Cosmos Left

A Coronation of Vampires

December 13, 2004--It's challenging just to keep up with the scandals engulfing one Bernard Kerik, whose multi-tiered corruption encompasses the Mafia, FOX News, the Department of Corrections, Taser stun guns, and Saudi Arabia. Bush's disgraced goon has a resume so riven with conflicts of interest and greed it should make Richard Perle blush.

It is tempting to revel in the unfolding political humiliation of Bush, Giuliani, and Kerik, but there's no time for such pleasures. As the World Socialist Web Site's Bill Van Auken wrote today, "[t]he attempt to install such a figure [Kerik] at the head of a law enforcement agency with immense powers over the lives and democratic rights of the American people constitutes a serious warning....In its second term, the Bush administration is preparing an escalation of surveillance and repression against the American people."

Nov. 3, 2004--Now that this fraudulent, undemocratic election is over, US workers still face the challenge of organizing ourselves as a class independently of the capitalists and their twin parties of war and reaction. We still have to figure out how to defend ourselves as a class against a rapacious capitalist class driven to make us pay for the crisis of their profit system.

Before a single vote was cast, before one occurrence of a Diebold machine changing a Kerry vote to a vote for Bush, the entire US working class was disenfranchised and powerless in this "election." As for the tens of millions of Americans opposed to the war in Iraq--most of whom are workers--they were also voiceless in this election, because both men of privilege support this brutal war of colonial conquest waged on behalf of the US capitalists. Both Bush and Kerry support the broader war on terror--a euphemism for a global war drive fought so US capital can dominate the world with no challengers in sight.

Every other issue, from health insurance to Social Security to education to the environment, was framed in terms of how to save the capitalists money and increase the exploitation of wage labor, subordinating human and social needs to private profit and the accumulation of wealth and capital by a privileged few.

The reelection of a diseased individual like George W. Bush--deranged, sadistic and sociopathic--only speaks to the advanced diseased state of the capitalist class that vomited him up as their leader. Bush, who has spent his life plundering and looting the public for private enrichment, running companies into the ground while he lined his pockets, is a fitting personification of the capitalist class he represents, a predatory crew of superrich exploiters forced to employ gangster methods to reverse the decline of long-term profits.

Kerry, too, was an apt representative for his Democratic Party--a weak, vacillating, double-talking, machine hack who asked for antiwar votes while supporting the war. His selection of John Edwards as the vice presidential candidate turned out to be as disastrous as Gore's choice of Joseph Lieberman. Edwards did his impression of the incredible shrinking candidate and brought absolutely zero to Kerry's ill-fated candidacy. The fact that Edwards is a trial lawyer had Cheney and Rove licking their chops and pinching themselves that Kerry was dumb enough to serve up the North Carolina water boy on a silver platter.

Fear and Loathing at Yankee Stadium

Oct. 28, 2004--It started in the ninth inning of Game 6 in the American League Championship Series. After Yankee fans responded to their team's downward spiral by throwing debris onto the field, the world was treated to the spectacle of two phalanxes of cops in riot gear down the first and third base lines. It was an ugly scene that succinctly captured the creeping totalitarianism and militarization of American society.

It was infuriating to see those jack-booted thugs so soon after the Republican National Convention, when New York was an armed camp in a state of siege. Just knowing these were from the same kennel of dogs that shot Amadou Diallo 41 times in the doorway of his building; the same motley crew of lumpen lowlives who shoved a broomstick up Abner Louima's rectum. Now they were contaminating the national pasttime. Jack London's Iron Heel is upon us.

But it was left to Boston's worst to stain baseball with the blood of a loyal fan....

Slain by Boston Cop

Oct. 29, 2004--After the Red Sox defeated the St. Louis Cardinals to win the World Series, 80,000 jubilant fans back in Boston jammed Kenmore Square to celebrate their team's historic victory. One of them, a 21-year-old Emerson College Student named Victoria Snelgrove, did not survive the party. Victoria was shot in the eye by a cop with a pepper spray projectile that police say is supposed to be "less than lethal." These thugs wouldn't knew the truth if it bit them in the ass. Snelgrove died a short time later, blood gushing from her nose.

Cops, their apologists, Boston's city government, and the corporate media are all blaming Boston's overzealous fans, not the trigger happy cop who murdered Ms. Snelgrove. Small fires, broken windows, and thrown bottles do not justify some cop aiming his weapon at the head of an innocent bystander and firing. Cops claim a bottle was thrown at one of them. The killer cop turned around and decided he was going to shoot someone. Anyone. He had no idea who threw the bottle. But someone was going to pay for startling him. And Victoria Snelgrove did--with her life.

And what do the cop apologists have to say about Snelgrove's death. So sorry, but she got in the way. Just another victim of collateral damage. Like all those Iraqis being slaughtered in their homes by the global police of US imperialism.  Sorry. These things happen in war. People get in the way.

Boston pitching ace Curt Schilling went out of his way to place all of the blame on Boston's fans while giving the trigger happy cops a free pass to murder again. Schilling said it was "pathetic" that the fans were so rowdy after the Bosox World Series victory. "Unfortunately, there's a few idiots everywhere and this girl paid with her life."

The only idiot responsible for Snelgrove's death was that cop who aimed his gun at her face and fired. What's pathetic is a flag-waving, right wing, religious bigot like Schilling blaming the fans for Snelgrove's death instead of the killer cop. But don't expect a fair and balanced assessment from Schilling, who's been parading his celebrity status around the country to hustle votes for Bush, a semi-literate ruling class parasite who has a date with a war crimes tribunal.

"Shortage Was Predicted"
"Health Experts Warned of a Decline in the Number of Vaccine Suppliers"

So read the titles of a NY Times Oct. 7 article on the critical flu vaccine shortage brought to us by the glories of the free market. Times reporter Denise Grady wrote: "Drug companies left making vaccines because it was not profitable..."

Grady quotes Dr. Irwin E. Redlener, associate dean of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, who said that the shortage "was utterly predictable, one of those slow-motion train wrecks that the public health community has been expecting for years. You cannot have a vital function like vaccine production limited to the manufacturing capacity of two companies. It leaves no room for failure."

That's right, and if the private sector refuses to make enough vaccines because they can't make sufficient profits, than the pharmaceutical manufacturers should be nationalized and put under workers control. The federal government should immediately institute a production plan that would make enough vaccines for the entire population.

We can no longer allow ourselves to be subject to the mercy of "market forces." Market forces are literally killing us. Market forces made us depend on two companies to supply all of the influenza vaccines for the United States. Now that the Liverpool, England, manufacturing plant of one of those companies--Chiron Corp--has been shut down by British regulators due to contamination, half of the 100 million doses we thought were available for the coming flu season are gone.

Another pharmaceutical industry scandal this week also illuminated the incompatibility between the profit motive and human need. Merck's voluntary recall of its blockbuster antiarthritic drug, Vioxx, after a study showed it presented high risk of heart attacks and stroke, was no surprise to medical professionals who for years doubted the drug's tolerability. But it was more important to Merck's bottom line to spend $600 million on advertising Vioxx than it was to research its safety.

This is too vital an issue to be held hostage to the profit motive. Some matters are too central to all of society to be run like a business. The "bottom line" has no place in health care, medicine, transportation, electricity, pensions, and education.

This is not something that can wait for a socialist workers government. The labor movement should demand that this capitalist government immediately nationalize the pharmaceutical industry so that a full-scale vaccine production plan can begin now.

. . .  Tel Aviv rampages through the Gaza Strip, killing and wounding hundreds.

Webster's Ninth defines "terrorism" as "the systematic use of terror as a means of coercion."

"Terror" is defined as "a state of intense fear"; and "violence (as bombing) committed by groups in order to intimidate a poplation or government into granting their demands."

Now listen to a Pentagon official defend Washington's ongoing murderous assault against the people of  Falluja: "If there are civilians dying in connection with these attacks, and with the destruction, THE LOCALS AT SOME POINT HAVE TO MAKE A DECISION. Do they want to harbor the insurgents and SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES THAT COME WITH THAT, or do they want to get rid of the insurgents and have the benefits of not having them there?" [emphasis added]

This statement should be used as evidence in war crimes tribunals that are reserved for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice, Rupert Murdoch, Bill O'Reilly, and the entire US political establishment that supported and facilitated the criminal invasion and occupation of Iraq, as well as Ariel Sharon and the political and military leadership of Zionist Israel.

Just as Bush's soldiers have a penchant for drowning wedding parties in blood from Afghanistan to Iraq,  Sharon's armed thugs have a propensity for shooting Palestinian children dead. The latest victim was an 11-year-old schoolgirl named Ghadir Mkhemar, who died of gunshot wounds she received while sitting in a classroom of a school in Khan Yunis run by the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).

A 10-year-old girl Palestinian girl was killed in September also while sitting in a UNRWA-run school. And if that's not enough, an Israeli soldier is under investigation for firing multiple shots at a Palestinian schoolgirl WHO WAS ALREADY DEAD.

Only the US and Israeli working classes can stop Washington and Tel Aviv's state terrorism.

For a democratic, secular state of Palestine!

End All US Aid to Israel!

End the Occupations Now!

It's begun. The capitalist government's attempt to censor the Internet and crack down on the free flow of ideas, information, and truth in cyberspace is under way as the FBI just shut down 20 antiwar Web sites run by Indymedia.

Oct. 1-7, 2004--The bankruptcy and degeneration of the US political system were on full display last night in the first debate between President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry. There they were, two multimillionaires arguing over how best to conquer Iraq and the rest of the world for Wall Street; over who could better hoodwink the American people into supporting new wars US imperialism has in store for the world; over who could do a better job exploiting the working class for the financial oligarchy they both loyally serve.

American workers were not represented in this "debate" between these two capitalist politicians. Neither were the tens of millions of Americans who opposed the Iraq war. Working class and antiwar politics have been excluded from this campaign by the capitalist political establishment. The US working class is effectively disenfranchised under this fraudulent two-party shell game. Democrats and Republicans have employed blatantly undemocratic means to bar third-party alternatives such as Ralph Nader, the Socialist Equality Party, and the Socialist Workers Party from ballots and debates.

As a result of the deepening capitalist crisis that has unfolded over the last several decades, the differences between the Democrats and Republicans have narrowed to the point where they are virtually indistinguishable. There are no strategic differences; only tactical ones. In the absence of substantive disagreements between the two parties' candidates, presidential debates come down to body language, demeanor, and style--who is more likeable, who do you feel more comfortable with, who sweats, who sighs, who looks at his watch.

Using these criteria, Bush's performance last night was an unmitigated disaster. Don't believe for a minute that Bush is unaware what's happening "on the ground" in Iraq. The spreading Iraqi insurgency had Bush on the ropes last night. He was staggered not by Kerry--who still supports the war and occupation though it was a colossal mistake--but by the heroic Iraqi people who have not rolled over and let Bush conquer their country without a fight.

Although Bush managed a few rhetorical flourishes and landed a few blows on Kerry for his flip-flopping on the war, the resolute commander in chief was reduced to a bumbling, rambling, incoherent weasel who looked like a deer in headlights while mindlessly repeating the empty cliches drilled into his small brain by Karl Rove and Karen Hughes: "Mixed signals." "Mixed messages." "Changes positions." "It's hard work." "Wrong war. Wrong place. Wrong time."

While watching Bush, it was hard not to think of the 40,000 Iraqis and 1,000+ Americans who are in the graves because of this parasitical cipher who has never worked a day in his life.

OCT. 3, 2004:

Bush isn't such a bad-ass without his handpicked crowds, preapproved questions, and cozy chats with sycophantic toadies like Bill O'Reilly. When he has to answer questions tougher than "God bless you, Mr. President," we see the real Bush emerge: scared, deer in the lights, clueless, paralyzed, halting, smirking, testy, intolerant, spoiled, defensive, mindlessly repetitive, intellectually dead, historically bankrupt, fanatical, maniacal, and extremely sadistic.

Bush became so unhinged he not only confused Bin Laden with Hussein, which is normal for him, but he also could not restrain himself from making a bizarre statement about his daughters that may have gone a long way toward unmasking the sadistic streak in his soul that reaches all the way to Abu Ghraib.

Kerry had reciprocated Bush's kind personal comments by complementing the latter's daughters and their ability to withstand the rigors of a presidential campaign. Then he joked, "I've chuckled a few times at some of their comments."

To which Bush replied: "I'm trying to put a leash on them."

A most revealing Freudian slip by Bush. Given the iconic photo of Private Lynnie England pulling an Iraqi prisoner on a dog leash--an infamnia that will forever brand US imperialism as barbaric and its leaders as war criminals--Bush's comment connects his well-documented sadism with the sadistic torture and humiliation that occurred under his watch, command, and apparently his orders.

Speaking of Abu Ghraib, Bush and Kerry sure didn't. Nor did they touch on unfolding horror being inflicted on Iraqi civilians and the atrocities they are suffering. The widespread outrage among American workers concerning Abu Ghraib and the war crimes being committed in their name was not reflected in the debate. Kerry voted for the war and vows to continue it until victory. That's not an antiwar position. Kerry has disenfranchised the antiwar sentiment of working people in the United States.

That's why Sue Niederer of Hopewell, NJ, whose son died in Iraq earlier this year trying to disarm a bomb, disrupted a Laura Bush speech recently by wearing a T-shirt reading, "President Bush you killed my son." Niederer understandably concluded that if John Kerry won't oppose Bush on Iraq, if John Kerry refuses to stand up for her son and others killed in Iraq because of Bush [and Kerry's] lies, then dammit, she would. Just like the grief-stricken and angry mother in "Fahrenheit 9/11" who also lost her son in Washington's bloody colonialist enterprise.

Kerry represents the same capitalist interests that Bush does. Kerry grovels before the US ruling class and begs for the chance to do a better job representing their interests than Bush, because Kerry's smarter. Kerry attacked Bush from the right on North Korea and Iran, arguing that Iraq is a diversion from the more threatening North Korea and Iran:

"...North Korea's gotten nuclear weapons, and the world is more dangerous. Iran's moving toward nuclear weapons and the world is more dangerous..."

North Korea's gotten nuclear weapons and Iran is moving toward them because the only government that's actually dropped nuclear bombs--the US--is openly threatening to use them again, even against nations that don't have a nuclear arsenal! That's why the world is more dangerous, Mr. Kerry, and it will remain so with you in the White House."

The only opening Kerry gave Bush to launch a counterattack both during the debate and in its aftermath concerned his "global test" requirement for US military interventions.

"But if and when you do it, Jim, you have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the GLOBAL TEST where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons." [emphasis added]

OCT 7, 2004:

Kerry's "global test" gave Bush the chance to distort his position by using the latest Republican talking point--that Kerry would seek a permission slip from foreign governments before taking aggression military action to defend the United States. What has been obscured amidst all the ensuing noise is that Kerry ENDORSED Bush's doctrine of pre-emptive war in the statement preceding the "global test" formulation: "The president always has the right, and always has had the right, for preemptive strike. That was a great doctrine throughout the Cold War...NO president, through all of American history, has ever ceded, nor would I, the right to preempt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America."

Kerry is rewriting history here. The "great doctrine" of the Cold War was mutual assured destruction--not preemptive strikes. Bush's preemptive strike doctrine emerged after the fall of the Soviet Union, when the alpha faction of the US capitalist class concluded the road was clear to use Washington's overwhelming military supremacy to secure control of the vast oil and natural gas supplies in the Middle East and Central Asia.

But it's not just Bush's doctrine. Kerry made clear in the first debate that he fully backs preemptive wars by US imperialism. He's telling the American ruling class that he would wage them more effectively; that a shrewder, more nuanced, yes more sensitive approach that convinces national and international opinion that the preemptive strike is justified because the threat posed by the target is real. The unilateralist approach that alienates the entire world, Kerry argues, has only hurt US imperialism's long-term strategic interests. Kerry thus represents the more enlightened wing of the US capitalist class, but capitalism is in such an advanced state of decay that the more short-sighted and predatory wing represented by Bush may win out.

This clash between Bush and Kerry over a global test is a tactical fight between the two major factions of the capitalist class over how best to wage wars against the international working class and defend the declining imperialist empire. The working class is not represented in this foreign policy fight; nor should we be. Our "foreign policy" is to extend solidarity with our fellow and sister workers around the world and do everything we can to get the imperialist yoke off their backs--so they can make socialist revolutions in their countries--and we can make one here.

Bush and Kerry are right when they say they must stay the course in Iraq and not cut and run. They're right when they say it would be a disaster if the US withdrew from Iraq. It would be a disastrous defeat for the capitalist class they represent and on whose behalf they invaded and occupy Iraq. But a defeat for the exploiting rich is a VICTORY for working people.

If Washington is forced to leave Iraq, it would be a richly deserved humiliation for Bush, Cheney, Rice, Powell, Rumsfeld, Allawi, Kerry, and all the war criminals responsible for this bloody, criminal aggression. But it would be a shining moment for the proletariat from Iraq to America. Iraqi workers would be in a stronger position to build a revolutionary socialist movement in their nation, and US workers would be well along the road to building an independent working class political movement.

Another result of Bush's precision bombing

"You've got to be able to speak clearly in order to make this world a more peaceful place. You cannot expect to LEAD THIS WORLD if you try to take both sides of every position."--George W. Bush, 9/27/2004 [emphasis added]

The first sentence instantly qualifies as the Orwellian comment of the new century, but it's the second statement we'll focus on here. You're not supposed to be "leading the world," Bush. You're running for reelection of the United States. Actually, more than half of the American population despises you, and the overwhelming majority of the world hates you even more. They hate you for what DO lead the world in. You lead the world in slaughtering civilians in their homes. You lead the world in launching murderous preemptive wars against defenseless and sovereign nations. You lead the world in ripping up international treaties that cut into corporate profits.

You are the world's worst leader with the world's worst weapons in your hands. And you're using them. And you don't give a damn what the world says because you've got a direct line to God, and he tells you whom to slaughter in the name of expanding "freedom." By that you really mean the freedom of US capitalists to superexploit workers around the world, because those capitalists are not getting enough out of the hides of US workers to reverse the long-term decline in profit rates.

Bush's defenders will reply he only meant that the US, as the most powerful nation in the world, has a responsibility to defend the world from the bad guys, evil doers, tyrants and all other threats to freedom and the American "way of life." Except that the 40,000 or so dead Afghan and Iraqi civilians were not bad guys, evil doers, or tyrants. And that's not why US imperialism illegally invaded those two countries. It did so to beat out its imperialist rivals by seizing control and dominating the vast oil and natural gas reserves in the Middle East and Central Asia, as well as to strengthen Israeli and US hegemony worldwide.

In other words, apologists for US imperialism sing in chorus, America's manifest destiny was to be the world's policeman. And the people of the world are saying, yeah, well we don't like the cop on the beat who's coming into our 'hoods and murdering our people. That's why every international poll shows the workers of the world want Bush out. We don't want Bush's leadership. We don't want imperialist wars.

The problem for working people in the US and worldwide is that the Bush/Kerry "choice" is no choice at all. Either way, we're going to the wall. Kerry is a loyal stooge of Wall Street and he will send US troops to Iraq, Afghanistan, Colombia, North Korea, and anywhere else his corporate masters want him to--he'll just do it with more sensitivity. That was the whole meaning of his "Reporting for duty" greeting to the Democratic National Convention. Kerry wasn't speaking to the American public. He was groveling to the US ruling class, pledging he'll be a more effective war president than Bush.

No matter how much he double-talks, Kerry supports the Iraq war. He voted for the war and he still is committed to "getting the job done"--that is, subjugating Iraq for US corporations can plunder it. Like Bush, he views the Iraq people as the "enemy" and in the insurgents as "terrorists." Kerry hasn't said one word about the shelling of civilians in Iraq or the torture at Abu Ghraib. He's a Herman Munster lookalike who will mow us down just as surely as Bush is doing, and anyone who believes otherwise is a fool who hasn't learned one lesson of history.

Working people in the United States need to build a socialist alternative to the two-party capitalist shell game. The international proletariat is waiting for that historic development. It will be a great day for humanity.

In the meantime, Bush has anointed himself King of the World, Don Caesar, Emperor Bush.

But this Emperor wears no clothes.

Sept. 24-25, 2004--George W. Bush is a very confused man. The Iraqi people's heroic resistance has severely rattled this cipher-turned-war criminal. In 10 different campaign speeches, Bush has mixed up the names of two Palestinian terrorists, Abu Nidal and Abu Abbas.

That's TEN different times.

Word for word, at every campaign stop, the Big Lie continues to be unchallenged by a kept press and swallowed by brain-dead, gullible lemmings: Hussein was a sworn enemy of America with terrorist connections.

"Do you remember Abu Nidal?" Bush asks the crowd. "He's the guy that killed Leon Klinghoffer. Leon Klinghoffer was murdered because of his religion. Abu Nidal was in Baghdad, as was his organization."

Except Abu Nidal didn't throw Klinghoffer off the Achille Lauro in 1985. That would be Abu Abbas of the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF). It's tough for a C student when all those Arabs look alike and so many of them are named Abu.

Abu Abbas was captured in Baghdad last year after a gun fight with US troops. He supposedly died of "natural causes" while in their custody. Right. Like we haven't heard that one before from police stations all over the United States. "Medical efforts to revive him were unsuccessful," said the Pentagon. The PLF accused the US of assassinating Abbas.

Abu Nidal was a Palestinian renegade who broke with the PLO in 1974 and tried to assassinate Yassir Araft several times. Nidal's terrorist outfit committed more than 100 acts that killed more than 280 people, including attacks at the Rome and Vienna airports in 1985, an Istanbul synagogue that killed 22 Jews, and a Greek cruise ship in 1988. In 2002, US occupation forces announced that Nidal had committed suicide in a Baghdad apartment.

However, Nidal's group hadn't attacked Western targets since the 1980s. Since the 1990s, the only major attacks were against other Palestinians and a Jordanian diplomat. There has been intelligent speculation that Nidal's outfit was infiltrated by Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, a viewpoint fueled by the lack of Nidal attacks against Israeli targets and Israel's failure to retaliate against Nidal's organization. Some quotes from a French terrorism expert, a former Jordanian intelligence officer, and Abu Iyad, former head of PLO intelligence:

"If Abu Nidal himself is not an Israeli agent, then two or three of his senior people most definitely are. Nothing else can explain some of his operations."

"Scratch around inside Abu Nidal's organization and you will find Mossad."

"Every Palestinian who works in intelligence is convinced that Israel has a big hand in Abu Nidal's affairs."

Israel may have had a big hand in the Achille Lauro tragedy as well. Many believe the 1985 hijacking was another "black-op" by Mossad designed to turn world opinion against the Palestinians. Indeed, Israel granted Abu Abbas immunity from prosecution for the hijacking in 1999 after he renounced violence and apologized for the hijacking.

Since it's very likely Israel was behind the terrorism of both Abu's, perhaps Bush should ask Ariel Sharon for advice on how to distinguish between them.

Some terrorist fighter, that Bush. What co nfidence he inspires that he's on top of things. I hope all those flag-waving lemmings who still fervently believe Bush is protecting them sleep well tonight knowing HE MIXED UP ABBAS AND NIDAL TEN TIMES.

ALL OUT FOR THE MILLION WORKER MARCH IN DC ON OCTOBER 17!

This is what working people need--independent working class political action--not voting for another prowar, probusiness candidate, John Kerry.

The Million Worker March was called by Local 10 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, San Francisco.

This could be an important first step toward the inevitable--a mass labor party that fights for jobs, decent affordable housing, free healthcare, free education, ending all aid to Israel, and the dismantling of the US imperialist war machine, beginning with the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all US forces from Iraq, the Middle East, Afghanistan, Philippines, Colombia, and Cuba.

Guantanamo on the Hudson (Jacob Richards/Connie Murillo)

Bloomberg, NYC Cops on Pier 57 detainees: "There were too many of them. We were overwhelmed."

US military on Abu Ghraib detainees: "There were too many of them. We were overwhelmed."

Malcolm X: "With skillful manipulating of the press, they're able to make the victim look like the criminal,  and the criminal look like the victim."

This Is What Democracy Looks Like!--NYC, Aug. 29, 2004

August turnout for yesterday's historic New York City antiwar march, they're pretending it didn't occur. Last night, FOX New30, 2004--The capitalist press just can't stop lying. If they're not repeating false mantras like "thousands of protesters" or "tens of thousands of demonstrators" when describing the s barely mentioned the massive Bush bash, preferring to focus on the post-march gathering at the Great Lawn, an epilogue to Sunday's Main Event.

One notable exception to this dishonest coverage of the turnout could be found in today's NY Times, whose headline accurately blared, "Vast Anti-Bush Rally Greets Republicans in New York." But the only reason the Times got it right is that they're still reeling from the angry emails they were deluged with the last time they tried to get away with that "tens of thousands" mantra.

FOX's biased coverage of the demonstration only reconfirmed the validity of one of the march's most popular chants, "FOX News Sucks!"

No to Bush Exploiting 9/11 for Political Gain!

No to the Twin Parties of War!

End All US Aid to Israel!

March FOR a Labor Party, Workers Rights, Unions, Jobs, Education and Healthcare!

Hiroshima, Aug. 6, 1945

The mother of all "weapons of mass destruction," brought to you by the only government on the face of the earth to actually use it.

Give 'em hell, Fidel

August 3, 2004--Before the invasion come the lies. We heard them before Afghanistan. We heard them before Iraq--twice. We heard them before Panama, Grenada, Vietnam, and Korea. And, as we did 43 years ago, we're hearing them before Washington invades Cuba and tries to drown the Revolution in blood.

Every US president since Kennedy has lied about the Cuban Revolution, but the lies coming from George W. Bush are so outrageously Orwellian they are particularly difficult to ingest without throwing up.

The first lie specific to Bush was heard in May 6, 2002, when his Undersecretary of Defense John Bolton falsely accused Havana of developing biological weapons. Fidel asked Bolton for evidence to back up that baseless charge. Bolton produced nothing, because as Fidel explained in a May 10, 2002 speech, Cuban law PROHIBITS the manufacture, possession, or transportation of chemical and biological agents. Weapons of mass destruction are Washington's province. It's the US--not Cuba--that has massive stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons stored in eight locations in the US and Pacific Ocean in defiance of international law. It's the US--not Cuba--that has been making an aerosol anthrax since 1992. It's the US--not Cuba--that dropped two atomic bombs on as many Japanese cities, instantly incinerating 200,000 people. It's the US--not Cuba--that has poisoned thousands of Iraqis with depleted uranium in both wars of aggression against that nation. It's the US--not Cuba--that has used weapons of mass destruction against its own people by exposing soldiers to atomic bomb blasts and spraying bacteriological agents over civilian populations in New York City and San Francisco.

No, it is the US that curses humanity with weapons of mass destruction. Cuba blesses humanity with revolutionary cancer vaccines. US imperialism fights for death in this world. Revolutionary Cuba fights for life.

Then in a July 16 speech from Tampa, Florida, Bush unveiled his second Big Lie concerning the Cuban Revolution. He had the cajones to accuse Havana of promoting sexual tourism and child pornography--and clearly implied these are reasons to "liberate" Cuba in that murderous Bush manner.

Just consider the source as you read Bush's tirade against Fidel and the Revolution:

"The regime in Havana, already one of the worst violators of human rights in the world, is adding to its crimes. The dictator welcomes sex tourism."

"The regime of Fidel Castro has turned Cuba into a major destination for sex tourism replacing Southeast Asia as a destination for pedophiles and sex tourists from the United States and Canada." [Bush knows all about Southeast Asian hookers. His brother Neil, who ran Silverado Savings and Loan into the ground and cost US taxpayers $1.4 billion, earning him the well-deserved status as the biggest thief in US history, told a divorce deposition proceeding that he had enjoyed group sex with Thailand and Hong Kong prostitutes while he was working hard pocketing $2 million in stock from
Grace Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp.]

"Sex tourism is a vital source of hard currency to keep his corrupt government afloat."

"We face a problem only 90 miles off our shores."

"As restrictions on travel to Cuba were eased during the 1990s, the study [quoted by Bush] found an influx of American and Canadian tourists contributed to a sharp increase in child prostitution in Cuba."

"My administration is working toward a comprehensive solution of this problem: the rapid, peaceful transition to democracy in Cuba."

"We have a strategy in place to hasten the day when no cuban child is exploited to fi nance a failed revolution and every Cuban citizen will live in freedom."

"It takes a special kind of depravity to exploit and hurt the most vulnerable members of society. Human traffickers rob children of life before they have seen much of life. Traffickers tear families apart. They treat their victims as nothing more than goods and commodities for sale to the highest bidder."

Ironic that the very study Bush cited--Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies' report-found that traffickers bring up to 17,500 people into the United States every year, where others profit from their being forced to perform sex acts as part of their slavery. Organized crime rings forcibly recruit young women from Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe to be sold as sexual slaves in the US, not Cuba.

President Fidel Castro answered Bush's slander in eloquent detail during a July 26 speech in Ernest Che Guevara Square in Santa Clara commemorating the 51st anniversary of the attack on the Moncada and Carlos Manuel de Cespedes fortresses. See Counterpunch's "The Pathology of George Bush" for the complete text of Fidel's speech.
These days Bush is neck and neck with his most influential media apologist, Bill O'Reilly, in the race to be the biggest spinner of Orwellian lies in the US. The truth is before the Revolution, Cuba was a sexual playground full of 100,000 prostitutes for rich Americans like John F. Kennedy and Mafia hoods like Meyer Lansky, whose gambling casinos and brothels constituted an integral part of organized crime's empire.

The Revolution abruptly ended this orgy of sex, vice and profits for US businessmen and gangsters at the expense of the Cuban people. The Revolution outlawed prostitution, educated the women and found them jobs.

Havana, May 14, 2004: "This will never happen in Cuba"

May 14, 2004--Hundreds of thousands of Cuban working people joined their president, Fidel Castro, in a huge march in Havana protesting Washington's latest economic proposals designed to strangle the revolutionary island nation. These harsh measures include cutting off cash payments from Cuban-Americans to relatives in Cuba and halting all direct charter flights to Havana.

Despite Washington's 45 year-long economic blockade, Cubans still enjoy free health care, education and recreation. Eighty-five percent of Cubans own their own homes and pay no rent or taxes. The remaining 15% pay no more than four dollars a month. [From Granma, newspaper of the Cuban Communist Party]

The massive May 14 demonstration in Havana proves that the Cuban people will not be intimidated by Washington's economic aggression. They will respond to US assaults on their revolution and national sovereignty as they always have--with dignity and resolve.

Cubans, cognizant of Washington's hue over alleged human rights violations in their country, denounced Washington's torture and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison. The sign in the photo from Abu Ghrabi reads: "This will never happen in Cuba."

Fidel opened his remarks, according to today's Associated Press report, by blasting Bush for being fraudulently elected and trying to impose "world tyranny." The crowd of students, workers, parents, kids, and grandparents filed past the US diplomatic mission in red shirts and chanted, "Long life free Cuba! Fascist Bush!"

One man carried a sign that said: "Bush, you are crazy, find yourself a psychologist!"

Fidel said the march was "an act of indignant protest and a denunciation of the brutal, merciless and cruel measures" against Washington's latest attempt to tighten the noose around Cuba. Castro reflected the militancy and internationalism of his people:

"This country could be exterminated...erased from the face of the earth," but it would never allow itself to be put in "the  humiliating condition of a neo-colony of the United States."

If the US invades Cuba, Fidel told the crowd, "I will be in the first line of defense, ready to die in defense of my people."

Unlike Bush, who sends the sons and daughters of the working class to die so his class can enrich itself.

Fidel contrasted Washington's foreign policy of fighting "wars of conquest to seize the markets and resources of the world" with Cuba's, which sends thousands of doctors to other nations.

"Cuba fights for life in the world; you fight for death," Castro declared, directing his comments to the White House.

Fidel opined that Bush had "no morality nor any right at all to speak of liberty, democracy and human rights,"and summed up Bush's 2000 election in words that many Americans share:  "All the world knows it fraudulent."

Listen to a genuine leader of working people, Americans. And contrast Fidel's comments with what we're hearing from John Kerry.

Speaking of Kerry, to all the "Anybody but Bush" folks who harbor illusions that the Massachusetts senator represents a saner and more palatable alternative to Bush, consider this--yes, Kerry might be a little different than Bush--he'd outflank Bush FROM THE RIGHT. Kerry's already criticized Bush for not getting the job done for US imperialism and evicting Fidel from power. In other words, Kerry's attacking Bush from the right in not effecting "regime change" in Havana.

Similarly, Kerry is frantically trying to prove his acceptability to the US ruling class by attacking Bush FROM THE RIGHT on Israel. In other words, Kerry would be even more craven in his support for the vicious apartheid Tel Aviv regime.

This presidential "campaign" more than ever shows why US workers need our own political party to defend our interests against the policies of war, austerity, and repression that both capitalist parties are carrying out with a vengeance. We need a mass socialist party that fights for a workers and farmers government LIKE THEY HAVE IN CUBA.

We need a government of the toilers that would fight for life and not death.

July 20, 2004--Here comes the next batch of lies to justify US military aggression. The Sept. 11 panel is about to release a report claiming that eight of the alleged 19 hijackers passed through Iran in the months preceding the terrorist attacks. Already the US media propaganda machine is linking Iran with Sept. 11 in the minds of Americans in order to convince them that the coming invasion of that country will be a legitimate part of the war on terror.

After what we've learned about Sept. 11, Iraq and WMD, anyone who believes ANYTHING this government says is so wrapped in patriotic dogma he would sit on the deck of the Titanic after hitting the iceberg and shout, "Clear sailing ahead."

Although even Bush and acting CIA director John McLaughlin have been careful to say there's no evidence suggesting Tehran was complicit in 9/11, the seed has already been planted in the minds of Kool-Aid Americans: Iran. Sept. 11. Invade.

Repeat after me: Iran. Sept. 11. Invade.

There's just one problem. If allowing the hijackers to pass through a country is the criteria for invading that country, then the US had better INVADE ITSELF. Because ALL 19 hijackers were allowed to pass through the United States before 9/11. Two of them--Almihdhar and Alhamzi--had been watched by the CIA since they attended a high level Al-Qaeda meeting in Malaysia in 2000. Despite their apparent ties to bin Laden, this pair lived openly in San Diego for two years with an FBI informant, their names in a phone book, and managed to buy first-class one-way tickets and board American Airlines Flight 77.

Then there's Ziad Samir Jarrah, whom the US had detained in the United Arab Emirates on January 30, 2001 after spending two months in Afghanistan and Pakistan. After his release, Jarrah traveled to Hamburg before flying to the US, where he was permitted to enroll in a flight school. On Sept. 9, 2001, Jarrah was stopped for speeding on Maryland's Interstate 95. The state police ran Jarrah's name through their computers before ticketing and releasing him.

In its special Sept. 11 edition published just days after the attacks, Newsweek, citing US military sources, wrote that "five of the alleged hijackers of the planes that were used in Tuesday's terror attacks received training at secure U.S. military installations in the 1990s."

Then there's Mohammed Atta, the alleged leader of the Sept. 11 plot. It turns out he had been watched by Egyptian, German, and US police for two years, no doubt because he had purchased large amounts of explosive chemicals in Frankfurt and was popping up in phone conversations of Al Qaeda operatives. In January 2001, Atta was able to reenter the US after a visit to Germany on the strength of an invalid student visa. He told immigration officials that he took flying lessons in the US, which normally requires an M-1 student visa. But immigration waved Atta through on his student visa, which, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, had been issued despite Atta's apparent involvement with a bombing in Israel.

So there was Atta, waltzing in and out of the US, Germany, and Spain, purchasing large amounts of explosive chemicals; the US not telling Germany about its investigation. And if that weren't enough, during the summer of 2001 Atta received a wire transfer of $100,000 from General Mahmud Ahmed, boss of ISI, Pakistan's "CIA" and the main backer of the Taliban. Coincidentally, Ahmed enjoyed a Capitol Hill breakfast on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, with the heads of the Senate and House intelligence committees, Senators Bob Graham (Dem) and Porter Goss (Rep), respectively. That's right, the money man for the Sept. 11 hijackers met with the congressional intelligence chairmen, one of whom, Goss, is a former CIA agent and rumored to be the next director of that agency.

Given this record, the US is no position to criticize--let alone invade--Iran for allowing safe passage for the Sept. 11 hijackers. Especially when the US State Department sent visas to several of the hijackers six months after they died in the attacks!

As Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi accurately put it: "It is not strange that some people manage to slip through a country's borders illegally...What is funny is the fact that the country which has given them visas, residency permits, pilot training and sabotage training is making such claims."

The same lies about WMD and ties to Al Qaeda that have been thoroughly discredited with regard to Iraq are being recycled to sell the American public on an invasion of Iran. The 9/11 panel's report will speak of an Iranian general who allegedly tried to help Al Qaeda. The source will no doubt be an Iranian defector, about as reliable as the Iraqi defectors who spoke definitively of Iraq's vast arsenals of biological and chemical weapons.

Iran--like Iraq--has long been in the cross hairs of US imperialism. The US rulers have had it in for the Iranian people ever since they overthrew Washington's puppet, the corrupt and brutal Shah, in the 1979 revolution. Washington will invade Iran for the same reason it invaded Iraq--control of its oil and domination of the entire region. It has nothing to do with ties to terrorism or involvement in Sept. 11. As for seeking nuclear power or even nuclear weapons, Iran has the sovereign right to acquire the former for its energy needs and the latter for self defense.

Hands off Iran!

US Out of Iraq and the Middle East!

US Out of Afghanistan!

End All Aid to Israel!

"Media suppresses news of Bush's moves to cancel US elections"

Confirming what we've been saying for months on this site.

"Iraq was going to be all Geneva, all the time."

June 23-July 22, 2004--The very fact that George Bush had to tell the world yesterday that "We do not condone torture. I have never ordered torture. I will never order torture" shows how much trouble he's in and what his historical legacy will be.

The Abu Ghraib prison scandal has delivered a staggering political blow to US imperialism. It's the international equivalent to the 1992 Rodney King videotape, because pictures don't lie and just one is worth a thousand words. In a futile and desperate attempt to stanch the political bleeding flowing from this piercing wound to the US capitalist class, the Bush administration declassified and released hundreds of pages of internal documents and memos it says proves that Bush never authorized torture against Afghan and Iraqi prisoners.

JUNE 24, 2004:

It dawned on the White House this week that given the growing international perception that Bush is responsible for the widespread practice of murder, rape, torture and abuse that's been inflicted on detainees in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and Iraq, it might be a good idea to start putting up a defense, since U.S.C. 2340A of the US Code says that "Whoever outside the United States commits or attempts to commit torture sh all be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both, and if death results to any person from conduct prohibited by this subsection, shall be punished by death or imprisoned for any term of years or for life."

Further, "There is jurisdiction over the activity prohibited in subsection A if - 1) the alleged offender is a national of the United States; or 2) the alleged offender is present in the United States, irrespective of the nationality of the vicitm or alleged offender."

The most important document released by Bush was the August 2002 memorandum prepared by the Justice Department in response to a request by the CIA who sought assurance they wouldn't be prosecuted for war crimes if they went too far in their interrogation methods. This is the memo that Attorney General Ashcroft refused to hand over to the Sept. 11 commission, but was leaked to the Washington Post last week. the memo, written by former assistant attorney general Jay Bybee, went out of its way to justify torture in the war on terrorism and that the president's powers inherent in his role as commander in chief render him immune from prosecution for violating US and international laws banning torture.

About a year ago when the first reports of Iraqis and Afghans suffering torture and abuse at the hands of US forces began surfacing, a reporter asked Bush if the interrogation methods violated international law. Bush replied, "International law? I'd better call my lawyers."

He's singing a different tune now. Today he's distancing himself from the lawyers who wrote that memo, which is being criticized as overbroad and irrelevant and about to be replaced by one with new guidelines.Bush may have distanced himself from Bybee's memo rationalizing torture, but there's no been no talk of removing Bybee from his spot on the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where Bush appointed him last year.

July 21, 2004 UPDATE:

There is much more to cover regarding the Pentagon and Justice Department memos that were written to advise Bush on how to get away with torture. But breaking news suggests an ongoing coverup is being conducted by the capitalist government with the cooperation of its kept corporate press. The Project on Government Secrecy reports that the Defense Department is blocking Freedom of Information Act requests that were sent to the Pentagon regarding torture at Abu Ghraib. The requests, which the Pentagon originally forwarded to the U.S. Central Command, were sent back to the Pentagon for "consolidation."

In addition, Congressional requests for documents related to Abu Ghraib have been unsuccessful.  According to Texas Democratic congressman Silvestre Reyes, "Time and again attempts by this House to acquire documents related
to the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal have been defeated, largely
on party line votes."

We apparently will hear again soon from Seymour Hersh, who first reported on the scandal in the May issue of New Yorker. At a recent ACLU convention, Hersh described the photos and videos he has seen and are in the possession of the Washington Post, Congress, the White House and U.S. News and World Report:

"The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling, and the worst part is the soundtrack, of the boys shrieking. And this is your government at war."

Hersh talked of "a series of massive crimes, criminal activity by the president and the vice president, by this administration anyway....a massive amount of criminal wrongdoing that was covered up at the highest command out there, and higher."

And in an article entitled, "Hell on Earth," U.S. News and World Report summarized the recently released 106 annexes to the Army's Tabuga Report on Abu Ghraib as follows:

"The abuses took place, the files show, in a chaotic and dangerous environment made even more so by the constant pressure from Washington to squeeze intelligence from detainees. Riots, prisoner escapes, shootings, corrupt Iraqi guards, unsanitary conditions, rampant sexual misbehavior, bug-infested food, prisoner beatings and humiliations, and almost-daily mortar shellings from Iraqi insurgents--according to the annex to General Taguba's report, that pretty much sums up life at Abu Ghraib."

This government and its media whores will not succeed in squelching the truth about who ordered the torture of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib, and who is responsible for those prisoners who were murdered by US forces. The stench surrounding this scandal is too strong for the war criminals and their media accomplices like Bill O'Reilly to cover up forever.

Brig. General Janis Karpinski told The Signal newspaper earlier this month that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld authorized the use of Guantanamo-style interrogation methods at Abu Ghraib. Karpinski also told the BBC that she met an Israel working as an interrogator at another detention center in Baghdad, which corroborates Hersh's statement to the BBC that his sources had confirmed Israel intelligence agents were all over Iraq.

JULY 22, 2004:

Rumsfeld's got more problems today. Jonathan K. Idema, on trial in Kabul, Afghanistan for waging a vigilante war against terrorism, said yesterday in court that his antiterrorism unit had direct authorization from Rumsfeld's Pentagon office. Idema, a former Special Forces member, who did time on a federal wire fraud conviction in the 1990s, is accused of taking hostages and torturing them in a private jail for days. The Afghan prisoners were hung allegedly hung by their feet, deprived of food for days, beaten, kicked, with their heads dunked in buckets of water.

"The American authorities absolutely condoned us and absolutely supported us. At times we were in touch with the Department of Defense ever day, at the highest levels, sometimes five days a day," Idema told the Kabul court. Idema said he has the emails and tapes to prove this. "We were working for the U.S. counterterrorist group and working with the Pentagon and some other federal agencies." Idema claims he had arrested suspected members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban and planned on turning them over to American and Afghan authorities in Kabul.

The Pentagon is of course denying any knowledge of Idema's activities and disavows any relationship with this Rambo-style soldier of fortune.  Richard Boucher, a State Department spokesman, said that Washington "does not employ or sponsor" any of the men. Perhaps. But Idema's Special  Forces garb was so genuine that it fooled several NATO commanders.

"Their credibility was such that with their uniforms, their approach, our people believed they were what they said they were," said Commander Chris Henderson of the International Security Assistance Force.

The plot keeps thickening with this character Idema. His illustrious resume also includes a stint as a Fox News analyst! But it doesn't end there. Last year, Idema sued Fox for allegedly stealing a videotape of an Afghan terrorist training camp for which he held the exclusive copyright.

Apparently, there's no honor among thieves, liars, and torturers.

Meanwhile, Rumsfeld should enjoy his freedom. He's got a date with the Big House, along with Bush, Cheney, Rice, Powell and the rest of them.

What did she find in the wiretaps regarding 9/11? (Photo: CBS)

July 7, 2004--In what may be the mother of all Sept. 11 coverups, a federal judge appointed by George W. Bush threw out the lawsuit against Attorney General John Ashcroft filed by FBI translator Sibel Edmonds on the grounds that, according to CBS News, "might expose government secrets that could damage national security."

U.S. District Court Judge Reggie  B. Walton dismissed Edmonds' lawsuit without hearing evidence from her lawyers. Walton did, however, meet twice with Justice Department attorneys. Edmonds had filed the suit on First Amendment grounds, alleging she had been fired after complaining to the FBI about incompetent pre-Sept. 11 wiretap translations and suggesting that another interpreter tried to recruit her into an organization under investigation by the FBI's counter-terrorism unit.

Edmonds' lawsuit caused Ashcroft to invoke the "state secrets" privilege, arguing "the litigation creates substantial risks of disclosing classified and sensitive national security information." Judge Walton, while acknowledging it might be "draconian" to dismiss a lawsuit without even hearing the evidence, concluded that Ashcroft's "state secrets" argument was good enough for him.

What else did this "troublemaker" find in her perusal of the pre-Sept. 11 wire intercepts she was hired to translate? Oh, nothing except specific references to skyscrapers, the 9/11 attacks, and the US visa application process that were apparently overlooked due to a shoddy translation. This is what she told her supervisor: "I need to talk to this agent over a secure line because what we came across in this retranslating is gigantic, it has specific information about certain specific activity related to 9/11."

And what was her "superior's" response? Edmonds tell us:

"The supervisor blocked this retranslation from being sent to the same agent. The reasoning this [supervisor] gave me was, 'How would you like it if another translator did this same thing to you?' "

Ashcroft also was not pleased that Edmonds claimed that she had been told repeatedly from her first day on the job that there was no urgency to her task. In fact, the FBI told her she should take her time translating intercepts so that they could claim the department was underfunded.

Amazing, isn't it? Not really, when you consider Ashcroft had told the acting FBI director before 9/11 that he didn't want to hear any more about terrorism.

And Ashcroft wasn't thrilled when Edmonds also alleged that another Turkish translator, Jan Dickerson, had stamped hundreds of pages of a document as "not pertinent"--meaning they weren't translated. Edmonds claimed that Dickerson invited her to join an organization that was being investigated by the  FBI. Dickerson told Edmonds not to worry, because her FBI credentials would ensure her admission. Indeed.

Edmonds was told by the FBI she'd be opening "a can of worm" if she kept up her complaints. After she wrote a letter to  FBI director Robert Mueller, the FBI confiscated her home computer, challenged her to take a lie detector exam--which she passed--and fired her for being disruptive on the job.

The Senate Judiciary Committee learned of Edmonds' case in the summer of '02. Staff aides said that the FBI confirmed most of her allegations. Senators Patrick Leahy (D-Vt) and Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) sent letters to the FBI urging it to investigate Edmonds' claims. These letters were posted on the senators' Web sites.

When Edmonds' went public with her claims on "60 Minutes" in October 2002, Ashcroft responded by slapping a gag order on Edmonds and classifying previously public documents. Last month, the Washington-based watchdog group known as Project on Government Oversight sued Ashcroft for reclassifying these materials.

Edmonds' response to the gag order was the First Amendment lawsuit which was unceremoniously dismissed by Dalton to day. Edmonds' lawyer, Mark S. Zaid, called Dalton's decision "another example of the executive branch's abuse of secrecy to prevent accountability. The judiciary seems to be unwilling to do anything but capitulate to assertions of national security."

Edmonds, a 34-year-old naturalized US citizen who grew up in Iran and Turkey and is fluent in Farsi and Turkish, wonders where the highly touted "separation of powers" that drew her to US "democracy" has gone.

"What I came to see is that it exists only in name. Where is the oversight? Who is there to stop him [Ashcroft]?"

Certainly not Patrick Leahy, Charles Grassley or any other US senator or congressperson. When the American working class realizes that "national security" is a smokescreen used by the rulers to hide their "intelligence" agencies links to Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups, WE will stop the likes of Ashcroft and Bush.

This situation will not last forever. Consider the following: 1) the US allowed the only person convicted of Sept. 11-related charges to walk free in Hamburg rather than disclose what's in those files; 2) the US has jeopardized its own prosecution of alleged 20th hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui rather than reveal what's in those files; and now, 3) the US refuses to investigate Sibel Edmonds' disturbing allegations about Sept. 11 because they might expose government secrets being kept from the American public and the world.

We can no longer entrust these files to the US government. We must demand the immediate declassification and release of every single file in Washington, including those relating to Israeli involvement in Sept. 11, as reported by Fox News' Carl Cameron in December 2001.

The US capitalist government has turned this country into a bloody death trap. We the People should demand: 1) the arrest of Bush, Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft for war crimes and for violating the US Constitution; 2) the immediate cessation of all aid to Israel; and 3) the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all US forces abroad, starting with Iraq.

These are the preconditions for our "security." Until then, we're sitting ducks for another terrorist attack.

July 9, 2004--COSMOS LEFT has little to add to Bill Van Auken's excellent July 7 article at the World Socialist Web Site, "Kerry-Edwards: Democrats finalize their pro-war, millionaires' ticket"--except to add this corroborating item found in the NY Times' Jodi Wilgoren's July 7 report on the same topic:

"Several people pointed to the secretive and exclusive Bilderberg conference of some 120 people that this year drew the likes of  Henry A. Kissinger,  Melinda Gates and RICHARD A. PERLE to  Stresa, Italy in early June, as helping win Mr. Kerry's heart [emphasis added]. Mr. Edwards spoke so well in a debate on American politics with the Republican Ralph Reed that participants broke Bilderberg rules to clap before the end of the session.

" 'His performance at Bilderberg was important,' said a friend of Mr. Kerry who was there. He reported back directly to Kerry. There were other reports on his performance. Whether they reported directly or indirectly, I have no doubt the word got back to Mr. Kerry about how well he did.' "

The Bilderberg group is a shadowy group of bankers, corporate executives, power brokers, war criminals and other agents of capitalist exploitation who have met behind closed doors for 50 years to discuss "global politics." And, just like the other notorious ruling class organization that Bush and Kerry belong to, the Skull & Bones Society, the proceedings of the Bilderberg conference take place under a veil of sworn secrecy. No reporters are invited.  The public is not privy to what transpires at the conference. Such is the decayed state of what passes for bourgeois democracy.

But we know enough of what occurred at this year's gathering in Italy to know that the US capitalists put their seal of approval on Kerry's selection of John Edwards as his running mate. They are justifiably confident that Edwards will loyally defend and fight for the interests of the ruling rich and the only political agenda they care about: "further enriching the corporate and financial elite by plundering the resources of both the US and the world."

So the US capitalists have all their bets covered. If Bush becomes too much of a liability, they have Kerry and Edwards in place to send more troops to Iraq and implement the Patriot Act at home, despite the fact that almost half the American public wants all US forces out of Iraq immediately. While the capitalists are happy, working people remain disenfranchised and without a voice in the political arena.

Our response should be the largest vote possible for a socialist alternative to the twin parties policies of war and repression. COSMOS LEFT urges readers to vote for either the Socialist Equality Party or the Socialist Workers Party.

''Why should we hear about body bags and deaths and how many, what day it's gonna happen? It's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?'' --Barbara Bush, March 18, 2003, just before her son ordered the invasion of Iraq.

"I'm the commander -- see, I don't need to explain -- I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."--George W. Bush explaining his style to author Bob Woodward

"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."--George W. Bush, Dec. 18, 2000

May-June 2004--Much of what passes for bourgeois political discourse in these times revolves around the notion of "heroes"--the definition of which is usually tainted with base jingoism, national chauvinism and mindless patriotism. Following Sept. 11, 2001, the term "heroes" was glibly attached to the 3,000 who died during that day's attacks in New York and DC. But they weren't heroes--they were tragic victims of an inside job by a criminal state that felt they were expendable in the big picture--that is, uniting the country behind Washington's military aggression to subjugate the world.

The term "heroes" is usually equated with soldiers and cops and the deeds they perform in the service of the capitalist class at home and abroad. Firemen are also frequently characterized as heroes, and rightly so, as communists view their objective role in and contribution to society in a q ualitatively different light than we see cops, whose primary job is not to perform vital social services like saving lives from fires but instead is to brutalize the working class and protect the profits and privileges and stability and social order of capitalism. Having said that, it must be acknowledged that the military-type cultures of cops and fireman contribute to an overlapping of values and politics and world views, which communists will have to skillfully pry apart to win over firemen to the labor movement, of which they objectively are a part, as opposed to the cops, who never were and never will be a part of the labor movement, their "police benevolent associations" notwithstanding.

When communists recognize heroes, it's usually for their bravery in the class struggle, for their tenacity and initiative in working class fights. Generally, elements of proletarian internationalism are key ingredients in a Marxist's criteria for heroes.

In this elucidation of contemporary profiles in courage, only Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia's example is an overt illustration of proletarian internationalism. The two Sept. 11 widows fighting to uncover the truth behind the attacks are resolute and uncompromising bourgeois democrats, demanding that US bourgeois democracy live up to its name and come clean with the American people over Sept. 11 instead of coverups, lies, and dust in our eyes.

Similarly, Michael Newdow, the California lawyer and doctor challenging the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance as a violation of the constitutional principle of separation of church and state, is also a radical bourgeois democrat fighting to keep the US from being turned into a theocracy.

COSMOS LEFT believes that all of these individuals are heroes today, because they are courageously challenging the obsolete and oppressive mores of capitalist society and pointing the way to a better and more humane, just, and honest world.

JUNE 15, 2004:

Mejia was recently convicted of desertion when he failed to return to his unit in Iraq after two weeks of home leave. He applied for conscientious objector status because he felt the war was about oil and the abuse of Iraqi civilians he witnessed was inhuman.
Because Mejia is bucking the most powerful military machine in history and a ruthless gang of bloodthirsty war criminals, and because his case is linked to the Abu Ghraib scandal--itself at the center of this entire criminal and predatory enterprise--he is COSMOS LEFT'S first profile in courage today.

Mejia is the son of Carlos Mejia Godoy, the popular Nicaraguan singer and one-time cultural minister for the Sandinista government. At the age of 18 Mejia moved to the US to live with his mother. One year later he joined the Army because he "wanted to be part of this nation, and the military was at the very heart of the United States. I was very young and was just starting to form my identity, values and principles."

After serving three years of active Army duty and five as a National Guardsman while attending college, Mejia's unit was trained for combat training at Fort Stewart and shipped off to Iraq soon after. He was promoted to squad leader supervising eight other infantryman.

"At first, I loved it," he told the Guardian. "Kids would come out of their homes waving and saying, "Hello, mister, we love you, mister, hello, hello, how are you?' It was beautiful-until we started getting shot at.

"Then we started getting into firefights, and killing civilians, and people were not so friendly any more. After a while we were still there, there was no electricity, no water, no jobs. There were roadblocks, and curfew, and people were dying, and the attitude changed. The people didn't want us there any more, and we didn't want to be there."

For six months Mejia and his squad saw heavy action in one of the Iraqi insurgency's strongholds--Ramadi and the Sunni Triangle. Mejia received a crash course in the brutality of a colonial war--the slaughter of civilians, the abuse of prisoners, which we will return to shortly, the cowardice and incompetence of military officers, who viewed Iraqi civilians and US soldiers as pawns in their quest for glory and medals.

Mejia told the Associated Press about the ambush that h it his squad in Ramadi when a bomb exploded by their Humvee.

"Prior to this attack I had briefed my squad on what I understood to be Standard Operating Procedure, which was that if we were ambushed we should haul ass while returning fire with our weapons. Following the blast, bullets rained down on us from both sides of the road as we drove out of the area. Back at the base, we were euphoric that no one had been hurt in the ambush.

"My commander and First Sergeant immediately asked to be briefed. When I told them what happened they asked me why we had fled rather than staying and fighting. The commanding officers then stated that the squad's actions had sent the wrong message to the enemy. It dawned on me that protecting our troops didn't rank very high on our leader's agenda...[M]edals, glory and 'sending the right message' were all worth the lives of a few soldiers. They were trying to draw the enemy onto us for medals and Purple Hearts."

As Mejia s urvived ambushes, firefights, roadside bombs, mortars and raids, he began thinking for himself about the nightmare that was unfolding around him.

"Imagine being in the infantry in Ramadi, like we were, where you get shot at every day and you get mortared where you lived, [and attacked] with R.P.G.'s [rocket propelled grenades], and people are dying and getting wounded and maimed every day. A lot of horrible things become acceptable."

One of those horrible things that heavily influenced Mejia's thinking was when his friend, a sniper, shot a child about 10 years old who was carrying an automatic weapon. Mejia told the Citizen Soldier, a soldier's advocacy group that helped his defense: "One of our sergeants shot a small boy who was carrying a rifle. The other two children who were walking with him ran away as the wounded child began crawling for his life. A second shot stopped him, but he was still alive. When an Iraqi tried to take him to a civilian hospital, Army medics from our unit intercepted him and insisted on taking the injured boy to a military facility. There, he was denied medical care because a different unit was supposed to treat our unit's wounded. After another medical unit refused to treat the child, he died."

[One of these days we'll finish this tribute to Mejia, Breitweiser, Mariani and Newdow]

June 6-9, 2004--Reagan's dead, and the bourgeois propaganda machine is inundating us with the long-prepared eulogies and memorials to the man who called his wife, "Mommy." But before we get overly teary-eyed, let's remember the historical perspective and true meaning of the "Reagan Revolution."

When you strip away all the maudlin rhetoric and look at Reagan's policies, the truth is he was a hero to the US capitalist class, the ruling rich who profited from his tax cuts and union-busting domestically and unleashed military aggression abroad. It was the US ruling class that needed its confidence restored after their humiliating defeat in Vietnam. That is what's behind all this drivel about Reagan making America feel good again. It's THEY who were reticent to use THEIR military power to safeguard THEIR corporate profits worldwide after Vietnam. It's THEY who were on the defensive because of the revelations that the CIA were professional murderers, torturers, and coup plotters. After four years of playing the human rights public relations game under James Carter, the US ruling class needed a more aggressive chief executive. Reagan answered the call.

When Reagan fired the air traffic controllers union in 1981, he sent a signal to US capitalists that it was open season on the labor movement. What followed was an offensive by the US bosses that resulted in massive budget deficits and a ballooning federal debt, policies that drove real wages down and increased by the poverty rate by 20 percent.

The rich got richer and the poor got poorer. THAT was Reagan's legacy. A deep recession, deep food stamp cuts to those "welfare queens," skyrocketing homelessness, environmental degradation, years of criminal neglect of AIDS from which we are still recovering, tax cuts for the rich and Social Security taxes on working people. THOSE were Reagan legacies, too.

Deregulation is another legacy of the Reagan Revolution that is still haunting us. Those Enron traders who joked about stealing from grandmothers, who celebrated a California power plant burning by singing the disco song, "Burn, baby, burn"--THEY are Reagan legacies as well.

Ah yes, the Reagan years. When ketchup was a vegetable and trees caused pollution. Makes one get choked up reminiscing about that long morning in America from 1980-1988.

But as much as Reagan facilitated capitalist exploitation of wage labor in the US, the extension of that class offensive internationally, his "foreign policy," was even more damaging because it was so lethal. Reagan's support of Central American military dictatorships and right wing death squads resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of El Salvadoran, Guatemalan, Honduran and Nicaraguan workers and peasants. Reagan supplied Hussein with biological and chemical weapons and helped him kill as many Iranians as possible. Reagan also illegally sold arms to Iran and used the profits to illegally finance the Nicaraguan contra terrorists. Reagan presided over a virtual holocaust in Central America. What a hero. Someone to look up to. Someone to make you feel proud about America.

Reagan's CIA director, William Casey, helped Osama bin Laden and other Islamic fundamentalists wage a holy war of terrorism against the pro-Moscow government in Afghanistan. Reagan consequently helped pave the way for the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and September 11.

Nice going, Ronnie. Thanks for the legacies.

But he wasn't through, not by a long shot. Reagan's boys came up with a slick plan to illegally sell arms to Iran and use the profits to finance the contra terrorist war against the Nicaraguan workers and peasants, who had overthrown the corrupt US-backed dictatorship of Somoza and established a workers and peasants government in Managua.

Reagan's legacy was lying to justify these murderous and illegal policies. In November 1986, Reagan denied illegally selling arms to Iran and using the profits to finance contra terror. A week later he had to retract this denial, but insisted that the sale was not part of a deal to free US hostages, which of course there was, although Reagan kept denying he knew anything about it.

Reagan supported the South African apartheid regime, Jonas Savimbi's Angolan contras, a terrorist outfit known as UNITA, and RENAMO, their equivalents in Mozambique who were even more vicious. Reagan said the Nicaraguan contras were the "moral equal of our Founding Fathers"--an outrageous lie considering the contras were counterrevolutionary bent on committing rape and terrorism and murder to overthrow a revolutionary government of workers and peasants that was giving land to the peasants. The Founding Fathers would be turning over in their graves to hear the contras described as their moral equals, when they regularly cut off women's breasts and men's testicles, beheaded babies, cut out tongues, slit throats and gouged out eyes.

Nice crew you armed, financed, and trained there, Ronnie. You and Ollie and Poindexter and Abrams and Reich and Negroponte. And George W.H. Bush, whose son has rehabilitated many of these sordid Iran/Contra criminals for use in US imperialism's war crimes today.

We remember how Reagan bombed Tripoli, Libya, in 1986, an act of state terrorism that killed Libyan leader Qadafi's adopted daughter and several dozen more. This after Reagan was tricked by Israel into believing that Libya was behind the West Berlin disco bombing.

We remember, too, how Reagan put US Marines in harm's way helping Israel pummel Lebanon, a move that cost 243 Marines their lives. Tough guy Reagan responded by pulling out of Lebanon and setting his sights on tiny, defenseless Grenada, which he invaded in 1983 to crush the revolutionary workers and farmers government that had already been beheaded by Stalinists. We remember the lies Reagan told to justify his cowardly invasion; that he did it to save US medical students; that the Cubans and Soviets were building an airport for use as their military base. We remember, too, how valiantly the Cuban construction workers in Grenada fought to defend themselves, Grenada, and the Cuban Revolution.

JUNE 8, 2004:

Even the claim that Reagan won the Cold War by forcing Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall is simplistic spin that ignores the complexity of what actually took place. "Reagan defeated communism and saved the world" is one of the epitaphs in vogue. Yeah. Take a look around at this saved world.

What collapsed in the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries was not communism but Stalinism, that is, counterrevolutionary bureaucrats who masqueraded as communists but increasingly relied on capitalist market mechanisms as they crushed workers democracy at home while selling out revolutions abroad. Except they couldn't sell out Cuba, where the revolutionary leadership under Fidel made a socialist revolution by outflanking the pro-Moscow Stalinists from the left.

Stalinism collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions, which worsened as the crisis of world capitalism intensified over the past several decades. The events of 1989-1991 were not "caused" by Ronald Reagan. Stalinism was a rotting shell. At best, Reagan gave it a nudge and it fell. But even this view is tempered by the testimony of a number of high ranking Soviet generals who say that Reagan's cowboy approach strengthened the hardliners and actually delayed the end.

The collapse of Stalinism was a reflection of the deepening crisis of world imperialism. All of the anticommunist ideologues praising Reagan for "defeating communism" should be more careful with their history, because the truth is the Soviet bureaucracy accelerated its downfall by increasingly relying on the capitalist market at a time when the manifestations of the structural crisis intrinsic to the international capitalist system--overproduction and the long term decline in the rate of profit--were intensifying.

In truth, Washington LOST the Cold War. For decades, the Stalinist bureaucrats did imperialism's dirty work by smashing workers democracy and excluding Soviet workers from world politics. With the demise of the Stalinists, Washington now has to take the workers of the Soviet bloc countries on directly. And the attempt to restore capitalism has not been pretty.

Reagan saved the world? From what? The so-called Evil Empire fell, and Washington's response has been unilateral military aggression and warmongering. More and more workers of the world are realizing that the wrong empire fell, or, more accurately, that what fell were the Stalinist-led deformed workers states which had at least acted as a brake on the rapacious military desires of the world's true evil empire.

Bill O'Reilly recent said that the war on terror began under Reagan. He's right, though as usual, not in the way that he thinks he is. Reagan and the CIA were condemned by the World Court for committing terrorist acts against Nicaragua, including the mining of its harbor. But of course Reagan, the imperialist leader, refused to recognize the jurisdiction of the World Court, much as Bush today has immunized Washington from being prosecuted for war crimes by any international tribunal.

The Reagan Revolution itself was a byproduct of the intensifying crisis of US and world imperialism. It was the response by the more aggressive and belligerent faction of the US capitalist class to this crisis. The Reagan capitalists were telling the world that the political framework flowing from the relationship of forces established by the 1930s labor upsurge was over; that there was no more meat on the bone, no more sweeping concessions to workers; that big government was solely for big business, while workers had to get used to smaller government and more self reliance.

Bush and most of the US capitalist media are frantically trying to enlist the myth and halo around Reagan to salvage Bush's disaster in Iraq. This futile attempt is doomed to failure, because the divisions emerging over Iraq within US ruling circles are too acute to be papered over by crass sentimentalism, and because Iraqi workers, US workers, and the international working class will not let the imperialist jackals around Bush get away with it.

JUNE 9th POSTSCRIPT:

The one positive aspect of Reagan's demise is that it forced Nancy to publicly criticize Bush's reactionary opposition to stem cell research. When Nancy realized that Bush's religious mysticism was endangering her husband's life and the lives of millions more, she added her voice to the growing chorus of those demanding that Bush reverse himself and allow science to work its magic and save human beings.

That, of course, is alien to Bush's nature. He is much more comfortable presiding over death. And he's just getting started. Remember, Bush is the president. He doesn't owe us an explanation. We owe him an explanation. That's why it's so much easier to just be the dictator.

Even "Just Say No" Nancy recognized the promise of stem cell research. You see, it's like this, Bush. Put down the Bible for a second. When you extract stem cells from early-stage embryos, you can use them to replace diseased or damaged cells. And that can work wonders in combating diabetes, spinal-cord injuries, heart disease and Alzheimer's.

Back in August 2001, in the middle of his month-long vacation in which he received specific warnings about the coming Sept. 11 attacks and responded by taking the military off its alert, Bush limited federal funding for stem-cell research to the existing 64 lines already in use. But it turns out that only 19 of those lines can be utilized. Meanwhile research is heading overseas, which not be a problem if the government of the most advanced scientific nation was leading an all-out international mobilization of stem-cell research.

But it's not, because this president is a religious fanatic whose superstition and myth are preventing millions suffering from Alzheimer's and other diseases--including the now deceased Reagan--from enjoying the benefits of science. Apparently the God who speaks to Bush is a vengeful, vindictive Being who lusts for the image of endless tombstones.

This is why the separation of church and state was so important to Jefferson, Madison, and most of the Founding Fathers and remains important to those of us living today. And it's why this constitutional principle, like so many of the revolutionary bourgeois democratic ideals that shaped America's origins, will in the end be most reliably defended by a revolutionary American working class.

Why was Nick Berg abandoned by Washington?

May 12, 2004--The grisly execution of Nick Berg is the latest nightmarish vision brought to the world by US imperialism's criminal and barbaric invasion of Iraq. Every pint of blood spilled in that tortured country--Iraqi, American, British, Japanese, Polish and every other government dragooned into this crime--flows directly or indirectly from the White House. Every manifestation of harm to an American prisoner anywhere is the direct byproduct of George Bush's spitting on the Geneva Convention and the torture of Iraqis and others that has resulted from that contempt. Bush was specifically warned he was putting Americans in danger all over the world by ordering his forces to torture prisoners from Afghanistan to Iraq to Guantanamo Bay.

Having said that, the specific circumstances of Berg's execution stink to the high heavens. A 26-year-old small telecommunications businessman from Pennsylvania, Berg went to Iraq "looking for work" fixing antennas. He was in Baghdad from late December to February 1 and returned to Iraq in March. Unable to find employment, he called his parents on March 24 and told them he'd be home March 30.

But then on March 30, Berg was detained in Mosul by Iraqi police. That would be the Iraqi police under the auspices of coalition forces. Berg's father claims that his son was not allowed to make phone calls or call a lawyer during the 13 days he was held by US authorities, who are saying, "Oh no, we didn't have him. It was them. It was the Iraqi police who had him."

There's a reason why the US is denying Berg was in their custody, which we'll get to shortly.

FBI agents visited the Bergs on March 31, supposedly to confirm Nick's identity. Berg's parents say Washington turned a deaf ear to their pleas for information and help regarding their son. So on April 5, the Bergs filed a federal lawsuit in Philadelphia that charged the US military was illegally detaining Nick. The next day Berg was released. The Bergs last heard from Nick on April 9, when he told them he would try to find a safe way home via Jordan, Turkey, or Kuwait.

From this point things get murky, but Whatreallyhappened.com reports that Berg was in US custody until the day before he ended up in "Al Qaeda's" hands.

This entire sordid episode stinks. We don't know who were behind those masks in the video. Washington was quick to identify the beheader as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the bogeyman responsible for all the terror in Iraq, according to the US government. There's a problem with this convenient theory--according to a March 4 AP report, an Islamic Iraqi group claimed that al-Zarqawi was killed during a US bombing raid in northern Iraq.

Berg's parents are blaming Washington for their son's death and are demanding answers to these questions: why was Nick arrested and detailed for 13 days by Iraqi police? Why wasn't he escorted out of Iraq when he was released?

Berg's father, Michael, blamed Washington for creating the circumstances that led to Nick's death, saying if his son hadn't been detailed for so long, he could have left Iraq before the violence intensified.

"I think a lot of people are fed up with the lack of civil rights this thing has caused. I don't think this administration is committed to democracy."

UPDATE: Already the FBI is trying to cover their asses by claiming they offered Berg safe passage out of Iraq, but he refused. Right. This is the same FBI that let an innocent man rot in jail while their mob informant kept on murdering; the same FBI whose informants were involved in the 1993 WTC bombing and the Oklahoma City Bombing; the same FBI that lied through its teeth about "Al Qaeda" suspects training at US flight schools. Believe these Gestapo/KGB scoundrels at your peril.

Coalition mouthpiece Dan Senor also says that FBI agents met with Berg while he was in the custody of those Iraqi police in Mosul, but denies that Berg was ever in U.S. custody and according to a May 12 CNN report, "that decisions about his detention and release were up to the Iraqi police."

Right. Like anything in Iraq is up to Iraqi cops or Iraqi anything. IRAQ IS OCCUPIED. Its police was set up by the Coalition. They don't move a bowel without Coalition permission.

Senor also says the FBI "met with him on three occasions and made their own determination that he was not suspected of being involved in any criminal or terrorist activities. But he was at no time under the jurisdiction or within the detention of coalition forces."

No, of course not. Berg was a free agent and the FBI just let him go, and somehow he ended up in the custody of an "Al Qaeda" posse.

The FBI released a statement that Berg "refused government offers to advise his family and friends of his status."

That doesn't square with any aspect of this story.

Berg's family isn't buying it either.

His brother, David, told reporters that the family received emails from Berg clearly stating he'd been held by the US military.

Michael Berg had this to say to WBUR, a Boston radio station:

"I still hold [Rumsfeld] responsible because if they had let him go after a more reasonable amount of time or if they had given him access to lawyers we could have gotten him out of there before the hostilities escalated.

"That's really what cost my son his life was the fact that the U.S. government saw fit to keep him in custody for 13 days without any of his due process or civil rights and released him when they were good and ready."

When the interviewer asked him if he really blamed Rumsfeld for Nick's death, Mr. Berg replied: "It goes further than Donald Rumsfeld. It's the whole Patriot Act, it's the whole feeling of this country that rights don't matter anymore because there are terrorists about.

"Well, in my opinion, 'terrorist' is just an other word like 'communist' or 'witch,' and it's a witch hunt and this whole administration is just representing something that is not America, not the America I grew up in."

One doesn't have to lapse into conspiracy theories to be troubled by this entire tragedy. He's jailed by Iraqi police; his parents file a federal suit; he's released the next day; and ends up in the custody of alleged Al Qaeda executioners. And the timing of this madness--right in the midst of the mushrooming Abu Ghraib prison scandal and plummeting public support for the war.

Expect a short-term uptick in support for Bush as right wing jackals like O'Reilly and Limbaugh scream a blood-curdling cry for revenge against the rag-headed savages.

But US imperialism has lost this war, no matter how loud the deluded fools still supporting it call for more blood.

MAY 13 UPDATE:

The stench keeps getting stronger from this tragedy. Now we learn that on March 7, 2004, Michael Berg's name appeared on an "enemies list" published by those freedom-loving folks over at Free Republic.com. That's right, Mr. Berg, who served as the business manager for Nick's telecommunications firm, Prometheus Methods Tower Service, was described along with other supporters of the ANSWER-sponsored March 20 antiwar demonstrations as enemies of America who should be harassed. Free Republic is a collection of ultrarightist fanatical psychos who will one day have to be dealt with and neutralized by battalions of labor defense guards. Though many misguided backward workers may support them, these fascists are objective enemies of working people and a threat to the democratic rights of all of us.

Apparently, Michael Berg was antiwar and antiBush, while his son Nick supported Bush and the war in Iraq.

Already there is speculation that Berg was more than some idealistic Bush supporter looking for work in Iraq, that he was some kind of Israeli spy who was either turned over to his enemies or coincidentally seized by them after he was released from US custody. We don't know precisely when his execution occurred. There are reports that after he was released he stayed at a Baghdad hotel, but no one there says they ever saw him. I just can't get past the fact that what we do know is he was last seen in US custody before ending up wearing an orange jumpsuit in front of his mysterious executioners. And the fact that his parents filed a lawsuit against the US military charging them with illegally detaining their son. And the fact that Nick's father was on that Freepers enemies list.

This smacks of a sinister, shadowy psyops deed by US or Israeli intelligence. We know that Iraq is crawling with CIA and Mossad operatives. Something tells me they're right in the middle of this atrocity. I'm more skeptical every day that al-Zarqawi was the executioner on that tape. Remember he's the guy with the amputated leg. The man with the knife does not seem to limping. And reports are already surfacing that even intelligence operatives doubt that the voice on the tape is al-Zarqawi's.

We don't know yet if the killers were demented Islamic extremists or Mossad agents, but let it be clear that revolutionary Marxists condemn the execution as incompatible with the methods and morality of the working class, as we condemn terrorist atrocities like the Sept. 11 attacks. They have nothing in common with Marxism, which seeks to mobilize the working class to fight for a better world, not terrorize and murder fellow and sister workers.

The supine and cowardly capitalist press is faithfully parrotting the government's line that Berg was offered a flight out of Iraq but he refused. "Fatal Choice" blared the NY tabloid headlines. It was all Berg's fault, you see. He had his chance. Pay no attention to the fact he was detained illegally in US custody for 13 days, or that he was last seen in US custody before ending up with "Al Qaeda."

BREAKING NEWS: AP is reporting that the Berg family has in their possession emails from Beth A Payne, the US consular officer in Iraq. proving that Nick had been detained by the US military in early April. Payne's April 1 email to the family read:

"I  have confirmed that your son, Nick, is being detained by the U.S. military in Mosul. He is safe. He was picked up approximately one week ago. We will try to obtain additional information regarding his detention and a contact person you can communicate with directly."

Payne wrote two more emails later that day saying she was still trying to find a  local contact for Nick Berg.

Once again, the US government is caught red-handed lying through its teeth. Once again, the facts reveal that Washington doesn't give a damn about its own citizens.

Bush supporters are reduced to arguing that at least we don't behead people. They should mind their mouths indulging in such moral relativity, given the fact that throughout America's history US military forces have not exactly been angels, from slaughtering Native Americans to committing more than a few atrocities among the hundreds of thousands of Filipinos killed the the post-Spanish American War occupation, to wearing necklaces of Vietnamese infants' ears.

MAY 14, 2004:

The plot thickens in this horrifying Berg tragedy. CBS News reported on May 13 that Berg had been paid a visit by the FBI while a student at the University of Oklahoma because either his computer password had been used by alleged 20th Sept. hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui or his email address had been traced to an Al Qaeda associate of Moussaoui. Berg's family said the FBI was satisfied with the explanation that Nick's password had passed to Moussaoui during a brief encounter on a bus.

It's also been reported that Berg either attempted to get hired at Abu Ghraib prison or did briefly work there. Maybe that explains where his orange jumpsuit came from

Now we discover that Berg's company, Prometheus Methods Tower Services, Inc., WAS NOT REGISTERED WITH THE PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF STATE OR CORPORATION BUREAU. Not much is known about Prometheus, including the number of employees worked there. There's been talk of a foreman, but Berg was alone in Iraq.

But it did end up on Free Republic's enemies list of antiwar activists.

Now Washington is claiming that the US consular official in Iraq, Beth A. Payne, was simply wrong when she wrote to the Bergs on April 1: "I have confirmed that  your son, Nick, is being detained by the US military in Mosul....He was picked up approximately one week ago."

This story is getting increasingly suspicious, and looking more and more like the work of an Israeli/US psyops murder.

Remember, where there is "Al Qaeda," the  CIA and Mossad are not far behind. At the very least, the US government is responsible for the context in which Nick Berg could be kidnapped and slaughtered by extremists. As Michael Berg told a Philadelphia radio station: "My son died for the sins of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld. This administration did this."

MAY 17, 2004--The evidence mounts that not only was the Berg murder a US/Israeli psyops assasssination, but transparently crude, almost amateurish, in its "execution." Note the eery similarity between the white chair Berg was sitting on and the white chair in the Abu Ghraib photos. THEY'RE THE SAME.

It has been widely reported that firearms experts believe the AK-47 held by one of the executioners is a "Gilal" model--an Israeli made variation of the traditional AK-47 that is a staple among Feyadeen fighters.

The poor editing of the video, the lack of blood, the Israeli stamp on Berg's passport, and all of the anomalies discussed above, all suggest our initial skepticism about the government's version of this tragedy was justified.

Marines liberating women and children in Falluja, 4/28/04 (Oleg Popov/Reuters)

This madness must stop. The entire world is waiting for the US working class to pierce through the fog of patriotic national chauvinism and start acting as thinking human beings with a conscience. The entire world awaits the glorious day when American workers break from the two party capitalist straitjacket and begin fighting for a government that represents the majority of the population and not a parasitic minority of exploiting rich who need colonial wars of conquest to stay alive. The entire world awaits the day when George W. Bush and his murderous gang of capitalist swine are in shackles and orange jumpsuits doing life with hard labor.

On that day, America will be admired again for its revolutionary ideals.--April 28, 2004

Be afraid. Be very afraid. But Fallujans are not afraid.

"It is impossible to intimidate the People. They just get stronger."--Fidel Castro

Before George Bush's April 13 press conference deteriorated into the incoherent rant that usually characterizes question and answer time, that scary moment when he actually has to depart from the scripted cliches and think on his feet--which nearly gives his aides a heart attack--Bush's theme came through loud and clear: the murderous repression directed against the people of Falluja is about to resume, and a similar bloodbath is planned for the residents of Najaf, the southern Iraq holy place currently housing Moqtada al-Sadr, leader of the Shiite militias known as the Mehdi Army.

Bush is already directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Fallujan women and children, some of whom have been shot down by US snipers. American F-16s, Apache and Cobra helicopter gunships, and US tanks have bombed and shelled residential neighborhoods. Soccer fields have been transformed into mass graves. Hospitals are overflowing with screaming children whose limbs and flesh have been blown off. The town is sealed off from water, food and supplies. A curfew mandates that any man on the streets after hours can be shot on sight.

But in the past two weeks, the best--and worst--laid plans of imperialist rats have been dashed to bits by the heroic resistance of Iraqi patriots--Sunni and Shiite--who are valiantly defending their national sovereignty, delivering a staggering political blow to Bush and his imperialist allies in the process.

APRIL 18, 2004: Bush is the definitive personification of the US capitalists as they confront a national uprising against their occupation. On the surface, while reading the script handed him by his speechwriters, Bush showed "steely resolve" reciting the standard lies and updated Orwellian inversions of reality to justify the madness he is inflicting on Iraq. And once Bush had to think for himself during the question and answer period, we saw the fear, trepidation, and confusion that permeates the US capitalists reflected on George W. Bush's disoriented expression.

Bush, his capitalist class, even Rumsfeld had the wits scared out of them last week during the nationwide uprising from Sunni Falluja to Shiite Najaf. They're scared because the valiant fighters of Falluja and Najaf have demolished the myth of US invincibility. In a very real sense, the US has already lost this war. They will never win the hearts and minds of the Iraqis. The parallel with Vietnam is that the US is in a winless colonial war against an indigenuous people who want the invaders out now.

As in Vietnam, the US has no real allies in Iraq, no viable social base it could use to defeat the social revolution. And that's the biggest difference between Iraq and Vietnam that renders most of the discourse surrounding this irrelevant: in Vietnam, you had a socialist revolution with a genuine mass social base leading the fight for national liberation against foreign armies. In Iraq, you have no such socialist revolution taking place. The Iraqi toilers have been defeated by brutal counterrevolutions directed by Hussein and his US backers followed by two wars of imperialist aggression. They lack a revolutionary workers leadership of the Viet Cong's or Hanoi's caliber, flawed as they were. They are fighting back with an inadequate political leadership, and mistakes will be made, but they have already shown Bush he will never pacify Iraq.

While the heroic resistance in Falluja and Najaf against the world's strongest military power has frightened the deranged Caligula residing in the White House and his equally deranged Dr. Strangelove over at the Pentagon, US workers--white, African American, Latino, Asian--SHOULD BE INSPIRED by the fearlessness and combativity of our brothers and sisters in Iraq for standing up to the US war machine.

Iraqi workers are in the front lines of the imperialist war of terror against the oppressed--much as the Palestinians are in the front lines of US and Zionist imperialist terror in the West Bank and Gaza. It's no accident that the storm trooper tactics being used by US forces against Iraqis in their own homes is a mirror image of what the Israeli Defense Force is doing in their brutal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

Bush showed no guilt, no remorse, no feelings for the hundreds of Fallujan men, wo men and children who were just slaughtered by his orders. To the contrary, he is promising more murderous repression. In Bush's upside down world, the US mission is a civilizing and liberating one that represents freedom and liberty. while Iraqis in their own land fighting to kick out foreign occupiers are terrorists and thugs threatening world civilization.

"This has been tough weeks in that country."

Even with a prepared text, Bush can't avoid a glaring grammatical error in the first sentence.

"Coalition forces have encountered serious violence in some areas of Iraq."

Iraqi nationals have encountered serious violence against their country by foreign armies that have killed tens of thousands of their people, all over the country.

"Our military commanders report that this violence is being instigated by three groups: Some remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime, along with Islamic militants have attacked coalition forces in the city of Fallujah. Terrorists from other countries have infiltrated Iraq to incite and organize attacks. "

The vast majority of Iraqi fighters are Iraqis fed up with US troops killing their families and friends in cold blood. To the extent Islamic fighters from other countries are entering Iraq to help their Muslim brothers, they have a right to do so, and Bush was warned by his own intelligence this would be an inevitable consequence of the invasion.

"In the south of Iraq, coalition forces face riots and attacks that are being incited by a radical cleric named al-Sadr. He has assembled some of his supporters into an illegal militia, and publicly supported the terrorist groups, Hamas and Hezbollah. Al-Sadr's methods of violence and intimidation are widely repudiated by other Iraqi Shia. He's been indicted by Iraqi authorities for the murder of a prominent Shia cleric."

In the south of Iraq but also throughout other Shiite areas, coalition forces have faced armed uprising and popular rebellion by the most impoverished Shiite layers of the population. Sadr is popular because his militancy has won the allegiance of broad layers of Shiite AND Sunni communities. Other Shiite clerics have warned Bush that an attack on the holy Shiite city of Najaf would ignite a full scale rebellion among Shiites and Sunnis against the occupation. The indictment by Sadr for allegedly murdering a rival cleric is worthless because it was issued by US puppets m squerading as "Iraqi authorities."

"Although these instigations of violence come from different factions, they share common goals. They want to run us out of Iraq and destroy the democratic hopes of the Iraqi people. The violence we have seen is a power grab by these extreme and ruthless elements."

APRIL 22, 2004:

The "different factions" exercising their sovereign right to defend their country from foreign invasion are the Sunnis and Shiites, who make up three fourths of Iraq. They want to "run" Washington "out of Iraq" in order to exercise and realize their democratic hopes with free elections, which the US is forbidding. The "violence we have seen" has come from the US, which invaded a defenseless Iraq and has slaughtered tens of thousands and destroyed much of the nation's infrastructure. The "power grab" in Iraq stems from the 130,000 troops Bush used to invade and occupy a sovereign nation in order to plunder its oil and exploit its working people.

"It's not a civil war. It's not a popular uprising. Most of Iraq is relatively stable. Most Iraqis, by far reject violence and oppose dictatorship. In forums where Iraqis have met to discuss their political future, and in all the proceedings of the Iraqi Governing Council, Iraqis have expressed clear commitments. They want strong protections for individual rights; they want their independence; and they want their freedom."

Of course it's not a civil war. But the fierce Sunni resistance in Falluja and Ramadi combined with Shiite militias fighting US forces in Baghdad, Kut, Kufa, Karbala, Samarra, Nasiriyah, and above all Najaf IS an insurrectionary upsurge against the occupation. When Sadr's Medhi Army wins control of several of Shiite cities in south and central Iraq, Bush has lost Iraq. When Sunni fighters in Falluja stand down the most powerful military machine in history, Bush has lost Iraq. Again, Bush speaks in an Orwellian, if not forked, tongue. Virtually the entire population of Iraq is completely opposed to the occupation of their country!

You don't liberate a people with a gun shoved down their throat. You don't free a nation by throwing 18,000 of its citizens into prison camps. You don't win hearts and minds by smashing down doors and destroying homes. You don't endear yourself to folks when you humiliate fathers in front of their families, or when you defile their women and religion. You don't win respect when your snipers shoot women and children in the street, or when your bombs and missiles destroy villages.

Yes, the Iraqis want strong protections for their individual AND national rights. That's why they don't appreciate the Emperor Bush invading their country and decreeing that US corporations and soldiers have a license to pollute and kill.

Listen to just a representative sampling of how Iraqis are committed to their independence and freedom.

"The Americans are attacking Shiite and Sunni at the same time. They have crossed a line. I had to get a gun."

"I'm in my shop right now but if an ything happens, I'll close up and take my weapon and join them. I'm ready."

"If the A mericans come this way, we will fight them. I'm going to defend my house, my street, my land, my religion."

"It is the best thing. They are infidels, they are aggressive, they are hunting our people."

"We just want to play football--or marbles. But the soldiers don't let us go out."

"We may be scared of their weapons. But we're not scared of them."

"They were counting on a Sunni-Shiite split in Iraq, but we are one hand. We will be victorious, God willing."

"The contacts between Moqtada Sadr and the Fallujah resistance are not as significant as the sympathy between the Shiites and the people of Fallujah."

"I saw it with my own eyes: they shelled all of Fallujah. Stores, houses -- they shelled indiscriminately."

"The armed struggle in Iraq needs a political party, a little like Sinn Fein in Ireland. I'd like to contribute to its creation."

"They killed all that moved, even the animals. These people are the enemies of mankind." [The Nicaraguan Sandinistas similarly called US imperialism the "enemy of mankind."]

The April 22 NY Times reported these sentiments from Baghdad regarding the US siege of Falluja:

"Frankly, we started to hate the A mericans for tha t. The Americans will hit any family. They just don't care. Children used to wave to the American soldiers when their patrols passed by here. Two days ago, the children t urned their faces away."

"My opinion of the Americans has changed. When the Americans came, they talked about freedom and democracy. Now, the Americans are pushing their views by force. All of us feel that."

"First of all, we'd like Iraqis to take responsibility for security, for the government. We need to have a state. Then we need the reconstruction they promised us. We have a shortage of water and electricity, and it seems nothing is coming."

No, there's nothing coming but death and destruction from Bush the Liberator.

"Four American people were killed in Falluja. Because of that, 500 people were killed in Falluja. The message of the Americas is that 'we have the power.' Iraqis will never accept that."

Iraqis are also hip to the fact that collective punishment is an international war crime, and that the US and Israel are the two leading practitioners of that illegality in the world.

"My opinion now is the same as that of the people in Falluja. They don't need the American people."

"When they first came here, the Americans were smiling. You could go up to them and talk with them. But now you look at them and see that their faces are very grim. They think all of us are enemies."

Yes, and that is the hallmark of an unwinnable colonial war that Washington has blundered into.

George Bush and the US ruling class have one response to this burning Iraqi desire for independence and national sovereignty--murderous repression. As this is being written they are preparing to turn Falluja into a "killing field," in the words of an unnamed senior US military officer. Already they have killed hundreds of women and children in that besieged town whose name will live in history as a profile in courage and heroism. Helicopter gunships continue to shell Falluja's homes. Jet fighters are dropping 500-pound bombs on the city's neighborhoods. Marine snipers are terrorizing Falluja's inhabitants by picking off grandmothers and youngsters.

APRIL 27, 2004:

The Iraqis defending Falluja against a foreign occupier are not terrorists, no matter how many times Bush and Fox News say they are. The Shiite militias known as the Medhi Army are not illegal. US troops are the illegal entities invading a sovereign nation in a preemptive war of aggression. The slaughter of nearly 1,000 Falluja residents in retaliation for the deaths of four US Blackwater contractors is an act of collective punishment that is illegal under in ternational law.

Bush and Brig Gen. Kimmett are determined to drown the Iraqi people in blood for having the audacity to defend their nation's sovereignty and dignity. In the last two days, Falluja Sunnis and Najaf Shiites have put up fierce resistance against the overwhelming firepower of the US forces. Many Iraqi fighters and an untold number of civilians have been killed in the battles.

All the corporate media babble about a "negotiated settlement" and "diplomacy" to avert a bloodbath was a song and dance designed to soften up world opinion for the bloodshed that Washington's war criminals are preparing for Iraqi workers and farmers.
Bush's "proposal" was for the Iraqi fighters to turn over their weapons to the US, that is, surrender. The Iraqis response was to turn in old dysfunctional guns and continue to valiantly defend their homeland security.

There was never a "truce" in Falluja. US snipers continued to terrorize Fallujan residents. Now US tanks and fighter jets are pounding the city of 300,000, to the delight of bloodthirsty media jackals like Bill O'Reilly who have been screaming for the destruction of Falluja.

No single recent act by Bush better illustrates what this international outlaw has in store for the Iraqi people than his choice as the new US ambassador for the newly liberated Iraq. It was time to replace the clueless chief administrator of the occupation, Paul Bremer, with a more seasoned veteran of international diplomacy and UN experience.

So who does Bush select for this post? Why, none other than John Negroponte, whose hands are still stained with the blood of working people from Vietnam to Honduras to Nicaragua.

APRIL 29, 2004:

So who does Bush select for this post? Why, none other than John Negroponte, whose hands are still stained with the blood of working people from Vietnam to Honduras to Nicaragua. His long and bloody career began in 1964 as a political affairs hack for the US embassy in Saigon--a breeding ground for CIA agents. From 1969 to 1971 Negroponte served as Henry Kissinger's aide at the Paris peace talks with North Vietnam. For the next two years, Negroponte headed up the National Security Council's Vietnam operations, still working for Kissinger. Negroponte was thus an accomplice in the slaughter of millions during Washington's criminal and illegal aggression against Vietnam.

As Reagan's ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985, Negroponte oversaw the transformation of that country into a major base for Washington's illegal Contra war against Nicaragua. The most notorious facility was the El Aguacate air base, where mass graves were discovered in 1999.

During Negroponte's tenure as US ambassador, Honduran death squads flourished. Thousands of Honduran workers, students and peasants were kidnapped, murdered and tortured, many by a paramilitary outfit kn own as Battalion 316, whose thugs were trained in the US and under the CIA's tutelage in Honduras.

Negroponte was an enabler and consistent apologist for Battalion 316, covering up reports of their nefarious crimes and telling the US Congress that Honduras had a glowing human rights record. It is this kind of "enormous experience and skill," that Bush had in mind when he announced Negroponte's nomination. And as the current US ambassador to the United Nations, Bush praised Negroponte for doing "a really good job of speaking for the United States to the world about our intentions to spread freedom and peace."

As we watch the nightmarish consequences of Bush's intentions to spread freedom and peace unfold every day in Iraq, it becomes chillingly clear how qualified Negroponte is for the job Bush wants him to do. In Honduras, Negroponte defended his look the other way approach to Battalion 316 by claiming that in order to defeat the communists and end turmoil, you have to deal with unsavory characters. Now, as Washington's viceroy in occupied Iraq, we can already hear Negroponte saying that in order to defeat the terrorists and end the turmoil, he may again have to resort to death squads, torture, and covert operations.

Fallujans rejoice as Marines withdraw, April 30, 2004

"It is impossible to intimidate the People. They just get stronger."--Fidel Castro

Fallujans celebrating their humiliating defeat of US imperialism and its demented Caligula, the dunce George W. Bush.

*********************

April 29-30, 2004--In the last several days, a turning point occurred in the US war on Iraq. The Falluja defenders inflicted a humiliating defeat on US imperialism. Whatever additional military reprisals Bush inflicts on Falluja, Washington has lost this war. The battle of Falluja will be remembered throughout history for shattering the myth of US invincibility.

After bombarding Falluja for several weeks and thereby committing the war crime of collective punishment; slaughtering hundreds of its citizens, many of them women and children felled by sniperfire; shelling homes with AC-130 gunships; dropping 1,000 pound bombs from fighter jets; firing on ambulances; taking over hospitals; cutting off water; cordoning off neighborhoods; preventing residents from reentering the city; terrorizing families with house to house searches; threatening to destroy the town; and demanding that the Falluja fighters surrender or die, US forces backed down and agreed to a settlement in which the Marines pull back from Falluja to be replaced by a former Hussein general leading a new force called the "Falluja Protection Army."

Bush called out the Falluja defenders and Bush blinked. The intense international pressure and the political costs that loomed for the White House forced Bush to back down in both Falluja and Najaf--for now. But it is only a matter of time before Bush unleashes another murderous assault. He may win a military victory, but politically Washington has lost Iraq. The more Bush is forced to escalate the murderous repression, the more alienated and angry Iraqis will become, and the more popular support--already strong--will grow for the armed uprising.

It is not hyperbole to assert that Falluja has become Bush's Tet offensive, Dien Ben Phu, Stalingrad, and Waterloo. The most powerful military machine i n history admitted to a defeat in agreeing to this settlement. Bush sought to smash the resistance in Falluja and break the will of the Iraqi people. The aim was to send an unequivocal message to the rest of Iraq that the consequence of resistance was total annilihation.

The Fallujans answer was just as unequivocal: come on with it. We are ready to die defending our soil. Are you? Are you finally ready to definitively test the Vietnam Syndrome?

Falluja is shattering the myth that most of the fighters are foreign Islamic terrorists or Baathist holdouts. While there are some Islamic jihadists who have come to Iraq to defend their Muslim brothers against US aggression, their numbers are far closer to a few hundred than the 10,000 figure Bill O'Reilly tried to pass off as fact recently. The vast majority of Falluja and Najaf and Samarra and Karbala and Kut fighters are IRAQIs, and some of these are Republican National Guard soldiers. But when you have grandmothers offering to do battle against the invaders, you've got a popular rebellion on your hands.

No, the Fallujans cannot defeat the Am ericans militarily. But one year after Bush proclaimed victory, his forces have not pacified the country nor won the war. The reason is political, not military. When an entire people resists an occupation, no amount of military power can crush their capacity to fight. Every bomb, rocket, missile, and bullet directed against Iraqis is powerless against this kind of power.

As Fidel said, The People only get stronger.

But while the Cuban leader speaks with moral clarity, Bush babbles in grand delusions, proclaiming that most of Falluja is "returning to normal" in the midst of a large scale humanitarian disaster, water and electricity shortages, hospital overflows and soccer fields turned into mass graves.

Further, we should harbor no illusions that the US aggression against Falluja are over. Already we're hearing that the Pentagon denies any reports of a settlement involving the handing over of security to Iraqi generals. The US attacks against Falluja have not ceased and never did during the phony "truce." The US have never carried out "defensive" operations. The entire occupying force is offensive has already killed over 1,000 Fallujan residents.

But Bush has more problems on his hands with the latest scandal involving his troops' torture of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison. These soldiers who forced prisoners to strip naked and perform acts of sexual humiliation; attached wires to genitals and threatened electrocution; forced naked Iraqi prisoners to stand on a box with heads covered in hoods; ordered naked prisoners to stand in a pyramid and be attacked by dogs; these soldiers were merely following the moral example of their sadistic commander in chief.

These are bona fide war crimes, captured on tape just as definitively as Rodney King's beating. Ramsey Clark, among others, is no doubt compiling the ever expanding data of evidence that will indict George W. Bush before an international war crimes tribunal. And he won't be alone--Cheney, Rice, Powell, Abizaid, Kimmitt, Wolfiwitz, Libby, Perle, Feith, Bremer, to name a few.

MAY 2:

Remember, however, that Bush and his gang knew in advance the war crimes they'd be committing against Iraqis--and they prepared accordingly. Washington told their puppets on the Iraqi Governing Council to make sure that all US soldiers in Iraq enjoyed a blanket immunity from prosecution for any criminal charges. And just to be sure, Washington twisted enough arms to ensure that no US soldiers or citizen could be prosecuted for war crimes before the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

The good news is there are a number of international initiatives to convene independent war crimes tribunals. On May 8, the World Tribunal on Iraq will meet in New York City at Cooper Union to hear presentations and testimony documenting the war crimes committed by the US against the Iraqi people.

The organizers issued a statement that read in part, "In the face of the human suffering caused by the war on Iraq, we must act now against 'the crime of silence,' to write a counter-history and to stand up as writnesses in judgment."

This tribunal is part of an international movement that kicked off last fall in Istanbul, Turkey. Meetings have since been held in London, Mumbai, Copenhagen, Brussels, Hiroshima, Paris, Monterrey, Munich, Seoul, Barcelona, Istanbul, Rome, Berlin, San Jose, Stockholm, Lisbon, and now New York.

Reflecting the sadism and moral depravity of her commander-in-chief

"America's armed forces are performing brilliantly, with all the skill and honor we expect of them."--George W. Bush, April 13, 2004

Not all US soldiers are sadistic thugs like the six charged with torturing Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison. Some soldiers--like the one who turned in these scoundrels--have managed to retain their consciences, despite the inhuman barbarism that's been drilled into them by their "superior" officers.

But the explosive scandal generated by the publication of the photographs like the one on this page cannot be reduced to the standard "few bad apples" theory that we hear so much from apologists for cops in the US. It is standard military policy to train soldiers to view the people that Washington wants them to kill as subhuman.

Even British military commanders have recently charged that part of the problem is that American soldiers see Iraqis as "untermenschen"--the Nazi expression for subhumans, or literally, "under-people," a term Adolf Hitler used in Mein Kampf to describe Jews, Slavs, gypsies, and everyone else he viewed as racially inferior.

MAY 1, 2004:

Those Brit commanders should have remembered that old English idiom before they opened their big mouths.

"Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones."

Indeed, hot on the heels of the US torture scandal at Abu Ghraib, today's papers are filled with equally nauseating photos of British soldiers urinating on hooded Iraqi prisoners. We should n ot be surprised. The English are the mother of all colonial occupiers. They wrote the book on dehumanizing their subjects.

George Bush can feign disgust all he wants, but the 6 soldiers from the 800th Military Police Brigade who tortured those prisoners were only following the moral depravity of their commander in chief, who laughingly mocked a Texan Death Row inmate's plea for her life. Already, Bush and Brig. Gen. Kimmitt are claiming these soldiers don't "reflect the nature of the men and women we've sent overseas."

But this knee-jerk attempt to peddle the rotten apples theory was contradicted by Army Reserve Staff Sergeant Chip Frederick, a Virginia prison guard charged with assaulting prisoners, ordering prisoners to fight each other and an "indecent act" for watching a sexual abuse incident.

Frederick told CBS's "60 Minutes II" that he and other reservist jail guards were ordered to physically and mentally "prepare" Iraqi prisoners for interrogation. An email message from Frederick read: "Military intelligence has encouraged and told us 'Great job.' They usually don't allow others to watch them interrogate. But since they like the way I run the prison, they have made an exception. We help getting them [detainees] to talk with the way we handle them.... We've had a very high rate with our style of getting them to break. They usually end up breaking within hours."

How efficient these patriots are. Lisa Croke from YellowTimes.org reported on April 11, 2004, that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) received a letter from an American soldier accusing his superior officer of having sex with "pre-ragheads"--or pre-pubescent Iraqi girls. The soldier charges that a U.S. Battalion Commander promised local Iraqi leaders protection in exchange for young girls.

CAIR also is demanding that the Pentagon investigate a photograph of a smiling US soldier standing next to two young Iraqi boys who are giving the "thumbs-up" sign while one of the boys is holding a sign reading, "Lcpl Boudreaux killed my Dad, then he knocked up my sister!"

This is not aberrant behavior. This is the standard behavior of a brutal occupying power trying to subjugate a people through murder, terror, and intimidation. We have seen it before in history--the Nazis in wartime Europe, the Israelis in the West Bank and Gaza, the French in Algeria. These photos of sexual sadism sum up the criminal and perverse character of Washington's occupation of Iraq.

Bush's military forces are the modern barbarians. They are imbued with national superiority and respect no other people, culture, or religion than their own. They are filled with imperialist arrogance that assumes they have the right to invade any country their commanders choose. They regard Iraqis as "untermenschen"--subhuman.

An army is a reflection of the society it "serves." Today's US army is no exception. There is a small minority of thugs and psychopaths who will serve fascism; there is a small minority of workers in uniform open to revolutionary ideas; and there's the huge majority that can go either way. The job of revolutionary Marxists is to wage the class struggle in the ranks of the military and win this majority to the side of the working class--to the Revolution. That is what is on the agenda today.

The March for Women's Lives, April 25, 2004, Washington DC

April 27, 2004--Despite the pro-Kerry, Anybody But Bush illusions harbored by many in this huge mobilization, this was an objectively proletarian action that put all of the Neanderthals trying to reverse Roe v. Wade on notice that any frontal assault on a woman's right to reproductive freedom will be answered in the streets.

These women's rights supporters demonstrated their implacable opposition to Bush's antiwoman policies, among them: cutting off funding for overseas family planning clinics that provide abortion counseling; slashing millions of dollars from the United Nations Population Fund; signing into law a ban on the so-called "partial birth abortions" (dilation and extraction, or "intact D&E abortions"), which will be used as a springboard to try to abolish abortion altogether.

Fittingly, Bush advisor Karen Hughes appeared on CNN to issue a not so thinly veiled warning: if you support a woman's right to choose, you're with the terrorists and against George Bush. Just listen to this latest drivel from Hughes:

"I think that after September 11, the American people are valuing life more and we need policies to value the dignity and worth of every life. President Bush has worked to say, let's be reasonable, let's work to value life, let's reduce the number of abortions, let's increase adoptions. And I think those are the kinds of policies the American people can support, particularly at a time when we're facing an enemy and, really, the fundamental issue between us and the terror network we fight is that we value every life."

Yes, Ms. Hughes, with each passing day we're seeing evidence of how much you value every life in Falluja, Baghdad, and Najaf

We've seen this McCarthyite tactic from Bushites before. In February, Secretary of Education Rod Paige called the National Education Association a "terrorist organization" because it blasted Bush's reactionary No Child Left Behind Act.

The repugnant Hughes is in good company. Randall Terry, president of the anti-abortion outfit Society for Truth and Justice, told CNN that "These celebrities who have attached their names to [the march[, their names are going to have a certain amount of shame with it. Remember, Adolf Hitler in the mid '30s had really big crowds and had a lot of famous people saying he was a great guy. It didn't do him much good in 1945."

Terry leaves out the fact that one of the first things Hitler did in power was to ban abortion.

Terry's grasp of history rivals that of Hughes's hero, George W. Bush.

Funeral of murdered Hamas leader Rantisi, 4/18/04 (Al Jazeera)

April 19, 2004--The day before this Shiite rally in Basra, thousands of Shias lined up in Sadr City, Baghdad, to give blood to their Sunni brothers and sisters wounded in Falluja.

"We should thank Paul Bremer," Salih Ali told Guardian correspondent Naomi Klein. "He has finally united Iraq. Against him."

David Horsey (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 4/16/04)

Rice: "No one could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center . . ."

Bush: "There was no actionable intelligence . . ."

"And I wanted Tenet in the Oval Office all the time."

BUT WHEN I'M ON VACATION, I'M ON VACATION!

*********************

Condoleeza Rice warned on April 18, 2004, that terrorists emboldened by their impact on the recent Spanish elections may strike again in the US because the opportunity to influence November's election may "be too good to pass up for them."

"We are actively looking at that possibility, actively trying to see -- to make certain that we are responding appropriately."

Well, given their track record of actively trying to see, that's not very reassuring, is it?

Beneath Rice's erroneous interpretation of the Spanish election and her misplaced attempt to apply its "lessons" to the US is an ominous warning. Rice is claiming that the Madrid bombings intimidated Spaniards into voting out Aznar and achieving the terrorists' desired result of forcing a US withdrawal from Iraq.  Showcasing the vulgar superficiality of her bourgeois mind, Rice argues that terrorists will be tempted to repeat the dynamic in the US.

Rice's alleged intellectual prowess leaves out a major fact: the Spanish electorate is not the American electorate. The Spanish election was in large measure a vote against the Iraq war. Ninety percent of Spaniards opposed this war long before their March 14 election. The Madrid bombings influenced the election because the Spanish people were repulsed by Aznar's instant attempt to blame the attacks on Basque separatists. Spain's toilers saw through Aznar and Bush's lies on Iraq and terrorism.

Unfortunately, American workers are not yet as antiwar, class conscious, or anti-imperialist as our Spanish brothers and sisters. At best, about half of Americans oppose the Iraq occupation, and a smaller minority support the demand for an unconditional withdrawal. Further, the political consequence of another major terrorist attack on US soil before November would be either the reelection of Bush or the suspension of the presidential election and imposition of martial law, as General Tommy Franks suggested months ago and ultrarightist Sean Hannity keeps repeating.

Rice has an intriguing habit of making statements that are destined to come back and haunt her. Bush benefits from another terrorist attack. Given the deteriorating situation in Iraq, another spectacular act of terrorism on US soil may indeed "be too good to pass up" for the same bastards who sponsored and/or allowed Sept. 11 to happen.

The signs are everywhere. This is one topic in which you should believe this government. There will be another attack before November. Listen to Bush on  April 21:

"This is a hard country to defend. I can understand why they [the 2/3 of Americans who think another attack is "somewhat likely" before November] think we're going to get hit again. They saw what happened in Madrid. Our intelligence is good. It's just never perfect, is the problem."

And from Homeland Security Director Thomas Ridge:

"In this country, we soon enter a season that is rich with symbolic opportunities for the terrorists to try to shake our will." [April 20, 2004]

It's looking more and more like Christmas will come early for Bush all wrapped in one of his cherished "trifectas": 1) a pre-election terrorist attack; 2) the capture or death of Osama Bin Laden; and 3) the "discovery" of a cache of biological or chemical weapons in Iraq, secretly brought to southern and western Iraq over the past month, according to credible reports. Again, listen to Bush's own words from his April 13 press conference: "I look forward to hearing the truth, exactly where they are. They could be hidden....[I]t will all settle out, John. We'll find out the truth about the weapons at some point in time.

Well, you know what the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad always says:

"By way of deception thou shalt wage war."

April 9, 2004--In the days ahead we will examine Condoleeza Rice's misleading and incriminating April 8 testimony she gave under oath to the Sept. 11 commission in relation to Richard Clarke's bombshell book and his own commission testimony.

We'll start it off with some questions the coverup panel did not ask Ms. Rice. We didn't expect anyone to ask Rice if she was the one who called San Franciso Mayor Willie Brown on Sept. 10, 2001, warning him not to fly the next day. But it's revealing that the panel did not grill Rice about Sibel Edmunds, the FBI wiretap translator who found pre-911 intercepted messages that clearly identified a looming suicide hijacking plot.

They didn't ask why Edmunds was threatened with jail by John Ashcroft if she spilled the beans about what she heard on those intercepts.

They didn't ask Rice to respond to Edmunds' comment: "Especially after reading National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice where she said, we had no specific information whatsoever of domestic threat or that they might use airplanes. THAT'S AN OUTRAGEOUS LIE. AND DOCUMENTS CAN PROVE IT'S A LIE."

Ah, but those documents are "classified" to protect "national security"--meaning the government is hiding behind phrases to protect their asses from the wrath of the people when we find out that the rulers allowed Sept. 11 to happen to win public support for wars long planned to control oil and gas in the Middle East and Central Asia.

They didn't ask Rice why Attorney General John Ashcroft was forbidden from flying commercial aircraft in July 2001.

They didn't ask Rice why on Sept. 10, 2001,10 Pentagon generals cancelled their plans to fly the following day.

They didn't ask Rice why there was no air defense over Washington and New York and no stepped up airport security in light of the Aug 6. presidential daily briefing and the fact that Bush had just returned from a Genoa summit that had been the target of a plot to kill Bush by crashing planes into the complex that housed him.

The commission also didn't ask Rice why, in light of the multitude of specific warnings received from British, Russian, French, Israeli, Jordanian and Moroccan intelligence of a looming Al Qaeda skyjacking plot on US soil, the commander in chief and national security advisor did not take any steps to ensure airport safety and an adequate air defense to protect the targets that had long been known by US intelligence: the White House, Capitol, CIA headquarters, Pentagon, and the World Trade Center.

Conspicuously missing from the hearings was any mention of Project Bojinka, the 1995 plot to crash hijacked planes into the World Trade Center, White House, and CIA headquarters, Chicago's Sears Tower, and San Francisco's pyramid building.

Rice stumbled nervously through her testimony, all rife with scripted, contradictory doubletalk that reeked of covering up a crime that could land her in prison for life or worse. She admitted that the title of the August 6th CIA briefing given to Bush was "Bin Laden Intends to Strike inside US" but denied with a straight face that constituted a warning, preferring to insult her listeners by mischaracterizing the briefing as "historical." Her exchanges with Ben Viniste and Kerrey revealed that the still-classified document spoke of FBI knowledge about preparations for hijackings in the near future. Rice then couldn't recall if Bush ever met with FBI director Mueller from August 6 until September 11. She also couldn't remember telling Bush about the presence of Al Qaeda cells within the US.

This is just the beginning. The magnitude of the crimes that was committed against the American people by the US capitalist government is too big to cover up forever.

Shiite rally in British occupied Basra, 4/16/04

April 19, 2004--The day before this Shiite rally in Basra, thousands of Shias lined up in Sadr City, Baghdad, to give blood to their Sunni brothers and sisters wounded in Falluja.

"We should thank Paul Bremer," Salih Ali told Guardian correspondent Naomi Klein. "He has finally united Iraq. Against him."

"Let my people go!" (AFP/Cris Bouroncle)

"No Sunnis, no Shiites, yes for Islamic unity. We are Sunni and Shiite brothers and will never sell our country."

 "They killed the elderly praying at the mosques, as well as women and children. This is indiscriminate killing."

 See "Fighting US Imperialism" for more on Iraq.

September 11: Did you know...? FLASH

BREAKING NEWS FROM SEPT. 11 HEARINGS!
Former FBI Wiretap Translator Tells Commission FBI Had Pre-911 Tapes Revealing Terrorist Plot to Use Planes as Missiles!

Says She Was Threatened With Jail by Ashcroft if She Went Public with Her Translations!

Late March-April 3, 2004--Bit by bit, the lies and coverup surrounding Sept. 11 are unraveling. The horrible truth that no one wants to face is staring this country in the face and it will not go away. The crimes of the Bush administration concerning September 11 and the Iraq war are too big to cover up forever. The new book by former terrorism czar Richard Clarke that accuses the Bush administration of ignoring signs of a large scale terrorist attack on US soil prior to Sept. 11 only confirms what many of us have been saying for over two years--that cumulative evidence points to the inescapable conclusion that the US government either sponsored the 911 attacks or allowed them to happen via a military standdown.

After refusing to establish a 911 investigative panel for months, Bush was shamed in to reversing course by the relentless pressure from Kristen Breitweiser and other courageous relatives of 911 victims. Now, after additional months of sabotaging the commission's work by dragging his feet and refusing to turn over unedited notes of intelligence briefings he'd received from the CIA about Al Qaeda, Bush has to face the music as the long awaited convening of the panel began today with the testimony of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Powell, former Secretary of State Madeline Albright, and former Secretary of Defense William Cohen.

Hovering over the opening testimony of these murderous scoundrels was the bombshell revelations from Clarke in his new book, "Against All Enemies: Inside the White House's War on Terror."

The opening day's witnesses, particularly the alleged iron man Rumsfeld, seemed visibly shaken. They should be.

The elephant in the room, as 911 commissioner James Thompson put it, was Clarke and the bombshell revelations from his new book, "Against All Enemies: Inside the White House's War on Terror." More on Clarke soon.

The opening day's witnesses, particularly the alleged iron man Rumsfeld, seemed visibly shaken as the day unfolded. They should be. The dam holding back the truth is about to burst.

While watching the testimony of Rumsfeld, Meyers, Powell and Armitage, I kept thinking of Churchill's quote, "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma," in that the more one listened to these war criminals, the less we learned about what happened on Sept. 11, and the more these bastards incriminated themselves.

Or maybe Robert Frost captured the proceedings more accurately: "We dance around in a ring and suppose/But the secret sits in the middle and knows."

The questioning of these r uling class figures by the ruling class stooges on the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States quickly revealed that the one thing this panel won't do is examine the root causes of Sept. 11 and the evidence suggesting complicity in the attacks by US intelligence and possibly the White House.

The thrust of the panel's message on the opening day of testimony was to blame Sept. 11 on bad intelligence combined with an overreliance on diplomacy and an unwillingness to launch preemptive military strikes against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Even Clarke, the "hero" of the anti-Bush camp, pushes this line of thinking. The message is that if only the US wasn't so constrained and restricted in conducting surveillance and covert operations and waging war, September 11 could have been prevented. If only Clinton wasn't such a pussy militarily, the Repugnants are basically saying, the US could have killed Bin Laden and prevented 911. But let's not be partisan here--Democrats are also saying this. Former Democratic Nebraska Senator and Navy Seal Robert Kerry repeated his long held claim that Washington should have invaded Afghanistan years ago to kill Bin Laden. Madeline Albright agreed: "You know, senator, I know were the only person that I know of who suggested declaring war. You were, you know, in retrospect--you were probably right."

Not so, accordingly to Rumsfeld, and COSMOS LEFT readers may be surprised to learn that in this case--he's actually closer to the truth than the Democrats.

"Even if bin Laden had been captured or killed in the weeks before Sept. 11, no one I know believes it would necessarily have prevented Sept. 11. Killing bin Laden would not have removed the Al Qaeda's sanctuary in Afghanistan. Moreover, the sleeper cells that flew the aircraft into the World Trade towers and the Pentagon were already in the United States months before the attacks."

He's right, althought not in the way he'd like us to think he's correct. Killing Bin Laden in an Afghanistan cave would not have stopped the Sept. 11 attacks because the terrorist operation was coordinated and executed as an inside job by US and Israeli intelligence!

MARCH 27, 2004 UPDATE:

The unchallenged assumption that killing bin Laden and invading Afghanistan would have prevented September 11 is false on another level: Washington HAS NEVER DEFINITIVELY PROVEN THAT THE SEPT. 11 PLOT WAS HATCHED IN AFGHANISTAN.

In fact, the US government has not even substaniated its claim that Bin Laden was behind the terrorist attacks. Immediately after Sept. 11, Bush promised documented proof that bin Laden was the culprit. BUT HE NEVER PROVIDED THIS EVIDENCE. The buck was passed to British Prime Minister Anthony Blair, whose speech to the UN did not contain a single fact linking Bin Laden to Sept. 11, focusing almost entirely on Bin Laden's alleged involvement in the African embassy bombings.

FBI Director Robert Mueller ADMITTED in April 2002 that the alleged 19 hijackers left "no paper trail" behind in Afghanistan:

"In our investigation, we have not uncovered a single piece of paper--either here in the United States or in the treasure trove of information that has turned up in Afghanistan and elsewhere--that mentioned any aspect of the Sept. 11 plot."

MARCH 28, 2004:
There IS a paper trail that would get to the bottom of Sept. 11--located in the intelligence files of the FBI, CIA, NSA, DIA and the White House. They remain classified because to release the only paper trail that counts would expose the links between Al Qaeda and September 11 with the US, Israeli, and British governments. Those classified files are so incriminating that Washington jeopardized its prosecution of the alleged 20th hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui, rather than allow those files to see the light of day.

All we heard during those two days of testimony was that the US held back from invading Afghanistan and wiping out Al Qaeda's camps because it lacked political consensus and public support for such a preemptive military strike. Not a word about the role the US played in building those camps during the early 1980s to help Bin Laden and other Islamic jihadists kill as many Soviets as possible. Not a word about the major role Washington played in the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Not a word about OIL and how control of Central Asia's oil and natural gas was a major geopolitical strategic objective of US imperialism during the Clinton administration.

Condoleezza Rice is lying through her teeth on many aspects of this sordid affair, but on one point she is closer to the truth than some of her cohorts: the notion that the US had no pre-911 military plans to invade Afghanistan--advanced by Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage--is a lie contradicted by the following:

1) Indian newspapers reported on June 26, 2001, that India and Iran would "facilitate" a joint US/Russian military incursion in Afghanistan to occur later that year.

2) The BBC reported on Sept. 18, 2001, that a former Pakistani diplomat told it that the US had planned months before Sept. 11 to carry out a military attack against Osama bin Laden and the Taliban by the middle of October. The diplomat, Niaz Naik, said that Washington would launch its attack from bases in Tajikistan, where US forces were already stationed. Naik also expressed doubt that Washington would cancel its operation even if the Taliban immediately turned over Bin Laden.

3) The British military publication, Jane's Defense, reported in March 2001 that India had joined Russia, the USA and Iran.

So ask yourselves, if a war on Afghanistan was being secretly plotted by the Bush administration, a war that could not win the support of Americans without a catastrophic event on the scale of Pearl Harbor, as the Bush think tank Project for an American Century openly speculated in 1997, then who planned the September 11 attacks? And, digger deeper, who benefited from them?

Well, for starters, Bush; the US military; US corporations like Chevron, Unocal, Bechtel, and Halliburto; military contractors and private equity firms like The Carlyle Group (the most recent joint business venture between the Bush and bin Laden families); and, lest we forget, the pharmaceutical industry, which, as Dr. Matthias Rath pointed out in a March 28 full-page New York Times ad, is "the largest corporate benefactor of the September 11 traged and the attack on Iraq."

Which brings us back to this week's Sept. 11 hearings and its two main attractions, one very much in attendance, the other conspicuous in her absence.

Richard Clarke joins the growing ranks of ruling class figures in the military and intelligence establishments who have parted ways with Bush's unilateralist and adventurist course toward global hegemony for US imperialism--former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, former State Department analyst Greg Theilmann, Ret. Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni, Lt. Col. US Air Force (ret.) Karen Kwiatkowski, former CIA agent Ray McGovern, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, former US Ambassador Joseph Wilson, to name a few.

Bush apologists have been so busy working themselves up into a froth in their cowardly attempt to assassinate Clarke's character that they forget to mention that Clarke is not alone in his sharp, angry criticism of the Bush regime.

What makes Clarke especially intriguing is not just the special insider status he shares with Paul O'Neill, but the fact that Clarke has served as a high level intelligence adviser to Reagan, Bush Senior, Clinton, and Bush Junior. Clarke is no liberal, no Democratic partisan, no left wing ideologue. He is a military hawk who has loyally served US imperialism for 30 years. Clarke supported the first Gulf war, arguing that Bush Senior should have continued the war and removed Hussein by conquering Baghdad. Clarke is no friend of the working class, from the US to Iraq.

Clarke's book and 911 testimony have dealt Bush a staggering political blow in charging that the self-proclaimed anti-terrorist warrior ignored growing signs that Al Qaeda was planning a major terrorist attack on US soil and then and manipulated the Sept. 11 attacks to win support for the long-planned invasion of Iraq.

Clarke's thesis that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld were obsessed with conquering Iraq and used Sept. 11 to advance that end completely dovetails with former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's earlier revelations on "60 Minutes" and Ron Suskind's book, "The Price of Loyalty."

When you listen to pathetic Republicans try to counter Clarke by pointing to statements he made while he was still working for Bush, keep the following facts in mind that were conspicuously ignored by the commission and much of the media this week:

1) In January 2001, the White House received a report from the US Commission on National Security, chaired by former Senators Warren Rudman and Gary Hart, which warned a catastrophic attack against American citizens ON AMERICAN SOIL was inevitable and urged the implemetation of its specific measures to be prepared. According to Rudman and Hart, the White House rejected the report, "preferring to put aside the recommendations." They were told Vice President Cheney would look into it. Five months went by until the creation of a task force, which failed to meet a single t ime in the four months before Sept. 11.

2) In August 2001, FBI Deputy Director John O'Neill resigned his post as head of the unit investigating Bin Laden and Al Qaeda to protest the US policy of giving a higher priority to protecting US oil interests and Saudi Arabia than fighting Al Qaeda. Like Clarke, O'Neill blames Clinton as well as Bush, but the frustration was reaching new heights under Bush, particularly wh en O'Neill realized that just five weeks before Sept. 11, Bush was still trying to negotiate a deal with the Taliban to build an oil pipeline in Afghanistan.

Two weeks after resigning from the FBI, O'Neill died in his first day as chief of security at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

The question is not why the US didn't bomb Afghanistan and kill Bin Laden before Sept. 11. As Rumsfeld said, accomplishing those goals would NOT have prevented 911. The questions screaming to be asked are 1) With all of the specific warnings about Al Qaeda hijacking planes and crashing them into national landmarks, why was there NO air defense protecting New York and Washington skies? and 2) Why was there no airport security at four major airports?

Which brings us to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, whose bizarre May 16, 2002, comment that she didn't think "anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile. All of this reporting about hijacking was about traditional hijacking."

APRIL 2, 2004:

No wonder Bush didn't want Rice to testify under oath. It was only after Clarke's revelations sent Bush reeling with a firestorm that included Republican heat did the White House conclude that executive privilege wasn't that crucial a constitutional principle after all and bowed to the 911 panel's request that Rice testify under oath.

Of course the fix is in already to minimize the impact of Rice's testimony. Rice can refuse to answer any question by claiming it would harm national security or the war on terror. She cannot be called back for further testimony, and no other administration official will testify under oath. And, best of all, Cheney gets to hold Bush's hand when they testify privately to the panel in the White House, just in case Junior says something stupid or lets the cat out of the bag, like the two times he said he watched the first jet crash into the North Tower live on a television at the Booker Elementary School.

If you've been wondering why the 911 panel seems to be bending over backwards to please the White House, it might be because the executive director of the commission, Philip Zelikow, was on Bush's transition team during the first months of his presidency, meaning he attended the same presidential briefings on terror that the commission is now "investigating."

The world learned about this little tidbit of news from Richard Clarke, and when Kristen Breitweiser, Mindy Kleinberg, Lorie Van Auken, and the other "Jersey Girls" heard about it, they sensed a conflict of interest that even surpassed Bush's initial choice to head the commission, Henry Kissinger, an international war criminal who can't go to most European countries without being arrested for his crimes against East Timorese, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, Chileans and Argentinians.

The Jersey Girls, surviving wives of 911 victims whose relentless pressure on Bush forced him to convene this investigatory commission, immediately demanded Zelikow's resignation. He tersely refused their legitimate request, giving the Jersey Girls another crash course in just how democratic this government really is.

Breitweiser and her co-fighters were probably not pleased to learn more about the nature of the conflict of interest plaguing Zelikow which precludes him from acting in an impartial manner. Zelikow and Rice go back a long ways--they worked side by side as aides to Bush Senior's National Security Adviser Brent Snowcroft. Later they co-wrote a book entitled, "Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A study in Statecraft." They worked together in a think tank that included Cheney and Wolfowitz. Which all led up to their reunion in the Bush Junior White House, where they together received briefings from Richard Clarke about the growing Al Qaeda threat during the transition period.

What conflict of interest?

It's a good bet that Rice won't be asked about the report that on Sept. 10, 2001, she called her friend Willie Brown, the mayor of San Francisco, and warned him not to fly the next day.

It'll be interesting to see how Rice responds to the question that WILL very likely be asked of her: "Can you explain your statement of May 16, 2002, Ms. Rice, that there was no way anyone could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile, and that all of this reporting about hijacking was about traditional hijacking?"

This is shaping up to be the blunder that may bring this regime down. For all of her alleged intellectual prowess, that 2002 press conference performance shows how dumb she really is. Either she genuinely believed that statement, which means she's a complete idiot and has no business being a national security adviser, or she was lying, proving she's equally stupid for uttering in public an indefensible position that can easily be disproved by the facts.

Watch Rice squirm next week when she testifies. And think about her culpability in the murders of 3,000 people on September 11, 2001.

Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste has already said that Rice modified that statement during her private testimony to the panel weeks ago. Ben-Veniste stated that Rice was talking only about herself on May 16, 2002, that SHE would never have predicted the use of planes as missiles striking the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Rice was forced to amend her original statement in light of the since revealed volumes of evidence proving that MANY in US intelligence and government circles were well aware of Al Qaeda plots using planes as weapons.

APRIL 3, 2004:

The Mother of All Coverups will unravel, despite the best efforts of the "independent" Sept. 11 commission.

Here's the first question Rice should be asked: "How could you say that no one could have predicted that 'these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another and slam it into the Pentagon. That they would try to use an airplane as a missile?' in light of the following facts?"

As you reflect on Rice's May 16, 2002, statement that no one could have predicted using planes as missiles and slamming them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, consider the following:

September 1994: A man named Frank Corder crashes his Cessna plane on the White House lawn, killing himself. Former CIA director Richard Helms commented: "For years I have thought a terrorist suicide pilot could readily divert his flight from an approach to Washington to blow up the White House.
IT HAS BEEN SAID THAT THE SECRET SERVICE IS PRIMED FOR JUST SUCH A VENTURE." [emphasis added]

January 1995: Philippine police investigating threats against the Pope discover "Operation Bojinka," a terrorist plot to hijack 11 American and United airlines commercial planes and blow them up over the Pacific Ocean. Secondary targets included the White House, the Capitol building, the Pentagon, CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, the World Trade Center, the Sears Tower, and the San Francisco pyramid building. Operation Bojinka's details were unearthed following a small fire in the Manila apartment of Ramzi Yousef, later convicted for masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and nephew of alleged Sept. 11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

September 1999: A Library of Congress report written by the National Intelligence council predicts that "suicide bomber(s) belonging to al-Qaida's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or the White House," reitering that "Ramzi Yousef had planned to do this against the CIA headquarters."

August 2000: Italian police wiretap conversations by suspected Al Qaeda operatives who discuss attacks involving US airports and airplanes in the US, according to a May 29, 2002, article in the Los Angeles Times. The Times notes that "Italian and U.S. anti-terrorism experts cooperate closely."

October 2002: The Pentagon conducts a "detailed" emergency drill involving the crashing of a hijacked plane into the Pentagon, according to a May 24, 2002 article in the Mirror.

Feb. 2001: UPI terrorism reporter Richard Sale writes that the National Security Agency had broken Osama bin Laden's encrypted communications.

April-May 2001: Rice later says US in telligence sources begin to learn of al-Qaeda terrorist plots against US targets around this time. [CNN, March 2002; Reuters, May 16, 2002]

April 18, 2001: The FAA warns US airlines to "demonstrate a high degree of alertness" for an attempted hijacking or destruction of a US plane by "Middle Eastern terrorists." [AP, May 18, 2002]

June 2001: BND, the German intelligence agency, warns the CIA and Israel that Middle East terrorists are "planning to hijack commercial aircraft to use as wepons to attack important symbols of American and Israeli culture." [reported in Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung, Sept. 14, 2001]

June 1-2, 2001: On the cover of a proposal for a multi-agency planning drill organized by NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) is a photo of Osama bin Laden, depicting him at the center of a plotto launch cruise missile from a barge off the East Coast. [American Forces Press Service, June 4, 2002] On the morning of Sept. 11, only 14 jet fighters were ready to defend the entire US. [Newsday, Sept. 23, 2001]

June 28, 2001: CIA director George Tenet writes the following intelligence summary to Condoleeza Rice: "It is highly likely that a significant al-Qaeda attack is in the near future, within several weeks." [Washington Post, May 17, 2002]

June 28, 2001: According toThe Senate Intelligence Committee on Sept. 18, 2002, the following briefing was prepared for senior US government officials: "Based on a review of all-source reporting over the last five months, we believe that [ bin Laden] will launch a signficiant terrorist attack against US and/or Israeli interests in the coming weeks. The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against US facilities or interests. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur without warning."

Late June 2001: Clarke gives a direct warning to the FAA to increase security measures to prepare for a looming terrorist attack. The FAA refuses. [New Yorker, Jan. 14, 2002]

July 2001: FBI agents in Arizona warn in a memo to their superiors that Al Qaeda operatives were acting suspiciously at flight schools in Phoenix. [NY Times, May 14, 2002]

July 5, 2001: White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke warns the White House, FBI, FAA, IMS, and Customs that "something spectacular is going to happen here real soon." As a result, the US military is put on high alert, a condition that lasts until early August.

July 2001: The G8 economic summit in Genoa, Italy, is surrounded by anti-aircraft artillery after Italian and Egyptian officials warn US intelligence of a plot to crash planes into the building to kill George Bush. [LA Times, Sept. 27, 2001]

July 16, 2001: British intelligence tells Prime Minister Anthony Blair that al-Qaeda is in the " final stages" of preparing a terrorist attack in the West. This warning is based on British and US intelligence, including the NSA. [London Ti mes, June 14, 2002]

July 26, 2001: CBS News reports thatAttorney General John Ashcroft is no longer permitted to fly commercial aircraft, based on "threat assessments" by his security detail.

August 2001: Russian president VladimirPutin orders Russian intelligence to warn Washington "in the strongest possible terms" of imminent attacks on airports and government buildings in the US. [MSNBC interview, Sept. 15, 2001]

Late July 2001: Egyptian intelligence tells the CIA that an operative in Afghanistan reported 20 al-Qaeda members had slipped into the US and four of them received flight training on Cessnas. [CBS, Sept. 9, 2002]

Late summer 2001: Jordanian intelligence tells the CIA that a major terrorist attack involving aircraft, code named The Big Wedding, was being planned on US soil. [International Herald Tribune, May 21, 2002]

August 2001: Jordanian intelligence warns the US that Al Qaeda is planning "large scale operations in New York in the summer or fall of 2001." [Agence France Presse, Nov. 22, 2001]

Early August 2001: A CIA official stated: "There was something specific in early August that said to us that [bin Laden was determined in striking on US soil."] [AP, Oct. 3, 2001]

Early August 2001: British intelligence again warns the US about an Al Qaeda attack involving multiple airplane hijackings. [Sunday Herald, May 19, 2002]

August 6, 2001: During his month-long vacation on his Crawford, Texas ranch, Bush receives a classified intelligence briefing from the CIA indicating that bin Laden was planning to hijack commercial airliners. The existence of this memo is kept secret until it is leaked in May 2002, prompting the infamous NY Post front-page headline: "Bush Knew." Rice then gave a false and misleading description of the briefing, claiming it was merely an analytic report about bin Laden's past methods. This is the memo that Bush still refuses to release in full, offering the 911 panel only redacted excerpts.

August 8-15, 2001: Israel warns the US that an al-Qaeda attack is imminent. [Fox News, May 17, 2002]

August 13-15, 2001: Zacarias Moussaoui raises suspicions at the Pan Am International Flight School in Minneapolis, Minnesota, that he is a terrorist after only one day of training. They call the FBI that day with their detailed concerns. After the FBI agents remains aloof, the flight instructor screams at them, "Don't you know how serious this is? This man wants training on a 747. A 747 fully loaded with fuel could be used as a weapon!" [NY Times, August 8, 2002]

August 15, 2001: The FBI arrest Moussaoui for an immigration violation, finding knives, fighting gloves, shin guards, and a laptop computer. FBI agents are frustrated at the noninterest from their superiors when they ask for a search warrant to search his computer. On August 21 they email FBI headquarters that it's "imperative" the Secret Service be warned of a plot involving Moussaoui that might endanger Bush--a warning that's never sent. [NY Times, Oct. 18, 2002]

August 22, 2001: The French tell the FBI they believe Moussaoui as ties to bin Laden and Al Qaeda. The FBI and CIA review the data and conclude the evidence is too sketchy to search his laptop. He remains in INS custody until after Sept. 11, when he is turned over to the FBI. [Senate I ntelligence Committee, Oct. 17, 2002]

August 23, 2001: Two FBI agents visit the Airman Flight School in Norman, Oklahoma, to investigate Mou ssaoui's training there earlier in the year. One of these agents had visited the same school in 1999 to investigate Abdul Hakim Mu rad, who had trained there as part of the planned suicide hijacking attack on CIA headquarters revealed at the 1996 trial of Ramzi Yousef.

August 23-27, 2001: After learning of the French warning about Moussaoui, FBI agents are "in a frenzy" and "absolutely convinced he is about to do something with a plane." One agent speculates Moussaoui might fly something into the World Trade Center. [Newsweek, May 20, 2002] Minnesota FBI agents become "desperate to search the computer laptop. [ Time, M ay 21, 2002] They apply for a search warrant to a special federal court under the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which out of 10,000 requests over 20 years, not a single one was ever turned down, even if the FBI had to lie, which it did at least 75 times during Clinton's presidency. This time it was denied, in large part, as FBI agent Coleen Rowley later put it, because FBI headquarters "almost in explicably, throws up roadblocks." [ NY Times, Aug. 21, 2002; Time, May 21, 2002]

August 24, 2001: Frustrated FBI Minnesota agents contact an agent working with the CIA's Counter-Terrorism Center, asking for help from the Agency, which complies by asking for Moussaoui information from its overseas stations and bases. The message says that the FBI is investigating Moussaoui for planning a terrorist attack and mentions his flight school training, further suggesting he might be " involved in a larger plot to target airlines traveling from Europe to the US. [Senate Intelligence Committee, Sept. 18, 2002] The CIA's message calls Moussaoui a "suspect 747 airline attacker" and a "suspect airline suicide hijacker." [Sen. Intel. Comm, Oct. 17, 2002] The FBI then reprimanded its Minnesota agents for calling the CIA without authorization. [Time, May 21, 2002]

Sept. 4, 2001: "On or around" this day, the Mossad gives another warning to US intelligence of a major, imminent attack in the US, a report Washington has always denied. [Sunday Mail, Sept. 16, 2001]

Sept. 10, 2001: Newsweek reports: "The state of alert had been high during the past two weeks, and a particularly urgent warning may have been received the night before the attacks, causing some top Pentagon brass to cancel a trip. What that same information was not available to the 266 people who died aboard the four hijacked commercial aircraft may become a hot topic on the Hill." [Sept. 13, 2001]

Needless to say, it didn't. The story basically died in the capitalist press, aside from a brief follow-up in the next edition of Newsweek: "a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly cancelled travel plans for the next day, apparently because of security concerns."

Any bets if this little tidbit of news becomes a "hot topic" when Rice testifies this week?

We've already talked about the phone call San Francisco mayor Willie Brown received on Sept. 10, 2001, not to fly the following day, and that Pacific Radio reported Condoleeza Rice was the source of that warning.

What was that you were saying, Ms. Rice, about how no one could have predicted slamming an airliner into the World Trade Center?

Believe it or not, the above compilation is not complete with regards to pre-911 awareness of plots involving the use of planes as missiles. It also leaves out how the Central Intelligence Agency DID infiltrate Al Qaeda before 911, and that the NSA intercepted pre-911 Al Qaeda communications regarding the attacks. It also excludes mention of the latest gem from the Sept. 11 commission: that an FBI wiretap translator discovered intercepted calls about the attacks before 911, and was threatened with jail by the Justice Department if she went public with that information!

Now, given all the above information, either Rice is one of the most incredibly stupid human beings on the planet, in which case she's guilty of criminal negligence in the deaths of 3,000 people, or she lied and is guilty of covering up a heinous state crime against the people of the United States. Either way, Rice is cooked.

Obviously, the scope and implications of the above compilation go far beyond the narrow confines of the "he said/she said" controversy between Rice and Clarke.

APRIL 5, 2004:

With all of the above occurring during the summer of 2001, with the threats so specific and severe they were setting Tenet's hair on fire, Bush decided it was a good time for a one-month vacation, splitting wood at the old Crawford ranch.
No wonder Bush refuses to release the unedited version of the April 6 presidential briefing he received from the CIA regarding the terrorist skyjackings that were just over a month away. The briefing's contents will reveal at best the criminal negligence of Bush and Rice in the deaths of 3,000 people, and at worst complicity in the Sept. 11 attacks.

The evidence is clear. Given the specific warnings and knowledge of a plot to hijack commercial planes and crash them into the WTC and the Pentagon, of course Sept. 11 was preventable; even commission chairman Thomas Kean has been forced to concede that fact.

If the Sept. 11 panel were truly "independent," all eyes should be on the White House's responsibility for the terrorist attacks, particularly in light of Richard Clarke's revelations.

But today we got a clearer sense of just how "independent" this commission is. USA Today reports that the White House will review the text of the Sept. 11 panel's report. And Kean told NBC's Meet the Press Sunday that the Bush administration would examine the report "line by line to find out if there's anything in there which could harm American interests in the area of intelligence."

This is unacceptable. An investigation is not independent if the White House gets to censor the report and delete any evidence that points to its culpability in the attacks. The stench from Washington, DC is polluting this entire country.

APRIL 4, 2004:

With all of the specific warnings about plots to hijack planes and crash them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, what was the response of the commander in chief and his national security adviser? No security at the airports, and no air defense around New York and Washington, DC.
The above compilation of warnings, along with Bush's strange behavior on Sept. 11 and the bizarre report of a threat against Air Force One with its cracking of the secret White House Code, show what happened was deeper than a "failure to connect the dots." The inescapable conclusion--and the one that won't be drawn by the Sept. 11 commission--is that a military standdown was in effect that morning.

The problem is also deep than the narrow focus of Richard Clarke's revelations. The significance of Clarke's testimony is that his insider status gives credence to the broader notion that Bush and Co. didn't give a rat's ass about protecting the country from terrorism. Their eyes were on seizing control of Iraq's oil and securing Afghanistan as a pipeline for oil and natural gas from Turkemenistan and other former Soviet republics to the Indian Ocean.

Yassin funeral, Gaza, March 23, 2004

Butcher Sharon's Murder of Sheik Yassin Enrages Arab World!

March 23, 2004--As if he didn't have enough Arab and Israeli blood on his hands, as if his cursed name wasn't sufficiently embedded in infamy, Ariel Sharon has launched another dagger into the hearts of the Palestinian people. This time he personally gave the order to assassinate Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder and spiritual leader of the militant Palestinian group, Hamas.

Tough guy Sharon, from the safety of his armed fortress, fired a missile into the wheelchair-bound body of the paraplegic, partially deaf and blind 67-year-old cleric, The vicious attack also killed nine other Palestinians and wounded more than 17.

Sharon is a grotesque ogre who has been slaughtering Palestinians since the 1950s, but this latest barbarism threatens to set off a conflagration throughout the Arab world and will most certainly generate a bloody act of revenge. Which is precisely what Sharon desires, for that will give him an excuse to intensify his ethnic cleansing and genocide against the Palestinian nation that stands in his way of a greater Israel.

In 1987 Yassin established Hamas, an Islamic fundamentalist group that advocated armed struggle and guerrilla warfare against Zionist Israel. Hamas actually was the beneficiary of tacit support from Israel, which sought to boost Hamas at the expense of the secular Palestinian Liberation Organization. There have been persistent and credible reports that Hamas has been infiltrated by Israeli intelligence over the years. Mossad may still be behind some of the suicide bombings taking place. But there's no question that many Palestinian youth willingly sacrifice their lives in suicide bombings because they see it as the only way to fight Israeli occupation and oppression, a noble sacrifice for their people and nation, motivated by a principle not alien to Americans--"give me liberty or give me death."

In recent years Yassin led the more moderate faction of Hamas that is willing to negotiate a truce with Tel Aviv. That was a huge mistake. There is no negotiating with murderous thugs like Sharon.

Sharon's latest act of state terrorism had the strong support of that other man of peace, George W. Bush. Bush's claim that he had no advance knowledge of the assassination is a lie. Washington gave the green light, if not active collaboration to Sharon's latest atrocity.

These two sadistic war criminals need one another. Sharon needs terrorism to justify his repressive apartheid rule and annexation of Palestinian land. Bush needs terrorism to justify his war OF terror. THEY are the true Axis of Evil in this world. Sharon and Bush have a morbid, symbiotic relationship to each other, much like Sauron and Saruman in The Lord of the Rings. They sit in their Two Towers, plotting death and destruction to all who stand in their way, snarling "we shall only destroy those who oppose us."

They send their armies of Orcs to terrorize helpless people, stealing and plundering their land, blowing up their homes and entire villages, smashing down their doors, defiling their religious customs, insulting their women and children, humiliating their men by beating, shackling and hooding them, killing them in their cars at checkpoints, causing pregnant women to die because they won't let ambulances through.

The situation is critical. The entire world should demand an immediate mobilization to rein in the Israeli storm troopers. The US should immediately and unconditionally withdraw all military and economic aid and diplomatic relations with Israel. The entire world must organize a comprehensive boycott of Israel goods. Already some Israelis are calling for the resignation of Sharon. He should be prosecuted for egregious war crimes going back to the 1950s in Egypt right up to the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacres in Lebanon.

We sh ould push forward the process of Israeli reservists and pilots refusing to bomb and kill Palestinians in the West Bank. These brave Israeli soldiers, like the small but growing number of conscientious objectors and deserters from the US forces in object, represent the future of humanity.

One day the hobbits of the world will rise up and defeat Bush and Sharon and we won't need wizards and Ents and Elves to help us do it. We will tear down the walls, open the borders, and organize socialist revolutions across this planet. We will cleanse the earth of all oppression and exploitation, much as the hobbits had to scour the Shire from all of Saruman's scum. And we will settle accounts with the Bushes and Sharons, who will receive revolutionary justice for their egregious crimes against humanity. There will be a rigorous debate among the masses as to what to do with them, but we can all agree the sight of these two monsters shuffling in the prison yard wearing orange jumpsuits and shackles would make our day.

The answer in the M iddle East is either a democratic, secular state of Palestine with equal rights for Christians, Jews, Muslims, believers and nonbelievers, which can only be realized with a socialist revolution by the Israeli and Arab working classes. It's not utopian. It's the only realistic, pragmatic solution that's grounded in history. It is utopian to believe the current crisis can continue.

The crisis facing Palestinians and Israeli workers is the same facing workers in the US--a crisis of working class leadership. One day, and it may be coming soon, we will join forces and do what is to be done. It won't be with fundamentalism, it won't be with liberalism, it won't be with terrorism. When we see the answer is proletarian internationalism and socialism, we will join forces and defeat the Bushes and Sharons. The Twin Towers of their Axis of Evil will come down. The Shire will be free.

House Ethics Committee Investigating Charge by Republican Congressman Nick Smith He Was Offered "bribes and special deals" to Vote for Bush's Bill

Medicare Actuary Richard Foster Says Bush Medicare Chief Threatened His Job if Foster Told Congress True Cost of Bill

New York City, March 20, 2004

March 21, 2004--After a year of standing on the sidelines, watching in horror as US imperialism unleashed death and destruction on the Iraqi people, listening to Bush lie every single day, watching the Democrats support him, and being shut out of the national debate, Americans returned to the streets in militant demonstrations Saturday, demanding an immediate end to the US occupation of Iraq and the eviction of George W. Bush from the White House.

Antiwar demonstrations occurred in more than 300 cities and towns throughout the US, including 50,000 in San Francisco (see below), 20,000 in Los Angeles, 12,000 in Portland, 5,000 in Seattle and 10,000 in Chicago.

But leading the way in the USA was New York City, where more than 100,000 marched to demand that the US get out of Iraq immediately. The demonstration began at Madison Avenue and 23rd Street, where protesters heard several speakers, including New York City labor activists; A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition spokespeople, including Brian Becker; representatives from Haitian, Filipino, and Palestinian solidarity organizations; New York City Council DemocratsTony Benn, a former socialist member of the British parliament; a representative from the Cuban Five defense campaign, and Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, to the delight of the sizable Kucinich contingent in the crowd. Kucinich was there to represent the "progressive" wing of the capitalist class that opposes Bush's unilateralism and wants to replace US occupation of Iraq with an internationalist one.

Many of the protesters were to the left of Dennis Kucinich.

The diversity of the protesters--students, workers, unionists, teachers, elderly--veterans reflected the political trouble facing Bush that's been documented in every poll, and confirmed that his social base is narrowing to hard-core Republican dogmatists and ultraright fundamentalists.

New York's demonstrators, like protesters throughout the rest of the US and around the world, seemed buoyed by the two recent actions by Spain's toilers that have changed the world--their massive mobilizations protesting terrorism and the Iraq war, and the electoral defeat they inflicted on the political party of Bush's stooge, Aznar.

Like our brothers and sisters in Spain, New York's demonstrators were outraged above all by their government's lies that have caused the deaths of tens of thousands and plunged the world into madness and chaos. Like the Spaniards, New Yorkers seemed possessed by an overwhelming sense of betrayal that they had been deceived on what matters most--life and death. Life and death about both the war AND terrorism, from September 11 to March 11 in Madrid.

The overriding theme of the March 20th New York action was: "Bush Lied--Thousands Died." The signs were everywhere, sometimes variations on that theme. "Leaders Lie--Soldiers Die." Or, simply, "Bush Lies."

But the political scope of the demonstration was broader than the Iraq occupation. Its participants seemed aware of the interconnections between the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the occupations of Palestine, Haiti, South Korea, and the Phillipines; September 11 and the government's immoral use of that day to attack our democratic rights; and the rulers' attack on our living standards and social wage.

"Stop the 911Cover-up!"
"End the US Occupation of Haiti!"
"Who Will Liberate the World from OUR Tyrannical Rulers?"
"US Out of the Middle East!"
"Money for Jobs! Not for War"
"US Hands Off Cuba!"
"Jobs Education Healthcare"
"Free Palestine!"

Students from the Bronx carried signs saying, "Books NOT Bombs!" and "Bronx Youth Say No to War!"

After Kucinich's brief remarks, the march proceeded from Madison Square Park up to near Times Square and then circled back to the 23rd and Madison rally point, filled 45 blocks, once again taking the cops by surprise. Although the hated pens were omnipresent, this rally went much smoother than last year's Feb. 15 rally, when the city unconstitutionally prohibited demonstrators from marching. After withering criticism and much public pressure, this time around the city permitted a march. Mayor Bloomberg claims March 20 was a trial run for this summer's Republican National Convention, when massive protests are being planned against Bush's unconscionable exploitation of Ground Zero for his reelection campaign.

I bet it was a trial run. Everywhere you looked, cops were videotaping demonstrators in the crowd. At 28th and Madison, the cops made no effort to keep their guns hidden.

One of the most inspiring contingents in Saturday's march was the Veterans for Peace, a group of Korean, Vietnam and Gulf War veterans opposed to the Iraq war. As they marched up Sixth Avenue to 40th Street, it was clear that when veterans speak out against a war, the community listens. Thumbs up, smiles and shouts of approval greeted the veterans as they chanted emotion charged verses:

"Hey, hey Uncle Sam/We remember Vietnam!"
"We don't want no Iraq war/Peace is what we're marching for!"
"A year ago this very day/Bush betrayed the USA!" "Halliburton and Bechtel/Think this war is going swell!"
"Corporate profits on the rise/Soldiers have to bleed and die!"
"Bush and Cheney talk the talk
"But we know they're just chicken hawks!"
"They wave the flag when you attack
"When you come home/they turn their back!"
"They wave the flag high and wide
"But when it's time to serve they hide!"

The rumblings of discontent within the military are increasing. The antiwar movement is spreading to the ranks of the military, fueled by the rapid fire technology of the Internet. Hundreds of GIs have refused to return to active duty in Iraq. The term "conscientious objector" is returning to the American lexicon, as a small but politically significant number of soldiers are choosing this time-honored tradition of draft resistance.

The latest is Army Reservist Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia, a 28-year-old Florida National Guardsman who served in Iraq last year but failed to return after a two-week leave in October. He turned himself in to military authorities last week, who have assigned him to his unit in Fort Stewart, Georgia, while they decide if Mejia should be prosecuted for desertion.

Mejia is seeking conscientious objector status because he believes the Iraq war is immoral. "I can no longer be an instrument of violence," Mejia said. "I am not against the military. The military has been my family. My commanders are not evil, but this war is evil. I did not sign up for the military to go halfway around the world to be an instrument of oppression. I don't think we're fighting terror in Iraq. We're fighting for oil."

Mejia had served for six months in the Sunni triangle encompassing Baghdad, where resistance to the US occupation has been strongest. At a recent press conference organized by Military Families Speak Out, Mejia said that he had been in several ambushes in which "innocent Iraqis" were killed in crossfires.

Groups like Military Families Speak Out are springing up all over the country. On March 20, Military Families participated in an antiwar protest at the Fort Bragg miitary base in Fayetteville, North Carolina, along with the Bring Them Home Now coalition, United for Peace and Justice, September 11th Families of Peaceful Tomorrows and Veterans for Peace. Last week these groups presented Congress with a petition demanding the censure of President Bush for his deception and manipulation of intelligence before invading Iraq.

George Bush is in trouble. When there's this much discontent in the military, there's room for revolutionary socialists to win over many soldiers to a working class perspective.

The March 20th protests, from New York to Rome, showed that the US president is the most hated man on the planet today.

Yes, there are still too many illusions among many of the demonstrators--social-patriotic illusions, pacifist illusions, illusions in capitalism and its lesser evil Democratic Party, illusions in that party's appointed nominee, John Kerry, but even those were expressed in a negative way by one marcher carrying a sign pleading, "Why aren't you here, Kerry?"

And yes, the Anybody but Bush crowd was well represented in the streets of New York on March 20 as well. But I sensed no dramatic yearning for Kerry, let alone support for him, at this action. There were far more Kucinich signs in view. This was a mobilization of Americans already anti-imperialist or open to an anti-imperialist, proletarian internationalist perspective. This group of demonstrators would support replacing the current capitalist regime with a workers and farmers government. And workers taking to the streets around the world to protest imperialist wars agree with this course of action.

The nomination of the prowar Kerry provides fertile ground for Marxists to gain a hearing for independent working class political action and a program that fights for a workers and farmers government.

Demonstrations like March 20 are important and should continue, but they can only accomplish so much given the absence of a political organization that represents the working class in the political arena. Ultimately, the US workers must break from the two party shell game and form a mass socialist party that defends working people from the rapacious profit drive of the capitalists.

Notice how the NY Times is once again lying about the size of the antiwar protests here and abroad. "From Midtown to Madrid, Tens of Thousands Peacefully Protest War in Iraq."

Rubbish. There were one million in Rome alone. MILLIONS protested the war in Iraq. Once again, the "liberal" NY Times proves they are nothing more than stenographers for the State Department.

Although the demonstration was a huge success in terms of the militant and diverse turnout, the event's organizers and major speakers once again provided no political perspective forward besides more demonstrations, including one at the Republican Convention this summer, and making Bush pay in November at the polls.

But that's the contradiction staring this "movement" in the face. Mass mobilizations are a major proletarian method of struggle, but if the tactic becomes the sole strategy that operates outside of the class struggle, we'll get nowhere. As long as the "anybody but Bush" mantra dominates the movement, it will be derailed into the Kerry campaign, where it will be co-opted and die.

Workers need to break from the two capitalist parties and the illusion that the Democrats are responsive to our needs and interests. We need to form a mass socialist party that will fight for free health care, education, jobs for all, a clean environment, nuclear disarmament, the abolition of the CIA, FBI, NSA, and the rest of the murderous imperialist war machine.

San Francisco, March 20, 2004

COSMOS LEFT received the following account of the March 20th San Francisco antiwar demonstration from a Bay Area reader:

"On Saturday, March 20, a huge crowd marched from Dolores Park to Civic Center Plaza in San Francisco to protest the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the continued occupation of Palestine, and the latest occupation of Haiti. The march went directly down Mission Street, through the heart of the Mission District, home to working class people from Mexico, Central and South America, Vietnam, India and Pakistan. People of all ages, from all over Northern California, participated.

"There were representatives from many organizations; principal amongst the crowd were members of the International Longshore and Warehousemen Union (ILWU), who were attacked by police in Oakland, California during an antiwar protest at the Port of Oakland last April 7. People started gathering at 10:00 am at Dolores Park and the march finally started moving at noon. Upon arrival at Civic Center Plaza at 1:30 pm, they found the Plaza already crowded and people continued arriving from the march, which ultimately filled the entire route, until past 2:00.

"Other groups included: South Asians Against the War (who carried signs reading 'Viva Spain'), Peace and Freedom Party, Socialist Workers Party, National Lawyers’ Guild, Free Palestine Alliance, Santa Cruz Peace Coalition, Free Mumia Abu Jamal, Not In Our Name, Teamsters for Kerry, Dennis Kucinich supporters, Green Party, Socialist Action, septembereleventh.org, ReDefeatBush.com, United for Peace and Justice, Peace Novato, Communist Workers Organization, United Union of Roofers Local 81, Bay Area United Against the War and Bushoncrack.com.

"Among the speakers at Civic Center Plaza was State Assemblyman Mark Leno, who spoke about the lies of the Bush administration in the standard 'Anybody But Bush' vein. He was followed by Leilani Dowel [sp.], Peace and Freedom Party candidate for office and Worker’s World member who was the first to mention the occupation of Haiti and the kidnapping of Jean Bertrand Aristide. She made vague references to demolishing the 'system' but neglected to directly challenge capitalism in her denunciations.

"Next was Maurice Campbell, a speaker who talked about the toxic waste at the old naval shipyards in the Bayview-Hunter’s Point district of San Francisco, where the majority of the population consists of poor and working class African Americans. Tom Ammiano, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, spoke about the homophobia of the Bush followers and the issue of gay marriage. He also called for the troops to be brought home from Iraq now.

"The first speaker to directly challenge the Democratic Party and its candidate, John Kerry, was Trent Willis of the ILWU. He spoke of the impact of the antidemocratic Patriot Act and Department of Homeland Security on working people and asked people to question the allegiance of the Democrats to their interests. He was followed by Cameron Henry Graham, President of Local 10, who said that his local came out against the war at the beginning, right after Hans Blix declared that inspectors had found no WMD in Iraq. He also indicted Halliburton and Bechtel for their war profiteering and ended by saying that the working class was the 'conscience of America,' adding that 'If the families against the war in Fayetteville, South Carolina are coming out and marching, you know it’s true.' He also declared solidarity with the Spanish workers.

"The President of the National Lawyers’ Guild opened by saying that the legal system of this country was created to protect the property of the oligarchs, and that proof was the fact that the Guild’s members were busier now than ever with civil rights cases against the Patriot Act and in defense of prisoners in the Guantánamo Bay concentration camp in Cuba. Guild members also intervened in the case at Drake University in Iowa, where the government attempted to subpoena names of people who attended antiwar meetings. Current cases they are working on involve soldier resisters attempting to file for conscientious objector status, even sending delegations to the Middle East. She said that there were Guild members in the West Bank defending Palestinians, and in Asia representing sweatshop workers.

"There were cheers when she announced that the U.S. had dropped its espionage charges against former Guantánamo chaplain, Captain James Yee.
Finally, a representative of the Free Palestine Alliance gave an anti-imperialist speech reviewing the history of Palestine and Israel and demanding the right of return for all Palestinians driven from the country.

"One of the more interesting displays at the march (and there was lots of music and street theatre) was a cardboard representation of Israel’s wall, built in sections that were worn by people so that it walked down the street and which was accompanied by a cardboard tank. The project was the brainchild of a group of young people from various Palestinian organizations who had come together to create this piece of street art/theatre.

"A great Dixieland Band played as demonstrators danced down Mission Street. People were hanging out of windows, giving us the thumbs-up, and cab drivers honked and gave the peace sign.

"More than 350 copies of the Socialist Equality Party’s statement, 'One year since the US invasion of Iraq'  were distributed."

Remember Rachel Corrie!

March 12, 2004--As we all digest Bush's sickening exploitation of Sept. 11 victims in his campaign ads, here's a few more news items that should make all the flag-waving bigots even prouder of their commander in chief and Secretary of Defense:

1) The Daily Mirror of London reports that Jamal-al Harith, one of five British citizens recently released from Camp X-Ray and Camp Delta on the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, says that Muslim prisoners were tortured and beaten by US soldiers and humiliated by prostitutes recruited by camp officials.

Harith said that prisoners were s hackled for up to 15 hours at a time, confined to wire cages with concrete floors that gave no protection to rats, snakes and scorpions. Guards in units called the Extreme Reaction Force regularly beat prisoners. Medical treatment was rare, brutal and marked by amputations. Foul water and old food ensured malnourishment.

But Bush and Rumsfeld's brave warriors against terrorism didn't stop there. They made us all safe by bringing in vice girls to sexually degrade and humiliate young Muslim men by smearing menstrual blood on their faces and forcing the men to watch as the prostitutes masturbated themselves.

Harith testifies that when he refused a mystery injection, five soldiers beat him with batons, feet, fists and knees, chanting in unison, "Comply, comply, comply. Do not resist."

Guards used force-feeding to end a hunger strike by 70 percent of the prisoners that began after one guard deliberately kicked a copy of the Koran.

2) An investigation by the Justice Department that weeks ago blasted FBI agents for taking souvenirs from the World Trade Center site now says Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld "has a piece of the airplane that flew into the Pentagon" and a top aide to FBI Director Robert Mueller, Pasquale D'Amuro, asked a supervisor to "obtain a half dozen items from the WTC debris so the items could be given to dignitiaries."

Liars, murderers, and thieves. The whole lot of them should be in the dock.

February 28, 2004--George Bush and the rest of the reactionary scum pushing for a constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage are not only wrong politically and morally, they are wrong on the facts. According to the American Anthropological Association as reported by Charless Buress in the Feb. 28 San Francisco Chronicle, Bush gets an F on his understanding of human cultures.

"The results of more than a century of anthropological research on households, kinship relationships and families, across cultures and through time, provide no support whatsoever for the view that either civilization or viable social orders depend upon marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution."

Contrary to Bush's claim that heterosexual marriage is "one of the most fundamental, enduring institutions of our civilization," the anthropologists' research "supports the conclusion that a vast array of family types, including families built upon same-sex partnerships, can contribute to stable and humane societies."

Dan Segal, a professor of anthropology and history from Pitzer College in Claremont, California, said Bush's explanation of the history of marriage "patently false.

"If he were to take even the first semester of anthropology, he would know that's not true," said Segal, who stated there were "sanctified same-sex unions in the fourth century in Christianity" and to the Greeks and Romans applying the marriage to same-sex couples, as well as a Native American custom in which males married males.

MARCH 4, 2004--The spectacle of Bush supporting a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage shows how decayed, reactionary, and debased bourgeois democracy has become during capitalism's death agony. This stepped up culture war on the part of rightist and other reactionary forces is not merely a diversionary ploy to distract from Bush's disastrous economic policies for the working class [but great for capitalists] and his war crimes in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Haiti.

The offensive against gay marriage by the capitalist rulers is another front in the culture war against the working class that is primarily aimed at attacking and weakening our democratic rights.

But it's also something else. The fact that Bush was forced to try and use the US Constitution to attack democratic rights and restrict, rather than expand, the scope of civil liberties and individual rights is a measure of the desperation of the US ruling class as they have no answers to the crises afflicting their system except war, depression, and fascism.

The Bushites campaign to constitutionally ban gay marriage is not just an attempt to "shore up Bush's conservative base" to defeat the Democrats in November. It is a desperate measure made out of political and historical weakness, not strength. It is a futile attempt by the most reactionary factions of the capitalist rulers to prop up one of the institutional pillars of bourgeois rule--the nuclear family. In periods of crisis, it becomes imperative for the rulers to rely on the family unit to shoulder a disproportionate burden of the economic and social strains imposed on families by the free market crisis.

MARCH 4, 2004--The push for gay marriage begun by courageous public figures like the mayors of San Francisco and New Paltz, New York, and which is spreading to Oregon and other communities around the country is literally striking a blow for freedom against the capitalist empire. While they are completely right in arguing that the federal and various state constitutions mandate equal protection under the law for all citizens, there is a broader reason for working people to support the constitutional, democratic and human rights of gay people to marry. Any extension and expansion of democratic rights, freedom and autonomy for any oppressed sector of capitalist society strengthens the working class as a whole. And when the crisis of capitalism weakens oppressive institutions of its class rule, that is a GOOD THING for the working class.

Contrary to ruling class propaganda, the nuclear family has not been around since time immemorial, and the time will come when like other institutions of class society, it will wither away. We are witnessing the transformation of the family as it feels the strains of the capitalist social and economic crisis. Gay marriage will accelerate the dissolution of the oppressive patriarchal culture so central to bourgeois domination.

Let's take a moment to hear what Karl Marx and Frederich Engels had to say on the subject of marriage, family and education under capitalism in "The Communist Manifesto." The relevance to today's events is striking.

"Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists.

"On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among proletarians, and in public prostitution.

"The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.

"Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.

"But, you say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social.

"And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, etc.? The Communists have not intended the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.

"The bourgeois claptrap about the family and education, about the hallowed correlation of parents and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all the family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labor.

"But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the bourgeoisie in chorus.

"The bourgeois sees his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women.

"He has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed at is to do away with the status of women as mere instruments of production.

"For the rest, nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indignation of our bourgeois at the community of women which, they pretend, is to be openly and officially established by the Communists. The Communists have no need to introduce free love; it has existed almost from time immemorial.

"Our bourgeois, not content with having wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other's wives. (Ah, those were the days!)

"Bourgeois marriage is, in reality, a system of wives in common and thus, at the most, what the Communists might possibly be reproached with is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalized system of free love. For the rest, it is self-evident that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of free love springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution both public and private."

These words, written 156 years ago, shed more light on what is happening in 2004 than what we hear from the chorus of muddle-headed bourgeois pundits railing against the prairie fire of gay marriages sweeping the country from San Francisco to Oregon to New Paltz.

MARCH 8, 2004--It's not communism that is tearing apart today's families. It's not communism that's forcing both parents to work to make ends meet. It's not communism that's failing to provide adequate child care, health care, education, and jobs.

It's capitalism and the subordination of everything to the accumulation of private profit and the enrichment of a small clique of billionaire capitalists.

When bourgeois hypocrites like William Bennett and Bill O'Reilly rant and rave that gay marriage will destabilize society, they really mean it will destabilize capitalist society. That should worry only rich scoundrels like Bennett and O'Reilly, neither of whom possess the moral standing to be lecturing ANYONE about right and wrong, given Bennett is a degenerate gambler and O'Reilly a sadistic peddler of pornography.

But anything that weakens the pillars of class rule is in the historic interests of the working class. O'Reilly and Bennett are worried because they know secularism is winning; that slowly religion's centuries-long legacy of superstition, dogma and ignorance is slowly being undermined and overturned by humanity's acquisition of scientific knowledge and rational thought.

All of this is a prequisite for the socialist revolution. O'Reilly and Bennett aren't as dumb as they sometimes sound. This is why they're foaming at the mouth over gay marriage. Secularism is winning, religious dogma is losing, despite "The Passion of the Christ"'s box office success. (See "O'Really O'Reilly" on page 2 of this site for more on Gibson's fascistic and sadomasochistic recruiting tool for Christian fundamentalism.)

It's almost amusing to hear these right wing scoundrels accuse San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsome and others of spreading anarchy and lawlessness by allowing gay marriage ceremonies in their cities. Yet George Bush's lawlessness--which has resulted in the deaths of many tens of thousands of working people in Iraq and Afghanistan--gets a pass from O'Reilly and Bennett.

Newsom "anarchy" is trying to expand freedom and democratic rights by forcing California to adhere to the equal protection clauses of the State and US Constitutions. Bush's anarchy is bombing defenseless nations and setting up gulags and concentration camps from Iraq to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, itself an ongoing violation of Cuba's national sovereignty by US imperialism.

Bush and his allies show their contempt for democracy and how desperate they are to achieve their class goals when they must soil the US Constitution with their filthy, bloody hands. But they will learn that their attempt to use the "culture war" to prevent gay marriage via religious demagoguery is historically doomed to fail.