NYCLAW Antiwar Digest
Sat Sep 13, 2008 10:08 am (PDT)
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OVERVIEW: BIPARTISAN EMPIRE
McCain, Obama find common ground at Columbia forum
John McCain and Barack Obama agreed Thursday night on the need to expand the U.S. military, and said they would have done more to tap the nation’s outpouring of patriotism if they had been in the White House when the World Trade Center was attacked.
newsday.com/news/local/newyork
ROTC and the Ivies
Mr. McCain said. “Shouldn’t the students here be exposed to the attractiveness of serving in the military, particularly as an officer?” Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) readily agreed, calling Columbia’s anti-ROTC stance a “mistake”. . . . [T]he restoration of ROTC at the Ivies might help reconnect two important American subcultures — elite academia and the military officer corps — that have grown apart.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
AFGHANISTAN
Obama and McCain on pretty much the same page
“[Obama] called for sending two brigades of U.S. forces to Afghanistan 13 months before the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said the same thing,” said Richard A. Clarke, the onetime Bush and Clinton adviser who has been chairing an advisory panel on counterterrorism for the Obama campaign. . . . Despite the rhetorical differences, the candidates share important similarities.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
US deaths in Afghanistan makes 2008 deadliest year
Thursday’s deaths brings to 113 the number of troops who have died in Afghanistan, surpassing last year’s record toll of 111.
http://ap.google.com/article/A
US at the ‘edge of historical defeat’: Taliban
“Afghans have never surrendered to foreign interference and have always united against the infidel invasions and have defeated the invaders united.”
http://www.hindustantimes.com/
What Americans must ask themselves
[I]t is lamentable that even left-wing groups in America are talking about taking the war to Afghanistan. . . . [I]s it possible after all to mess up so much, destroy so many lives, and not expect pay back?
http://counterpunch.org/
Corporate political duopoly’s policy on Afghanistan: same old
The antiwar movement in the U.S. can no longer afford to ignore the war in Afghanistan without fading into irrelevance.
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/
PAKISTAN
Bush ordered raids in Pakistan
“We have to be more assertive. Orders have been issued”. . . . It is unclear precisely what legal authorities the United States has invoked to conduct even limited ground raids in a friendly country.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09
U.S. kills 12 in Pakistan
The missiles were fired at a village called Tole Khel, two miles east of Miran Shah, and the dead included women and children.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09
Palin agrees with Obama
“We have got to have all options out there on the table.” That response put [Palin] in line with a view expressed by Sen. Barack Obama, now the Democratic presidential nominee, in August 2007, when he stirred controversy by saying that if he were elected president, he would be willing to attack inside Pakistan with or without approval from the Pakistani government.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Higher-tech Predators targeting Pakistan
“It is like they are living with a red dot on their head. . . . With the quietness of the Predator, you never knew when a Hellfire [missile] would come through your window.”
http://www.latimes.com/news/na
IRAQ
Illusory U.S. withdrawal
Gates urged caution on Iraq cutbacks. The U.S. will remain in Iraq “for years to come.”
http://www.latimes.com/news/na
U.S. death squads
The question is: are Special Forces in Iraq and CIA units in Afghanistan carrying out clandestine hits? In most places in the world, those groups are called “death squads.”
http://counterpunch.org/
Should the Americans leave now?
“The Americans? I hate even to hear their names, these criminals and infidels. What more do they want from us? They killed my young brother, Ahmad, 27, and my wife, Ahlam, 30, on the same day in 2005. . . . I swear to God, if any Iraqi says, ‘Let the Americans stay to protect us’, he does not have any honour, any dignity, any morals. Let them get out of our country so that we can rebuild it.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
Iraqi Communist Party confers with puppet prime minister about “security operations”
The meeting also dealt with the successes in security, the achievements of the Iraqi armed forces as indicated by their improved performance in the field, as well as the importance of addressing the shortcomings associated with security operations.
http://www.politicalaffairs.ne
PALESTINE/LEBANON
Biden: U.S., Israel joined at the hip
If Israel did not exist, we’d have to invent it for our own national security.”
http://www.jewishexponent.com/
U.S. approves $330 million in arms deals for Israel; still more in the pipeline
The U.S. government on Tuesday said it had approved up to $330 million in three separate arms deals for Israel, and sources tracking a much bigger deal for 25 Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 fighter jets said that agreement could be approved later this month.
http://www.reuters.com/
Jenin is “model” U.S.-sponsored Bantustan
Gen. James L. Jones, special American envoy to the region in an interview this week after visiting Jenin: “I see this as a kind of dress rehearsal for statehood, a crucible where the two sides can prove things to each other”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09
Ailey violates cultural boycott, despite racist abuse of troupe member
His company, and indeed all other artists and cultural entities that care about human rights and realize that art and moral responsibility should not be divorced at any time, are called upon by their Palestinian colleagues and public at large not to perform in Israel until justice, freedom, equality and human rights are established for all, irrespective of ethnic, religious, gender or any other form of identity.
http://www.danceinsider.com/f2
Increased ethnic cleansing from West Bank to Gaza
[T]he Hamoked-B’Tselem study reveals an alarming increase in forcible transfers of West Bank residents to the Gaza Strip, effectively making refugees twice over of those falling victim to this punitive policy. . . . [T]he reason behind the Israel authorities’ recent escalation of enforcing this law is based on a desire to do everything within their power to drive a wedge between the West Bank and Gaza, and to turn them into separate entities. This is, again, in direct contravention of the Oslo Accords.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
Prisoner release yet another propaganda tactic
Israel’s release of prisoners should be seen for what it is, yet another successful public relations coup in a long line of actions aimed at convincing the world that it is desperately seeking peace.
http://electronicintifada.net/
Blair sister-in-law: Gaza world’s largest concentration camp
“There is no right to punish people this way. There is no justification for this kind of collective punishment. You were in the concentration camps, and I can’t believe that you are allowing the creation of such a camp yourselves.”
http://www.ynetnews.com/
Growing Palestinian support for one-state
In light of the dim prospects for Palestinian statehood, support for the one-state solution, whereby Palestinians and Israelis would live in a single democratic state of all of its citizens covering all mandatory Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, is gaining momentum among Palestinian intellectuals and ordinary people alike.
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=
Film review: “Slingshot Hip Hop”
Jackie Salloum’s most recommended film presents these artists’ struggle to a global audience and helps ensure that Palestinian hip-hop finds claims its rightful place in the proud tradition of artistic resistance to oppression.
http://electronicintifada.net/
Lebanese resistance is greatest obstruction to U.S.
It was Hizbollah’s success in the Levant that provided the most direct repudiation of US military strength in the Middle East.
http://www.thenational.ae/
LATIN AMERICA
Chile: The other 9/11
On September 11, 1973 a military coup d’etat supported by the administration of President Richard M. Nixon in the United States put an end to the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile. . . . The junta, led by Augusto Pinochet, arrested, tortured and murdered thousands of Allende’s supporters.
http://counterpunch.org/
Venezuela: Another U.S. coup attempt?
“Our expelling their ambassador is not the end of things,” said the [U.S.] official. . . . [In 2002] the Bush administration tacitly approved a coup that briefly toppled Mr. Chavez.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09
WAR AT HOME
Apartheid wall at border costs $3.5b+
[T]he $3.5 billion Secure Border Initiative faces a $400 million cost overrun.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Democrats embrace offshore drilling
“It is a huge power grab on the part of the oil industry and its allies. [A]nd it won’t do anything to help the public and will hurt the coast.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09
FBI to get extensive new powers
The changes would give the FBI’s more than 12,000 agents the ability at a much earlier stage to conduct physical surveillance, solicit informants and interview friends of people they are investigating without the approval of a bureau supervisor. . . . It also would rewrite 1976 guidelines established after Nixon-era abuses that restrict the FBI’s authority to intervene in times of civil disorder and to infiltrate opposition groups.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Screening Mumia: suppression of dissent in America
“In Prison” presents extraordinary evidence pointing to Abu-Jamal’s innocence inclusive of crime scene photographs discovered in 2006 that contradict core elements of the prosecution’s case against the man whose written five books while on death row.
http://counterpunch.org/
Death penalty upheld in publicized Georgia case
The prosecution offered no murder weapon, DNA or fingerprints tying Mr. Davis to the killing but instead relied heavily on testimony from witnesses. Since the trial, seven key witnesses have recanted, saying they were bullied by investigators into lying under oath.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09
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