United States News Digest
Officials Tell Congressional Black Caucus: Put LaRouche in Debate
The LaRouche in 2004 campaign has delivered the following letter, dated May 28, to members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), asking Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche's inclusion in upcoming CBC debates. In addition, former Rep. Mervyn Dymally of California has sent his own letter to the CBC, which he formerly chaired, with the same demand.
"We have been informed that the Congressional Black Caucus has announced plans to host a series of Presidential debates among the declared Democratic Presidential candidates. We, the undersigned, urge you to include Democratic Presidential candidate Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. in the upcoming CBC Institute-sponsored presidential debates.
"Mr. LaRouche was the first Democrat to announce his campaign for the 2004 election, only days after the inauguration of George W. Bush. According to the most recent Federal Election Commission report, he ranks fourth in total dollars raised ($4 million); and he ranks first in both numbers of contributions and numbers of contributors, reflecting the broad base of his campaign. He has also raised significantly more funds in amounts under $200 than any other candidate, reflecting the grass-roots nature of his campaign. In many states across the U.S., he ranks number one in all categories of fundraising. He deploys the largest youth movement in the country, and his campaign has distributed millions of pieces of literature to promote a Roosevelt solution to the economic crisis, and to stop the preemptive war policy of Rumsfeld and Cheney....
"The Congressional Black Caucus has often been referred to as the conscience of the Congress. The hallmark of the CBC has been the issue of fairness and inclusion. The Caucus was born out of the struggles of the civil rights movement, where people gave their lives for freedom and the right to political expression. It would be a tragic turn of events if the CBC turned its back on the achievement of that struggle. We urge you to invite Mr. LaRouche to participate in the debates now being organized by the CBC."
The letter is from Debra Hanania Freeman, National Spokesman of LaRouche in 2004, and is signed by present and former Democratic Party and elected officials: Assemblyman Mervyn Dymally, California; the Hon. Joycelyn Elders; Sen. Eugene McCarthy; State Sen. Joseph Neal, Nevada; Amelia Boynton Robinson, Schiller Institute; JL Chestnut, Alabama; Rep. J.E. "Billy" McKinney, Georgia; Dr. Abdul Alim Muhammad, Washington, D.C.; State Reps. Earle Banks and Erik Fleming, Mississippi; State Rep. Alexander Lipsey, Michigan; State Sen. Alma Wheeler Smith, Michigan; State Reps. James Thomas, Demetrius Newton, Charles Steele, and Thomas Jackson, Alabama; Mary Rasmussen, Wisconsin; State Rep. Harold James, Pennsylvania; State Rep. Howard Kenner, Illinois; State Sen. L. Louise Lucas, Virginia; State Sen. Maggie Wallace Glover, South Carolina; State Sen. Daryl Jones, Florida; State Sen. Henry Wilkins IV, Arkansas.
Congress Hits Ashcroft on Police-State Powers
On June 5, in long-delayed appearance before the House Judiciary Committee, Attorney General John Ashcroft defended his policies of round-ups and detentions after Sept. 11, and demanded that Congress give him additional powers, including an expanded death penalty, nearly unlimited authority for pre-trial detention, and longer sentences.
Ashcroft's "testimony" was interspersed with lurid statements, quoting from terrorists about killing Americans, and a grim reading-out of the names of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, the USS Cole bombing, and so on. The stated reason he wants more draconian sentences, is to use them as a means of coercing cooperation and plea-bargaining. Ashcroft complained that "existing law does not consistently encourage cooperation by providing adequate maximum penalties to punish acts of terrorism," and, "Some terrorist acts resulting in the death of citizens do not provide for the death penalty, or even life imprisonment."
But with aspects of the Patriot Act from 2001 about to expire, Ashcroft's theatrics did not convince all the Congressmen to "roll over" and approve greater police-state measures, especially in the current environment of investigations into apparent lying and disinformation from top officials of the Bush Administration in order to push through the vote on the Iraq war.
"My support for this legislation [the Patriot Act] is neither perpetual or unconditional," said the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. James Sensenbrenner to Ashcroft. He added, "I believe the [Justice] Department and Congress must be vigilant towards short-term gains, which ultimately may cause long-term harm to the spirit of liberty and equality which animate the American character."
The ranking Democrat on the Committee, Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich), lectured Ashcroft: "We've got the Constitution and the rights that are guaranteed to everyone on these shores. We've got due process. We have the great traditions that have accompanied us, and really, that separate this country from our adversaries. And when you're engaged in war, there's always this national inclination to 'Let's go get them any way we can; no holds barred.' Well, we are a nation of laws and not men. And it's in that arena that in this committee, of all the committees in the Congress, has the jurisdiction over Constitutional questions, the Department of Justice itself, the FBI, Immigration, the laws that control the entire nation. All of these things are up for reexamination, and it's no secret that there has been a lot of questions and controversy about the way some of the things have been done in the Department."
'Feith and Bum' Corps Press Conference Backfires
On June 4, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, one of the top Jabotinskyite moles in the Bush Administration, and an author of the 1996 "Clean Break" policy paper that called on Israel to push for war against Iraq, and overthrow the Oslo Accords, tried to upstage President Bush's Middle East "Road Map" summit with an 8:30 a.m. press conference in Washington, and take the heat off the Straussian cabal that has been caught spreading lies and disinformation about Iraqi WMD and links to terrorism.
But the press conference led by Feith and William Luti, one of the "cabal's" other DOD warmongers, to defend the Office of Special Plans has backfired, fuelling more investigations into the evasive answers give at the press conference. The response of the U.S. press next day was to disdain Feith's claims, and pursue a wider investigation into how the Chickenhawks in the Bush Administration invented intelligence and misled Congress and the public to get the U.S. into the Iraq war. The environment after Feith's ridiculous appearance has been compared to what happened after the discovery of the Watergate burglary in 1972. A sampling of comments:
*The Washington Post buried the Feith/Luti press conference in the middle of a story that revealed that Vice President Dick Cheney and his chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby were directly involved in cooking the intelligence reports, with multiple trips to the CIA over the past year, in what was seen by CIA analysts as an effort to put pressure on them to shape their assessments to fit with the Administration's policy objectives analysts. Before joining the Straussian team at the Defense Department, Luti was on Cheney's staff.
*The New York Times reported that Defense Department officials were "baffled and angered" by Feith's performance. One senior official "was too angry to answer immediately." Another said, "There was a lot of doublespeak out there." Others disputed Feith's claim that the special unit on Iraq was disbanded last August.
*A Knight-Ridder story, published in many regional papers, cited three Administration officials saying that Feith sidestepped the real issues, such as how the Pentagon unit gave far greater credence to Ahmed Chalabi, the convicted embezzler who headed the Iraqi National Congress (INC), than did either the DIA or CIA. The INC had said that many Shiites would welcome U.S. troops as liberators, that some Iraqi military commanders would surrender their units en masse, and that postwar Iraq would be much friendlier than it's been so far.
*The Wall Street Journal quotes an unnamed senior intelligence analyst: "The process was somewhat reversednot intelligence informing policy, but policymakers going to the intelligence community to find ways to sell the policy that was predetermined."
*The Forward, a national Jewish weekly newspaper, not only disputed Feith's claim that the OSP was decommissioned, but reported that the unit is at this very time working on a regime change in Iran.
"They are running their own intelligence operation, including covert action, and using outside contractors outside the government to do their leg work," says a former top CIA official. The Forward also quoted former CIA official Larry Johnson saying that the OSP is using the Iranian MEK organization, which is on the State Department's terrorist list, to pressure Iran.
Former Intelligence Analysts Expose Chickenhawk Schemes
In a June 5 op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, two top senior intelligence analysts ask, "Who Will Believe Bush and Blair?" Former DIA analyst Patrick Lang and former CIA and State Department analyst Larry Johnson co-author the commentary, which asks, what went wrong with intelligence on WMD? Did analysts misread the tea leaves, did policy wonks slant the views of the intelligence community, or could there have been a deliberate fabrication?
They write that as veterans of previous policy battles, "We have firsthand experience with the dynamics that politicize intelligence." They give examples ranging from Vietnam to Honduras to South Africa. Preemption is a bold policy, they say, but it must depend on accurate intelligence. "If a new crisis arises in Iran or North Korea, and Bush or Blair alerts the world to the new danger, will he be believed? We can't afford to have such doubts."
Illinois Governor's Death-Row Commutations Affirmed
Giving powerful confirmation to former Illinois Governor George Ryan's commutation of all 167 death sentences on the state's Death Row in January, as he was leaving office, the State Legislature May 29 gave final approval to sweeping safeguards against errors in death-penalty cases. The Legislature, which noted that the bill was necessary to restore credibility to the criminal justice system, adopted many of the changes recommended by a commission established in 2000 by Ryan, a Republican.
Following earlier passage by the House, the State Senate voted 56-3 for the bill, which will make it easier for murder defendants to defend themselves, and will give courts extraordinary powers to set aside death sentences.
"This is a revolutionary change that will be a model for other states that have the death penalty," said Sen. John J. Cullerton, Chicago Democrat, the bill's sponsor.
Aides to the new Governor, Rod R. Blagojevich (D), said he had not decided whether to sign the bill. But he has said he wants comprehensive reforms, including the audiotaping or videotaping of police questioning to protect against coercion or torture. He has not lifted Ryan's moratorium on executions.
The new legislation would prohibit executing the mentally retarded, increase defendants' access to police evidence, let judges file dissents to jury verdicts, and give the state Supreme Court new power to set aside sentences that it considers unjust. It would also increase defendants' access to DNA tests that might exonerate them. Seventeen people on the state's Death Row were released after they were found to have been wrongly convicted.
OSHA Ends TB Protection Rules
The Bush Administration's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has proposed to end its regulations and requirements protecting public service workers in prisons, hospitals, and so on from tuberculosis, SARS, and similar illnesses. OSHA says these diseases are under control. The Administration also rationalizes that standards for health-care workers are redundant, because the Centers for Disease Control also issues guidelines.
The proposal was entered into the Federal Register May 27, in the form of advance notice that the Administration wants OSHA to drop these precautions in the fall. A storm of criticism has erupted, from the American Nurses Association, to the State, County and Municipal Workers Union, and public health experts of all kinds. Even gross statistics now show that infectious disease is on the rise.
CDC guidelines are voluntary only. Speaking for the American Public Health Association, Rosemary Sokas pointed out on May 28 how hospitals are pressured to cut costs, and infection control can easily be lost. OSHAalong with other agencieshas in the past established regulations for work conditions in high-risk locations, to safeguard workers by mandating that there be protective respirators, specially ventilated isolation rooms for infectious patients, staff training, and many other essential measures. These are precisely what is needed for SARS. Many of its victims have been health-care workers.
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