If you think that you have the moral high ground, that's a very dangerous position and you can do some really dreadful things.

Brian Flanagan, Member of the Weatherman

As a percentage of gross domestic product, the deficit rose sharply from 4.6 percent to 5.1 percent. At this level, the US needs to attract more than $1.5 billion per day in foreign investment to cover the payments shortfall.

US balance of payments gap widens again, By Nick Beams

Invitation to an International Peace Conference in Boston

Peace and justice activists, take note: From July 23-25 in Boston, on the eve of the Democratic National Convention, AFSC and the European Network for Peace and Human Rights will present the International Peace and Human Rights Conference. Leading figures from European and U.S. peace movements will be joined by their counterparts from Asia, Africa, and Latin America to share analyses, strategies and priorities; network; and develop joint campaigns.

The conference is the centerpiece of the Boston Social Forum (www.bostonsocialforum.org), which is bringing together activists to exchange information, form new alliances, and push their movements toward the next stages of development. As part of the forum, AFSC is also organizing “tracks” and workshops on youth activism, criminal justice, immigration, and water privatization issues. Get more information.

The Democratic Party is a big tent, dominated by a safe play-to-the-center leadership, but chock full of positions many Democrats agree with: ending the war in Iraq, supporting fair trade, equal rights for all, repealing the Patriot Act, and more. But whether or not these positions are represented in Boston is up for grabs at the moment.

The DNC platform committee is meeting in Miami on July 9-10 to approve a draft platform.

Let your voice be heard from you! We need you to write to Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones. She is a Co- Chair of the Platform Committee.

	Fax letters to her at 216-751- 8241
	Email to: stjcampaign@aol.com
	Write to: 3645 Warrensville Center Road, Suite 323 - Shaker Heights, OH 44122

Suspicious deaths in custody. Allegations of torture. Claims of a military out of control. These are some of the key issues that will face John Negroponte, the newly appointed U.S. ambassador to Iraq.

Suspicious deaths in custody. Allegations of torture. Claims of a military out of control. Those were some of the key issues that faced John Negroponte 20 years ago when he was U.S. ambassador to Honduras. So it is worth examining how he reacted then when faced with evidence of extra-judicial killings, torture and human rights abuses.

Negroponte `looked the other way': U.S. ambassador to Iraq under fire for rights record twenty years ago, he served as envoy to Honduras by DUNCAN CAMPBELL

 You can't distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror.
    - President George W. Bush, September 2002

Our press, now acknowledging Iraqi reality, writes that, though "sovereignty" has been transferred, nothing's really changed, which in a sense it hasn't. And yet, though we turned over little real power to our Iraqis, in another sense much has changed. After all, for the last half-year the "transition" has been the administration's trump card. Now, it's been played, hurriedly and in the dark. What are they going to do, when things get worse? What will happen then?

Bremer, of course, did what he could do. He took the first flight out to cooking school. George Bush can travel anywhere in splendid isolation, and for him, there's always Crawford, Texas. But for our troops, 138,000 of them, in desperate danger, no such handy options exist. And what in the world are they supposed to do, while our leaders, who cut and ran in their moment of truth, continue to eye November and claim that no one will ever drive us from Iraq?

A cut-and-run transition, by Tom Engelhardt

U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, whose opening remarks during the oversight hearing with Attorney General John Ashcroft on June 8 succinctly lay out the case as to why Ashcroft is among the worst attorney generals in modern history:

Mr. Attorney General, I must speak frankly about an issue that has emerged as a basic problem during your tenure. There are two words that succinctly sum up the Justice Department's accountability and its cooperation with congressional oversight on your watch. Those two words are "sparse" and "grudging." Even those of us who have served through several presidents cannot recall a worse performance record when it comes to responsiveness.

Just days ago we learned of Justice Department involvement in devising legal arguments to minimize our obligations under such U.S. laws and international agreements as the convention on torture. Yet a letter I wrote to you last November, well before most of these abuses came to light, went unanswered for months, and when we are lucky enough to get responses, the premium is on unresponsiveness.

Few of the answers we get are worth much more than the paper they are printed on. We often learn more about what's really happening in the Justice Department in the press than we do from you.

In the 1,000 days since the catastrophic attacks of Sept. 11, we have learned little from our Justice Department. We know this:

●  The Moussaoui prosecution has bogged down because the prosecution refuses to let the defense interview witnesses in U.S. custody;

●  A German court acquitted two 9/11 co-conspirators, in part because the U.S. government refused to provide evidence for the cases;

●  Three defendants who you said had knowledge of the 9/11 attacks did not have such knowledge; the department retracted your statement, and then you had to apologize to the court for violating a gag order in the case;

●  The man you claimed was about to explode a "dirty bomb" in the U.S. had no such intention or capability, and because he has been held for two years without access to counsel, any crimes he did commit might never be prosecuted;

●  U.S. citizens with no connection to terrorism have been imprisoned as material witnesses for chunks of time - with an "Oops, I'm sorry" when a "100 percent positive" fingerprint match turns out to be 100 percent wrong;

●  Noncitizens with no connection to terrorism have been rounded up on the basis of their religion or ethnicity, held for months without charges and, in some cases, physically abused;

●  Interrogation techniques approved by the Department of Justice have led to abuses that have tarnished our nation's reputation and likely given strength and driven hundreds, if not thousands, of new recruits to our enemies;

●  Your department turned a Canadian citizen over to Syria who was tortured;

●  Documents have been classified, unclassified, and reclassified to score political points rather than for legitimate national security reasons;

●  Statistics have been manipulated to exaggerate the department's success in fighting terrorism; and

●  The threat of another attack on U.S. soil remains high, although how high depends on who, in the administration, is talking and what audience they are addressing.

We need checks and balances. There is much that has gone wrong that your administration stubbornly refuses to admit. For this democratic republic to work, we need openness and accountability.

At Justice, worst record in memory
By ROBYN E. BLUMNER

 

A man who prolonged the Cold War by turning the heat on the Soviet Union. A man who talked glibly of freedom and democracy but supported some of the worst dictators in Latin America and Asia. And a man who made the privatization of government a religious cause but who finally departed Planet Earth with a subsidized STATE funeral (that funeral should have been auctioned out really).

Long after all that manufactured hype around the demise of former US President Ronald 'Gipper' Reagan fades out, here is what I think he will finally be remembered for: as the most powerful B-grade movie actor ever in human history.

Reagan: The ‘Performing’ Politician, By Satya Sagar

The UN's emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland said 3.3m civilians [in the DR Congo] were out of reach of aid agencies - the largest number of any conflict

'Massive abuses' in DR Congo

The Bush administration has decided to take the unusual step of bestowing on its own troops and personnel immunity from prosecution by Iraqi courts for killing Iraqis or destroying local property after the occupation ends and political power is transferred to an interim Iraqi government, U.S. officials said.

The administration plans to accomplish that step -- which would bypass the most contentious remaining issue before the transfer of power -- by extending an order that has been in place during the year-long occupation of Iraq. Order 17 gives all foreign personnel in the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority immunity from "local criminal, civil and administrative jurisdiction and from any form of arrest or detention other than by persons acting on behalf of their parent states."

U.S. Immunity in Iraq Will Go Beyond June 30 By Robin Wright

Progressive Converge in Boston

For one of the largest progressive convergences in the history of America
Progressive Vote has united with hundreds of progressive affinity groups under one banner of unity during the Boston events around the Democratic National Convention. This banner... the "United Progressive Alliance" or "UPA."

Thousands of progressives from various groups, campaigns, and communities have come together to plan dozens of powerful events with well known progressive names.

In a few key areas - electricity, the judicial system and overall security - the Iraq that America handed back to its residents Monday is worse off than before the war began last year, according to calculations in a new General Accounting Office report released Tuesday.

The 105-page report by Congress' investigative arm offers a bleak assessment of Iraq after 14 months of U.S. military occupation. Among its findings:

-In 13 of Iraq's 18 provinces, electricity was available fewer hours per day on average last month than before the war. Nearly 20 million of Iraq's 26 million people live in those provinces.

-Only $13.7 billion of the $58 billion pledged and allocated worldwide to rebuild Iraq has been spent, with another $10 billion about to be spent. The biggest chunk of that money has been used to run Iraq's ministry operations.

-The country's court system is more clogged than before the war, and judges are frequent targets of assassination attempts.

-The new Iraqi civil defense, police and overall security units are suffering from mass desertions, are poorly trained and ill-equipped.

-The number of what the now-disbanded Coalition Provisional Authority called significant insurgent attacks skyrocketed from 411 in February to 1,169 in May.

Iraq is Worse Off Than Before the War Began, GAO Reports by Seth Borenstein

  Adlai Stevenson once said, "Patriotism is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime." As a nation, we have become lost because the frenzied outburst of emotion which arose from the dust and death of September 11 was transformed, with deliberation and intent, into a shield which protects Bush and his people from any consequences arising from their actions. We have become lost because, in that frenzy and fear, millions of Americans were coaxed into believing that Bush alone could protect us, could save us, and any words against him or the actions of his administration were tantamount to treason.

Nine Eleven  By William Rivers Pitt