Category Archives: NYCLAW

Exposing Socialist Zionism Panel at Socialism 2017 Conference

Exposing Socialist Zionism Panel at Socialism 2017 Conference
Michael Letwin, Labor for Palestine
Chicago, July 7, 2017

Let’s start at the beginning: In the narrative of the oppressed – in this case, the Palestinian narrative — “Israel” is not a place, but a colonial-settler regime. Just as Zimbabwe was never “Rhodesia,” all “Israel” is occupied Palestine, and there is no such thing as “Israel-Palestine.”

Therefore, the “Occupation” is not just the West Bank and Gaza, which have been Israeli-occupied since 1967, but every inch of land stolen by the Zionist state since 1948. In the Palestinian narrative, “Israel” or “Israel proper” are known as 1948 Palestine, or simply ’48. Conversely a free Palestine refers to *all* of Palestine, from the river to the sea, with equal rights for all its inhabitants.

Think: Make Israel Palestine Again.

Against that narrative is “Progressive Except for Palestine” (PEP), which reflects Zionism’s long-term impact on the U.S. left, specifically through the misappropriation and misapplication of  the right of national self-determination, civil rights, even “socialism” itself, to Israeli settler-colonialism, and often linked to the notion of binationalism.

As discussed by Tikva Honig-Parnass and others, this misappropriation was spearheaded by the Histadrut, the Zionist labor federation, which was the Israeli state-in-waiting until 1948, and then ruled the Zionist regime for its first 30 years. Even before that, the social democratic Second International supported Labor Zionism as part of its overall support for imperialism: both the First World War “at home,” and colonialism abroad. Indeed, imperialist regimes like Britain saw Zionism as a way to undermine Bolshevism and the October Revolution of 1917. It’s no surprise that, to this day, the Histadrut is closely aligned with the Second International.

In the late 1930s and 1940s, at the Histadrut’s behest, social democratic garment union leaders in this country enlisted both the AFL and CIO — they were separate federations until 1955 — to loudly demand establishment of a “Jewish state” in Palestine.

This misappropriation of the right to national self-determination and other genuinely-socialist principles was also adopted by the non-Social Democratic left. In the 1920s and 1930s, virtually all communists and socialists had staunchly denounced Zionism as a reactionary, colonial movement. But during the Second World War, Stalin supported a “Jewish state” in Palestine, mainly in the delusional hope of helping Russia replace Britain as the dominant imperial power in the Middle East.

Toward that end, he sent 142,000 displaced Eastern European Jews – willing or not – to displace indigenous Palestinians, organized the necessary two-thirds majority for UN partition in 1947, armed the Zionist militias that carried out the Nakba, and made Russia the first country to recognize the Israeli regime. As U.S. Communist Party chief William Z. Foster boasted in the early 1950s:

“The only true friend of the Jewish people in their fight for national freedom was the Soviet Union, which steadfastly supported the setting-up of the longed-for homeland of the Jews. . . . Eventually, the Jewish masses themselves virtually settled the matter by establishing the Republic of Israel, in May 1948. They then defended their government, arms in hand, against the British-inspired attacks from the neighboring Arab governments. . . . Within the United States. . . . [t]he Communist Party took a very active part in the whole struggle.”

Ironically, some Trotskyists took a virtually identical position. Amidst the Nakba, Hal Draper stated the majority view of the Independent Socialist League: “We not only support the Palestine Jews’ right to self-determination but draw the necessary conclusions from that position: for full recognition of the Jewish state by our own government; for lifting the embargo on arms to Israel; for defense of the Jewish state against the Arab invasion in the present circumstances.”

Now obviously, Draper did not share Stalin’s motives for supporting a Jewish state in Palestine. Rather, his position was rooted in binationalism — the same premise shared by Socialist Zionists of the Hashomer Hatzair — that Jews have an equal right to self-determination in Palestine, including a right to a *separate* state. Jewish and Palestinian workers were to unite for a “socialist” Israel. To put this into perspective, it is like saying that, as communities suffering oppression in Europe, the Boers in apartheid South Africa, or European immigrants in Americas, had the right to a separate — i.e., apartheid — state on stolen indigenous land.

Though common on the left, this premise didn’t go unchallenged. During the 1936-1939 Arab uprising in Palestine, the South African Trotskyists noted that some Marxists had “been swept off their feet by the widespread anti-Semitic wave [in Europe] and have fallen victims to nationalism,” and reminded readers that, “[a] clear, unambiguous stand in support of the colonial people in their struggle against imperialism is the first duty of revolutionary socialism.”

Palestinian Marxists asked how “socialist” were kibbutzes — or “Jewish states” — built on top of the ruins of Palestinian villages like Deir Yassin, site of the most infamous Zionist massacre of the Nakba?

As documented in Black Liberation and Palestine Solidarity, this same position was upheld in the 1960s by Malcolm X, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Black Panther Party, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, and others, who condemned not only particular Israeli policies, but Zionism itself. This was based on the understanding that Palestinian oppression — and resistance – was part of the same international system of racism and colonialism inflicted on Black South Africans, Vietnamese, Latin Americans and African Americans. Indeed, in 1973, thousands of Arab and Black workers held a wildcat strike in Detroit to protest UAW support for Israel.

Who defended Israel against these protests? Labor/Left/Socialist Zionists and social democrats, including black moderate civil rights leader Bayard Rustin, the Jewish Labor Committee, and the Workmen’s Circle – the same “left” forces who jumped on the bandwagon for U.S. and Israeli wars in the wake of 9/11.

However, 9/11 and its immediate aftermath also sparked the first visible labor anti-Zionism since the 1973 UAW wildcats, including New York City Labor Against the War (NYCLAW) and Labor for Palestine, both co-led by Black radical activists from the 1960s.

And since the most recent Israeli massacre Gaza massacre in 2014, we have seen a small, but growing number of labor bodies standing with Palestine, including the refusal of the dockers in ILWU Local 10 to handle Israeli Zim Line cargo, and the adoption of BDS resolutions by a small but growing number of labor bodies. This has paralleled growing intersectional solidarity from Black4Palestine, the Movement for Black Lives, Labor for Standing Rock, immigrant rights and other grassroots social justice movements in the United States.

That kind of solidarity with Palestinian resistance is the antidote to Socialist Zionism.

Michael Letwin, Is Israel an Apartheid State? (Socialism Conference 2009)

Is Israel an Apartheid State? 
Dennis Brutus, Michael Letwin and Toufic Haddad
Socialism Conference
Chicago, June 19, 2009

Presentation of Michael Letwin:

Introduction

By way of introduction, I became a radical activist in the late 1960s. From 1971-1976 was a leader of Red Tide, a revolutionary high school underground newspaper and later youth organization of the International Socialists. In 1977, I was a founding member of the ISO. From 1978-1981 I was a student and antiwar activist at UMB. Since 1985, I have been a public defender in Brooklyn. From 1990-2002, I was President of the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys/UAW Local 2325. I am a co-convener of New York City Labor Against the War (NYCLAW) and a founding member of Labor for Palestine.

And during those forty years and more, I have been a supporter of the Palestinian national movement.

Changing Mood

The last six months have seen a remarkable shift in popular perceptions of Palestine. Following September 11, 2001, the U.S. government, the Israeli regime and the media were more successful than ever before in portraying Palestinian resistance as “terrorism.” At home, the Zionist Lobby had a relatively free hand in witch-hunting those who spoke out against Israeli apartheid and ethnic cleansing.

This lockstep picture first began to crack in July 2006, when Israel slaughtered thousands of people in Lebanon. But it was the Israeli massacres in Gaza, which began on December 27, 2008, that marked the greatest change. Despite the usual media disinformation, many were appalled at the high-tech slaughter of more than 1400 people — hundreds of them children; the thousands of maimed and wounded; and the utter devastation of Gaza’s infrastructure. Several writers have identified Gaza as the Palestinian Sharpeville.

In this country, the Arab-Muslim community responded to the Gaza massacre with the largest protests since the massive March 20, 2002 DC protest against the Israeli slaughter in Jenin. In New York City, for example, the Break the Siege on Gaza Coalition, led by Al Awda NY, organized several demonstrations in which thousands of people participated. Similar action was held in several other cities.

Perhaps more than ever before, the Zionist regime emerged from the Gaza Ghetto Massacre with, in its words, a serious “PR problem.” Indeed, during the massacre, “Sixty Minutes” broadcast a chilling report on Israeli settlers that ended by warning of the imminent demise of the “two-state solution.” Since the massacre, polls in the U.S. show that favorable opinion of Israel dropped, even among Jews.

One consequence of this post-Gaza “problem” for Zionism is renewed momentum behind the campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. In February, dockers in South Africa and Western Australia refused to handle Israeli cargo. In March, students in the UK occupying more than twenty universities demanded aid to students in Gaza and/or divestment from Israel; they were soon emulated by U.S. students at RIT, Hampshire and NYU. Numerous BDS activities too place elsewhere.

Conversely, efforts to break the Israeli siege of Gaza have escalated. These include Viva Palestina, a series of aid convoys led by British MP George Galloway. On July 4, the first Viva Palestina US convoy will depart NYC with the goal of delivering $10 million in medicine to Gaza.

The extent of these developments should not be overstated. The response of “mainstream” antiwar formations, such as United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) and US Labor Against the War (USLAW), was tepid, at best. The Zionist lobby is still witch-hunting academics such as William Robinson at UCSB. Yet, there are clearly greater opportunities for opponents of Israeli apartheid. This changing climate make it necessary for Palestine activists to wrestle with a variety of longstanding political issues, several of which I would like to address here.

Ultimate Goals: Two States, One State, and Binationalism

Israel’s blatant brutality, combined with the resilience of Palestinian resistance — much of it nonviolent — together with the need to rebrand increasingly unpopular U.S./Israeli wars and occupation throughout the Middle East and Central Asia, explains why Barack Obama felt it necessary to make a June 2009 speech in Cairo, the tone of which seemed to go further than prior U.S. pronouncements in recognizing Palestinian grievances. Specifically, he called for limiting Israeli settlements in the West Bank and establishing a Palestinian state — the “two-state solution.”

Of course, Obama’s speech overflowed with absurdity and hypocrisy: the assertion that the Nazi holocaust in Europe somehow excuses ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians; the pretense of U.S. “evenhandedness,” when, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is U.S. aircraft, white phosphorous, bombs and bullets that kill and maim on behalf of the occupiers; omission of the fact that Israel receives this support in consideration of its role as outpost and watchdog for U.S. domination of the Middle East; preaching nonviolence to an oppressed people when, as Martin Luther King Jr. pointed out, “the world’s greatest purveyor of violence is my own government”;  claiming to support “democracy,” while backing the corrupt, unelected Quisling regime in Vichy Palestine and refusing to recognize the democratically-elected Hamas government in Gaza; and the obvious fact that the U.S. could end the settlements tomorrow by just threatening to cut-off U.S. aid to Israel.

But even leftwing commentators often ignore the most fundamental problem with Obama’s pronouncements on Palestine: that, even if implemented, two-states would not — and could not — achieve justice for Palestinians as a whole, or for even any branch: those in the “Occupied Palestinian Territories,” those in ’48 Palestine (“Israel” within the Green Line), or those in Diaspora.

While the BDS movement does not take an explicit position on how many states should exist in historic Palestine, the Palestinian Call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions of July 9, 2005 articulates the minimum terms for “the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination,” including:

1. Ending [the Israeli] occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall;

2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and

3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.

First and most obviously, implantation of half a million Zionist settlers has undermined any prospect of a contiguous Palestinian state in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Second, even if the settlers were uprooted, any “Palestinian state” would be a non-contiguous Bantustan consisting, at most, of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. Under any scenario, this would remain a defenseless Vichy Palestine, ruled by the Quisling Palestinian Authority.

Third, maintaining 78% of historic Palestine as a “Jewish state” would be possible only if Palestinians — who already make up 20% of the population in 1948 Palestine (AKA “Israel”) — accept permanent inequality and/or expulsion. To survive on the basis of such ongoing ethnic cleansing and apartheid, the “Jewish state” would, by necessity, remain a highly-militarized outpost and watchdog for U.S. imperialism.

Fourth, recognition of a “Jewish state” means surrender of the Palestinian Right to Return to areas within 1948 Palestine, in which 70% of the Palestinian population was ethnically cleansed during and since the Nakba. For example, where did Gazans come from, why did they leave, and why can’ t they return?

This ugly reality is only confirmed by Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech of June 15, which lays out Zionist terms for a “Palestinian state.” But it is no less true of Obama’s “two-state” vision.

In other words, continued existence of any “Jewish state” in Palestine would only further institutionalize and perpetuate ethnic cleansing and apartheid against the indigenous Palestinians. It is inherently inconsistent with Palestinian national self-determination and democratic rights.

It is for these reasons that a growing number of both Palestinian activists and Jewish anti-Zionists have embraced the call for one secular democratic state throughout historic Palestine. For only such a state offers true self-determination for Palestinians: an end to military occupation, the right of return, and equal rights.

The OSS should not be confused with a “binational” state, an anti-democratic concept first formulated in the 1930s by “left wing” Zionists of the Hashomer Hatzair, and apparently advocated by Israeli Marxist Moshe Machover. In this context, binationalism would mean that, regardless relative population size, Jews *as a group* would have equal weight to the indigenous Palestinian population, and the right to a separate, apartheid state. This, in turn, is based on the false premise that all Jews, like all Palestinians, constitute a distinct oppressed “people” or “nation.”

Whatever legitimacy the idea of Jews as an oppressed nationality might or might not have had in Eastern Europe prior to the Nazi Holocaust, it is clearly inapplicable elsewhere. As recently documented by Israeli historian Shlomo Sand, there is no evidence for the existence of a Jewish “nation” expelled from ancient Palestine. The myth of Jewish “peoplehood” was born in the late 19th century to justify the Zionist colonization of Palestine. And since that time, the relationship of most Jews to Palestine is not as the oppressed, but as oppressors in a colonial settler-state. Thus, Jewish and Palestinian workers in historic Palestine share no more of a common class interest than did white and Black workers during South African apartheid.

Thus, while the Palestinian national movement has long agreed to one democratic state with minority rights, it has always rejected a “binational” state as anti-democratic, just as Black South Africans never agreed to national self-determination and separation for the Boers. For the same reasons, Jews living in other countries have no special right to settle in Palestine.

In light of the BDS campaign’s goals, and the speeches by Obama and Netanyahu, “two states” will become increasingly discredited as another front for apartheid and ethnic cleansing. Its main Palestinian proponent, the Abbas regime, has already been largely exposed as a US/Israeli puppet. And notwithstanding continued support for two states from Noam Chomsky and others, one-state is increasingly the default position amongst Jewish leftists.

Answering those (like Chomsky or Avneri) who argue that one state is “unrealistic” because Jewish Israelis “will never agree,” journalist Jonathan Cook rightly points out that the Zionist state will never “agree” to any type of “solution.” It is also important to remember that the fall of South African apartheid only looked inevitable in hindsight. Our job is to support those Palestinians who are unwilling to accept anything less than justice.

Labor and the BDS Movement

Since 1920s, labor officialdom has been a key supporter of Zionism. But labor also has the potential to play a very different role. In the wake of Gaza, BDS has been reaffirmed or newly endorsed by numerous labor bodies, including the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), UNISON (UK), Transport and General Workers’ Union (UK), Canadian Union of Postal Workers, Canadian Union of Public Employees-Ontario, six Norwegian trade unions, Irish Congress of Trade Unions, Scottish Trades Union Congress, and Intersindical Alternativa de Catallunya. The strongest response was made by the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union in Durban, and the Western Australia Branch of the Maritime Union of Australia, both of which refused to handle Israeli cargo.

This has generated a Labor-Zionist backlash from Stuart Appelbaum, who heads the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) and the Jewish Labor Committee (JLC).

The JLC smears BDS supporters with accusations of “anti-Semitism,” just as the Israel Lobby routinely attacks Archbishop Desmond Tutu and numerous other critics of Israeli apartheid — many of whom are Jewish.

This is standard JLC operating procedure. For decades, it has served as “progressive” mouthpiece for the Histadrut, the Zionist labor federation that has spearheaded — and whitewashed — apartheid, dispossession and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians since the 1920s. Meanwhile, U.S. labor leaders have plowed at least $5 billion of our union pension funds and retirement plans into State of Israel Bonds.

In 2007, Appelbaum and the JLC recruited top AFL-CIO and Change to Win officials to sign a statement condemning British unions for supporting the BDS campaign. Now, to deflect international outrage over Gaza, they have launched “Trade Unions Linking Israel and Palestine (TULIP),” a benign-sounding name for a project whose sole purpose is to target labor BDS supporters.

Their shameful complicity with Israeli apartheid echoes “AFL-CIA” support for U.S. war and dictatorship in Vietnam, Latin America, Gulf War I, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Palestine and the Antiwar Movement

In January 2004, Arab-Muslim activists issued an open letter demanding full inclusion of the Palestinian struggle — including the right to return — in the antiwar movement. Palestine has been taken seriously by ANSWER, the Campus Antiwar Network, the Troops Out Now Coalition, and others. But much of the antiwar movement, including UFPJ and USLAW, remain relatively deliberately clueless about Palestine.

Under pressure from the Arab-Muslim community and parts of the left, UFPJ has finally felt compelled to say something about Palestine, an example of which was its June 10, 2007 event in D.C. But it the issue completely segregated its opposition to the Iraq war, and was virtually MIA during the Gaza massacres. It defines the “Israeli occupation” solely in terms of the 1967 occupation, while ignoring the overall Zionist occupation of Palestine launched by the Nakba and creation of the Israeli apartheid state in 1948.

In contrast, it is critical for the antiwar movement to build strong relationships with the grassroots Arab-Muslim community, including GUPS, Palestine Popular Conference, and Awda-NY.

NYCLAW Antiwar Digest

New York City Labor Against the War (NYCLAW)

NYCLAW Antiwar Digest

 

Sat Sep 27, 2008 6:18 am (PDT)

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AFGHANISTAN & PAKISTAN

In debate, Obama is more aligned with Bush
It was Mr. Obama who seemed more aligned with President Bush’s current policy of authorizing American special forces to cross the Afghan-Pakistan border into Pakistan’s tribal areas that Al Qaeda and the Taliban have used as a sanctuary.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/27/us/politics/27policy.html?ref=us

UN pays lip-service to civilian casualties — and reauthorizes their murderers
[T]he U.N. Security Council on Monday . . . urge[d] the NATO-led force to make efforts to minimize such casualties. The body also voted unanimously to extend the mission in Afghanistan.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/22/AR2008092203036.html

Echoes of Vietnam war
The strikes against Pakistan represent — like the decisions of President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, to bomb and then invade Cambodia — a desperate bid to salvage a war that was never good, but has now gone badly wrong.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/23/pakistan.afghanistan

U.S. tortured Afghan journalist for 11 months
“I was tortured and jailed for 11 months and 20 days for doing nothing. They have destroyed my future, my soul. I’ll fight until they apologize to me and give me back what I have lost”.
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m47488&hd=&size=1&l=e

Police kill Pakistani protesters
Pakistani police shot dead five people in the volatile northwestern Swat Valley during a protest against the alleged killing of children in a military operation.
http://news.morningstar.com/newsnet/ViewNews.aspx?article=/DJ/200809230930DOWJONESDJONLINE000318_univ.xml

More resistance on the way
“There’s going to be a winter offensive in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. It’s not just a war in Afghanistan. It’s a war in both countries.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122208463491862557.html?mod=rss_whats_news_us

Rising crime makes Taliban look good
[F]ast-expanding violent crime. . . . is making some Afghans nostalgic for the low-crime days before 2001, when the Taliban sternly ruled most of the country.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/24/AR2008092403339.html

IRAN

Israel seeks to bomb Iran
Israel gave serious thought this spring to launching a military strike on Iran’s nuclear sites but was told by President George W Bush that he would not support it and did not expect to revise that view for the rest of his presidency.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/25/iran.israelandthepalestinians1

IRAQ

Palin: U.S. has already won
“[A] surge in Afghanistan also will lead us to victory there as it has proven to have done in Iraq.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/25/AR2008092502171.html

It has?
It is folly for any politician in Washington to think the Iraqi people will make peace with the continued occupation of their country, whatever deals Maliki may cut to preserve his own power and security.
http://socialistworker.org/2008/09/26/has-the-us-won-in-iraq

Resistance demands total withdrawal
The first demand of the Iraqi resistance is the unconditional withdrawal of all foreign forces illegally occupying Iraq — including private contractors — and disbanding all armed forces established by the occupation.
http://palestinethinktank.com/2008/09/20/peace-in-iraq-is-an-option-sign-the-le-feyt-declaration/

Shell back in Baghdad after 36-year absence, but boxed in by resistance
But in a sobering reminder of the underlying dangers of doing business here, the company would not disclose the location of its office, and the senior Shell official who announced the gas deal was accompanied by a phalanx of armed guards.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/world/middleeast/23iraq.html?ref=world

Western lawyers belatedly figure out that Hussein’s trial was unfair
Long before Mr. Hussein was hanged on Dec. 30, 2006, with supporters of Iraq’s new Shiite-led government taunting him as the noose was tightened around his neck, a pattern of intervention by powerful Iraqi officials had been established.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/25/world/middleeast/25trial.html?ref=world

US soldier accused of abusing and killing Iraqi
Military prosecutors accused a U.S. soldier Sunday of taking an Iraqi detainee to a remote desert location, stripping him naked, shooting him in the head and chest and then watching as another soldier set fire to the body with an incendiary grenade.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gNASOeVXYtU2rrHiYLyS5aW-gkmAD93BC0NG1

Murder charges against three Army sergeants, none against those who sent them
If John Hatley, Joseph Mayo and Michael Leahy, Jr. — three platoon-level leaders — go to the dock for murdering four defenseless victims, then who goes to the dock for what Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell and all their lying associates did to Iraq?
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m47478&hd=&size=1&l=e

Sexual cleansing in Iraq
[W]hile Saddam was president, there was certainly no danger of gay people being assassinated in their homes and in the street by religious fanatics.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/25/iraq.humanrights

PALESTINE

The future is one nation
The one-state solution is now part of mainstream [Palestinian] discourse.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/25/middleeast

Irish trade union federation reaffirms support for Israel boycott
The trade union movement is the largest and the most organized of all civil society organizations. It is therefore of fundamental importance that Palestinian solidarity work be grounded in the trade unions, particularly if a major international campaign of boycott and divestment similar to the boycott of apartheid South Africa is to take place.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9850.shtml

Settler pogroms work with army
Hard-core right-wing settlers have responded to limited army operations in recent weeks by blocking roads, rioting spontaneously, throwing stones at Palestinianvehicles and burning Palestinian orchards and fields all over the West Bank, a territory that Israel has occupied since 1967. . . . In general, the relationship between the religious settlers of the area and the army is an ambiguous, if symbiotic one.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/26/world/middleeast/26settlers.html?hp

Settlers openly declare ethnic cleansing
[Video] “This is the land God gave us, if you read The Bible you can know it. The Arabs and all the people around, have no right to be here.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7634338.stm

Pogroms are no aberration
The recent “pogrom” carried out by the illegal settlers of Yitzhar is not an isolated incident or an aberration. Such pogroms happen with frightening regularity and are regularly ignored by the Israeli government who view the illegal settlers as their front line shock troops against the Palestinian population.
http://palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=14188

Jerusalem crash not deliberate
“My son was murdered, they killed him. He did not carry out a terrorist attack”. . . . Defence Minister Ehud Barak said Israel must expedite the legal process leading to demolition of Palestinian attackers’ homes.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7631693.stm

Olmert: Seal off Palestinian neighborhoods in Jerusalem
[A]t the end of the day you say to the Arabs in the Arab neighborhoods, you will live in your neighborhoods, and won’t come into ours. We have to remember that.”
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1222017371244&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Israeli shelling of Gaza village could be war crime: UN report
The UN Human Rights Council voted Wednesday to adopt a report of inquiry that says the Israeli shelling of a Palestinian village in which 19 people died could be construed as a war crime.
http://news.yahoo.com/story//afp/20080924/wl_mideast_afp/unrightsmideastisraelpalestinianbeithanoun

Israel arrested 200 Palestinian workers during Ramadan
Palestinian workers are not granted work permits in Israel and are being chased and harassed while trying to work and feed their families.
http://imemc.org/article/57056

Abbas thanks Bush
“Your efforts, Mr. President, as well as your vision, both help us and the Israelis to work very hard during the last year.”
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1024595.html

PA admits collaborating with US-Israel v. Hamas
Fatah officers openly called for “joint action with Israel against the common enemy — Hamas,” and expressed their “willingness to take care of the Hamas mosques and institutions using information provided by Israel”. . . . Those who are no less concerned than Abbas are American General Keith Dayton, who is rebuilding the PA’s defensive forces, as well as IDF and Shin Bet officers who recommend Israeli assistance to Fatah in preparation for war. . . . Fatah leaders have emergency escape plans, and most of them own homes overseas.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3600099,00.html

Palestinian refugee organizations defend right of return to President Abbas
It has been clear at all stages of the negotiations that this process aims to eliminate the core issue of the Arab/Palestinian struggle for freedom and justice: the Palestinian refugees and their rights of return and restitution.
http://www.alternativenews.org/news/english/letter-of-palestinian-refugee-organizations-to-president-mahmoud-abbas-20080925.html

Palestinians protest McCartney visit, but apartheid supporters rejoice
Sir Paul was forced to abandon a trip to the West Bank city of Ramallah on Wednesday because of planned Palestinian protests against his gig, billed as part of the celebrations of the Jewish state’s 60th birthday. . . . “When one of the most admired musicians in the world not only expresses his willingness to visit Tel Aviv, but also publicly talks about the positive things he’s heard about Israel, this is an Israeli diplomatic and PR success of the first order,” said Ron Prosor, the Israeli Ambassador to London
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article4828082.ece

DailyKos (and others) get free trip to Israel, but won’t touch Israel-Palestine
What was so shocking was the ease with which left bloggers and leaders allowed themselves to be purchased with the promise of a free trip. . . . In fact, a cursory search in DailyKos indicates that debate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is nearly invisible.
http://www.muzzlewatch.com/?p=402

Israel lobby behind Islamophobic video
A group of hard-line U.S. neo-conservatives and former Israeli diplomats, among others, are behind the mass distribution, ahead of the November U.S. presidential election, of a controversial DVD that critics have denounced as Islamophobic.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43983

New York socialites dismayed by protest at Leviev-sponsored fundraiser
Manhattan’s elite were aghast to be greeted this evening by 25 chanting protesters when they exited their SUVs and limos to attend a glitzy fundraiser sponsored by Israeli billionaire Lev Leviev for the Museum of the City of New York.
http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2008/09/100205.html

WAR AT HOME

Pelosi fronts for Bush bailout plan
It’s not me blowing this up, it’s the Republicans.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/26/business/26bailout.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

The making of the free-market meltdown
[N]one of the Democrats are opposing the essence of the Paulson plan: funneling $700 billion in taxpayer money to the very people who drove the economy into the crisis in the first place.
http://socialistworker.org/2008/09/24/free-market-meltdown

Michigan protest demands foreclosure moratorium
Chanting “Bail out the people, not the banks,” hundreds of poor and working people from across Michigan converged on the Capitol here on Sept. 17 demanding the State Legislature enact SB 1306, a two-year foreclosure moratorium bill.
http://www.workers.org/2008/us/michigan_1002/

Statement by Rosenbergs’ children
All that we have learned in the last two weeks, coupled with all that we have gleaned from the information already available, reinforces the biggest lesson of our parents’ case: The U.S. Government abused its power in truly dangerous ways that are still very relevant today.
http://www.rfc.org/Statement%20of%20Michael%20and%20Robert%20Meeropol%2009.23.08.html

Torture on death row
So they finally killed Jack Alderman after all. More than 33 years after his conviction for the murder of his wife, the whole time spent on Georgia’s death row, he was executed last Wednesday despite frantic last-minute attempts to have him reprieved.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/sep/22/humanrights.usa

ANTIWAR MOVEMENT

Woolsey & Lee opposed antiwar challenge to Biden
Prominent Democratic antiwar stalwarts such as Rep. Lynne Woolsey (D-CA) and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) — in the name of “party unity” — rejected calls by some delegates for a roll-call vote in which Biden would be pitted against an antiwar challenger for the vice-presidential nomination
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5549

GI Resistance: Iraq and Afghanistan are same war
People internationally are looking to the U.S. antiwar movement to take up these demands and really fight to end the war in Iraq and end the war in Afghanistan, because the U.S. government is not going to stop in this agenda that it has. . . . To me, it’s the same war. It’s about the same things. The excuses that they’re using are as unjustified in Afghanistan as in Iraq.
http://socialistworker.org/2008/09/25/antiwar-strategy-and-tactics

Kent State protest against National Guard recruitment
“We are here because we feel the moral compass needs reset. We attend every National Guard event because it doesn’t make sense that Kent students were shot by them and now we allow them to recruit on our campus.”
http://media.www.kentnewsnet.com/media/storage/paper867/news/2008/09/24/News/AntiWar.Protest.Interrupts.Event-3448458.shtml

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NYCLAW Antiwar Digest

New York City Labor Against the War (NYCLAW)

NYCLAW Antiwar Digest

 

Sun Sep 21, 2008 11:46 am (PDT)

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OVERVIEW

Senate passes $612b bipartisan war bill
As passed on an 88-8 vote, the measure would authorize $103.9 billion for Pentagon procurement, $1.2 billion more than President George W. Bush’s request.
http://news.yahoo.com/story//nm/20080918/pl_nm/usa_defense_senate_dc

$700b for bad mortgages
The proposal was stunning for its stark simplicity: less than three pages, it would raise the national debt ceiling to $11.3 trillion. And it would place no restrictions on the administration other than requiring semi-annual reports to Congress.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/business/21cong.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

AFGHANISTAN

U.S. escalation has killed at least 1400 civilians in 2008
“This is the highest number of civilian deaths to occur in a single month since the end of major hostilities and the ousting of the Taliban regime at the end of 2001.”
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/09/16/asia/AS-Afghan-Violence.php

U.S. General: Far more troops needed in Afghanistan
“We are not losing, but we are winning slower in some places than others.”
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iIE29KvrMkQhd118TuP3ddanKkywD937VJP00

Resistance show strength, sophistication
In contrast to the insurgents’ freedom of movement, Western forces must expend great effort and large numbers of troops to dominate even a sliver of territory. . . . [I]n the [next 3-5 years], will we have enough forces to take the initiative away from the Taliban? The answer is probably no.”
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-insurgency18-2008sep18,0,638330.story

War and drought generate resistance
“The lower part of society, when facing hunger, will not wait. We could have riots.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/19/world/asia/19afghan.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Modernized Taliban thrives
“The new Taliban has much broader goals — to drive foreign forces out of the country and the Muslim world.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/19/AR2008091903980_pf.html

Does UPFJ support a kinder occupation of Afghanistan?
Should the peace movement support U.S. military forces in a policing role, rather than counter-insurgency role?
http://www.unitedforpeace.org/article.php?id=3946

“Humanitarian” occupation?
Given the toxic track record of the Bush administration on corruption, lack of health care and a crumbling infrastructure in the U.S. itself, can anyone really believe that Washington has sent troops all the way to Afghanistan for humanitarian purposes?
http://www.workers.org/2008/world/afghanistan_0925/

PAKISTAN

U.S. military advisors on the way?
A long-delayed plan to send dozens of U.S. military advisors to Pakistan to train its army in counterinsurgency could begin in a matter of weeks.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mullen19-2008sep19,0,2298512.story

U.S. killing of five civilians generates resistance
The attack occurred in the evening, as the villagers were breaking the Ramadan fast. . . . Thousands of Wazirs from the area vowed during a meeting on Wednesday to raise a volunteer army to make incursions into Afghanistan against NATO forces if the Americans again carried out a raid inside Pakistan.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/18/world/asia/18pstan.html?ref=world

Turning to the Taleban in Pakistan
“I would rather live in the dark ages under the Taleban than be subservient to any foreign power.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7623097.stm

What really motivates the resistance?
Though, in the world of the Western media, the Taliban has been entirely conflated with al-Qaeda, most of their supporters are, in fact, driven by quite local concerns.
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174977/tariq_ali_has_the_u_s_invasion_of_pakistan_begun_

IRAN

Israel-US ‘Secret War With Iran’
Israel and America are intensifying a clandestine war against Iran that has run hot and cold since the Islamic Revolution in 1979 but has grown more urgent.
http://www.nysun.com/foreign/israel-waging-secret-war-with-iran/85831/

IRAQ

U.S. airstrike kills at least 7 in Iraqi village . . . .
“This family was a victim of terrorism before, and now they are the victims of the Americans.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/19/AR2008091900732.html

U.S. still imprisons thousands of Iraqis
The number of detainees the US military is holding in Iraq will probably exceed 15,000 by year’s end.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20080918/ts_csm/adetainees

Amnesty: Many crimes of U.S.-backed regime
The easy availability of small arms and lack of accountability in Iraq has contributed to sectarian killings by armed groups, as well as torture and other ill-treatment; extra-judicial executions by Iraqi government forces and the continuing arbitrary detention of thousands of suspects by Iraqi soldiers backed by US armed forces since 2003.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/17/armstrade.humanrights

Ethnic cleansing, not “surge,” caused decline in sectarian violence
“Our findings suggest that the surge has had no observable effect, except insofar as it has helped to provide a seal of approval for a process of ethno-sectarian neighborhood homogenization that is now largely achieved.”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080919/sc_nm/iraq_lights_dc

But resistance continues
“Honestly, I don’t know who we are fighting,” said Staff Sgt. Tim Carter, who has survived six roadside bomb attacks. . . . “I think the (American) people think the war is over. But they don’t realize the amount of contact that we receive out here.”
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iyT9166Mn9NskjD67kCk9VZC_4mwD937LKVG0

And continues
“The security improvement is just in the media, it has nothing to do with reality.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/18/world/middleeast/18iraq.html?ref=world

Seven GIs die in copter crash
It was the 69th helicopter to go down in Iraq since the start of the war.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/19/world/middleeast/19iraq.html?hp

U.S. war crimes go unpunished
With a very few exceptions, most who were court-martialed have been acquitted. Those who were convicted have generally served light sentences.
http://www.truthout.org/article/when-refusing-kill-has-a-higher-sentence-than-murder

Vets’ transforming trauma
“I realised it wasn’t about freedom and democracy, and the way we conducted ourselves, and the way we brutalised the people, made me against the occupation.”
http://www.countercurrents.org/jamail200908.htm

Winter Soldier Iraq and Afghanistan: Eyewitness accounts of the occupation
[A] gut-wrenching, historic chronicle of what the U.S. military has done to Iraq, as well as its own soldiers.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43891

PALESTINE

Freedom Rider: Boycott Israel
Israel does function as America did in its own apartheid era. It does so with impunity, comfortable in the knowledge that no one who speaks the truth about that government will ever be powerful enough to take action against it.
http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=783&Itemid=36

Palestinian laborers beaten in ’48 areas  
“The occupation is creative in devising ways in which to wage war on the Palestinian people.”
http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3586&Itemid=1

Gaza a massive concentration camp
The sister-in-law of former British prime minister Tony Blair has called Gaza a “concentration camp” and a “humanitarian crisis on the scale of Darfur.”
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1221489063620&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

The 1948 murder of Count Folke Bernadotte — Who are the terrorists, again?
Two of the planners. . . . were pardoned a few months later and one of them took his place as an elected member of the Knesset. The names of the conspirators are forgotten today except one, [future Israeli prime minister] Yitzhak Shamir.
http://www.counterpunch.org/heller09172008.html

New study illuminates Neocon-Israel lobby
The right wing of Israeli politics, the neoconservatives in the U.S. who strongly support Israel, and the aging Israel lobby in the United States all have worked together, and are still doing so, to bring about more wars, regime changes, and instability, specifically the fragmentation of any Middle Eastern states that might ever conceivably threaten Israel.
http://counterpunch.org/christison09202008.html

Second Palestinian battalion begins U.S.-funded training
Washington wants to train the backbone of a Palestinian gendarmerie that would underpin any future state.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080918/wl_nm/palestinians_israel_troops_dc

Hamas calls for self-defense v. PA puppet regime
“We call upon our people and the [fighters] to defend themselves by all available means against any attempt to arrest them by [Fatah security] services, which are now working as a unit of the Zionist army”. . . . Hamas said some 300 of its members had been detained by Fatah in the West Bank over the past year, and about half remained in custody.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1022128.html

“Democracy” under Fatah, Israel
Fatah, or more correctly the American-empowered camp within the movement, actively collaborated with the CIA and Israel to “make the Hamas experiment fail” lest it be repeated elsewhere in the Middle East and the rest of the Muslim world. . . . We also know that the PA is 150% subservient to the US which is in turn subservient to Israel. So why speak to the monkey when you can speak to organ grinder?!!
http://palestinethinktank.com/2008/09/19/the-joke-of-palestinian-democracy-under-fatah-israel/

Open letter to PA President Abbas
You were not elected to give away our rights . . . [or] to give away the hopes and dreams and rights of people who are still in refugee camps, living on rented lands and wait to return to their original homes and lands for the past 60 years.
http://annies-letters.blogspot.com/2008/09/i-remember-that-our-right-of-return-to.html

Israel Bonds honors Jewish Labor Committee apartheid defender . . . .
The honoree of the dinner was RWDSU’s Stuart Appelbaum, who is pictured below with Clinton, state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli and Joshua Matza, president and CEO of State of Israel Bonds. DiNapoli announced a $15 million investment by the pension fund in State of Israel Bonds.
http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/2008/09/israel-bonds-rwdsu-yes-antiira.html

. . . . At which Clinton threatens Iran
“U.S. policy must be clear and unequivocal. We cannot, we should not, we must not permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons”. . . . The event, at the Grand Hyatt, was organized by the Development Corporation of Israel in honor of labor leader Stuart Appelbaum and the sale of $40 million in Israel bonds.
http://www.observer.com/2008/politics/pro-israel-crowd-split-clintons-withdrawal-stop-iran-rally

Canadian carpenters’ union commits apartheid denial
[T]he Council unanimously adopted a resolution denouncing the characterization by a limited number of other Canadian unions of Israel as an apartheid state.
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/canadas-carpenters-union-unanimously-passes/story.aspx?guid={48C4A86F-363E-4277-88A7-553CF0D45941}&dist=hppr

DARFUR

U.S. backs genocidal general for Darfur command
In February, a Spanish judge charged Karenzi and 39 other Rwandan officials with the mass killings of Rwandan civilians and of several Spanish and Canadian missionaries and relief workers. Nevertheless, the United States, Britain and Rwanda have urged U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to renew Karenzi’s contract when it expires next month.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/20/AR2008092001801.html

COLOMBIA

U.S. has financed murder of 3000 trade unionists
At least 27 trade unionists have been killed this year and almost 3,000 union members are said to have been killed in the past 22 years. . . . Colombia has received about $5.5 billion in aid since 2000 from the US.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2008/09/2008919201016521775.html

U.S.-backed army commander tied to death squads
“Our experience with Montoya is a good one,” Thomas A. Shannon Jr., assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, said by telephone from Washington. “He is a great field commander.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/16/AR2008091603006.html

WAR AT HOME

A bankrupt empire hits the wall
Never before in U.S. history has a major crisis in the sphere of economic relations, expressing both massive private and governmental bankruptcy, come at the same time as a failing Imperial war draining off what little national capital remains.
http://www.uruknet.de/?p=34902

Scapegoated after the storm
Billions of dollars are poured into war and bailouts for Wall Street CEOs, while the rest of us are left behind and stranded, every bit as much as those now trapped and suffering on Galveston Island.
http://socialistworker.org/2008/09/17/scapegoated-after-the-storm

Workers, oppressed to pay billions to bail out Wall Street
The only way out is the way of resistance — like the movement to stop foreclosures, which is gathering steam around the country.
http://www.workers.org/2008/us/capitalist_meltdown_0925/

Latinos face increased racial profiling
Nearly 10% of Latinos said they had been stopped by police or other authorities and asked about their immigration status in the last year.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-immig19-2008sep19,0,1001572.story

Why rush a lynching?
There was no physical evidence against Mr. Davis, and the murder weapon was never found. As for the witnesses, their testimony was obviously shaky in the extreme — not the sort of evidence you want to rely upon when putting someone to death.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/20/opinion/20herbert.html?ref=opinion

Scores of L.A. rail casualties because govt. rejected safety measures
Twenty-five people died and 135 were injured in a crash Friday. . . . The Bush administration, in a statement a year ago, strongly opposed mandatory positive train controls, saying the technology “has not yet been proven.”
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-traincrash17-2008sep17,0,6020186.story

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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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NYCLAW Antiwar Digest

New York City Labor Against the War (NYCLAW)

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/ny-nycolu0912,0,3929974.story

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/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/12/AR2008091203114.html

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/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/10/AR2008091003393.html

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/ALeqM5i8dGftYb0s4XWdUMRdIVs3vh1CKAD934N4000

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/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?sectionName=HomePage&id=94d0ba0f-eca4-42ed-98ec-b81347f483be&&Headline=US+at+the+%27edge+of+historical+defeat%27%3a+Taliban&strParent=strParentID

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/ayesha09122008.html

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/2008/09/corporate-political-duopolys-policy-on-afghanistan-same-old/

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/2008/09/11/washington/11policy.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

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/2008/09/13/world/asia/13pstan.html?hp

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/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/11/AR2008091103789.html?nav=rss_world/mideast

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/nationworld/world/la-fg-pakistan12-2008sep12,0,3916230.story

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/nationworld/world/la-fg-gates11-2008sep11,0,4550839.story

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/hallinan09102008.html

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/world/2008/sep/11/iraq

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.net/article/articleview/7373/

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/article/17064/

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/article/marketsNews/idUSN0932568720080909

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/2008/09/12/world/middleeast/12jenin.html?8dpc

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/f2008/f0912_1.html

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/commentisfree/2008/sep/12/israelandthepalestinians.middleeast

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/v2/article9817.shtml

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/articles/0,7340,L-3595097,00.html

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=m47176&hd=&size=1&l=e

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/v2/article9818.shtml

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/article/20080911/NATIONAL/921510694/1001/rss

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/cantor09112008.html

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/2008/09/13/world/americas/13venez.html?ref=world

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/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/10/AR2008091003419.html

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/2008/09/12/us/12cong.html?hp

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/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/11/AR2008091103306.html

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/washington09112008.html

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/2008/09/13/us/13execute.html?ref=us

NYCLAW Antiwar Digest

http://atticathefilm.com/images/ATTICA_2007.gif

New York City Labor Against the War (NYCLAW)

NYCLAW Antiwar Digest

Wed Sep 10, 2008 4:10 pm (PDT)



Overview

Obama Needs to the Peace Vote: Can he get it? Does he deserve it? Can he win without it?
[A]bolition of slavery, voting rights for women, ending child labor, the forty hour work week, health care for the poor and elderly — all these issues were off the table until voters organized outside the two parties of the era.
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/73703

Afghanistan

Obama: Bush’s escalation still isn’t enough
Bush “is moving in the direction of the policy that I have advocated for years.” But he said the plan also “comes up short” because “it is not enough troops and not enough resources, with not enough urgency” . . . . The new deployments represent a 15 percent increase in U.S. military personnel for Afghanistan, and administration officials say the groundwork is being laid for more troops in the future. One senior official told reporters during a background briefing yesterday that the latest influx of troops is “a down payment on what will eventually be an even larger U.S. commitment to Afghanistan.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/09/AR2008090900323.html

2 Afghan civilians killed, 10 wounded by NATO bomb

A NATO bomb missed its target by more than 1 1/2 miles and hit a house Tuesday, killing two Afghan civilians and wounding 10 at a time of rising tension between the Afghan government and international troops over the use of airstrikes.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/09/AR2008090900611.html

Fox News & Oliver North Involved with U.S. Afghanistan Massacre Cover-up
Looking at the video from the Times, which shows rows of dead bodies, including many children, we can only conclude that North has once again lied for the government.
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m47090&hd=&size=1&l=e

Iraq

Troop “reduction” level still higher than before surge
There are 157,000 US troops in Iraq and Kuwait, of whom 146,000 are in Iraq. The withdrawal announced yesterday will reduce the total in Iraq to 138,000, more than when Bush ordered an extra 31,000 troops to Iraq in January last year, which he said would be a year-long deployment.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/10/iraq.usa

Victory in Iraq declared, not achieved
The Iraq troop withdrawals President Bush announced on Tuesday at the National Defence University were much ado about nothing.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/10/iraq.usforeignpolicy

U.S. troops kill doctor on way to hospital
[A] doctor was mistakenly killed by American forces east of Baquba while he was driving to work at a general hospital. . . . The statement said “the driver ignored all signs to stop.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/09/world/middleeast/09iraq.html?ref=world

Suffering in “post-surge” Iraq
The antiwar movement still has a case to make against the occupation of Iraq — and in a presidential election where both candidates agree that “victory” in Iraq is the goal, it’s more important than ever for opponents of war and occupation to put forward the argument that the U.S. has only made the lives of Iraqis worse.
http://socialistworker.org/2008/09/10/post-surge-iraq

Palestine

Israel moves to Judaise East Jerusalem
The Israeli government is attempting to Judaise Palestinian East Jerusalem, and maintain a Jewish majority against the demographic threat of a higher Palestinianbirth rate.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43833

Israel cutting off Gaza from West Bank
“Through this new regime of permits, Israel is turning Palestinians from the territories into ‘illegal residents’ in their own home,’ in an unprecedented move which has no legal basis.”
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3594576,00.html

Histadrut is major enforcer for Israeli apartheid
Live among Israel’s Palestinian minority for even a short time and one is forced to abandon the widely accepted notion of Israel as a liberal democracy. . . . Enforcing this segregated employment structure are official public institutions, state monopolies, and the government itself. The most important is the Histadrut.
http://www.jkcook.net/Articles2/0331.htm#Top

Marking 5th anniversary of protests, Ni’lin marchers choke on tear gas
Dozens choke on tear gas and are hit with rubber-coated metal bullets as protesters mark fifth anniversary of the Ni’lin anit-wall campaign on Monday afternoon.
http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=31817

PA fires on Aida camp refugees demanding water
Palestinian Authority (PA) forces used teargas and bullets to disperse demonstrators from Aida Refugee Camp who were demanding water from local PA authorities. . . . Camp residents say that they have gone without water at times for up to two weeks.
http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=31847

Video cameras document systemic anti-Palestinian violence
The most obvious comparison to Shooting back is the infamous Rodney King video, which sent shockwaves through America, and proved conclusively that the black community’s complaints of police racism and harassment were by no means a figment of their imagination.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/10/israelandthepalestinians.middleeast

Sixteen anti-democratic laws submitted to Knesset
According to Haaretz columnist, Akiva Eldar, most of these laws have been supported by the Labor Party.
http://www.alternativenews.org/news/english/sixteen-anti-democratic-laws-submitted-to-the-israeli-knesset-20080904.html

African-American performer forced to dance at Tel Aviv airport
Dancer Abdur-Rahim Jackson, of New York, was detained by Israeli airport security officers because of his Muslim first name, and was forced to dance to prove he was no terrorist. . . . Security officials at Ben-Gurion airport refused to issue an apology.
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2008/09/10/2008-09-10_untitled__a-3.html

Hamas has widespread popular support
The reality is if democratic elections were held in the Middle East tomorrow, Hamas would be swept to victory wherever candidates stood.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20713.htm

PA declares its intention to fire non-striking civil servants
This statement was issued despite that fact that the PA government denied coyly its intention to cut the salaries of civil servants who were not committed to the strikes after it was severely reprimanded by human rights and civil society institutions.

Five children dead so far in PA-Ordered Strike v. Hamas
Five children have so far lost their lives in Gaza’s hospitals due to the strike of nurses and doctors called for by the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah and heeded by Fatah loyalists.
http://www.arabmonitor.info/news/dettaglio.php?idnews=24586&lang=en

Fatah rank-and-file impatient with PA’s collaboration
[W]ithin Fatah grassroots there is growing impatience to rejoin the rest of thePalestinian people as part of the struggle, rather than allowing what is left of their movement to be turned into a tool of Israel.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9815.shtml

War at Home

Boeing strikers intent on winning
“We’ve made them record profits, and now they want to sell us out like we’re nothing?”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/10/business/10boeing.html?hp

37th anniversary of Attica prison uprising
The rebellion began on Sept. 9 as a protest against jail conditions and ended on Sept. 13 as one of the bloodiest days in the 20th century in the U.S. The state of New York eventually paid the surviving prisoners $12 million in damages for killing, beating and torturing prisoners.
http://www.democracynow.org/2003/9/11/sept_9_13_1971_new_york

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NYCLAW ANTIWAR DIGEST

NYCLAW ANTIWAR DIGEST
New York City Labor Against the War (NYCLAW)

Mon Sep 8, 2008 4:01 pm (PDT)

Overview

Obama and McCain campaigns fan ‘war on terrorism’ hysteria
The bipartisan consensus responsible for the “war on terrorism” lie has never
been more ironclad. The next presidential administration will be a continuation
of the Bush-Cheney nightmare — in substance, if not in style.
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_3715.shtml

Afghanistan

US air power triples deaths of Afghan civilians, says report
“There has been a massive and unprecedented surge in the use of air power in
Afghanistan in 2008. . . . Mistakes by the US and Nato have dramatically
decreased public support for the Afghan government and the presence of
international forces providing security to Afghans.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/08/afghanistan.usa

US Attacks Leave 500 civilians killed, injured
At least 500 civilians were killed or wounded during the five-day US-led
troops` ground and air operation in the Sangin district of Helmand province.
http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?205155

Evidence Points to Civilian Toll in Afghan Raid
Accounts from survivors, including three people wounded in the bombing,
described repeated strikes on houses where dozens of children were sleeping,
grandparents and uncles and aunts huddled inside with them. . . . “They bombard
us, they hate us, they kill us. . . . God will punish them.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/08/world/asia/08afghan.html?hp

Harrowing video film backs Afghan villagers’ claims of carnage caused by US
troops
Women are heard wailing in the background. “Oh God, this is just a child,”
shouts one villager. Another cries: “My mother, my mother.” . . . Local people
say that US forces bombed preparations for a memorial ceremony for a tribal
leader. Residential compounds were levelled by US attack helicopters, armed
drones and a cannon-armed C130 Spectre gunship.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article4699077.ece

Pakistan

U.S. drones kill 16 in missile attack in Pakistan
“No foreign militant was killed”. . . . Fifteen to 20 wounded people, most of
them women and children, had been taken to hospital.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/08/AR2008090800190.html

Iraq

Rice: “A thousand times again”
Of a war that has cost more than 4,100 American lives, left an additional
30,000 seriously wounded and killed tens of thousands of Iraqis, Ms. Rice says.
. . . “I’d do it a thousand times again. I’d do it a thousand times again.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/books/07book.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Inmates tell of sexual abuse and beatings in Iraq’s overcrowded juvenile prison
system
“Trials last on average for 25 minutes, no witnesses are called, confessions
are used as the only evidence, and court-appointed defence lawyers get the case
file on the day of the trial, leaving no chance to consult the defendant in
private.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/08/iraq.humanrights

GI Casualties

On a Southern California beach, young war widows come together to grieve
There is no official list of U.S. war widows, but there are thousands — nearly
half of the 4,155 soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan were married. Most of
the dead were young, as are the women they left behind.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/complete/la-me-widow8-2008sep08,0,4573938,print.story

Palestine

Israel still destroying Gaza industrial sector
The crisis in Gaza’s industrial sectors has continued to escalate despite the
truce. . . . Israeli policies [have] lead to the closure of 3,900 factories and
workshops in the Gaza Strip, leaving 70,000 Gazans unemployed.
http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=31775

Arab activists accuse Israel of Gaza genocide
“The catastrophic situation in which Gaza citizens live, which led to the
deterioration of medical, economic, ecological and humanitarian conditions, in
addition to the death of innocent people, amounts to genocide.”
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iydPB-tm4GnAyyjXmM55qThDEzuA

Shin Bet’s academic freedom
Those who support an academic boycott of Israel often argue that Israel’s
universities serve the occupation and its army. There is something to this.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1018912.html

Olmert’s deputy is accused of war crimes
Mr Mofaz, after ensuring he was not being officially recorded, called for a
Palestinian death toll of 70 per day.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/olmert-indicted-as-deputy-is-accused-of-war-crimes-922496.html

The Palestinians: Warehousing a “surplus people”
Overall, while both peoples suffered extreme economic oppression leading to the
impoverishment of their entire populations, the daily repression suffered by
Palestinians is on a scale that apparently surpasses that of South Africa in
its apartheid days.
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/18750

Arming Abbas’s security reward for its role in liquidating resistance
Hamas said that the Israeli occupation authority’s delivery of 1,000
machineguns to the PA security apparatuses loyal to PA chief Mahmoud Abbas was
meant as a reward for those apparatuses’ efforts in protecting Israel’s
security.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/en/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcOd87MDI46m9rUxJEpMO%2bi1s7T5ZT%2bQmEI2bEwLlEedn5UrVgMEhSLkx1vzGRGEjjRlPYElEAMfx13nCKmP7AYLbtsybRH0siNSybR%2bohMm8pSa4I9lL8ukiULKhmoraBu6c%3d

Zionist myth of enforced exile
Jews worldwide have always tended to form religious communities, usually by
conversion; they cannot be said to share an ethnicity derived from a unique
origin and displaced over 20 centuries of wandering.
http://mondediplo.com/2008/09/07israel

Georgia

US military trained Georgian commandos
The US military provided combat training to 80 Georgian special forces
commandos only months prior to Georgia’s army assault in South Ossetia in
August.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bdffd9a6-7b71-11dd-b839-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1

Islamophobia

What western feminists should do about the veil
[T]he veil seems to be a real blind spot for some people, even for western
feminists, who appear to infantilise women who choose to wear the veil, even as
they argue men have infantilised women in other areas.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/08/religion.gender

War at Home

Few Stand to Gain on This Bailout, and Many Lose
[T]he companies’ outgoing leaders could see big paydays — a prospect that
angers many investors, particularly because ordinary stockholders could be
virtually wiped out. . . . Wall Street investment banks, meanwhile, are
breathing a sigh of relief.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/08/business/08scorecard.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Antiwar Veterans & Military Families

Bipartisan War
Former Army sniper Garett Reppenhagen of Colorado Springs, Colo., said, “Both
parties got us into this war, both parties need to get us out.”
http://www.fortmilltimes.com/124/story/275015.html

Neither Iraq Nor Afghanistan
Juan Torres, whose son, Juan Torres Jr., was killed at Bagram Air Base in
Afghanistan, told me . . . . “We’re here to stop the war in Afghanistan, too.”
http://www.alternet.org/story/97812/

IVAW Debates Afghanistan
“IVAW is in a unique position to lead the antiwar movement on [Afghanistan],
and begin to build solidarity with veterans opposed to the global war on
terror.
http://socialistworker.org/2008/09/08/antiwar-veterans-conventions

VFP Takes Stand Against Afghan War
The resolution called for the immediate withdrawal of all military and
intelligence forces.
http://pacificfreepress.com/content/view/3007/1/

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NYCLAW Antiwar Digest

NYCLAW Antiwar Digest

Mon Sep 8, 2008 4:01 pm (PDT)

New York City Labor Against the War (NYCLAW)
NYCLAW Antiwar Digest

NYCLAW Website
http://nyclaw01.wordpress.com/

About NYCLAW
http://nyclaw01.wordpress.com/about-nyclaw/

Contact NYCLAW
http://nyclaw01.wordpress.com/contact-nyclaw/

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Overview

Obama and McCain campaigns fan ‘war on terrorism’ hysteria The bipartisan consensus responsible for the “war on terrorism” lie has never been more ironclad. The next presidential administration will be a continuation of the Bush-Cheney nightmare — in substance, if not in style.http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_3715.shtml

Afghanistan

US air power triples deaths of Afghan civilians, says report
“There has been a massive and unprecedented surge in the use of air power in Afghanistan in 2008. . . . Mistakes by the US and Nato have dramatically decreased public support for the Afghan government and the presence of international forces providing security to Afghans.”http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/08/afghanistan.usa

US Attacks Leave 500 civilians killed, injured
At least 500 civilians were killed or wounded during the five-day US-led troops` ground and air operation in the Sangin district of Helmand province.
http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?205155

Evidence Points to Civilian Toll in Afghan Raid
Accounts from survivors, including three people wounded in the bombing, described repeated strikes on houses where dozens of children were sleeping, grandparents and uncles and aunts huddled inside with them. . . . “They bombard us, they hate us, they kill us. . . . God will punish them.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/08/world/asia/08afghan.html?hp

Harrowing video film backs Afghan villagers’ claims of carnage caused by US troops
Women are heard wailing in the background. “Oh God, this is just a child,” shouts one villager. Another cries: “My mother, my mother.” . . . Local people say that US forces bombed preparations for a memorial ceremony for a tribal leader. Residential compounds were levelled by US attack helicopters, armed drones and a cannon-armed C130 Spectre gunship.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article4699077.ece

Pakistan

U.S. drones kill 16 in missile attack in Pakistan
“No foreign militant was killed”. . . . Fifteen to 20 wounded people, most of them women and children, had been taken to hospital.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/08/AR2008090800190.html

Iraq

Rice: “A thousand times again”
Of a war that has cost more than 4,100 American lives, left an additional 30,000 seriously wounded and killed tens of thousands of Iraqis, Ms. Rice says. . . . “I’d do it a thousand times again. I’d do it a thousand times again.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/books/07book.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Inmates tell of sexual abuse and beatings in Iraq’s overcrowded juvenile prison system
“Trials last on average for 25 minutes, no witnesses are called, confessions are used as the only evidence, and court-appointed defence lawyers get the case file on the day of the trial, leaving no chance to consult the defendant in private.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/08/iraq.humanrights

GI Casualties

On a Southern California beach, young war widows come together to grieve There is no official list of U.S. war widows, but there are thousands — nearly half of the 4,155 soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan were married. Most of the dead were young, as are the women they left behind.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/complete/la-me-widow8-2008sep08,0,4573938,print.story

Palestine

Israel still destroying Gaza industrial sector
The crisis in Gaza’s industrial sectors has continued to escalate despite the truce. . . . Israeli policies [have] lead to the closure of 3,900 factories and workshops in the Gaza Strip, leaving 70,000 Gazans unemployed.
http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=31775

Arab activists accuse Israel of Gaza genocide
“The catastrophic situation in which Gaza citizens live, which led to the deterioration of medical, economic, ecological and humanitarian conditions, in addition to the death of innocent people, amounts to genocide.”
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iydPB-tm4GnAyyjXmM55qThDEzuA

Shin Bet’s academic freedom
Those who support an academic boycott of Israel often argue that Israel’s universities serve the occupation and its army. There is something to this.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1018912.html

Olmert’s deputy is accused of war crimes
Mr Mofaz, after ensuring he was not being officially recorded, called for aPalestinian death toll of 70 per day.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/olmert-indicted-as-deputy-is-accused-of-war-crimes-922496.html

The Palestinians: Warehousing a “surplus people”
Overall, while both peoples suffered extreme economic oppression leading to the impoverishment of their entire populations, the daily repression suffered by Palestinians is on a scale that apparently surpasses that of South Africa in its apartheid days.
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/18750

Arming Abbas’s security reward for its role in liquidating resistance
Hamas said that the Israeli occupation authority’s delivery of 1,000 machineguns to the PA security apparatuses loyal to PA chief Mahmoud Abbas was meant as a reward for those apparatuses’ efforts in protecting Israel’s security.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/en/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcOd87MDI46m9rUxJEpMO%2bi1s7T5ZT%2bQmEI2bEwLlEedn5UrVgMEhSLkx1vzGRGEjjRlPYElEAMfx13nCKmP7AYLbtsybRH0siNSybR%2bohMm8pSa4I9lL8ukiULKhmoraBu6c%3d

Zionist myth of enforced exile
Jews worldwide have always tended to form religious communities, usually by conversion; they cannot be said to share an ethnicity derived from a unique origin and displaced over 20 centuries of wandering.
http://mondediplo.com/2008/09/07israel

Georgia

US military trained Georgian commandos
The US military provided combat training to 80 Georgian special forces commandos only months prior to Georgia’s army assault in South Ossetia in August.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bdffd9a6-7b71-11dd-b839-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1

Islamophobia

What western feminists should do about the veil
[T]he veil seems to be a real blind spot for some people, even for western feminists, who appear to infantilise women who choose to wear the veil, even as they argue men have infantilised women in other areas.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/08/religion.gender

War at Home

Few Stand to Gain on This Bailout, and Many Lose
[T]he companies’ outgoing leaders could see big paydays — a prospect that angers many investors, particularly because ordinary stockholders could be virtually wiped out. . . . Wall Street investment banks, meanwhile, are breathing a sigh of relief.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/08/business/08scorecard.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Antiwar Veterans & Military Families

Bipartisan War
Former Army sniper Garett Reppenhagen of Colorado Springs, Colo., said, “Both parties got us into this war, both parties need to get us out.”http://www.fortmilltimes.com/124/story/275015.html

Neither Iraq Nor Afghanistan
Juan Torres, whose son, Juan Torres Jr., was killed at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, told me . . . . “We’re here to stop the war in Afghanistan, too.”
http://www.alternet.org/story/97812/

IVAW Debates Afghanistan
“IVAW is in a unique position to lead the antiwar movement on [Afghanistan], and begin to build solidarity with veterans opposed to the global war on terror.
http://socialistworker.org/2008/09/08/antiwar-veterans-conventions

VFP Takes Stand Against Afghan War
The resolution called for the immediate withdrawal of all military and intelligence forces.
http://pacificfreepress.com/content/view/3007/1/

NYCLAW Antiwar Digest

NYCLAW Antiwar Digest

Sun Sep 7, 2008 12:40 pm (PDT)

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BIPARTISAN WAR — AND ANTI-IMPERIAL RESISTANCE — WILL GO ON
Americans will continue to kill and die — and suffer and inflict
terrible injuries — in the U.S. war in the Middle East, regardless of
who is elected president, well into the next administration and
beyond. . . . It has been a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy since
the Second World War that the U.S. must control the energy resources
of the Middle East. Not because we need them here at home. . . . but
because control of energy gives the U.S. a strangle-hold on our
corporations’ major economic competitors, the European Union and
northeast Asia (Japan, China and South Korea). Whether we call them
al-Qaida, Taliban, insurgents, terrorists or militants, the people
whom we’re trying to kill in the Middle East are those who want us out
of their countries and off of their resources.
http://counterpunch.org/estabrook09012008.html

AFGHANISTAN/PAKISTAN

AFGHANISTAN

UN HAS EVIDENCE AIR STRIKES KILLED 90 AFGHAN CIVILIANS
“90 civilians were killed, including 60 children, 15 women and 15 men.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/26/AR2008082600884.html

U.S. KILLS MORE AFGHAN CHILDREN
“Are these two children al Qaeda?” an angry resident asked as the
bodies were taken for burial.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-afghan-violence.html

NUMEROUS OCCUPATION STRIKES KILL AFGHAN CHILDREN
Western troops killed three Afghan children and wounded seven other
noncombatants in an errant artillery strike Monday. . . . Fueling
Afghan anger, two other children and a man were killed in a separate
incident Monday involving foreign troops near Kabul. . . . In the
other fatal incident. . . . Afghan TV showed the corpses of two
children and reported that a woman, apparently their mother, was
injured. The man was killed.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-afghan2-2008sep02,0,2374381.story

US ATTACKS ON CIVILIANS WILL CONTINUE AS LONG AS THE OCCUPATION
Last Saturday, a US air strike was responsible for the deaths of more
than 90 Afghans including women and children. . . . Tragic incidents
like this have been repeated over and over again. Almost every time,
the military perpetrators attempt to cover-up their mistakes and this
occasion was no exception. . . . Let the Afghans have their country
back and do with it what they will. Let the foreign troops come home
on their own two feet rather than in body bags.
http://www.gulfnews.com/opinion/columns/world/10240101.html

HEARTBROKEN AFGHAN GROOM WILL NEVER FORGIVE U.S. MURDER OF HIS FAMILY
I thought American forces were in Afghanistan for our security,” said
Attiqullah, his voice trembling. “I could never have imagined that
they would bomb my wedding party. They killed my entire family. I will
never forgive them”. . . . “Oh my God!” Attiqullah was now sobbing
uncontrollably. “I saw my bride and my family members; I saw the
pieces of their bodies scattered all over the place.”
http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/09/03/1330613.aspx

AFGHANS FED UP WITH GOVERNMENT, US
Ordinary Afghans are deeply bitter about American and NATO forces
because of errant bombs, heavy-handed searches and seizures and a
sense that the foreigners do not understand their culture. . . .
“(U.S. troops) are not making one mistake, but they are making one
thousand mistakes and they are killing many people.”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080905/ap_on_re_as/angry_afghans;_ylt=AoG.wCyKA1F.wdQRX8mtbkDlWMcF

US PROVOKES AFGHAN RESISTANCE
Heavy-handed bombing raids and house raids, which are seen as
culturally unacceptable by many Afghans who guard their privacy
fiercely, and the detention of hundreds of suspects for years without
trial at the Bagram air base and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have stirred up
Afghans’ strong independent streak and ancient dislike of invaders.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/26/world/asia/26afghan.html?ref=world

AFGHAN PUPPET FORCES WON’T FIGHT
If we did not have foreigners here, I don’t think the Afghan National
Army or police would come out of their bases.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/27/world/asia/27kandahar.html?hp

PLAN WOULD SHIFT FORCES FROM IRAQ TO AFGHANISTAN
[A]n Army brigade and a Marine battalion would be sent to Afghanistan
by early next year, adding about 4,500 troops to American forces there.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/05/world/middleeast/05military.html?hp

PAKISTAN

NATO GUNSHIPS KILL 15+ PAKISTANI CIVILIANS
NATO helicopter gunships attacked three houses near a stronghold of
the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s South Waziristan region early
Wednesday, killing at least 15 people, including women and children.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/04/world/asia/04attack.html

U.S. MISSILES KILLED AT LEAST SIX PAKISTANI CIVILIANS
It was the first of what American military officials said could be
more raids. . . . [O]n Thursday, a pilotless American aircraft struck
a large house in another village, Chaar Kehl, about 16 miles west of
Miran Shah. . . . “Only innocent civilians, including women and
children, have been targeted.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/06/world/asia/06pstan.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin

AT US BEHEST, PAKISTANI AIR WAR TERRORIZES CIVILIANS
The Pakistani military. . . . has used jet fighters and helicopter
gunships in the past three weeks to strike at insurgents who pour over
the border to attack American forces in Afghanistan. . . . [A]s a
result of the air campaign, more than 200,000 civilians have fled
their homes.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/08/31/asia/pakistan.php

U.S. ATTACKS ON PAKISTANI CIVILIANS GENERATE RESISTANCE
By killing civilians, General Abbas said, there was now a great risk
of an uprising by the tribesmen who supported the Pakistani soldiers
in the border area. . . . Sher Khan, a phone company employee in
Angoor Adda, said in a telephone interview that 19 people were killed
in the raid. He said most of the dead were women and children.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/04/world/asia/04attack.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

IRAQ

JURY ACQUITS FORMER MARINE IN KILLING OF IRAQIS
A former Marine accused of killing unarmed Iraqi detainees was
acquitted of voluntary manslaughter Thursday in a first-of-its-kind
federal trial.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Marines-Fallujah.html

U.S. DEATH SQUADS ECHO VIETNAM WAR’S OPERATION PHOENIX
The assassination program in Iraq is a collaborative effort between
the British SAS and the American Delta Force. It is called “Task Force
Black.”
http://www.infowars.com/?p=4248

U.S. “SUCESS” DUE TO DEATH SQUADS, NOT SURGE
Rather, Woodward reports, “groundbreaking” covert techniques,
beginning in 2007, enabled U.S. military and intelligence officials to
locate and kill insurgent leaders and key individuals in extremist groups.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/complete/la-na-iraqbook5-2008sep05,0,4542815.story

TERRIBLE TOLL OF U.S. WAR ON ANBAR
More than 1,000 American marines and soldiers have died. . . . The
fighting devastated much of Anbar. Falluja was razed; whole
neighborhoods in Ramadi were likewise flattened.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/02/world/middleeast/02anbar.html?ref=worldspecial

U.S. EVEN KILLS ITS IRAQI COLLABORATORS
A member of the Iraqi army in Tarmiya said it was “unbelievable” that
the Americans would not have known there was an Iraqi security force
checkpoint at the bridge, which sits at a strategic location. . . .
There have been several Sons of Iraq fighters killed by U.S. forces in
the last year.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/complete/la-fg-iraq4-2008sep04,0,908498.story

U.S. DETAINS SECOND IRAQI CAMERAMAN THIS WEEK
The American military says the U.N. mandate authorizing its presence
in Iraq allows it to hold anyone it deems a threat indefinitely.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-iraq-cameraman-detention.html

“IRAQ FOR SALE: SEE MALIKI”
Though Mr. Maliki seemed to be referring to all foreign troops in his
statements, Iraqi negotiators have said recently that an agreed-upon
2011 date is for combat forces only, and that “training and support”
forces could remain after that if invited by the Iraqi government. On
Monday, a senior Iraqi official said he understood that even a
departure date for combat troops would be “conditions driven”. . . .
Graffiti can be seen on the walls in Shiite districts of Baghdad
saying, “Iraq for sale: See Maliki.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/26/world/middleeast/26iraq.html?ref=worldspecial

NEXT PRESIDENT WILL HAVE MORE TROOPS
[T]he next president will inherit a force in Iraq that has slightly
more troops than in January 2007, when President Bush announced his
troop reinforcement plan.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/05/world/middleeast/05military.html?hp

PETRAEUS: DELAY IRAQ TROOP CUTS
Army Gen. David H. Petraeus has recommended that President Bush
postpone sharp troop cuts in Iraq until next year, delaying a
large-scale shift of combat forces to Afghanistan and reflecting
concerns that widespread violence could return to Iraq.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/complete/la-na-troops5-2008sep05,0,5083304.story

OBAMA PRAISES THE SURGE
In a much-anticipated interview with conservative nemesis Bill
O’Reilly, Sen. Barack Obama said Thursday that the troop surge in Iraq
had “succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated” and “beyond our
wildest dreams.”
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/complete/la-na-oreilly5-2008sep05,0,4005976.story

OBAMA AND CLINTON: UNITED FOR WHAT?
[O]n every vote but one since Obama joined Clinton in the Senate, they
voted the same way on the war–including continuing to fund it.
http://socialistworker.org/2008/08/29/united-for-what

PALESTINE/LEBANON

SHARP INCREASE IN SETTLEMENT ACTIVITY
Israel has nearly doubled its settlement construction in the occupied
West Bank in violation of its obligations under an American-backed
peace plan.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/27/world/middleeast/27mideast.html?ref=world

JIM CROW ALIVE AND WELL IN HEBRON
The occupied West Bank today is like walking through a page from a
different era — part Wild West, part Jim Crow — with one set of laws
for Palestinians and another set for Israeli settlers.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9804.shtml

NILIN VILLAGERS HEMMED IN
For the past four months, the people of Nilin, aided by Israeli and
foreign campaigners, have been protesting against the barrier the
Israelis are planning to build across their land.
http://www.economist.com/world/mideast-africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12059326

VILLAGER’S NONVIOLENT RESISTANCE FACES ARMY REIGN OF TERROR
“When we started our demonstrations, maybe 50 soldiers showed up. Now
there are hundreds stationed permanently around us. Israel is treating
us like a major war zone, even though we are using non-violence.
http://counterpunch.org/cook09022008.html

ROADBLOCKS CHOKE DEFIANT NABLUS
Nablus, once the West Bank’s commercial center and during the uprising
a militant stronghold, remains hard hit by travel restrictions.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-palestinians-blair-interview,1,6361905.story

U.S. “CHARITABLE” ORGANIZATIONS FUND SETTLERS
[A]t least 13 American organisations have been claiming charitable
status as they have pumped more than US$35 million (Dh129m) into the
settlement enterprise over the past five years.
http://www.thenational.ae/article/20080831/FOREIGN/772525596/1011/SPORT

COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT OF GAZA STUDENTS GENERATES HATRED OF ISRAEL
Anyone with any leverage — a Western government’s backing, or
high-level connections in Cairo or to the Fatah-run Palestinian
Authority in the West Bank — is using it to get out. . . . “Whatever
animosity Gazans feel, it’s not being directed at Hamas. It’s being
directed at Israel.”
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-students31-2008aug31,0,4422136.story

ETHNIC CLEANSING LEAVES PALESTINIANS LITTLE TO LOSE
The policy was described to me by a local activist as “ethnic
cleansing by stealth”, with the ultimate aim being to make life so
tough for the Palestinians that they hold their hands up in despair
and relocate elsewhere. . . . “Never fuck with a guy who ain’t got
nothing to lose”; his mantra could be the motto of Palestinians the
length and breadth of the Occupied Territories.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/04/israelandthepalestinians.humanrights

ISRAELI POLICEMAN SENTENCED TO ONLY 6.5 YEARS FOR KILLING A PALESTINIAN
Abu Hamdiyya was kidnapped and placed in a military jeep and as the
jeep sped away Lazla and three other policemen threw him out. . . .
“He fell to the ground, I heard his head hitting the ground, I heard
his head cracking.”
http://www.imemc.org/article/56850

RENEWED CAMPAIGN TO ELIMINATE PALESTINIAN WORKERS IN ’48 AREAS
“We want to create a situation where there is no interest in hiring
Palestinian workers instead of Israeli ones.”
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9794.shtml

AP’S SELF-CONTRADICTING SETTLER-EDITORS
Not a day goes by in which editors like Josef Federman and bureau
chief Steven Gutkin do not perpetrate a fraud on their readers for the
sake of minimizing Palestinian suffering and Israeli culpability therefor.
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/08/aps-self-contradicting-settler-editors/

“WE REFUSE TO SERVE IN THE ISRAELI OCCUPATION”
We, high school-graduate teens, declare that we shall work against the
Israeli occupation and oppression policy in the occupied territories
and the territories of Israel. . . . We cannot hurt in the name of
defense or imprison in the name of freedom, therefore we cannot be
moral and serve the occupation.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9791.shtml

ISRAEL: ANYONE BUT PALESTINIANS
[Both secular and religious Zionists] believe that at a time when the
number of Arabs living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean
Sea is poised to surpass the number of Jews, Israel needs all the
converts it can get.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/29/AR2008082903594.html

WHY DON’T ZIONISTS ADOPT GANDHI’S METHODS?
It takes a special kind of nerve to embark upon a project — Zionism-
– that can be fulfilled only through the violent destruction of
another people, and then criticize the people you are destroying for
their failure to adopt non-violence. . . . Gandhi himself was very
opposed to Zionism.
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m46900&hd=&size=1&l=e

REFUGEES’ SUPPORT FOR RETURN AND BOYCOTT
[D]escendants of 1948 refugees have not forgotten and will not forget
our towns and villages, and that we still know that those are the
places to which we truly belong. . . . [T]he central aim of Israeli
political and military strategy in Gaza is to eliminate the resistance
and the existence of Palestinian refugees struggling to return. . . .
The one path that we have all called for as Palestinians to stop, not
just the genocide in Gaza, but the implementation of apartheid,
colonialism and occupation throughout Palestine is boycotts,
divestment and sanctions on Israel.
http://www.badil.org/al-majdal/2008/summer/commentary.htm

APPLICABILITY OF THE CRIME OF APARTHEID TO ISRAEL
[I]t is necessary to support the shift of the struggle from the
limited focus on the occupation of the OPT back to its roots as a
struggle against apartheid and colonialism and occupation in all of
mandate Palestine.
http://www.badil.org/al-majdal/2008/summer/articles02.htm

ISRAELI OUTPOSTS SEAL DEATH OF PALESTINIAN STATE
Over the past four decades, Israel has declared nearly two-thirds of
the West Bank as “state land”, seizing it on a variety of pretexts and
transferring much of it to the jurisdiction of settler councils.
http://counterpunch.org/cook08252008.html

ONE-STATE RISING
The more Palestinians feel they have nothing left to lose, the more
likely it becomes that they will press for “one person, one vote”,
returning in essence if not rhetoric to the Palestinian Liberation
Organization’s pre-1988 advocacy of a “secular democratic state” in
all of pre-1948 Palestine.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JI05Ak02.html

EVAPORATION OF PALESTINIAN SUPPORT FOR 2-STATES
Even among the most moderate Palestinians, the credo of a negotiated
two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is beginning to
erode.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/04/world/middleeast/04state.html

ONE STATE IS ANTIDOTE TO APARTHEID
Once Jews or Europeans in South Africa or a particular group says,
this is our country exclusively, we have more rights than other
people, that’s what leads you to apartheid. And so the only way out of
Apartheid is to reconcieve this whole country as one country that
belongs to all of us.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9796.shtml

ISRAEL REARMS THE PA
Israel allowed Palestinian security forces in the West Bank to receive
a shipment of about 1,000 Kalashnikov rifles and tens of thousands of
bullets in a step aimed at bolstering the moderate Palestinian
government there.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/05/AR2008090500955.html

PA FAILS DARWISH’S LEGACY
Abbas spoke of Palestinian unity but in actuality, the PA has complied
with Israel and the US’s attempt to further fracture Palestinian
society by isolating Gaza from the West Bank. . . . And if there is a
common current throughout [Darwish’s] oeuvre, it is his challenging of
injustice whatever its source or perpetrator.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9774.shtml

FATAH’S “POLITICAL STRIKES” AFFECT GAZA’S HEALTH, EDUCATION SECTORS
“These are political strikes [dictated by] Fatah in Ramallah to spoil
Palestinian life in Gaza by attacking the health and education sectors.”
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9805.shtml

PA THREATENS ITS TEACHERS WITH CUTTING SALARIES IF THEY RETURN TO WORK
[T]the union of teachers, after extensive consultations, decided to
refrain from the strike and return to schools, pointing out that there
was an obvious PA threat to cut the salaries of all cadres of the
union if they resumed teaching in Gaza schools.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/en/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcOd87MDI46m9rUxJEpMO%2bi1s7zHGrLL35EGRqrlICWmeyp0F8FHAYY2ilhBgozMRoKg4UpkXcgCCfY0dVLGHduuG%2bOXl1SvPd0HWtQqGfrQaCLW4jh7g6SeRq6y4nEqTHSn0%3d

PA TEACHER STRIKE ON BEHALF OF US-ISRAEL.1
The most recent example of the power struggle and the most tangible
proof of the drive to annex the PLO to the PA, which derives its
authority wholly from the Israeli occupation’s military governor, is
the PA’s decision that its approval, and that of President Abbas, is a
necessary condition for the paying of salaries to its employees. . . .
The government’s economic agenda is set by donors who hold the purse
strings that pay civil service salaries while its security agenda is
set by the three-member committee of American generals consisting of
William Frazer, James Jones and Keith Dayton. It is this committee
that is the PA government’s real frame of reference and its priorities
are to eliminate all opposition to the US-Israeli vision for a
solution to the conflict, starting with the ranks of Fatah and the PLO
and, of course, Hamas.
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2008/913/op111.htm

PA TEACHER STRIKE ON BEHALF OF US-ISRAEL.2
[T]he PA is very much a police state without a state, an entity that
is first and foremost responsible to Israel and the United States. . .
. A classical or rather scandalous example of how the security
agencies are corroding Palestinian civil life is the refusal of the PA
government to pay the salaries of some 3000 teachers hired in 2006
under the democratically-elected government led by Hamas.
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m46975&hd=&size=1&l=e

DESPITE PA THREATS, TEACHERS LISTEN TO HAMAS
The Ramallah government told teachers that they wouldn’t be paid
unless they stopped going to work. . . . The Palestine Teachers’ Union
(PTU), a non-elected body controlled by the PLO, called the strike.
Palestinian factions in the past accused the PTU of being a “pawn” in
the hands of the Ramallah government. A year ago, elections were held
to form a rival labour union, the Palestine Teachers’ Syndicate (PTS).
Hamas candidates won and are now in control of the PTS.
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2008/913/re1.htm

HAMAS CALLS ON ARAB DONORS TO STOP TRANSFERRING FUNDS TO PNA
“Abbas and Fayyad are using this money to practice policies of
blackmail and pressure on large sectors among the Palestinian people
to achieve personal political and factional interests.”
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-08/24/content_9683257.htm

ISRAEL-EGYPT-FATAH ALLIANCE
“Egypt is completely biased towards Fatah, which itself has a close
relationship with Israel.”
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9784.shtml

ISRAEL THREATENS ANOTHER LEBANON WAR, BUT RESISTANCE IS STRONGER
Israeli leaders have issued warnings that they would carry out a more
devastating attack than the 2006 war if Hezbollah were to lead
Lebanon’s government. . . . “I came here to teach my kids the culture
of resistance,” said a visitor who gave his name only as Ahmed, as he
stood with his wife and two children. “I want them to see what the
enemy is doing to us, and what we can do to fight them, because this
enemy is not merciful.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/03/world/middleeast/03lebanon.html?ref=world

HEZBOLLAH LESS ABOUT RELIGION, THAN RESISTANCE
Hezbollah. . . . has dramatically shifted its political rhetoric away
from religious politics since the 2006 conflict with Israel and now
often depicts itself as a universal movement fighting Israeli domination.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-hezleft30-2008aug30,0,6229513.story

NO WAY FOR ISRAEL LOBBY TO LOSE THIS ELECTION
“AIPAC is pleased that both parties have selected four pro-Israel
candidates.”
http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/breaking/110192.html

ZIONIST TERRORISTS ORGANIZE IN NYC
The group’s Facebook page has a photo of young men wielding rifles in
front of an Israeli flag, while its MySpace page blared: “Keeping Jews
safe, when no one else will!” Brown said the organization – whose name
means “preparedness team” in Hebrew – wants to work as an adjunct to
Homeland Security and the NYPD.
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/brooklyn/2008/08/28/2008-08-28_jewish_group_holds_training_camp_hopes_t-2.html

GEORGIA

NO EVIDENCE THAT RUSSIANS ATTACKED FIRST
Republicans and Democrats alike have signaled strong support for
Georgia. . . . To date, however, there has been no independent
evidence, beyond Georgia’s insistence that its version is true, that
Russian forces were attacking before the Georgian barrages.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/03/world/europe/03georgia.html?ref=world

CHENEY BACKS NATO MEMBERSHIP
“[The Georgian regime] can count on continued support and assistance
from the United States. . . . Georgia will be in our alliance. NATO is
a defensive alliance. It is a threat to no one. . . . Appreciate
everything you’re doing for us.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/05/world/europe/05cheney.html?hp

ISRAEL OF THE CAUCASUS
In a secret agreement between Israel and Georgia, two military
airfields in southern Georgia had been earmarked for the use of
Israeli fighter-bombers in the event of pre-emptive attacks against
Iranian nuclear installations. . . . The Tel Aviv-Tbilisi military
axis was agreed at the highest levels with the approval of the Bush
administration. . . . Georgia, as Saakashvili saw his country’s role,
was the “Israel of the Caucasus.”
http://www.metimes.com/Security/2008/09/02/commentary_israel_of_the_caucasus/f5e1/

COLOMBIA

GENERATIONS OF US-FUNDED TERRORISM
[I]llegal paramilitary gunmen, often working closely with army units,
killed thousands of people in their war against leftist insurgencies
and, in most cases, disposed of them in shallow, unmarked graves. . .
. “We cut people’s heads off, we dismembered. . . . We had to spread
terror.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/26/AR2008082603154.html

GI LIFE AND DEATH

WAR VETERANS’ CONCUSSIONS OVERLOOKED
As many as 300,000, or 20 percent, of combat veterans who regularly
worked outside the wire, away from bases, have suffered at least one
concussion. . . . “The Army was raking these guys over the coals.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/26/us/26tbi.html?ref=us

SOLDIERS’ SUICIDE RATE ON PACE TO SET RECORD
Suicides among active-duty soldiers this year are on pace to exceed
both last year’s all-time record and, for the first time since the
Vietnam War, the rate among the general U.S. population.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/04/AR2008090403333.html

ARMY OPENS PREP SCHOOL FOR DROPOUTS
”There’s no jobs out there, nothing. It’s just horrible.”
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Army-Prep-School.html

TORTURE

SCIENTIST TORTURED, HER CHILDREN DISAPPEARED
Siddiqui’s family contended that the young mother and children were
imprisoned during at least some of that time at a secret site,
possibly by Afghan or Pakistani officials working in concert with the
CIA. Her two younger children, who are also U.S. citizens and were 6
months and 5 years old when they disappeared, are still unaccounted
for. . . . Her nose has been broken, her lips and skin are deeply
chapped, her face has a deathly pallor, and she is only periodically
lucid, they said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/25/AR2008082502835.html

MILITARY SENDING FOREIGN FIGHTERS TO HOME NATIONS
“[T]the U.S. wants to get all the Saudi prisoners to Saudi Arabia
because the Saudis know how to deal with them.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/28/washington/28detain.html?ref=world

WAR AT HOME

IMMIGRANT RIGHTS: HUNDREDS OF WORKERS HELD IN RAID
“They’re creating their own terrorism by going after workers.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/26/us/26raid.html?hp

LABOR: 2D WALKOUT AT BOEING IN 3 YEARS
“If the company wants to talk, they have my number. . . . They can
reach me on the picket line.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/business/07strike.html?ref=business

POLICE VIOLENCE: ACTIVISTS ASK CONGRESS TO INVESTIGATE INGLEWOOD
POLICE KILLINGS
Civil rights activists alarmed by the fourth officer-involved fatal
shooting in Inglewood since May called Monday for congressional and
local inquiries into the use-of-force policies of the Inglewood Police
Department.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-inglewood2-2008sep02,0,1684436.story

POVERTY: NY POVERTY GAP WIDENS
New York’s gap between rich and poor, already the highest of any
state, grew from the previous year.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/27/nyregion/27poverty.html?ref=nyregion

RACIST VIOLENCE: FBI HAS BROUGHT NO RACIST MURDERERS TO TRIAL
”Are they waiting on everybody to die? What else do you need?”
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Cold-Killings.html?_r=1&oref=login

SCHOOLS: BOYCOTT PROTESTS EDUCATIONAL APARTHEID
“It is totally separate and totally unequal. . . . The children of the
rich get a different education than the children of the poor. We
continue to fight that battle every way we can.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/04/AR2008090403398.html

ANTIWAR MOVEMENT

DNC

DEMOCRATS PARTY, WHILE HOMELESS ARE HIDDEN
To hold this four-day extravaganza, hundreds of millions of dollars
were spent by corporations and government to amuse, pamper, and
protect the visitors. Not a nickel will find its way to this soup
kitchen. The only attention these homeless men received was from
police shooing them back into the shadows.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/08/29/just_blocks_away_the_party_was_far_out_of_reach/

POLICE, PROTESTERS CLASH AS DEMS CONVENE IN DENVER
[O]fficers charged the protesters with no warning. . . . “There’s a
powerful police presence here. The chill of 1968 is in the air of Denver.”
http://www.star-telegram.com/667/story/859668.html

VIDEO SHOWS UNPROVOKED POLICE ATTACK ON PROTESTER
The video shows an officer quickly shoving Forrest with the length of
his baton, forcing her to the ground, where she lands with a scream
and a loud smack.
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/aug/27/rocky-video-shows-officer-shoving-protester-to/

IVAW: BOTH PARTIES ARE RESPONSIBLE
[I]t’s both parties’ fault we got into this war. It’s both parties’
fault that we’re still there. So we need to hold them both accountable.
http://i1.democracynow.org/2008/8/28/iraq_veterans_against_the_war_lead

IVAW: DON’T DEPEND ON THE DEMS
Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats are the savior,” said IVAW
member Eli Wright. “But since Obama’s inspired people for change, when
he gets elected, people will see him not coming through. And his
failures will inspire people that they need to fix it themselves.”
http://socialistworker.org/2008/08/29/voices-outside-the-convention

IVAW: HOLD DEMOCRATS ACCOUNTABLE
“We voted them in to end this war. They’ve not done that. . . . We
want our brothers and sisters to come home now, not later. Now”
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-na-protest28-2008aug28,0,238178.story

IVAW: WHY WE’RE HERE
I’m here at the Democratic convention, because the Democrats have
shown absolutely no initiative in getting the troops out of Iraq.
http://i3.democracynow.org/2008/8/26/iraq_veterans_against_the_war_descends

DEMOCRATS IGNORE IVAW
The Iraq Veterans Against the War, combat veterans whose courageous
efforts our government has no problem invoking in their political
stump speeches, were basically ignored yesterday by Democratic
politicians for the soothing melodies of Melissa Etheridge.
http://www.examiner.com/x-447-Denver-Young-Democrats-Examiner~y2008m8d28-The-Real-Action-in-Denver

OBAMA AIMS TO REASSURE WALL STREET
Obama needed Wall Street to understand that you don’t have to be
white, a “war hero,” super rich, or a Republican like John McCain to
wage war.
http://www.workers.org/2008/us/obama_0911/

DEMOCRATS’ ELECTION TO LOSE.1
[I]f Obama put as much daylight between himself and McCain, he would
be at least twenty points ahead.
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/8/25/anti_war_protests_begin_in_denver

DEMOCRATS’ ELECTION TO LOSE.2
Obama has been so busy convincing the U.S. business and political
elite that he would be a better manager of American imperial
interests, McCain is getting a pass. . . . When you strip away the
rhetoric, the Democrats share much more in common than they differ
with the Republicans–on every issue.
http://socialistworker.org/2008/08/26/rhetoric-and-reality

WHY ISN’T OBAMA WAY AHEAD?
While continuing to market himself as a candidate of change, Obama has
spent the summer assuring the movers and shakers of American politics
that he is committed to a status quo hardly different from what we
have known since at least the end of the Cold War. Thousands of his
most fervent supporters have expressed their disgust with Obama’s moves.
http://socialistworker.org/2008/08/28/why-isnt-obama-way-ahead

DEMOCRATS’ WEAKNESS BOOSTS NADER
Nader’s antiwar, anticorporate message is resonating in some quarters.
On the third day of the Democratic convention in Denver he held a
rally attended by 4,000 and plans another on Sept. 4 in Minnesota
during the Republican convention in St. Paul.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/100/story/51172.html

OBAMA HASN’T CHANGED — HE’S ALWAYS BEEN LIKE THIS
Disappointed as some progressives may be, Obama has not made a
dramatic shift to the center: He’s always been more centrist, cautious
and compromising than many of his supporters — and critics — have
wanted to admit.
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/18590

CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM FOR OBAMA
The Democrats, who promise to end the war in Iraq, create jobs and
provide universal health care, ignore these promises once election
cycles are over. And we never make them pay.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080831_curb_your_enthusiasm_for_obama/

LIBERALS’ FEAR OF ISLAM
[F]or American Muslims and progressive allies, both eager to see an
end to the vilification of Arabs and Muslims in the United States,
Obama’s mantra of hope and change barely set in before it expired.
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/alam270808.html

A CALL FOR BLACK UNITY, ACTION
We call for a National Black Agenda for democracy. . . . These demands
should be promoted inside the trade unions, mass organizations and
social movements comprising large numbers of the Black working class
and other oppressed sectors throughout society. They should be
promoted throughout the many mass activities aligned with the Obama
campaign and by the McKinney/Clemente campaign.
http://www.workers.org/2008/us/black_unity_0911/

RNC

NATIONAL GUARD DEPLOYED AGAINST PROTERERS
As the protests grew, scores of National Guard troops in riot gear and
gas masks fanned out around the Xcel Energy Center, where the
convention is being held, and set up a blockade about three blocks
away. Police helicopters buzzed over St. Paul throughout the day.
Humvees painted in fatigue green ferried water to police officers
working in the 88-degree heat, and city dump trucks were used to block
traffic on some streets.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/02/us/politics/02protest.html?ref=us

IVAW, FATHER OF FALLEN MARINE LEAD PROTEST
Leading the throng of up to 10,000 marchers was Carlos Arredondo of
Boston. He pushed a flag-draped coffin bearing the uniform, dog tags,
and Purple Heart of his 20-year-old son Alexander, a Marine lance
corporal who was killed in Iraq in 2004. . . . Along with the
Arredondos, dozens of Iraq veterans marched at the front of the crowd.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2008/09/02/boston_father_of_fallen_marine_leads_protest/

UP TO 50K MARCHERS DEFY INTIMIDATION
The crowd of at least 20,000 — march organizers estimated the crowd
at as many as 50,000 — was made up of antiwar activists, veterans and
military families, students, immigrant rights supporters, unionists,
welfare rights activists and many more. . . . The turnout was in
defiance of heavy-handed repression and intimidation by police, who
carried out eight or more preemptive raids and roughly 100 arrests
after filling the media in the days leading up to the protest with
warnings about “violence and chaos” that “anarchist” protesters
planned to unleash.
http://socialistworker.org/2008/09/02/marching-on-the-rnc

PROTESTERS PERSEVERE
Dozens were pepper-sprayed and tear-gassed. . . . “Nobody was trying
to cause destruction or violence. . . . . The idea was to just block
the streets. We were just trying to disrupt the delegation, and I
think we succeeded.”
http://www.startribune.com/politics/27736044.html?elr=KArksi8cyaiUeyD8_o8cyaiUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUU

PROTESTERS CHARGED WITH “TERRORISM”
If convicted, the suspects could each face up to five years in jail, a
$10,000 fine, or both.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-terror4-2008sep04,0,7911659.story

POLICE REPRESS CONVENTION PROTESTS
[A]t a press conference the following day, march coordinator Jess
Sundin was quick to point out that any rage displayed by activists in
the streets is completely justified and pales in comparison to the
state violence committed on a daily basis by U.S. forces at home and
abroad.
http://www.workers.org/2008/us/rnc_0911/

ARRESTS MARK LAST ANTI-WAR MARCH OF CONVENTION
Percussion grenades, tear gas and nearly 400 arrests marked the final
anti-war march during the Republican National Convention.
http://wcco.com/local/protests.arrests.rnc.2.810694.html

MOB ATTACKS PROTESTERS DURING MCCAIN SPEECH
One of the livelier moments of the evening came when Mr. McCain was
interrupted by several antiwar protestors who had infiltrated the
hall. Their signs were quickly ripped from their hands, and they were
carried out of the arena as the crowd shouted, “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/05/us/politics/05repubs.html?bl&ex=1220760000&en=911c9604f792c501&ei=5087%0A

LOCKDOWN IN ST. PAUL
The real conspiracy was a plot by 30 federal, state and local law
enforcement agencies to repress dissent and protests under the rubric
of “national security” and the “war on terror”. . . . A member of
Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) who witnessed some of the violent
police attacks told reporters that police were “treating [U.S.]
civilians like you would Iraqis.”
http://socialistworker.org/2008/09/05/lockdown-in-st-paul

MILITARY RESISTANCE AT THE RNC
“It’s amazing to me,” he observed, “how little soldiers know about
their government and politics in their own country, not to mention the
people they’re going to blow up.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200809u/veterans-against-war

WHY WE WERE FALSELY ARRESTED
Here on the streets of St. Paul, the press is free to report on the
official proceedings of the RNC, but not to report on the police
violence and mass arrests directed at those who have come to petition
their government, to protest.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080903_why_we_were_falsely_arrested/

RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE DEFIES BOTH PARTIES
Many contemporary musical acts have lined up behind the Democratic
candidate for president, Senator Barack Obama, while the McCain
campaign has put some country music firepower behind it, but Rage
Against the Machine and its legions regard donkeys and elephants as
the same species. . . . “[Police at the RN] blocked us from even
approaching the stage, saying they’d arrest us if we played. So we
went into the middle of the crowd and began to improvise.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/06/arts/music/06rage.html?ref=us

WIDESPREAD REPRESSION ECHOES RNC 04
[M]ore than 800 people were arrested in St. Paul and Minneapolis over
the last week, and dozens of others were detained, handcuffed,
photographed and searched without arrest. . . . [M]any people have
said they were stopped on flimsy pretexts, or in some cases arrested
on peaceful marches that were blocked by heavily armored police
officers who used pepper spray and flash bangs.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/06/nyregion/06about.html?ref=nyregion