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