by Robert H. Reid
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) – An uptick in airstrikes and other military moves point to an imminent showdown between U.S. forces and Sunni Muslim insurgents west of Baghdad – a decisive battle that could determine whether the campaign to bring democracy and stability to Iraq can succeed.

American officials have not confirmed a major assault is near against the insurgent bastions of Fallujah and neighboring Ramadi. But Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi has warned Fallujah leaders that force will be used if they do not hand over extremists, including terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

A similar escalation in U.S. military actions and Iraqi government warnings occurred before a major offensive in Najaf forced militiamen loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to give up that holy city in late August. And U.S. and Iraqi troops retook Samarra from insurgents early this month.

Full Article: cnn.com

by Andrew Gumbel
No need to wonder if this year’s US presidential election is headed for another meltdown: the meltdown has already started. The voting machines have already begun to break down, accusations of systematic voter suppression and fraud are rampant, and lawyers fully armed and ready with an intimate knowledge of the nation’s byzantine election laws have flocked to court to cry foul in half a dozen states.

Nine days out from election day, we don’t yet know whether the state-by-state arithmetic will lead to a post-election stalemate similar to the 36-day battle for Florida in 2000. It is, of course, possible that the margins of victory in the 50 states will be wide enough to avert the worst – even if overall conditions are likely to fall short of the usual definition of a free and fair election.

Given the nail-bitingly close numbers in the opinion polls, however, Election 2004 could just as easily produce a concatenation of knockdown, drag-out fights in several states at once, making the débâcle in Florida four years ago look, in retrospect, like the constitutional equivalent of a vicarage tea party.

Last week saw the start of early voting in Florida and a clutch of other states, and with it came a plethora of problems. In three heavily populated counties – around Tampa, Orlando and Fort Lauderdale – the network connection used to verify voter identifications broke down on the first day, creating hours of delay. In Jacksonville, where poor ballot design in 2000 knocked out the votes of 27,000 poor, predominantly black, predominantly Democratic voters, the county elections supervisor chose the first day of polling to resign, citing ill health. He had come under fire for failing to make early voting available in the city’s African-American neighborhoods – something his interim successor is now going some way to remedy.

Elsewhere, there were computer breakdowns during early voting in Memphis. Pre-election testing of electronic machines in Riverside County, California, and in Palm Beach County, Florida, led to multiple computer crashes. Elsewhere, machines have manifested problems handling basic addition – especially when asked to display instructions in a language other than English. Several county administrators have chosen simply to skip the non-English language part of the test.

In Nebraska, dead people were found to have applied for absentee ballots. In Ohio, a representative of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was found to have offered crack cocaine to a known drug addict in exchange for completed voter registration forms, which he duly submitted in the names of Mary Poppins, Janet Jackson and Jeffrey Dahmer, the notorious cannibal serial killer.

Full Article: Independent UK

by Omar Barghouti
Iman al-Hams was a 13-year old refugee schoolgirl who was executed — after being wounded — by an Israeli platoon commander on the sad sands of Rafah.

According to testimonies given by soldiers in the same company to the mass Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, a soldier in the watchtower identified Iman and cautioned his commander shouting, “Don’t shoot. It’s a little girl”. The company commander, the soldiers testified, “approached her, shot two bullets into her [head], walked back towards the force, turned back to her, switched his weapon to automatic and emptied his entire magazine into her.” (1) Eyewitnesses corroborated the soldiers, account, saying that Iman was shot almost 70 meters away from the Israeli military position. After a bullet hit her leg, Iman, who was wearing her school uniform, fell. Then, they said, the officer went over to her, saw that she was bleeding from her wounds, but still shot her twice in the head to “confirm the killing”, an Israeli euphemism for the practice of executing a wounded Palestinian. A cursory army investigation later cleared him of any “unethical conduct”, as is customary, and suspended him only because of “poor relations with subordinates”.(2)

In a flash, Israel proved to the world — yet again — that it is not only intransigent in its patent and consistent violation of international law, but also incapable of adhering to the most fundamental principles of moral behavior.
Full Article: counterpunch.org

Masked Haitian Police Shoot Children While Arresting Priest
by Bill Quigley
Jeanine (not her real name for reasons you will shortly understand) is a quiet 14 year old girl who lives with her family of 18 off a rutted dirt road near the international airport in Port au Prince. Twice a week she walked the mile or so to eat a meal at St. Claire’s church.

Fr. Gerard Jean-Juste is the pastor of St. Claire’s. He has been in jail for more than a week after his church was surrounded by heavily armed masked men while feeding 600 children at his parish His arrest was violent. The police ripped metal bars out of their concrete surroundings and smashed the windows of the church house to enter. After beating and handcuffing Fr. Jean-Juste, they dragged him out though the smashed window, threw him into a car and raced off to jail.

After the arrest, the people of the parish publicly complained and said the masked police had even shot children. Haitian authorities flatly denied any children were shot and no police inquiry into the arrest has been made.

Government-friendly media and US Embassy personnel also scoffed at the reports of children being shot by police. They said the stories of the children were products of the Haiti rumor mill and propaganda from the opponents of Haiti’s unelected government.

Now the wounded children have appeared in public. They have real bandages and real medical reports.

And then there is the bullet.
Full Article: counterpunch.org

And then there is the fact that these countries are close US allies, and US taxpayers pay for those bullets.

WASHINGTON – Violent crime fell last year, with only a slight uptick in murders marring the overall trend of fewer crimes across the country, the FBI (news – web sites) said Monday in its annual crime report.

There were just under 1.4 million crimes of murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery and aggravated assault in 2003, 3 percent fewer than 2002 and a decline of more than 25 percent from 1994.

The 2003 figure translates to a rate of 475 violent crimes for every 100,000 Americans, a 3.9 percent decrease from the previous year, the FBI report said. Aggravated assaults, which make up two-thirds of all violent crimes, have dropped for 10 straight years.

Murder was the only violent crime that increased in 2003, with the 16,503 slayings reported by police to the FBI representing a 1.7 percent hike from the year before. Nearly eight in 10 murder victims last year were male and 90 percent were adults.

Property crimes such as burglary, theft and theft of motor vehicles dropped slightly, with the overall total of 10.4 million crimes in 2003 representing a decline of less than 1 percent.

The property crime rate for 2003 was 3,588 crimes per 100,000 Americans, a 1.2 percent decline.

Full Article: news.yahoo.com

Well gee, glad it’s gone down…

by James Glanz, William J. Broad and David E. Sanger.
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 24 – The Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives – used to demolish buildings, make missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons – are missing from one of Iraq’s most sensitive former military installations.

The huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no man’s land, still picked over by looters as recently as Sunday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years, but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished sometime after the American-led invasion last year.

The White House said President Bush’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was informed within the past month that the explosives were missing. It is unclear whether President Bush was informed. American officials have never publicly announced the disappearance, but beginning last week they answered questions about it posed by The New York Times and the CBS News program “60 Minutes.”

Administration officials said Sunday that the Iraq Survey Group, the C.I.A. task force that searched for unconventional weapons, has been ordered to investigate the disappearance of the explosives.

American weapons experts say their immediate concern is that the explosives could be used in major bombing attacks against American or Iraqi forces: the explosives, mainly HMX and RDX, could produce bombs strong enough to shatter airplanes or tear apart buildings.

Full Article: NY Times

BAQUBA, Iraq (Reuters) – Rebels killed 49 unarmed army recruits in one of the bloodiest attacks on Iraq’s nascent security forces and, in a separate attack Sunday, killed a U.S. diplomat in a mortar strike near Baghdad airport.

The bodies of 37 recruits shot dead on a road northeast of Baghdad were found Saturday and 12 were discovered Sunday.

“They were all executed, we found them executed,” Interior Ministry spokesman Adnan Abdul-Rahman said.

The attack was another blow to the efforts of the interim government to rebuild Iraqi security forces to tackle a raging insurgency that U.S.-led forces have failed to quell.

“We found them arranged in groups of 12 with bullets in the head,” Iraqi National Guard officer Jassim Saadi told Reuters television in the town of Mandali, near the Iranian border, where the bodies were brought after the ambush.

The bodies, in torn and bloodstained civilian clothes, were taken in the back of trucks to a National Guard base in Mandali, where they were laid out in rows. Some bystanders wept.

The recruits, based at Kirkush, 90 km (55 miles) northeast of Baghdad, had been heading for home leave in three minibuses when they were ambushed at about 8 p.m. (1700 GMT) Saturday.

Police said insurgents disguised as police had set up a checkpoint and stopped the buses. They forced them to leave the buses and lie face down on the tarmac before shooting them.

Villagers heard the gunfire, found the bodies and called police. A dozen recruits who tried to flee were also shot. Their bodies were found Sunday. The minibuses were burned.

Full Article: Reuters

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – Rising sea levels force millions of Bangladeshis into India, fueling ethnic and religious tensions that end in bloody riots. In Africa, crops wither in the parched landscape of a once-lush nation, bringing strife to the countryside and leading city dwellers to clash with the army as they loot shops for food.

As Russian lawmakers ratified the Kyoto protocol on climate change on Friday after years of dithering, grim scenarios like these may have been on the minds of some.

A growing number of analysts argue that global warming linked to greenhouse gas emissions is not just a “green issue.”

They argue it might eventually top terrorism on the global security agenda, provoking new conflicts and inflaming old ones.

“The biggest security problem from global warming would be forced migrations, the dislocation of people because of flooding or drought,” said Steve Sawyer, climate policy adviser for environmental group Greenpeace.

“Or drastic ecosystem change could change the resource base and uproot rural people. Forced migrations of people almost always cause problems.”

Former Canadian Environment Minister David Anderson said earlier this year that global warming posed a greater long-term threat to humanity than terrorism because it could force hundreds of millions from their homes.

Full Article: Reuters

by Tim Golden
WASHINGTON – In early November 2001, with Americans still staggered by the Sept. 11 attacks, a small group of White House officials worked in great secrecy to devise a new system of justice for the new war they had declared on terrorism.

Determined to deal aggressively with the terrorists they expected to capture, the officials bypassed the federal courts and their constitutional guarantees, giving the military the authority to detain foreign suspects indefinitely and prosecute them in tribunals not used since World War II.

The plan was considered so sensitive that senior White House officials kept its final details hidden from the president’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and the secretary of state, Colin L. Powell, officials said. It was so urgent, some of those involved said, that they hardly thought of consulting Congress.

White House officials said their use of extraordinary powers would allow the Pentagon to collect crucial intelligence and mete out swift, unmerciful justice. “We think it guarantees that we’ll have the kind of treatment of these individuals that we believe they deserve,” said Vice President Dick Cheney, who was a driving force behind the policy.

But three years later, not a single terrorist has been prosecuted. Of the roughly 560 men being held at the United States naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, only 4 have been formally charged. Preliminary hearings for those suspects brought such a barrage of procedural challenges and public criticism that verdicts could still be months away. And since a Supreme Court decision in June that gave the detainees the right to challenge their imprisonment in federal court, the Pentagon has stepped up efforts to send home hundreds of men whom it once branded as dangerous terrorists.

Full Article: NY Times

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Support among Iraqis for the U.S.-appointed government in Baghdad has plunged since it was installed this summer, a U.S. survey released on Friday said.

The survey brought unwelcome news for the Bush administration as it fights to build stability before elections in January. It also indicated that Iraqis are most strongly influenced by their religious, rather than secular, leaders.

The survey, carried out at the end of September, showed popular support for interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi dropped more than 20 percentage points since July. Washington formally handed sovereignty to Iraq at the end of June.

Just over 45 percent of those surveyed said Allawi had been effective since taking office in June, down from over 66 percent in July, and support for his government plummeted from 62 percent to 43 percent over the same period.

The survey was carried out by the International Republican Institute, a government-funded body that promotes democracy around the world and which is helping oversee efforts to build political parties in Iraq.

It found religious leaders carry more political weight than tribal leaders, the government or political parties with potential Iraqi voters.

The Washington Post, reporting figures not publicly released by the institute, said the survey also found that the most popular politician in Iraq was Abdel Aziz Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

Fifty-one percent said they want him in the national assembly, which will pick a new government.

Full Article:cnn.com

by Rootsie
I heard a commentator today say that all substantive issues have drained out of the 2004 presidential election, and that the whole thing is boiling down to a few voters’ perception of which candidate will make them/keep them safe. It’s all come down to fear.

‘Safe.’ Now ain’t that a shame. And ironic, since America’s abiding myth is that we are a nation of risk-takers, as all of our heroes, from pioneers and warriors and adventurers to modern corporate pirates, attest.

Well what are we so afraid of? The barbarians at the gate, the terrorists. As obvious as it is that the media are masters at manipulating people through fear, their tactics wouldn’t work on a fearless people.

I know my writings might sound to some like a one-note song, but let’s look at some history. The first fraidy- cat Americans were the Puritans, those small people who braved the Atlantic in their small boats seeking some small measure of liberation, within the parameters of their starched-collar Protestantism.

What they sought: Zion in the Wilderness, the City on a Hill, a New Jerusalem. What they found: a frigid slate-gray ocean; a land dense and dark with ancient, and no doubt, to them, gloomy forests; hardscrabble soil that yielded little; wolves and bears and wildcats; and if that weren’t all discouraging enough, dark people. Lurking, hiding, skulking in the underbrush, liable to pop out at any minute with their expressionless faces and clothes made from skins. Wait a minute now: land of milk and honey? This was more like the Catholic Hell, and those strange dark people demons here to welcome them to their final home. They began to think that they must have gotten their theology wrong, and this the punishment.

They talked a big game, the Cotton and Increase Mathers, the William Bradfords. They perched their little gray villages at the edges of that great unknown darkness, whose vastness they must have sensed, raising storms of Old Testament thunder. But secretly they were appalled by how heinously they must have transgressed against their God to wind up in a place like this. This is the great fear that lies at the deep heart’s core of America.

The only possible response to this encounter with primeval darkness was light, light, and more light: clear the forests, cut down the animals and those irritating dark people, once they had outlived their usefulness. And look out to the sea, towards familiar places, establish a brisk maritime trade to bring familiar comforts, and from the beginning, slaves. Slaves to aid in the enlightening project, the pacification of the rough wilderness. Build and thrust, up and up and up, until gleaming towers scraped the skies. God himself became a vastly distant creature of light, way up there somewhere, not of much use, but demanding obeisance and frequent, fervent, mention.

The light of Liberty. The light of commerce, technology, progress… Well it wasn’t a City on a Hill when we got here, but we are surely making progress.

Simply put, America is afraid of the dark.

This plays out literally and figuratively in countless ways. Constant, virulent, racism. Anti-depressants. Clean lines, polished steel, tons of windows. A hatred of real intelligence, i.e. introspective types. America has never been much for looking at herself.

Carried away by her rhetoric about freedom and equality, America flirted for a brief moment with the idea of freeing the slaves and sending them back to Africa. But L’Ouverture’s rebellion in Haiti put a quick end to that. They will murder us in our beds, never mind that we might deserve it. That’s too much introspection. No one talked in those heady days of equality for the Indians; they were simply too much of a moral affront, and useless besides. Total eradication was the prescription for that problem.

So now it’s the A-rabs too. Nothing seems to constellate the deepest fears of Americans like dark-skinned human beings. And this bunch, unlike blacks and the remaining invisible Indians, really do seem to want to murder us in our beds. And so we are looking for a big daddy to make us feel safe. Too bad we banished God to some heaven of indeterminate location.

Could it be that the mighty, muscular, ostensibly light-bringing projects– military, industrial, and technological, which so distinguish our history, have always been pre-emptive strikes against our fear, undertaken in order that we may feel some measure of ‘safe’?

Safe from what? Safe from history. Safe from the shattering of our great national myth of particular favor from God, whom we need to imagine as smiling down benevolently upon our grand experiment. From the first we doubted it.

Freedom. Justice. Equality. Funny how ill-suited those first small people were for such things. The Protestant ethic is not particularly conducive to expansive ideas about tolerance and human dignity, and for all of the rhetoric, those ideas have not taken firm root here. They simply have not. For all of the material excess and the mind-boggling technology and illusions of freedom, we are a fearful, profoundly unfree people: a depressed people, an addicted people, a murderously violent people.

We have tried to fight back the shadows. Our cities glow eerily in the distant darkness. Our rhetoric reflects our desperate craving for light. What you deny and deny comes back to get you in the end. We have made a monster out of that darkness, and it threatens to envelop the whole world.

Black is the color of the good earth; we poison it. Dark are the roots which nourish, which we deny. Black are the skins of people who built this place, whom we have murdered by the millions. We pretend that we just do not understand why ‘they’ hate us. We know. We know very well. All of this desperately gaudy Technicolor culture of ours we have constructed to distract us from all the things we know.

There is something so pathological about all of this. Physically speaking, Americans are pretty much the safest people in the world. And in terms of the intangibles of life, when does an overwhelming desire for safety get us anywhere? We admire and value courage and risk-taking , but only vicariously I guess. We are more than willing to render vast regions of the world unsafe for the people who live there for the sake of our own safety. So much for the selfless generosity of the American spirit. Another myth

Here we stand, the most terrifying menace the world has known, crying out for safety. Safety.

Tell it to Fallujah. To Gaza. To Pine Ridge. To South L.A.