes very deep.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/
U.S. MAY EASE POLICE SPY RULES
“It turns police officers into spies on behalf of the federal government.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
ILL AND IN PAIN, DETAINEE DIES IN U.S. HANDS
[T]wo days after his 34th birthday, he died in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in a Rhode Island hospital, his spine fractured and his body riddled with cancer that had gone undiagnosed and untreated for months.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/
IMMIGRANTS’ SPEEDY TRIALS AFTER RAID BECOME ISSUE
“The entire process seemed to presume and be designed for fast-track guilty pleas.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/
LOUISIANA: CHARGES AGAINST OFFICERS THROWN OUT
Survivors of the Sept. 4, 2005, shootings have said the officers fired at unarmed people crossing the Danziger Bridge to get food at a grocery store.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/
WEALTH AND POWER
PELOSI CLASHES WITH PROTESTERS OVER IMPEACHMENT
The Speaker made it clear she would not support any effort to hold impeachment hearings against President Bush.
http://www.pubrecord.org/
BOTH CANDIDATES FOR SALE
The truth is that the campaigns of both Barack Obama and John McCain are being inundated with cash from more or less exactly the same gorgons of the corporate scene.
http://www.rollingstone.com/
MOST COMPANIES IN US AVOID FEDERAL INCOME TAXES
Collectively, the companies reported trillions of dollars in sales.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
OBAMA WATERS DOWN TAX CHANGES
[Obama] said he “certainly would not go above what existed under Bill Clinton, which was 28 percent” and that “my guess would be it would be significantly lower than that.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/
HOUSE TO RETHINK DRILLING, PELOSI SAYS
Dropping her opposition to a vote on coastal oil exploration, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Saturday that the House would consider expanded offshore drilling as part of broad energy legislation when Congress returns next month.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/
ANTIWAR MOVEMENT
ACTIVISTS DEMAND: ‘HANDS OFF IRAN!’
Under the leadership of the Stop War on Iran Campaign, anti-war activists in 100 cities voiced their opposition boldly in the streets despite the short notice in which the initial call was made, the difficulty of organizing during the summer and the sometimes paralyzing effects on organizing during a presidential election.
http://www.workers.org/2008/
STOP WAR ON IRAN
Considering the rain and the lack of endorsement from the nation’s largest peace group, United for Peace and Justice, the demonstration was a success in bringing together a broad coalition of activists and calling attention to Iran.
http://socialistworker.org/
BUYERS REMORSE OVER OBAMA
[T]here is no way to change Obama by begging as the letter does. There is plenty of carrot, in fact downright ass kissing, in the letter — but no stick. Ambitious pols understand sticks.
http://www.counterpunch.org/
SHEEHAN QUALIFIES TO CHALLENGE PELOSI
She says Pelosi (D-Calif.) has failed the country by refusing to cut off funding for the war after Democrats reclaimed the majority in the 2006 elections.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
MOVEON EXCUSES BAYH
Eli Pariser, the executive director of the antiwar group MoveOn.org, said that Mr. Obama had a variety of factors to weigh in making a choice and that he was not ready to say that Mr. Bayh should be ruled out because of his views at the start of the war.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
THE DEMOCRATS’ ELECTION TO LOSE
If we want to win our demands, we have to organize independently of either of the pro-business and pro-war parties. We have to refuse to tailor our demands to what “hurts” or “helps” the Democrats in the election.
http://socialistworker.org/
DENVER’S DNC: MOVEMENT SETS MARCHES, RALLIES TO RAISE KEY ISSUES
The protests are designed to show the Democratic Party’s complicity with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. . . . The real struggle is in the streets. Those who are able should go to both DNC and RNC protests and express the will of those who dream of a better world.
http://www.workers.org/2008/
RAGE TO ROCK DURING DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION
In conjunction with the Iraq Veterans Against the War and Tent State University, Rage Against The Machine will play a free show Aug. 27 at the Denver Coliseum during the Democratic National Convention. http://www.billboard.com/
DNC PROTEST, SPLIT, AND THE PRINCIPLED STAND OF CYNTHIA MCKINNEY
[T]he Alliance for Real Democracy’s denunciations of the right to self-defense and denunciations of Recreate ’68 as “violent” creates a ready made excuse for the police and government that may actually cause police violence.
http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/
ANTHONY J. RUSSO, 71, PENTAGON PAPERS FIGURE, DIES
From Mr. Russo’s perspective, the ordeal — even the beatings he claimed to have endured after being imprisoned for refusing to testify to a grand jury — was worth it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/
