Monthly Archives: September 2008

NYCLAW Antiwar Digest

New York City Labor Against the War (NYCLAW)

NYCLAW Antiwar Digest

 

Tue Sep 16, 2008 3:01 pm (PDT)

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OVERVIEW

U.S. arms sales skyrocket
“This is not about being gunrunners. . . . This is about building a more secure world.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/washington/14arms.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

AFGHANISTAN

Bush’s policies resemble Obama’s
When Bush announced the new troop deployments to Afghanistan, for example, Obama said he was “glad that the president is moving in the direction of the policy that I have advocated for years.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/14/AR2008091401973.html

Defense contracts foretell military buildup
Some larger contracts give an indication of how long the U.S. military might intend to remain in Afghanistan.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/13/AR2008091302372.html

Afghanistan is in its worst shape since 2001
Afghanistan could be facing “a very cold winter” that threatened to become “a very hot winter for all of us.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/15/world/asia/15kabul.html?_r=1&ref=worldspecial&oref=slogin

Occupation ‘aids al-Qaeda’
“[T]he threat of foreign occupation is giving them oxygen in the region with tribal leaders leaving aside local differences to unite against foreign forces.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/14/alqaida.military

PAKISTAN

No al-Qaeda or Taliban leader was killed in recent US strikes
All the injured victims of the US air strikes admitted in hospitals in Miramshah and Bannu are women or children.
http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=17268

Tribal chiefs vow resistance
“The Americans might have supersonic jets and we might have to fight with stones in our hands, but we will stand up.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/15/pakistan.usforeignpolicy

Villagers vow to resist U.S. air attacks
“They either stop incursions or we’ll fight them, not just on the border but in Afghanistan.”
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-pakistan-violence.html

IRAQ

Surge failed in Basra
[M]ost al-Qaida insurgents slipped away before it began — and they are now slipping back.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/15/iraq.alqaida

U.S. general warns against leaving soon
[Army Lt. Gen. Lloyd Austin] said Iraqi forces might be ready to stand on their own by 2011, which Iraq’s government would like set as the deadline for U.S. troop withdrawal, but events “could slow down their evolution.”
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-gates16-2008sep16,0,483016.story

Things getting better, claims Iraqi Communist Party minister in puppet government
“We are living in brutal, violent times, but Iraqi society is finding a new equilibrium,” says Raid Jahid Fahmi, the Minister of Science and Technology and leader of the Iraqi Communist Party.
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/opinion/good-times-bad-times/2008/09/16/1221330783942.html

U.S. Antiwar activists say “out later”?
On Saturday, September 20, 25,000 volunteers across the country will contact one million people in their neighborhoods and ask them to sign a petition urging the next Congress to bring US troops home from Iraq within one year. (The timetable is based on a new report from the Center of American Progress–coauthored by Dr. Lawrence Korb, former Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan Administration — that suggests “an orderly and safe withdrawal is best achieved over an 8 to 10 month period.”)
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/edcut/358300/a_million_doors_open_for_peace

PALESTINE

U.S. to sell Israel new bunker-buster bombs
The U.S. Department of Defense announced it would sell the Israel Air Force 1,000 new smart bombs, rumored to significantly enhance the IAF’s military capabilities.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1020702.html

U.S. police chiefs in Israel for 9/11
The weeklong learning program is intended to introduce the U.S. law enforcement officers to their Israeli counterparts and demonstrate techniques in security, counterterrorism and emergency response.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2008/09/israel-us-polic.html#comment130613576

Paul McCartney embraces Israeli apartheid
Not only will such a concert violate the Palestinian cultural boycott against Israel, it will convey a message that McCartney either condones or apathetically ignores Israel’s reality as a colonial power and an apartheid state that oppresses the indigenous Palestinians and occupies Arab land.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9832.shtml

Settler pogrom in West Bank
Israeli occupation troops and paramilitary Jewish settlers on Saturday rampaged through several Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, killing at least one Palestinian civilian and injuring several others.
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m47226&hd=&size=1&l=e

Occupation soldiers present at West Bank pogrom
The footage, obtained from Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, shows Israel Defense Forces soldiers consistently present at the scene of the rampage, during which settlers fired on Palestinian residents, destroyed their property and spray-painted Stars of David on homes.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1020914.html

Israeli navy killing Gaza fishermen
Palestinian fishermen claim 14 colleagues have been murdered at sea by the Israeli navy since the onset of an economic blockade imposed after Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007.
http://www.sundayherald.com/news/heraldnews/display.var.2446157.0.scottish_activist_films_israeli_navy_shooting_at_gaza_fishermen.php

Mapping an occupation
Interactive map.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2008/sep/11/israelandthepalestinians?gusrc=rss&feed=worldnews

PA caves to Israeli ethnic cleansing and apartheid
“We understand that if we demand that all the five million refugees return to their land, Israel will collapse, therefore we must reach a compromise on the issue and we need to know the number of returnees that can be acceptable by Israelis. . . . We do not want one state for two people”.
http://www.imemc.org/article/56956

Hamas slams Abbas for not demanding the right of return
“Abbas is turning his back to millions of displaced Palestinians.”
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m47215&hd=&size=1&l=e

Gaza students brave PA-ordered teachers’ strike
“The first day, we had just half a day in school, and half of the teachers were away,” said 16-year-old student Isra al-Najjar. “We are not happy with this strike”. . . . [The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights] says the PA threat of salary cuts is illegal, and serves the interests of Fatah rather than the demands of employees. The move also raises questions whether the international money coming in is for the needs of teachers or the games of political parties, it says.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43867

Exposing Israel’s attempts to equate the Palestinian refugee plight with Jewish immigrants from the Arab world
[T]he ethnic cleansing of Palestine, as Illan Pappe says, had been meticulously planned and systematically implemented. . . . But there never was a Jewish Dir Yasin in Iraq, or a Jewish Tantura in Tunis, or a Jewish Dawaymeh in Algeria or a Jewish Kafr Qassem in Yemen.
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m47279&hd=&size=1&l=e

Jews attacking Jews
Practically the entire business of studying and analyzing current anti-Semitism has been hijacked and debased by people lacking any serious expertise in the subject, whose principal aim is to excoriate Jewish critics of Israel and to promote the “anti-Zionism = anti-Semitism” equation.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1020490.html

LATIN AMERICA

Chile: New transcripts of Kissinger’s role in 1973 coup
“We didn’t do it. I mean we helped them. [Deleted] created the conditions as great as possible.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-kornbluh/35-years-after-original-9_b_125447.html

WAR AT HOME

Millions of people of color denied the right to vote
Felony disenfranchisement — often a holdover from exclusionary Jim Crow-era laws like poll taxes and ballot box literacy tests — affects about 5.3 million former and current felons in the United States.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/us/politics/14felony.html?hp

Growing resistance to immigration raids
The effort has parallels to the sanctuary movement of the 1980s, when churches brought Central American refugees to the U.S. to protect them from political violence. More recently, churches have offered shelter to illegal immigrants facing deportation. . . . Tips gleaned from black workers were key to learning about ICE’s presence in Mississippi.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-immig14-2008sep14,0,5069395.story

Statement from Dr. Al-Arian to supporters
Dr. Sami Al-Arian has given his first public statement since being released on bond, thanking his supporters for everything they have done, and calling on them to keep bearing witness to justice all over the world.
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m47206&hd=&size=1&l=e

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