ANTIFA INFO-BULLETIN, No. 650
Tom Burghardt
ANTIFA INFO-BULLETIN
News * Analysis * Research * Action
___________________________________
- AFIB No. 650, August 17, 2005 -
FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL! FREE LEONARD PELTIER!
FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS & PRISONERS OF WAR!
END THE OCCUPATIONS!
ISRAEL OUT OF PALESTINE! U.S. OUT OF IRAQ!
Within days of the fall of Baghdad, thousands of local and expatriate
contractors, working for multinational corporations, were hired to
reconstruct the country and install democracy at a profit that most assumed
would be paid for from Iraq's vast oil wealth. But the oil did not flow as
quickly as expected... In my conversations with Iraqis, I was reminded of
the time I spent documenting the impact of California's 1849 Gold Rush on
Native Americans and also of my visits to the modern-day equivalent of that
era, in the present days Philippines and in the Amazon. I witnessed the
same frontier mentality in Iraq; here all measure of opportunists hatched
get-rich schemes with nary a thought for the local people or the future of
the place. Yet this was not the only analogy that sprang to mind. As I
visited American bureaucrats in Saddam's old palaces, ministries, and
hotels, I felt as though I were watching old newsreels of colonial British
India. And every day as I watched the soldiers driving through town in
their armored Humvees and Stryker vehicles, weighed down with the latest in
modern war technology, I imagined I was in Nixon's Vietnam. -- Pratap
Chatterjee, Iraq, Inc. [New York, Seven Stories Press, 2004] pp. 13-14.
Contents: Number 650
01. GREEN LEFT WEEKLY [Australia]: Iraq: Vanishing Human Rights.
02. WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE [Oak Park, MI]: Where Frank Rich Goes Wrong:
The War in Iraq and the Stakes for American Imperialism.
03. THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE [Washington, D.C.]: State Department
Experts Warned CENTCOM Before Iraq War about Lack of Plans for Post-War
Iraq Security.
04. THE INDEPENDENT [London]: Iraq Must Reject a Constitution that Enslaves
Women.
05. MAD COW MORNING NEWS [Venice, FL]: Able Danger Intel Exposed
"Protected" Heroin Trafficking.
06. VENEZUELA ANALYSIS [Caracas]: Venezuela to Deny Diplomatic Status to
DEA Agents.
07. WEEKLY NEWS UPDATE ON THE AMERICAS [New York]: Paraguay: Community
Radio Bombed. Ecuador: Iraq Mercenaries Recruited, Haiti: Paramilitary
Leader Released. US: Cuban 5 Conviction Thrown Out.
08. MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: Inheriting an Imperial Nightmare.
* * *
GREEN LEFT WEEKLY
Australia's Socialist Newspaper
E-mail: g...@greenleft.org.au
Web: http://www.greenleft.org.au
- Number 638, August 17, 2005 -
-----
____________________________________________________________________
IRAQ: HUMAN RIGHTS VANISHING
____________________________________________________________________
Rohan Pearce
http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2005/638/638p16.htm
When the WMD myths evaporated, the "coalition of the willing" was left
grasping the ostensibly humanitarian justifications for the 2003 invasion
and occupation of Iraq. Democracy, human rights and liberty for Iraqis --
these were the watchwords brandished by the apologists for US President
George Bush and his cohorts as their armed forces rampaged through the
country.
But in the new Iraq, democracy and liberty seem curiously elusive when,
over a year since the "handover of power" to an Iraqi government, it's
still the White House and US Central Command that call most of the shots.
As for human rights, the ferocity of the repression unleashed by the US-led
occupation forces against their opponents, sometimes directly and sometimes
by proxy, seems to indicate that Iraqi freedom remains as mythical as
Saddam Hussein's arsenal of chemical and biological weapons.
Many of the crimes committed by the US-led occupying forces are relatively
well-known -- the mass killings of civilians in rebel areas like Fallujah,
the checkpoint shootings and the brutal torture at Abu Ghraib and other
detention centres. But in many ways these are the "official" human rights
abuses committed under the auspices of the occupation regime. More sinister
than these atrocities is what appears to be a secret war being waged by
death-squad militias aligned to the US.
In January, US magazine Newsweek published an article on its website that
revealed that figures in the Pentagon were "intensely debating" whether to
employ the "Salvador option" in its struggle to crush armed anti-occupation
forces in Iraq. An unnamed senior military officer told Newsweek: "We have
to find a way to take the offensive against the insurgents. Right now, we
are playing defence. And we are losing."
The "Salvador option" refers to the undeclared, secret war waged by the
Ronald Reagan administration against a popular left-wing guerrilla movement
in El Salvador led by the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN).
US-sponsored death squads unleashed an orgy of violence on Salvadoran
workers and peasants to crush opposition to El Salvador's military regime.
What Uncle Sam Really Wants, a 1992 book by renowned US dissident Noam
Chomsky, quotes a description by Daniel Santiago, a Catholic priest working
in El Salvador, of how the "Salvador option" was implemented: "People are
not just killed by death squads in El Salvador -- they are decapitated and
then their heads are placed on pikes and used to dot the landscape. Men are
not just disemboweled by the Salvadoran Treasury Police; their severed
genitalia are stuffed into their mouths. Salvadoran women are not just
raped by the National Guard; their wombs are cut from their bodies and used
to cover their faces. It is not enough to kill children; they are dragged
over barbed wire until the flesh falls from their bones, while parents are
forced to watch."
The terror unleashed in El Salvador was not an innovation of the Reagan
regime or their Salvadoran allies. During the Vietnam War similar campaigns
of violence were unleashed by Washington to terrorise the peasant support
base of the Vietnamese liberation forces. In the name of combating the
"menace" of communism in Vietnam, the US carried out horrific programs of
murder and torture, such as the infamous Operation Phoenix and the CORDS
program (Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support).
The primary targets of these programs weren't the Vietnamese fighters but
their civilian supporters. Douglas Valentine, author of The Phoenix Program
(Avon Books, 1992), described Operation Phoenix as "aimed at
'neutralising', through assassination, kidnapping, and systematic torture,
the civilian infrastructure that supported the insurgency in South Vietnam.
It was a terrifying 'final solution' that violated the Geneva Conventions
and traditional American ideas of human morality."
US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld publicly denied the Newsweek story's
claims. In response to a reporter's question at a January 11 press
conference, he described them as "nonsense". But in February, the Wall
Street Journal's Greg Jaffe filed a report from Baghdad on "irregular
brigades" that were being used in an attempt to crush the insurgency. "We
don't call them militias. Militias are ... illegal", US Major Chris Wales
told Jaffe. "I've begun calling them 'irregular Iraqi ministry-directed
brigades'." The other label US forces have tagged them with, Jaffe
reported, is "pop-ups" (as in militias that pop up seemingly out of
nowhere). Jaffe reported that the groups, which are often under the command
of "friends and relatives of cabinet officers and tribal sheiks",
"generally have the backing of the Iraqi government and receive government
funding".
Probably the most infamous of these paramilitary groups is the Special
Police Commandos, a group that, according to Jaffe, was formed in September
2004 by Iraqi General Adnan Thavit. Thavit, as well as being an uncle of
Iraq's then-interior minister, was involved in a 1996 coup attempt against
Hussein. The coup was led by the Iraqi National Accord, a CIA-sponsored
opposition organisation that carried out terrorist bombings inside Iraq
between 1992 and 1995 and now holds a number of seats in the Iraqi
parliament.
INA members include Iyad Allawi, who was installed by the US as the Iraqi
prime minister in June 2004 and held that office until April 2005.
According to the Newsweek report, Allawi was "said to be among the most
forthright proponents of the Salvador option".
An analysis by Max Fuller, published on the website of the Centre for
Research on Globalisation on June 2, argued that the "Salvador option" is
being actively implemented in Iraq. Fuller argues that it is not too much
of a stretch of the imagination to draw a connection between a series of
mass execution-style killings in Iraq and the areas where "pop-up" forces
are known to have been operating.
Fuller reported that some of the strongest evidence was beginning to emerge
in Baghdad, where accusations of responsibility for a series of mass
killings had been directly levelled at "the state security forces and
specifically against the Police Commandos".
"On 5 May a shallow mass grave was discovered in the Kasra-Wa-Atash
industrial area containing 14 bodies. The victims, all young men, had been
blindfolded, their hands tied behind their backs and they had been executed
with shots to the head. The bodies also revealed such torture marks as
broken skulls, burning, beatings and right eyeballs removed ... the victims
were Sunni farmers on their way to market. According to Phil Shiner of the
British-based Public Interest Lawyers, the men had been arrested when Iraqi
security forces raided the vegetable market."
The bodies of victims of similar execution-style killings were discovered
on May 15. Fifteen bodies were found at two sites in Baghdad. At a funeral
congregation for the men, who included "pro-insurgent clerics" according to
a May 19 report by the British Financial Times, Hareth al Dhari,
secretary-general of the pro-resistance Association of Muslim Scholars,
said that they were victims of "state terrorism by the Ministry of
Interior".
The FT reported: "Mr Dhari said [Hassan al Naimi, one of the victims] had
been taken from his mosque on Monday night in the district of al-Shaab by
uniformed troops of the Wolf Brigade, a police commando unit, accompanied
by members of the Badr Brigade militia loyal to the Supreme Council for
Islamic Revolution in Iraq ... Naimi was 'one of the best and most upright
men, well known for resisting the occupation', Mr Dhari said."
As the execution of Naimi, apparently at the hands of a
government-sponsored death squad suggests, the "Salvador option" is not
fundamentally a military solution to the occupation regime's inability to
crush opposition to US rule in Iraq. Like Operation Phoenix in Vietnam,
it's a political solution designed to terrorise sections of the population
that aid or sympathise with opposition forces.
In a January 4 interview with the Arabic-language, London-based daily
Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, Major General Muhammad Abdallah al Shahwani, director of
Iraq's National Intelligence Service, claimed that armed anti-occupation
forces "are mostly in the Sunni areas where the population there ... is
sympathetic to them". He claimed they "do not provide material or
logistical help" to resistance forces, but they also "do not report their
activities if they have the information". He explained: "Take for example
the right side of the city of Mosul. From the security point of view, it is
out [of] control. The terrorists are active in this side and the
inhabitants there do not report them and very often shelter them."
Newsweek reported that, according to a "military source involved in the
Pentagon debate" on the Salvador option, "new offensive operations are
needed that would create a fear of aiding the insurgency". "The Sunni
population is paying no price for the support it is giving to the
terrorists", the source told the magazine, adding: "From their point of
view, it is cost-free. We have to change that equation."
"Changing that equation" means unleashing the state against opponents of
the occupation. But it shouldn't be a surprise that the US occupiers are
using such methods in the name of "liberating" Iraq. Saddam Hussein's
original sin, after all, was not his brutal repression of opponents to his
rule or his ruthless genocidal campaign against Iraqi Kurds' ambitions of
independence; rather he was guilty of being too independent of Washington.
The evidence continues to mount that human rights abuses like the torture
at Abu Ghraib and the slaughter of civilians in Fallujah by US forces are
not aberrations. Instead, they're the real face of the US occupation regime
in Iraq.
Max Fuller's analysis "For Iraq, 'The Salvador Option' Becomes Reality" is
available at http://globalresearch.ca/articles/FUL506A.html.
Copyright ) 2005, All rights reserved, Green Left Weekly. Redistribution
permitted with this notice attached. Redistribution for profit prohibited.
*****
WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE
Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI)
Web: http://www.wsws.org/
E-Mail: edi...@wsws.org
- Tuesday, 16 August 2005 -
-----
____________________________________________________________________
Where Frank Rich goes wrong
THE WAR IN IRAQ AND THE STAKES FOR AMERICAN IMPERIALISM
____________________________________________________________________
News & Analysis: North America
http://wsws.org/articles/2005/aug2005/rich-a16.shtml
By Patrick Martin
Frank Rich of the New York Times is one of a handful of columnists for the
major daily newspapers in the United States who exhibit intelligence and
compassion. He makes no secret of his loathing for the war in Iraq--a
sentiment entirely to his credit and rare in the media. And he recognizes
that the Bush administration, with its combination of criminality and
recklessness, represents something qualitatively new and troubling in
American political life.
That being said, the limitations of Rich's liberalism were all too clearly
on display in the column published on Sunday under the headline, "Someone
Tell the President the War Is Over."
Rich compares Bush to the proverbial Japanese soldier marooned on a Pacific
atoll and still fighting World War II, writing: "President Bush may be the
last person in the country to learn that for Americans, if not Iraqis, the
war in Iraq is over." Citing the growing public opposition to the war in
Iraq and the danger of huge losses for the Republican Party in the 2006
mid-term elections, Rich declares, "Such political imperatives are rapidly
bringing about the war's end."
The Times columnist is clearly encouraged by the media attention given to
the antiwar activities of Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a young soldier
killed in Baghdad who is camped outside Bush's Texas ranch, demanding a
meeting with the president. He also cites the near-victory of an antiwar
Iraq war veteran, running as the Democratic candidate in a special election
for a normally safe Republican congressional seat in Ohio, and statements
by nervous Republican politicians, concerned that the White House has
failed to recognize the growth of public disillusionment with the war as
the US death toll approaches 2,000.
Rich is not wrong to believe that, in terms of public opinion, the summer
of 2005 has marked a decisive shift against the war. He makes a striking
comparison, noting that Bush's approval rating on the war, now down to 34
percent, nearly matches the low of 32 percent for Lyndon Johnson's conduct
of the war in Vietnam in March 1968, just before Johnson announced he would
not seek re-election. Bush's overall approval rating at 42 percent is just
barely higher than Johnson's 41 percent in his final year in office.
But it is self-delusion to believe that the collapse of public support for
the Bush administration, as measured by opinion polls or even elections,
will be sufficient, in and of itself, to bring an end to the war. Rich
writes: "The country has already made the decision for Mr. Bush. We're
outta there."
One small difficulty stands in the way: it is Bush, not "the country," who
exercises the powers of commander-in-chief. Congress, not the American
people, authorizes the tens of billions to finance the war. Neither the
Bush administration nor the congressional Republican leadership has shown
the slightest intention of getting out of Iraq.
As for the Democratic Party, the nominal "opposition," it is a remarkable
fact--one whose significance Rich ignores--that as the American people have
turned against the war, leading Democrats have come forward to attack the
Bush administration from the right, calling the existing troop levels
inadequate and urging a significant expansion of the Army and Marines, the
two forces tied down by the bloody guerrilla warfare in Iraq.
In other words, the established political structures in the United States,
far from being responsive to public opinion, are increasingly committed to
carrying out deeply unpopular and anti-democratic policies.
The millions of American working people and youth who oppose the war in
Iraq must face the facts: the war cannot be stopped through protest and
pressure on the existing political parties and institutions. What is
required is the development of a mass movement from below--an independent
political mobilization of working people which opposes both the war in Iraq
and the capitalist system which is the fundamental cause of the war.
The fallacy of Rich's position is that his opposition to the war is based
on moral outrage, rather than an analysis of the social and economic
interests which are driving the conflict. He uncritically accepts the Bush
administration's own description of the decision to invade Iraq as a "war
of choice," as though there was no inner logic or historical necessity
involved.
While there is certainly an element of arbitrariness and willfulness in the
timing of the war and the pretexts used to justify it, it can hardly be
argued that Bush's invasion of Iraq is purely subjective and irrational.
The current conflict, after all, is the second major US war against the
same country in 12 years, an interval during which Iraq was subjected to
economic blockade, the imposition of US-British "no-fly" zones, and
repeated bombing attacks.
After one abstracts from all such contingencies as Bush's ignorant and
sadistic personality, the pro-war agitation of the neo-conservative faction
of the Republican Party, and the desire of White House political
strategists to divert attention from the domestic economic crisis, there
remain more fundamental driving forces behind the invasion of Iraq:
American imperialism seeks to control the world's two largest sources of
oil and gas, the Middle East and Central Asia, both to insure its own
supplies and to give it the upper hand in the struggle against its major
rivals in Europe and Asia.
Iraq sits on the second largest oil reserves in the world, and the conquest
of Iraq puts American military forces in a key strategic position at the
crossroads of the Middle East, guarding access to the Saudi and other
Persian Gulf oil fields to the south, while able to strike out to the west
against Syria, to the north to the Caspian Sea, and to the east against
Iran.
Far from suggesting any pullback from Iraq, Bush gave an interview to
Israeli state television Friday night in which he threatened to use force
against Iran to destroy its nuclear energy program, which Washington claims
is a cover for the building of nuclear weapons. He declared that the United
States and Israel "are united in our objective to make sure that Iran does
not have a weapon." (Israel, of course, has hundreds of nuclear weapons
targeted on the Arab states and Iran.)
Bush said that if ongoing talks between three European powers and Iran
failed, "all options are on the table." In language that was deliberately
provocative and went beyond his previous hints of war, he added, "The use
of force is the last option for any president. You know, we've used force
in the recent past to secure our country."
The obvious suggestion was that the invasion of Iraq is to be a precursor
to an even bloodier and more catastrophic military intervention against
Iran, a country three times larger in both area and population.
On Monday, the Los Angeles Times carried a report by its senior Washington
correspondent Ron Brownstein citing military experts who said the Pentagon
was building the infrastructure to make possible a permanent US military
occupation of Iraq, with bases that could sustain as many 50,000 US troops,
a force sufficient to launch a major attack on any of Iraq's neighbors.
It is worth noting that, two days before Rich's column, the Washington Post
published an op-ed column by former Nixon secretary of state Henry
Kissinger, for decades one of the most ruthless and cynical strategists for
American imperialism. Kissinger wrote: "Because of the long reach of the
Islamist challenge, the outcome in Iraq will have an even deeper
significance than that in Vietnam. If a Taliban-type government or a
fundamentalist radical state were to emerge in Baghdad or any part of Iraq,
shock waves would ripple through the Islamic world. Radical forces in
Islamic countries or Islamic minorities in non-Islamic states would be
emboldened in their attacks on existing governments. The safety and
internal stability of all societies within reach of militant Islam would be
imperiled. This is why many opponents of the decision to start the war
agree with the proposition that a catastrophic outcome would have grave
global consequences--a fundamental difference from the Vietnam debate."
Kissinger's last point is the most important: unlike Vietnam, where there
were deep divisions within the ruling elite over whether that war was worth
the cost, there is virtual unanimity today, among both leading Republicans
and Democrats, that American imperialism cannot afford to lose in Iraq.
There is no significant section of the Democratic leadership that supports
withdrawal from Iraq. On the contrary, the most prominent spokesmen for the
party on this issue, such as senators Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and
Joseph Biden, are calling for more troops and a more forceful effort to
suppress the insurgency against the US occupation.
At the end of his column, Rich seems to be drawn towards a position of
endorsing such an escalation, even though it conflicts with his past
denunciations of the war. He writes that, "this administration long ago
squandered the credibility needed to make the difficult case that more
human and financial resources might prevent Iraq from continuing its
descent into civil war and its devolution into jihad central."
Rich, of course, acknowledges that both the danger of civil war and the
influx of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists are consequences of the US
invasion. But he nonetheless implies that a continuation and deepening of
the US intervention might be justified to prevent what he calls an "even
greater disaster" than what already exists.
All such arguments must be rejected. American imperialist military
intervention is the disaster in Iraq. Every day that it continues only
compounds the disaster for both the Iraqi people and the American soldiers
who are being used as cannon fodder.
The only principled course is to demand the immediate and unconditional
withdrawal of all American troops and personnel, as well as the remaining
troops of the US-led "coalition," combined with the payment of extensive
reparations to the Iraqi people. This must be combined with the prosecution
for war crimes of all those responsible for planning and perpetrating the
invasion and occupation.
Copyright 1998-2005 World Socialist Web Site. All rights reserved.
*****
THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE
Gelman Library, Suite 701
2130 H Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20037
Phone: 202 / 994-7000
Fax: 202 / 994-7005
E-mail: nsar...@gwu.edu
Web: http://www.nsarchive.org
- Wednesday, August 17, 2005 -
-----
____________________________________________________________________
STATE DEPARTMENT EXPERTS WARNED CENTCOM BEFORE IRAQ WAR ABOUT LACK
OF PLANS FOR POST-WAR IRAQ SECURITY
____________________________________________________________________
Planning for post-Saddam regime change began as early as October 2001
Washington, D.C. -- Newly declassified State Department documents show
that government experts warned the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) in early
2003 about "serious planning gaps for post-conflict public security and
humanitarian assistance," well before Operation Iraqi Freedom began.
In a February 7, 2003, memo to Under Secretary of State Paula Dobriansky,
three senior Department officials noted CENTCOM's "focus on its primary
military objectives and its reluctance to take on 'policing' roles," but
warned that "a failure to address short-term public security and
humanitarian assistance concerns could result in serious human rights
abuses which would undermine an otherwise successful military campaign, and
our reputation internationally." The memo adds "We have raised these issues
with top CENTCOM officials."
By contrast, a December 2003 report to Congress, also released by the State
Department, offers a relatively rosy picture of the security situation,
saying U.S. forces are "increasingly successful in preventing planned
hostile attacks; and in capturing former regime loyalists, would-be
terrorists and planners; and seizing weapons caches." The document
acknowledges that "Challenges remain."
Since then, 1,393 U.S. military fatalities have been recorded in Iraq,
including two on the day the report went to Congress.
The new documents, released this month to the National Security Archive
under the Freedom of Information Act, also provide more evidence on when
the Bush administration began planning for regime change in Iraq -- as
early as October 2001.
The declassified records relate mainly to the so-called "Future of Iraq
Project," an effort, initially run by the State Department then by the
Pentagon, to plan for the transition to a new regime after the overthrow of
Saddam Hussein in 2003. They provide detail on each of the working groups
and give the starting date for planning as October 2001.
Entire sections of a Powerpoint presentation the State Department prepared
on November 1, 2002 -- including those covering "What We Have Learned So
Far" and "Implications for the Real Future of Iraq" -- have been censored
as still-classified information.
Please follow the link below for more on the new documents:
http://www.nsarchive.org
THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE is an independent non-governmental research
institute and library located at The George Washington University in
Washington, D.C. The Archive collects and publishes declassified documents
acquired through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). A tax-exempt public
charity, the Archive receives no U.S. government funding; its budget is
supported by publication royalties and donations from foundations and
individuals.
*****
____________________________________________________________________
IRAQ MUST REJECT A CONSTITUTION THAT ENSALVES WOMEN
Islamic terrorism is killing and injuring Iraqi women daily, employing,
among other
weapons, acid attacks
____________________________________________________________________
THE INDEPENDENT
Commentators
15 August 2005
http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article305879.ece
Houzan Mahmoud
Today is the deadline for Iraq's ruling political classes to agree a brand
new "constitution" for the country - but don't be deceived, this is likely
to be nothing but another false dawn for Iraq's women. Much of the debate
over the constitution's main articles has centred on the degree to which
Islam will be the source for future laws in Iraq. This spells disaster for
Iraq's women, and represents a cave-in to the terrorist Islamist groups who
are "committing crimes against humanity" on an almost daily basis, in the
words of Amnesty International.
The constitution's drafting committee, like Iraq's legislative assembly, is
dominated by religious, ethnic and tribal figures. Committee members have
been pushing for Islamic Sharia law to be the sole source of the
constitution and there is strong resistance to the incorporation of any
human rights standards that are seen as usurping Islamic legal supremacy.
By all accounts, the finished document is going to reflect the growing
forced Islamisization of Iraqi life, as the poison of Islamic groups
spreads into the mainstream. Supposedly moderate politicians are
disastrously disinclined to challenge the increasingly powerful Islamist
factions that now hold sway in almost every quarter of post-occupation
Iraq.
Whether Sunni or Shia; in the current government or in opposition;
affiliated directly to al-Qa'ida or to the Jordanian fanatic Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi, or are former Baathists who "freelance" as so-called
"resistance fighters", what unites Iraq's armed Islamists is a fierce
hatred of women that rivals their hatred for US and British "invaders",
foreign "infidels" and other assorted enemies.
Across the country, a steady clampdown on women's rights has been going
unreported and unchecked by the government. Islamic terrorism is killing
and injuring Iraqi women daily, employing among other weapons, acid
attacks.
My women's rights group, the Organisation of Women's Freedom in Iraq, has
been documenting part of the upsurge in violence against women. In March
this year, for example, followers of the Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr
targeted an outing of students from Basra University. Playing football and
listening to music, the mixed group was attacked in Basra Public Park. One
male student was killed trying to defend his female friends against
Islamists who literally tore the women's clothes off their bodies. Sadr's
men photographed the dishevelled, half-dressed women, and told them that
their parents would receive the photos if they didn't refrain in future
from "immoral" behaviour.
More widely, professional women have been deliberately targeted and killed
- notably in the city of Mosul - and, recently, anti-women Islamists in
Baghdad have taken to throwing acid in women's faces and on to their
uncovered legs.
So-called "honour killings" are rife, as is the kidnapping and rape of
women. Beheadings have occurred and women have been sold into sexual
servitude. When I was in Baghdad a few months ago, I couldn't go anywhere
without a bodyguard. The sense of danger and threat was tangible.
Islamist repression against women is a campaign of "moral" terror.
Leaflets, graffiti and verbal warnings in their thousands warn women
against going out unveiled, against putting on make-up, and against shaking
hands or mixing with men. Female doctors have been prevented from treating
male patients, and male doctors warned not to attend to women.
This is a recipe for future gender enslavement, second-class citizenship
and ignorance. Thousands of female university students have now given up
their studies to protect themselves against Islamist threats.
Islamist hostility is contagious and echoed daily in high-level political
debate. Currently there is a drive over the "right" of men to have four
wives, to make divorce a male preserve and for custody of children to be
given to men only. Even women on Iraq's National Assembly - the country's
parliament - have been calling for resolutions to allow for the beating of
women by their guardians (males relatives, such as husbands or fathers).
This is all the outcome of the occupation of Iraq. This has been pursued
under the name of liberation, but what we actually see is women
increasingly losing their freedom, while political Islamists feel free to
terrorise them. The Islamicists pour into this invaded, so-called Muslim
land in order, they say, to liberate it; but in reality, neither the US nor
the Islamists are our liberators. They both really fight for power and
influence in Iraq and in the region.
The January so-called election and today's constitution are all part of the
same procedure, which is to legitimate the current installed government in
Iraq. It is only in an atmosphere of occupation and terror, they can push
their reactionary ideas forward.
The constitution is set to add to a growing fearfulness among Iraqi women,
as their rights are passed over or signed away to Islamists hostile to
Iraq's entire female population. Women in Iraq face being dragged back into
the dark ages. We need to stop this tragedy before it's too late. A
constitution based on enslaving women, religious sectarianism, and
tribalism must be rejected.
The writer is the UK Head of the Organisation of Women's Freedom in Iraq
and co-founder of the Iraq Freedom Congress. houzan73@ yahoo.co.uk
Copyright ) 2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.
*****
____________________________________________________________________
ABLE DANGER INTEL EXPOSED 'PROTECTED' HEROIN TRAFFICKING
____________________________________________________________________
MAD COW MORNING NEWS
Feature Story
August 17, 2005
http://madcowprod.com/08172005.html
by Daniel Hopsicker
Venice, FL -- Mohamed Atta was protected from official scrutiny as part of
an officially-protected cocaine and heroin trafficking network with ties to
top political figures, including Republican officials Jeb Bush and
Katherine Harris, and it was this fact--and not the "terrible lapses" of
"weak on terror" Clinton Administration officials cited by Republican
Congressman Curt Weldon--which shielded him from being apprehended before
the 9.11 attack.
Weldon alleges that Pentagon lawyers rejected the military intelligence
unit's recommendation to apprehend Atta because he was in the country
legally, and therefore information on him could not be shared with law
enforcement.
But the "terrible lapses" cited by Weldon do not stem from the nonsensical
assertion that Atta had a green card (he did not) which rendered him immune
from military investigation but were the result of an officially-protected
heroin trafficking operation being conducted on planes like those of Wally
Hilliard, whose Lear jet flew "milk runs" down and back to Venezuela every
week for 39 weeks in a row before finally running afoul of local DEA agents
not been clued-in on the 'joke.'
Moreover the secret military intelligence operation which identified
Mohamed Atta and three other hijackers as a threat a year before the 9.11
attack, called Able Danger, was by no means the first military intelligence
investigation into the activities of the Hamburg cadre.
Watching the river (of heroin) flow
As far back as 1991, military investigators had been detailed to Hamburg
Germany, tracking what one military investigator who was there told us were
"Al Qaeda heroin flows" from Afghanistan to the West.
A two-year investigation in Venice, Fl. into the flight school attended by
Atta and his bodyguard Marwan Al-Shehhi and which provided them with their
"cover" while in the U.S. unearthed the amazing fact that during the same
month the two men began flying lessons at Huffman Aviation, July of 2000,
the flight school's owner's Lear jet was seized on the runway of Orlando
Executive Airport by Federal Agents who found 43-pounds of heroin onboard.
43 pounds of heroin is known in the drug trade as "heavy weight."
In a story in the August 2, 2000 Orlando Sentinel authorities called the
bust "the biggest drug seizure in central Florida history."
"It confirms the sad fact that a massive amount of heroin is coming through
Central Florida," U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration special agent Brent
Eaton told the paper. "It's very disturbing to the DEA that more and more
high quality heroin is coming from Colombia and at a cheaper price."
The DEA was "very disturbed" enough to look more closely at Wally
Hilliard's jet charter operation. The result was their firm opposition to
returning the Lear to Hilliard, even though no one from Hilliard's company,
Plane 1 Leasing, had been charged with any crime.
Do Jeb and Kathering Harris Share "A Feeling for the Little Guy?"
And even while his companies were being used to train terrorists to fly and
smuggling heroin into the U.S., prominent Florida politicians Governor Jeb
Bush and Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris publicly endorsed
Hilliard's operation.
Governor Jeb Bush honored Hilliard's operation (called at various times
Florida Air, Sunrise Airlines and Discover Air) with a personal visit,
posing for photos with the "Discover Air family."
Katherine Harris' endorsement of Hilliard's operation was splashed across
the pages of her beloved hometown Sarasota Herald Tribune. "As one of
Florida's top politicians, Katherine Harris doesn't have much time to do a
lot of personal traveling," the paper reported.
"But twice in the past month or so, the secretary of state... has taken the
75-minute plane ride from her current home in Tallahassee to her old
stomping grounds in Sarasota. Her choice of airline? Florida Air, a
start-up commuter airline based here, grasping to be an air-taxi for the
entire state."
The Herald Tribune quoted Harris spokesman Ben McKay saying, "She
appreciates the convenience that Florida Air offers."
Ms. Harris' reputation as a stickler for the letter of the law from the
contested 2000 Presidential election was apparently put "on hold" on Wally
Hilliard's behalf: While she was "appreciating their convenience," the
operation was flying passengers without holding an air carrier certificate.
The juxtaposition of the discovery of a huge cache of heroin on a Lear jet
belonging to Wallace J. Hilliard, 70, of Naples, Fl, Huffman Aviation's
owner, at the exact same time terrorist and Osama bin Laden associate
Mohamed Atta arrived to attend his flight school from Afghanistan, a
country producing well more than half of the world's heroin, would normally
have had U.S. Attorneys looking up the sentencing guidelines appropriate to
major RICO narcotics trafficking cases, and getting ready to throw the book
at him.
In fact, they did nothing of the sort, which strongly indicates that the
Army's secret military intelligence unit Able Danger's inability to prod
federal authorities to move on Atta and other terrorists known to be in the
U.S. encountered the same obstacles, and for the same reason.
In fact, the only effort made at holding financier Wallace J. Hilliard, 70,
of Naples, Florida accountable was the weak one of confiscating his plane.
When Hilliard sued to get the DEA to return the Lear jet inn forfeiture
hearings, attempting to show himself to have been an "innocent owner," his
motion was opposed by the Government and roundly rejected in court.
The U.S. Attorney's office opposed the plane's return. Their motion said,
"because the property was used or acquired as a result of a violation of
the Controlled Substances Act."
Court documents revealed that Hilliard's leasing company, Plane 1 Leasing,
had been paid in cash for each charter by the two Latin passengers, which
aviation experts in South Florida said strains credulity.
"DEA would not return it, they auctioned it off, they told Wally they had
'reasons,'" said an aviation source in Naples. "It was the first seizure in
history for a so-called "innocent person" where they took and kept the
plane."
The court concluded Hilliard's company knew what was going on. Affidavits
later filed by the machine-gun toting DEA agents who had surrounded the
Lear jet indicated Hilliard's company's involvement went much deeper than
anyone was willing to acknowledge publicly.
Red Flags, Red Faces, Red Blood Everywhere
"It was just blatant," said a manager who worked there at the time. "That
same plane flew that same run thirty or forty times, ferrying the same
people. And they always paid cash for the rental! The red flags could not
have been raised any higher."
Hilliard lost his Lear jet. America lost (almost) 3000 lives.
And something else as well. The fact that this story was first broken
exclusively (and only) by the MadCowMorningNews, and not "papers of record"
like the New York Times and Washington Post amply demonstrates the massive
9.11 cover-up led by the FBI which is still in place, a cover-up which has
contemptuously mocked the very concept of American democracy, of a "free
press," and of the "people's right to know."
Nor were we alone in our discovery of the officially-protected drug
trafficking network. FBI whistle-blower Sibel Edmonds, in the months after
the attack, bumped into the arms for drugs deals. Edmonds alleged that the
US State Department blocked investigations showing links between criminal
drug trafficking networks and the terror attacks on 9/11.
"Certain investigations were being quashed, let's say per State
Department's request, because it would have affected certain foreign
relations [or] affected certain business relations with foreign
organizations," she stated.
Even if military intelligence unit Able Danger had been allowed to notify
the FBI, the information which fingered Mohamed Atta and others of the
hijackers was already well-known to the Bureau.
"FBI Knew Terrorists Were Using Flight Schools" the Washington Post
reported on Sept 23, 2001. "Federal authorities have been aware for years
that suspected terrorists with ties to Osama bin Laden were receiving
flight training at schools in the United States and abroad, according to
interviews and court testimony."
Indications of the FBI's "guilty knowledge" were widespread in the
aftermath of the attack included the widely-reported fact that the FBI was
at Huffman Aviation with search warrants at 2.30 a.m. the night after the
attack. An executive of Huffman Aviation told us that FBI agents were on
the scene even earlier than that.
"They moved pretty fast for guys in black Florsheims"
"How do you think the FBI got here (Huffman Aviation) so fast after the
attack?" asked the executive. "They knew what was going on here. Hell, they
were parked in a white van outside my house less than four hours after the
buildings collapsed."
"We heard that 16 of the 19 terrorists had been on Interpol's Most Wanted
list," this aviation executive continued. "But early on I gleaned that
these guys had Government protection. They were let into this country for a
specific purpose. It was a business deal."
Amazingly, the smuggling operation being protected continues to this day.
The pilot of Hilliard's busted Lear, Venezuelan Diego Levine Texar, was not
taken into custody. "The pilot was not arrested, according to a DEA
spokesman, because of a lack of evidence," reported the Orlando Sentinel.
He has since been identified as also being the chief pilot on Venezuela's
"Air Force One," which provides a bit of context for last week's news that
the State Department was revoking the visas of three Venezuelan military
officers suspected of involvement in drug trafficking.
When we first published the DEA's official report to the court about the
Orlando heroin bust (read it here) on our website and in the appendix to
"Welcome to TerrorLand," we received a very credible death threat... even
though the report is a public document available to anyone.
And Rudi Dekkers just told his favorite newspaper, (of course, the Sarasota
Herald Tribune) that he was out of work.
Poor man. We guess the trips to Colombia don't count.
Now Available! "Welcome to Terrorland: Mohammed Atta and the 9/11 Cover-up
in Florida," by Daniel Hopsicker, eco...@earthlink.net. The two-year long
investigation into Mohamed Atta & his contacts and associates in Florida.
English and German editions. Order a signed copy now; $29.95:
http://MadCowProd.com.
Copyright ) 2005 Daniel Hopsicker
*****
____________________________________________________________________
VENEZUELA TO DENY DIPLOMATIC TO DEA AGENTS
____________________________________________________________________
VENEZUELA ANALYSIS
Ongoing News and Analysis from Venezuela
Monday, August 15, 2005
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news.php?newsno=1716
By VenezuelAnalysis.com
Caracas, Venezuela--Venezuela's Vice-President Josi Vicente Rangel said
that Venezuela would no longer give diplomatic immunity to DEA agents in
Venezuela and that it might deny visas to U.S. citizens. Rangel announced
this decision in reaction to a move by the U.S. government to revoke visas
of six National Guard members who were in charge of combating drug
trafficking.
"The Venezuelan government ... will proceed quickly, with responsibility,
but firmly to reciprocate in the cases of U.S. citizens who travel to our
country," said Rangel. "We are no longer going to accept civilian employees
of the Drug Enforcement Administration being assigned to the US embassy,
because that gives them the benefit of immunity," he added.
The U.S. Embassy in Caracas declined to explain why the visas of the
National Guard officers were revoked, saying that such information is
confidential.
These developments in the relationship between the U.S. and Venezuela
represented the latest escalation in the deterioration of cooperation
between the two countries in the effort to fight drug trafficking. Last
week President Chavez had said that Venezuela would suspend all cooperation
with the DEA because the Venezuelan government had evidence that some DEA
officers were spying on Venezuela and were also involved in drug
trafficking themselves. Another reason for the suspension of cooperation
that various Venezuelan officials named is that the DEA operates outside of
the parameters of Venezuelan law. The U.S. ambassador to Venezuela, William
Brownfield, denied these accusations.
Despite the numerous complaints by U.S. officials that Venezuela is not
cooperating enough with U.S. authorities in the drug interdiction effort,
drug seizures have increased steadily since Chavez came into office.
Nonetheless, Venezuelan officials say they believe the U.S. will
"decertify" Venezuela's work against drug trafficking next month, when it
issues its annual evaluation. A decertification would mean that the U.S.
would block Venezuelan efforts to apply for credit from international
financial institutions, such as the Inter-American Development Bank.
Copyright ) 2005 Venezuela Analysis
*****
WEEKLY NEWS UPDATE ON THE AMERICAS
Nicaragua Solidarity Network of New York
339 Lafayette St
New York, NY 10012
Tel: 212-674-9499
Fax: 212-674-9139
E-mail: w...@igc.apc.org
Web: http://home.earthlink.net/~dbwilson/wnuhome.html
- Issue No. 811, August 14, 2005 -
-----
____________________________________________________________________
PARAGUAY: COMMUNITY RADIO BOMBED
____________________________________________________________________
Early on Aug. 2, unidentified individuals broke into and used homemade
explosives to set fire to the Quebracho Poty community radio station at the
San Ramon Nonato parish in Puerto Casado, Paraguay. No one was hurt, but
the attack left virtually the entire station destroyed. Some people believe
the attack may have been carried out by employees of the Victoria company,
owned by the World Unification Church of Korean businessperson Sun Myung
Moon. The radio station has been backing local residents in a demand that
Paraguay's Congress expropriate and redistribute among local residents some
52,000 hectares of land bought by the Victoria company in 2001 [see Update
#808]. [Adital 8/9/05 from Asociacion Mundial de Radios Comunitarias para
America Latina y el Caribe (AMARC-ALC)/International Freedom of Expression
Exchange (IFEX)]
* * *
____________________________________________________________________
ECUADOR: IRAQ MERCENARIES RECRUITED
____________________________________________________________________
The US company Epi Security & Investigation says it has hired some 1,000
Colombian military and police veterans to work as mercenaries for the US
occupation in Iraq. Epi is operating from a house near a US air base in the
Ecuadoran city of Manta. The Bogota daily El Tiempo reported on Aug. 12
that the Colombian mercenaries receive salaries of between $2,500 and
$5,000 a month--less than half the salary charged by their US counterparts.
Most of the mercenaries are retired military officers or police agents who
were trained by the US military and are accustomed to working with US
troops. [La Jornada (Mexico) 8/13/05 from AFP]
Ecuador's minister of government, Mauricio Gandara, responded on Aug. 13 by
announcing he will order an immediate investigation into Epi Security's
activities in Ecuador. Speaking from New York, where he was on a private
visit, Gandara described the company's recruitment of mercenaries as
illegal and immoral. More than a year ago, the Latin American Human Rights
Association revealed that Dyncorp, another US company which recruits
mercenaries for US military projects, was operating in Manta. Two other
competitors, Blackwater and Halliburton, also have representatives in
Colombia and in Manta. [Prensa Latina 8/13/05]
* * *
____________________________________________________________________
HAITI: PARAMILITARY LEADER RELEASED
____________________________________________________________________
The interim Haitian government released rightwing paramilitary leader Louis
Jodel Chamblain from jail on Aug. 11. Chamblain, a leader in an armed
rebellion that ended when President Jean- Bertrand Aristide was ousted in
February 2004, had been imprisoned since April 2004 because of his
conviction of several crimes committed under military rule in the early
1990s. An Aug. 17, 2004 retrial cleared Chamblain of charges in the 1993
murder of business leader Antoine Izmery, and on May 6, 2005 the Supreme
Court overturned his conviction in the 1994 massacre in the Raboteau
neighborhood of Gonaives. He remains convicted of the 1994 murder of a
priest, Jean-Marie Vincent [see Updates #760, 798].
In a press conference on Aug. 12, departing US ambassador James Foley
condemned Chamblain's release as "a scandal for the country and for Haiti's
image around the world." He contrasted the release with the continued
imprisonment of Aristide's prime minister, Yvon Neptune, who has been held
for 14 months in connection with political killings in St-Marc in February
2004, even though no one has shown "the least sign," Foley said, that
Neptune was involved in the deaths. Foley also used the press conference,
his last, to deny Aristide's claim that he was kidnapped by the US in
February 2004. "[H]e called me personally to come help him," Foley said,
adding that the US had "saved his life" both in 2004 and during a coup in
1991. [AlterPresse 8/12/05; Agence Haitienne de Presse 8/12/05]
* * *
____________________________________________________________________
US: CUBAN 5 CONVICTION THROWN OUT
____________________________________________________________________
On Aug. 9 a three-member panel of the Atlanta-based 11th US Circuit Court
of Appeals issued a 93-page decision overturning the June 2001 conviction
of five Cubans for allegedly trying to infiltrate US military bases and
Cuban exile groups in South Florida. The panel found that prosecutors had
made improper comments during the trial and that a fair trial was not
possible in Miami because of the political climate and intense media
coverage in a city dominated by rightwing Cuban Americans, especially after
the US government's return of six-year old Elian Gonzalez to Cuba in April
2000. "A new trial was mandated by the perfect storm created when the surge
of pervasive community sentiment and extensive publicity both before and
during the trial merged with the improper prosecutorial references," the
court said.
Lawyers for the Cuban Five--Fernando Gonzalez, Rene Gonzalez, Antonio
Guerrero, Gerardo Hernandez and Ramon Labanino--said the men were not
spying on the US government but on rightwing Cuban Americans like Orlando
Bosch who were involved in violent acts against Cuba and Cuban citizens. In
1998 the Cuban government shared some of the information the men
obtained--including documents and photographs--with the US Federal Bureau
of Investigation (FBI) on the understanding that the US would act to stop
planned violent acts by the rightwingers. Instead, the US arrested the
sources in September 1998.
Guerrero, Hernandez and Labanino were sentenced to life in prison. Rene
Gonzalez was sentenced to 15 years, and Fernando Gonzalez (no relation) to
19 years. Hernandez was also convicted of conspiracy to commit murder for
his alleged role in the 1996 shooting by Cuban fighters of two planes
operated by the Miami- based Brothers to the Rescue group headed by
rightwinger Jose Basulto.
One of the defense attorneys, Leonard Weinglass, called the decision
"historic," saying it was the first time a federal appeals court had issued
such a detailed decision based on the venue of a trial. The US government
had aided the appeal by its position in a separate civil case at about the
same time, an employment lawsuit brought against the US by immigration
agent Ricardo Ramirez. Government lawyers said the government could not get
a fair trial in Miami because the community had become too polarized after
the Elian Gonzalez affair. [Miami Herald 8/10/05; La Jornada (Mexico)
8/10/05 from correspondent]
The Altanta court's ruling came less than a month after the release of a
decision by the Geneva-based United Nations (UN) Working Group on Arbitrary
Detention that the trial of the Cuban Five was arbitrary and in violation
of international law. The group found that the defendants were denied full
access to evidence and to their lawyers and urged the US to "adopt the
necessary steps to remedy the situation, in conformity with principles
stated in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights." The
Associated Press obtained a copy of the ruling on July 14. [MH 7/15/05 from
AP]
Federal prosecutors said they plan to retry the men, but the trial is not
expected to take place until next year. Defense attorneys and a support
group, the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five, are asking for their
release on bail pending the new trial. On Aug. 10 the committee launched a
letter-writing campaign to persuade the US government to approve visas for
Olga Salanueva, Rene Gonzalez's wife, and Adriana Perez, Hernandez' wife,
so they can visit their husbands. [MH 8/11/05]
Weekly News Update on the Americas (ISSN 1084-922X) is published every
Sunday by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York. A 1-year
subscription is $25 within the US. Free one-month trial subscriptions are
available; back issues and source materials available on request. Feel free
to reproduce these updates or reprint information from them, but please
credit us. The Update is also available electronically: contact us at:
w...@igc.org for info.
*****
____________________________________________________________________
INHERITING AN IMPERIAL NIGHTMARE
____________________________________________________________________
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
[Col. Writ. 7/31/05]
Source: Afrikan Frontline Network, natt...@comcast.net
- Sunday, 14 August 2005 -
It's amazing when you think about it, but in less than two slim terms, the
Bush administration and its neocon minions, have pushed the nation into a
New Era, one which will bedevil the US for generations. By pushing the
nation into a bogus war, by essentially taking over a nation based on lies
and pretexts, the country will have to wrestle with the nettling problem of
Iraq for years to come. It doesn't matter who becomes president in 2008. It
doesn't matter which political party controls the Congress. (As if it
really matters now, huh?).
The American Empire, unimpeded by any imperial rival, tells the rest of the
world to go to hell, and now, by the millions, people of the world are
itching to return the sentiment.
One writer, Tony Judt, in an article in *The New York Review of Books*
(July 14, 2005), quotes a comment he heard from a senior "and rather
conservative" Spanish diplomat, saying:
"We grew up under Franco with a dream of America. That dream encouraged us
to imagine and later to build a different, better Spain. All dreams must
fade -- but not all dreams must become nightmares. We Spanish know a little
about political nightmares. What is happening to America? How do you
explain Guantanamo?" [p. 18]
In this apparent era of imperial fever, Judt has criticism for historians,
the press, and politicians:
"Historians and pundits who leap aboard the bandwagon of American Empire
have forgotten a little too quickly that for an empire to be born, a
republic has first to die. In the longer run no country can expect to
behave imperially -- brutally, contemptuously, illegally -- abroad while
preserving republican values at home. For it is a mistake to suppose that
institutions alone will save a republic from the abuses that make or break
republics, it is men. And in the United States today, the men (and women)
of the country's political class have failed. Congress appears helpless to
impede the concentration of power in the executive branch; indeed, with few
exceptions it has contributed actively and even enthusiastically to the
process." [pp. 17-18]
Like drunken monkeys, Americans have lurched, from hope to hope, from ledge
to ledge; from timetable to timetable; from installed toadies, to
quasi-elected ones; from illusion to illusion; to try to reconstruct one of
the oldest societies on earth. Every step forward, has been a tumble
backwards two feet.
And the best that the "loyal opposition" can muster is a misdirected call
for more troops!
The War in Iraq, like all wars, eventually comes home, to wreak its havoc,
and render its casualties, among those who blithely and blindly sent such
violence forth. It is already having an impact on the poorest among us, who
find less and less resources available for the hardscrabble existence of
living in urban, or rural America. The struggle to raise, to educate, and
to gainfully employ young people today is a struggle that millions of
parents are finding well-nigh impossible.
Politicians offer childish diversions, like hearings into computer games,
or bills shielding young people from sex on the internet; or the latest
biggie -- congressional hearings into steroid use by athletes.
Meanwhile, 'New Rome' is burning. Capitalism buys the Congress, and rents
their names to pass bills which further weakens workers, while empowering
the business class (as in the recent CAFTA -- Central American Free Trade
Agreement -- bill). Remember NAFTA? Remember its promises? Remember its
realities? One wonders, what ever happened to a Global Free Labor Agreement
-- where the interests of labor, worldwide, is protected?
Speaking of 'crimes of Empire', I urge all of those reading this to read
the book, *America's Disappeared: Detainees, Secret Imprisonment, and the
"War on Terror"*, edited by Rachel Meeropol (New York: Open Media/Seven
Stories Press, 2005). Despite its timely subject, its been largely ignored
by a media pressing for its place at the imperial table. If you want to
know what Guantanamo is really about, check it out.
Decades ago, George Bush I threatened to bring forth a 'New World Order.'
Bush II made it real.
This is the foreboding picture of that world.
Copyright ) 2005 Mumia Abu-Jamal. All rights reserved.
Mr. Jamal's new work, WE WANT FREEDOM: A Life in the Black Panther Party,
is now available from South End Press, Cambridge, MA.
(http://www.southendpress.org).
Check out Mumia's NEW book: "Faith of Our Fathers: An Examination of the
Spiritual Life of African and African-American People":
http://www.africanworld.com.
These are VERY SERIOUS TIMES for political activists in this country and
around the world. Get full details and keep updated by reading ACTION
ALERTS!! at http://www.mumia.org and http://www.movenet.org.
To download Mp3's of Mumia's commentaries visit http://www.prisonradio.org
or http://www.fsrn.org
The Power of Truth is Final -- Free Mumia!
CHECK http://www.mumia.org FOR IMPORTANT ACTION ALERTS!
PLEASE CONTACT: International Concerned Family & Friends of MAJ; P.O. Box
19709; Philadelphia, PA 19143; Tel: 215-476-8812; Fax: 215-476-6180:
E-mail: icf...@aol.com AND OFFER YOUR SERVICES!
Send our brotha some LOVE and LIGHT at:
Mumia Abu-Jamal
AM 8335
SCI-Greene
175 Progress Drive
Waynesburg, PA 15370
WE WHO BELIEVE IN FREEDOM CAN NOT REST!!
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