Yasawathie, an operating theatre attendant, told us: “Now we are proud of what we did. We worked for 24 hours without changing our theatre gowns or even taking a meal. Nobody was concerned about meals. Our only concern was to treat the injured.”
wsws.org/articles/2005/jan2005/sril-j18.shtml


In typical Times fashion, the editorial includes a dishonest gesture of contrition—“our own failures to deconstruct all the spin and faulty intelligence”—while failing to note the role of its own reporters and commentators, such as the notorious Judith Miller, in promoting the lies, which it euphemistically labels “faulty intelligence.” Neither Miller nor any other journalist or editor at the newspaper has been fired for helping to perpetrate this fraud on the people of America and the world.
wsws.org/articles/2005/jan2005/wmd-j18.shtml


As Congress prepared to rubberstamp the nomination of torture aficionado Alberto Gonzales as the nation's chief prosecutor, the Washington Post broke news that would have torn a saner nation apart. The Bush Administration, the paper reported January 2, is no longer planning to keep hundreds of Muslim prisoners currently rotting away in U.S. concentration camps at Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib and Bagram merely "indefinitely." The Defense Department and CIA are now planning "a more permanent approach for potentially lifetime detentions" for these innocents.

We're locking them up forever. Without due process.

Before gangsters like Alberto Gonzales seduced us into abandoning our values, a person was considered innocent before being proven guilty. Now we're locking people away because "the government does not have enough evidence to charge [them] in courts." And everyone, including Democrats, is OK with this.
chicago.indymedia.org/newswire/display/51535/index.php


Alberto Gonzales should not be the Attorney General of the United States. He should be considered a war criminal and indicted by the Attorney General. This is a suggested indictment of Alberto Gonzales for war crimes under Title 18 U.S.C. section 1441, the War Crimes Act.
www.truthout.org/docs_05/011905A.shtml


Those implicated in the war against the people of Iraq must be brought to justice in war crimes trials which will mete out the appropriate punishment, not only to those who took the lead in planning and organizing the war, but those who acted as its propaganda mouthpieces, those who served as its political enablers, and those whose corporations profited enormously and continue to profit from the war.

There is one essential precondition in the struggle to accomplish this: the American working class must break out of the political straitjacket of the two-party system, establish its political independence, and link its efforts to those of the working class throughout the world, in a common fight against imperialism and war.
wsws.org/articles/2005/jan2005/bush-j19.shtml


According to traditional constitutional norms in the United States, the president is not an absolute monarch restricted only by quadrennial elections and a two-term limit. He functions under a system of checks and balances, with two co-equal branches of government, legislative and judicial, exercising independent powers of their own. His role as commander-in-chief—of the armed forces only, not of the country or its people—signifies the supremacy of the civilian authority over the military, not the supremacy of the president over the population.
wsws.org/articles/2005/jan2005/bush-j19.shtml


At a Washington news conference held to publicize the release of the survey, HRW executive director Kenneth Roth rejected the ongoing prosecution of troops accused of abusing Iraqi prisoners, such as Army Spc. Charles Graner, saying blame for the abuse and torture goes beyond the low-level military personnel and reaches to top levels of the Bush administration.

In an essay entitled “Darfur and Abu Ghraib,” Roth observes that the US action is one of the “fundamental threats to human rights” in the world today precisely “because the abuser is so powerful.” He points out that when most governments breach international human rights law, they commit a violation, “but the rule remains firm. Yet when a government as dominant and influential as the United States openly defies that law and seeks to justify its defiance, it also undermines the law itself and invites others to do the same.”
wsws.org/articles/2005/jan2005/hrw-j17.shtml


Hersh writes: “The war on terrorism would be expanded, and effectively placed under the Pentagon’s control. The President has signed a series of findings and executive orders authorizing secret commando groups and other Special Forces units to conduct covert operations against suspected terrorist targets in as many as ten nations in the Middle East and South Asia.”

These directives give the Pentagon authority to run covert operations “off the books—free from legal restrictions imposed on the CIA.” The Pentagon refers these actions, not as “covert ops,” which the CIA must report to Congress, but as “black reconnaissance,” which is treated as preparation of the battlefield and therefore not subject to intelligence reporting requirements.
wsws.org/articles/2005/jan2005/iran-j20.shtml


Having taken the decision not to apply the Geneva Conventions to those held in Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, you sought to dispel concern about the treatment of such detainees by saying that they would be treated "in a manner consistent with the principles of Geneva". However, this assertion has always been qualified with the phrase "to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity". The legal concept of military necessity cannot lawfully be used to override the prohibition on torture or ill-treatment, but there is mounting evidence that the USA has violated this principle under your leadership.
www.truthout.org/docs_05/012105W.shtml


"Lane McCotter, a former Utah Department of Corrections director ...
claimed that Abu Ghraib "is the only place we agreed as a team was truly closest to an American prison."

There is ample evidence that prisoner mistreatment occurs commonly in U.S. correctional facilities, not just in proxy prisons placed in occupied territories. Physical violence, sexual humiliation and rape, and medical neglect are documented yearly by human rights organizations sans any effort by the public or their elected representatives to remedy these abuses.
electromagnet.us/dogspot/modules.php


The US invasion of Iraq was not so much directed against Saddam Hussein, as against Washington’s European and Asian rivals. Let us pose a counter-factual. Suppose that, in accord with UN resolutions, sanctions against Iraq had been lifted after its disarmament. Oil production and exports would have resumed, generating large revenues, used both for reconstruction and the opening up of new fields.

The beneficiaries, however, would not have been US companies, but European construction and engineering firms. The oilfields would have been opened by French, Russian, and Chinese companies. Closer economic integration would have inevitably raised the question of whether oil contracts, at least from Iraq, and possibly other producers, should not be priced in euros rather than dollars.
wsws.org/articles/2005/jan2005/nb-j17.shtml


A major political row is raging in the mass media of Colombia and Venezuela, left-wing websites and elsewhere over the kidnapping of FARC leader Rodrigo Granda. Each day brings more pronouncements and revelations from ministers, military and police officials, as well as Congress-people and leaders of social movements. Intellectuals have written and signed petitions, some seeing the kidnapping as a CIA plot to destabilize Chavez, others looking at the emerging facts and finding a complex picture of Colombian strategic moves and Venezuelan internal security lapses. [...]

I call upon all people of good will to join in condemning the Uribe regime for the kidnapping of Rodrigo Granda and express our support for him as a political prisoner of conscience.
chicago.indymedia.org/newswire/display/51531/index.php


Massive media corporations like Globovision are using all their resources to spread lies about the Bolivarian Revolution and openly call for coups and foreign intervention. Meanwhile the landowners are hiring thugs to terrorise peasant and community leaders. The Venezuelan Revolution must take the initiative and expropriate all those who do not respect the democratic will of the majority and put these means of production under the control of the workers and the community.
www.handsoffvenezuela.org/content/view/153/43/


In July 2003, the owners declared bankruptcy and the workers responded by occupying the plant and starting to run production under workers’ control. Rowan Jimenez, a trade union activist and member of the action committee, explained how during the occupation, “the workers organised production, broke all productivity records and reduced unproductive waste to a level never seen before”, (El Topo Obrero interview, 16/09/04). After a 77-day long struggle an uneasy truce was reached. But that was not to last. On September 7th of last year, the company again ceased operations and the workers’ struggle started again. [...]

After months of struggle, finally, on January 13th, when a delegation of Venepal workers went to Caracas to demand a solution, the National Assembly declared Venepal and its installations to be of “public usefulness and social interest”. This was the prelude for Chavez signing decree no. 3438. This is the result of the struggle and the resilience of the workers in Venepal who consciously sought the support of the local community for their struggle.
chicago.indymedia.org/newswire/display/51662/index.php


The El Charcote estate has 13,000 hectares (32,000 acres) of land and produces some 450,000 kilos of beef every year. The Venezuelan government argues that a large part of this land is not actually owned by the Vestey group and that they are illegally using property belonging to the Venezuelan state. Local peasant leaders argue that the land was bought by dictator Juan Vicente Gomez in the 1930s and that subsequently, all land owned by the dictator was passed over to the Venezuelan state. Vestey Group administrators complain that parts of the ranch have been occupied by peasants since 2001 when the Land Act was passed. The intervention at the El Charcote estate was carried out by the governor of Cojedes, Johnny Yánez, with about 200 national guardsmen and police along with helicopters which will allow them to survey the ranch. [...]

The problem is precisely that, as in other areas of the progressive government of Chavez, any social justice measures implemented, no matter how “moderate” they might be, clash head on with the vested interests of the owners of industry, capital and the land. We must remember that, even though the Bolivarian revolution has not directly infringed on the rights of private property, the capitalists and landowners have attempted the violent overthrow of the government on several occasions. The fact is that the basic needs of the working people of Venezuela (to free health care and education for all, to a roof over their heads, to decent food on their table, to means of earning their livelihood) are in direct contradiction to the existence of the capitalist system based on private profit and the benefits of a wealthy minority. And this is why the very existence of a revolutionary movement in Venezuela is seen by the oligarchy, rightly, as a threat to their interests.

The Bolivarian revolution should understand this basic fact and move to wrest from the oligarchy the levers of economic and political power they still control as the only guarantee for the victory of the revolution.
www.marxist.com/Latinam/venezuela_land_reform.htm


William Izarra: The Revolution is a change of structure. The political model of the Bolivarian process is revolutionary. The change of structure means the building of a new political system (State, productive apparatus and power relations). The structure is the dimension of how society works, where the genetic factors inter-relate and which produce the visible actions (observable facts). The structure is the genesis of the phenomena. A revolution acts on the structure while its opposite, reform – or reaction – only operates on the level of phenomena (that which is visible and verifiable). Reform does not transform the structure. Reform is contrary to revolution. The political model of representative democracy is reform. It does not seek change in the political system. The revolution is going to create a new system of relations which will establish a new “institutionality”. Representative democracy is based in the representation of the people. On the contrary a revolution has no representatives, only spokespersons. In the revolution decisions are taken directly by the people, not the representatives. In Venezuela representation led to cliques which took over power and isolated the people.
www.marxist.com/Latinam/interview_william_izarra.htm


It is only a question of time, and not very much time, before Abbas will be seen by most Palestinians as the head of a puppet government, just as the Iraqi people view the Interim government of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. [...]

The only way out of the death trap for the Palestinians and the Israeli masses is the formation of an independent working class party, which would pursue independent class politics leading to a fundamental transformation of capitalist society. For this the working class requires a completely different leadership, one that is independent of imperialism and is committed to the road of Lenin and Trotsky.

The similarity of the situations facing the people in Israel/Palestine and Iraq is becoming more and more clear to the suffering masses. The role of the rulers of the Arab states in support of the US is being exposed on a daily basis. From this the working class and poor will be able to draw the lesson that the road to be taken is not the road in service of the imperialist order, whose policies are those based on robbery and death, but the road that leads to the foundation of the Socialist Federation of the Middle East.
www.marxist.com/MiddleEast/palestine_election_results04.htm


Trotsky always emphasized that imperialism was not a policy, but represented what he called the “capitalist thievish” attempt to resolve a contradiction that had arisen in mankind’s development—that between the world economy and the nation-state system. This contradiction could be resolved only by the international working class. [...]

[I]n order to expand the productive forces, it was necessary to alleviate at least some of the constrictions imposed by the national system. The cornerstones of these new arrangements were the Bretton Woods monetary system, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and the Marshal Plan. wsws.org/articles/2005/jan2005/nb-j17.shtml


One of the great strengths of our analysis is that we defined the essential, that is, historical causes of the eruption of US militarism. In the SEP election statement we wrote:

“The unprecedented integration and interdependence of the world economy—the phenomenon known as globalization—is incompatible with the nation-state system upon which capitalism is based. The violent eruption of American imperialism—which finds its essential expression in the Bush administration’s doctrine of preemptive war—represents a desperate attempt to resolve the contradiction between world economy and the nation state by establishing the hegemony of one country—namely, the United States—over all other countries.”
wsws.org/articles/2005/jan2005/nb-j17.shtml


"Racial profiling is to the 21st century what Jim Crow laws were to the last, turning entire groups of people into second-class citizens and denying them the rights to which we all are due."

A recent Cornell University survey found that almost half of all Americans believe that the U.S. government should restrict the civil liberties of Muslim Americans. This bigoted, racist attitude is quite simply appalling. It essentially favors racial profiling; yet a recent report by Amnesty International presents strong evidence indicating that racial profiling does not work.
informationclearinghouse.info/article7723.htm


So if there's no crisis in Social Security, why is President Bush pushing so hard to privatize it?

It's politics. Since the days of Barry Goldwater, the Republican right has really wanted to dismantle Social Security. And now they have a degree of political dominance that lets them push it to the top of the agenda - even though no rational analysis of the actual problems facing the U.S. government would say that it belongs there.
www.truthout.org/docs_05/011805I.shtml


The administration is pushing proposals to begin the dismantling of all government-backed economic safeguards, including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. With its call for tax “reform,” it is targeting the graduated income tax in favor of regressive tax structures that will shift the burden even more decisively from big business and the rich onto the working people. Bush’s demand for “tort reform” is the spearhead of a campaign to free corporations from any accountability for the socially destructive consequences of their insatiable profit drive and remove all legal restrictions on the accumulation of personal wealth.
wsws.org/articles/2005/jan2005/bush-j20.shtml


The multi-billion dollar AIDS/HIV fraud is based on two fabrications: that AIDS is a single disease and that it is caused by the HI virus or the "HIV virus" as some medical/media masterminds call it - perhaps they think the V in HIV stands for volcano. In Japan "AIDS" is virtually unknown : yet, in random tests, 25% of people were found to be "HIV-positive". HIV-positive response means nothing of any relevance to health: it can be triggered by vaccination, malnutrition, M.S., measles, influenza, papilloma virus wart, Epstein Barr virus, leprosy, glandular fever, hepatitis, syphillis ... : over sixty different conditions. Dr Robert E. Willner, inoculated himself with the blood of Pedro Tocino, a HIV-positive haemophiliac, on live Spanish television: an event which was not picked up the pharma-beholden British or US media. The great HIV/AIDS lie was created by Robert Gallo who was found guilty of "scientific misconduct". "...instead of trying to prove his insane theories about AIDS to his peers...he went public. Then, with the help of Margaret Heckler, former head of Health and Human Services, who was under great political pressure to come up with an answer to AIDS, the infamous world press announcement of the discovery of the so-called AIDS virus came about. This great fraud is now responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands... It was no accident that Gallo just happened to patent the test for HIV the day after the announcement...Gallo is now a multi-millionaire because of AIDS and his fraudulent AIDS test." Dr. Willner. By grouping together 25-plus different diseases and other allied factors - pneumonia, herpes, candidiasis, salmonella, various cancers, infections, vaccine and antibiotic damage, amyl nitrate damage, malnutrition etc.and, particularly in Africa, TB, malaria, dysentery leprosy and "slim disease" - and calling the whole thing an "AIDS epidemic", a multi-billion dollar/pound "AIDS research and treatment" racket has been created. The mythical "HIV-induced AIDS plague" in the Third World generates huge sums of cash from Western relief organisations whilst smokescreening the vaccine/drug boys, responsible for the carnage. Every death of someone "HIV-positive" is recorded as an "AIDS death". Periodically, the BBC/ITV/Press visit Africa/Yugoslavia/Russia etc to report on the "HIV/AIDS victims" and how they cannot afford the "life-saving AZT." Glaxo Wellcome's lethal drug, AZT, in combination with the diagnosis of HIV-positive and the prediction, stated or implied, that - "You will die of AIDS" is one of the great pieces of Medical Black Magic - Voodoo Medicine at its most impressive: people have committed suicide on the basis of the ludicrous diagnosis.


New York, NY: Emmanuel "Toto" Constant was served with a lawsuit today that accuses him of responsibility for torture, crimes against humanity and the systematic use of violence against women, including rape, for the purpose of terrorizing the Haitian population during that country's brutal military regime in the early 1990s.

Despite being the outspoken leader of the paramilitary death squad known as FRAPH (Revolutionary Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti), Toto Constant has lived and worked openly in Queens, New York, for the last ten years. The U.S. government tried to deport Constant in 1995, but suspended its efforts and released him from detention after he threatened on the 60 Minutes news program to expose information about the CIA's role in the formation of FRAPH.

The lawsuit was filed in federal court in the Southern District of New York by the Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA), based in San Francisco, on behalf of several women who survived savage gang rapes and other forms of extreme violence, including attempted murder. The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), based in New York, is serving as local counsel. [...]

Commonly referred to as "The Devil," Toto Constant has been the target of several community protests in Queens. In November 2000, he was convicted in absentia in Haiti for his role in the notorious "Raboteau Massacre" of April 1994. Until now, no court in the U.S. or Haiti has forced him to face trial in person for the human rights abuses he committed against the people of Haiti. No one from the ranks of FRAPH or the Haitian Armed Forces has been held accountable for the hundreds of politically motivated rapes that were committed and continue to be committed against the women of Haiti.
www.indybay.org/news/2005/01/1714924.php


Photoillustrations by Chris Kaihatsu
community.webshots.com/user/ckaihatsu/