WNC students join nationwide call
for ‘Books Not Bombs’

By Liz Allen

Asheville, North Carolina, Mar. 12 (AGR)— On Wednesday, Mar. 5 students across the country walked out of their classes to protest war on Iraq. “Books not Bombs” was the slogan students from across Buncombe County wore on their shirts and signs as they left school at 1pm to convene for a rally of 300 people in City County Plaza. At Asheville High School (AHS), nearly 200 students walked out of their classrooms and marched a mile and a half on the sidewalk chanting slogans like “Peace Not War!” to protest money from their education being used to fund a military they do not agree with. Later, students held an unscheduled meeting with Asheville mayor Charles Worley and city manager Jim Westbrook to consider petitions in support of Asheville taking an anti-war stance as a city.

Schools from across Buncombe County were represented, including Erwin, located in Leicester; Owen, located in Swannanoa; Reynolds, located in Fairview; Rainbow Mountain Children’s School in Asheville; Asheville High, and Asheville Middle School (AMS). The schools, excluding Asheville High, each brought at least 20-30 students.

“People came to support the idea of books not bombs, not just to skip class. The teachers have been saying that no one is going to go, they’ve intimidated us, but you can’t do it man, when a bunch of kids get together and they’ve all got a cause behind what they believe in, they’re not going to be afraid to stand up,” said AHS student Jon Oswell during the march to the rally. Victoria Frierson, also an AHS student, said she was scared at first to walk out but decided to take a moral stand. “I’m doing it because I want to make a change. Even though it might be a small change, I’m making a change.”

During the march, police directed marchers and traffic, many with smiles on their faces. “I’m glad to see these kids out here taking advantage of their rights. We heard that the kids were very organized, very meaningful in their approach for this action today. We were told that they were a couple of great kids that had a passion for what they were doing,” commented Asheville police officer Alan Dunlap as he stood at the side of the march, blocking off a lane through the tunnel on Asheland Ave. When the marchers walked through the tunnel, a banner was dropped from the road above reading “Youth against Militarization.”

Many parents were present at the rally and march in support of the children who participated in the event. Parents also showed their support by writing their children notes excusing their absences or to get them out of class. At Asheville High it was reported that students who were signed out by their parents for the rally got one day of in-school suspension and those who walked out without parent notes got two days of out-of-school suspension.

Parent Carolyn McCarter Wood said she was impressed with the peaceful cooperation between the marchers and police because she felt the students had “a lot of fear that it was going to be antagonistic.” She related that after her 14-year-old daughter told her a month earlier “that they were planning a student walk-out and we began to discuss in our family whether we supported her and participated in that, we left the decision to her, but we decided that we would show our support by having me check her out and walk with her. But, I, of course, promptly lost her in the crowd.”

Passers-by and onlookers to the march expressed varying degrees of support. Many cars honked and flashed thumbs up or peace signs. While marching, two students commented about a passing car, “Dude, she was so flicking us off and she was old, too.” “Old people can’t flick off high schoolers.”

Many onlookers stood outside the places of business en route to the rally.

“I think half of them probably have good intentions and the other half want out of class,” said Mike Roberts, who was standing outside of the Reel Lighting Showroom. Roberts said he “disagree(s) with the war wholeheartedly.”

Students who protested at school faced suspension, with the exception of home schoolers and Rainbow Mountain students. A student named Jeff, from Owen High School, said that he and two other unaffiliated students were harassed and searched when caught collecting signatures for an anti-war petition. Also at Owen High, a group of 30 students hosted a sit-in in the commons area which lasted three hours until the students were either suspended and parents called or they left to go to the rally in Asheville. Two parents also joined the sit-in with the students. Eric Lynch, an AMS substitute teacher and director of the WNC group Education in Action, a 150-member student-based organization that works to provide youth with resources to effect positive social change, said he was fired from his teaching job on the morning of the rally due to his active support of the event.

During the rally, speakers used a megaphone, which was passed to different students and a few adults, in a planned speaker/open mic fashion. Students spoke of their concerns about the effect war will have on their country, rights, and education.

“The youth of today are the ones that will suffer from this, not the voters, not the taxpayers. The United States budget today is 53 percent on military spending and 9 percent on educational spending. The estimated cost of this current conflict is $100 billion, nearly three times what the government is spending on, first of all, education. Plus, it’s more than three times the combined defense budgets of Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Libya, Cuba, Sudan and Syria, those nations traditionally considered rogue nations or states of concern. The Bush administration is intent on pushing America into an illegitimate and preemptive war, at the same time education and the economy are being neglected. It’s time for the youth to take a stand for America’s future,” Sam Ruchti announced to the boisterous rally crowd.

In another speech John Keeney pointed out that if the $2 billion cut from the federal education budget this year was reinvested back into education then “every one of the 1,200 students at Asheville High School could eat free lunch every day for 9,260 school years, 400 billion textbooks could be purchased, 100,000 teachers could be paid the average salary for one year.” Also during his speech, Keeney criticized the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program’s use of guns and military recruitment in public schools as an unnecessary display of force.

Kendrick Robbs led the crowd in a call and response of “We don’t want no war; you know what I’m talking about?” Rally participants cheered or booed in agreement with the speakers throughout their talks. Especially loud boos erupted from the crowd during the discussion of the Patriot Act II after it was announced that if the new legislation passed, participants in unpermitted peace rallies such as this one could be registered as terrorists and deported.

After the rally, students went to the office of Asheville’s mayor and city manager and insisted on a meeting to discuss their petition urging Asheville city council to respond to popular opinion by passing an anti-war resolution. Their objective was to get the mayor to confirm in writing that the resolution would be placed on the agenda for discussion, since the resolution was previously presented but tabled. Seventeen students and five other members of the public met with mayor Charles Worley and city manager Jim Westbrook. Westbrook explained that the city was set up like a corporation and did not concern itself with federal actions. One person pointed out that that council had passed a resolution in support of the “war on terror;” the students then suggested that the city appeared willing to pass resolutions only if they supported federal actions.

“I thought that in capitalism a corporation could refute action by federal government,” Keeney questioned during the meeting. After Worley repeatedly told the students that he would not place the item on the agenda, and that council members needed consensus for such action, the group took a vote and decided to present the resolution in the informal discussion session at city council.

The following Tuesday, Mar. 11 – the day of the next city council meeting – students presented the petitions with their request to join the other cities across the nation who have passed anti-war resolutions.

“We’re not going to do a sit-in [if council refuses to place the item on the agenda of the next formal meeting] because there is no reason to get arrested over a resolution. We should stay in the streets,” said John Lapp part of the Asheville High group.

At around 9:30pm at the city council meeting Grace Williams presented the petitions with 400 supporting signatures. She explained that she was present to represent the youth, although they were not the only ones supporting the resolution.

“The youth of Asheville are part of this community and we expect and hope to be treated like that. If the city council wants to recognize that the young people are part of the political community, they need to start showing it, and what better way than to discuss the resolution of Asheville adopting an anti-war stance,” she stated to council during her presentation. The mayor said that he commended the young people on their work regardless of whether the issue was ever put on the agenda.

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Bush pushes imminent Iraq ultimatum

Compiled by Eamon Martin

Mar. 12 (AGR)— President Bush has vowed to go to war with or without United Nations backing and there are more than a quarter of a million troops massing in the Persian Gulf poised to invade Iraq. But in an effort to gain as much political cover as possible beforehand, the US and Britain have been forced into more concessions in their demands on Saddam Hussein in an attempt to try to win over wavering countries on the UN Security Council.

Bowing to pressure from the swing states in the last days of frenzied lobbying, the US and Britain have agreed to set out the precise acts of disarmament Saddam would have to undertake by Mar. 17 to avoid war, rather than demanding wholesale disarmament.

Previously Washington had pressed for the resolution to be forced to a vote by Tuesday, but the delay is designed to give the UK and the US badly-needed extra time to canvass support for the revised position.

A British minister said that, with or without a second resolution, the stand-off with Iraq “will all be done and dusted within two or three weeks.”

Under the evolving plan, Iraq would be given a set of benchmark disarmament tasks and a deadline for achieving them, a proposal that incorporates suggestions made by undecided council members. The proposal would also automatically authorize the end of UN weapons inspections and the use of force against Iraq unless a council majority agrees that Baghdad has fully complied with the benchmark demands.

Diplomats and senior administration officials cautioned that many parts of the proposal, which would amend a widely opposed resolution introduced last week, were still under discussion. Chief among the points of disagreement was a deadline date for war, originally set for Mar. 17. But France, Russia and China swiftly dismissed it. The three nations, all of whom hold veto power as permanent members, are opposed to any new resolution that would implicitly or explicitly authorize military action. The six undecided council members then suggested Apr. 17.

But that also appears to be out of the question for the United States and Britain, with the US insisting that it be no later than the end of next week. The White House has said a vote on the measure must be held by Friday.

An atmosphere of “it’s now or never” pervades US officials’ comments, even though much of the world does not see it that way. An amended resolution is still almost certain to be vetoed by France and perhaps Russia, who oppose any deadline and have argued that only the UN inspectors can set benchmarks or judge compliance.

And while Britain is willing to move the deadline far closer to the Apr. 17 proposal, Washington has sharply refused.

“That’s not going anywhere,” a senior administration said. “Our bottom line is getting shorter and shorter,” and is extremely unlikely to budge beyond the end of next week, the official said.

Recent events have led to speculation that Washington will not risk a vote that might be defeated and will attack without returning to the Security Council.

Such a move would violate the UN charter, UN chief Kofi Annan warned Monday. Russia’s UN Ambassador Sergei Lavrov said this week that a US-led invasion of Iraq would be a clear violation of international law.

Bush has said publicly he does not think another resolution is needed. So has British Prime Minister Tony Blair. But Blair faces stiff opposition to war without UN backing, and the White House concedes the president is working for a new resolution more on Blair’s behalf than its own.

UN support for a possible war with Iraq is crucial for Blair. Recent polls indicate more than four-fifths —fewer than 20 percent— of Britons oppose war without Security Council backing, and a leading member of his government, International Development Secretary Clare Short, has threatened to resign if Blair orders British forces into action without UN support.

Last Thursday night, Bush made it clear in an address on prime time television to the American people that war is inevitable. Several times, Bush spoke as though Saddam Hussein’s overthrow was a foregone conclusion. Later, in response to a question, he said flatly that, “we will be changing the regime of Iraq.”

“If we need to act, we will act. And we really don’t need United Nations approval to do so,” Bush said.

In what appeared to be a prelude to a declaration of war, he somberly warned journalists in Iraq to leave.

While White House officials briefed beforehand that Bush planned no declaration of war, the conference was flagged as a way of softening up the American public for an imminent war.

Bush said Sept. 11 “should say to the American people that we’re now a battlefield.”

Asian and European stock markets fell as Bush’s remarks were interpreted to mean war was virtually certain.

Bush appeared determined to pre-empt a report the following day by the chief arms inspectors, Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, who did in fact offer their most positive assessment yet of Iraqi disarmament.

Blix praised Iraq’s move to begin destroying its al-Samoud II missiles as “a substantial measure of disarmament.”

“We are not watching the breaking of toothpicks. Lethal weapons are being destroyed,” Blix said.

ElBaradei said not only that there was no evidence Iraq had resumed its nuclear program, but that a report —cited again and again as evidence by the US and Britain — that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from Niger was based on fake documents.

He also said aluminum tubes which the US says were part of an illicit nuclear program were nothing of the sort. Before Congress, and in public, Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell have repeatedly pointed to the tubes imported by Iraq, claiming their purpose was for the construction of nuclear weapons.

The documents were first disclosed by Blair last September — and referenced by Bush in his State of the Union address in January.

But over the weekend, The Washington Post reported that, “the forgers had made relatively crude errors.”

The Guardian newspaper in London reported the phony documents were “transparently obvious.”

The inspectors said it would take months for Iraq to disarm.

Several hundred US soldiers unloaded trucks and jeeps Sunday at a newly established forward-operating base deep in southeastern Turkey, only 100 miles from the Iraqi border.

The compound will serve as a logistics base for 62,000 US troops, if Turkey allows the United States to use its territory to launch a northern front against Iraq in a war.

The US military is pushing ahead with preparations for a deployment even after the Turkish parliament last week narrowly rejected a resolution letting in American troops. The Turkish government as well as the military supports the deployment and says it intends to hold another vote, though when is not clear.

Residents in this part of southeast Turkey reported increasing activity by US troops.

“Americans are everywhere,” said Abdullah Dulger, who sells hundreds of gallons of gasoline a day to US troops for their generators.

UN leaders draw up secret blueprint for postwar Iraq

Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s warnings against US threats notwithstanding, the United Nations has drawn up a confidential plan to establish a post-Hussein government in Iraq in a move that suggests its leaders now consider war all but inevitable.

The plan, obtained by British newspaper The Times, has been produced in great secrecy over the past month, even though Security Council approval of a “war resolution” hangs in the balance.

The UN is breaking a taboo, and arguably breaching its charter, by considering plans for Iraq’s future governance while it deals daily with Hussein’s government as a legitimate member.

The 60-page plan was ordered by Louise Frechette, the Canadian deputy of Annan, and was drawn up at the UN’s New York headquarters by a six-member pre-planning group. It envisages the UN stepping in about three months after a successful conquest of Iraq, and steering the country towards self-government.

A clause in the UN Charter bars it from interfering in a member state’s internal affairs. When Annan wanted to discuss contingency plans for war-time humanitarian operations with the Security Council last month, Russia insisted that he do so informally in his own office rather than in the council chamber.

Yet Frechette had a 90-minute meeting on Monday with Jay Garner, the retired US Army general who is in line to be the US governor of postwar Iraq.

Lieutenant-General Garner heads the Pentagon office of reconstruction and humanitarian affairs formed in January, which is assembling a “government-in-waiting” of Iraqi exiles and American advisers to head Iraq’s major ministries and public works agencies.

Sources: ABC, Agence France-Presse, Associated Press, CBS, CNN, Guardian (UK), Inter Press Service, MSNBC, New York Times, Reuters, The Scotsman, Times (UK), Washington Post

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Afghan prisoners beaten to death
at US military base

By Duncan Campbell

Los Angeles, California, Mar. 7— Two prisoners who died while being held for interrogation at a US military base in Afghanistan had apparently been beaten, according to a military pathologist’s report. A criminal investigation is now under way into the deaths, which have both been classified as homicides.

The deaths have led to calls for an inquiry into what interrogation techniques are being used at the base where it is believed the al-Qaida leader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, is now also being held. Former prisoners at the base claim that detainees are chained to the ceiling, shackled so tightly that the blood flow stops, kept naked and hooded, and kicked to keep them awake for days on end.

The two men, both Afghans, died last December at the US forces base in Bagram, north of Kabul, where prisoners have been held for questioning. The autopsies found they had suffered “blunt force injuries” and classified both deaths as homicides.

A spokesman for the Pentagon said yesterday it was not possible to discuss the details of the case because of the proceeding investigation. If the investigation finds that the prisoners had been unlawfully killed during interrogation, it could lead to both civil and military prosecutions. He added that it was not clear whether only US personnel had had access to the men.

One of the dead prisoners, known only as Dilawar, died as a result of “blunt force injuries to lower extremities complicating coronary artery disease,” according to the death certificate signed by Major Elizabeth Rouse, a pathologist with the Washington-based Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, which operates under the auspices of the defense department. The dead man was aged 22 and was a farmer and part-time taxi-driver. He was said to have had an advanced heart condition and blocked arteries.

Chris Kelly, a spokesman for the institute, said yesterday that their pathologists were involved in all cases on military bases where there were unusual or suspicious deaths. He was not aware of any other homicides of prisoners held since Sept. 11. He said that the definition of homicide was “death resulting from the intentional or grossly reckless behavior of another person or persons” but could also encompass “self-defense or justifiable killings.”

The death certificates for the men have four boxes on them giving choices of “natural, accident, suicide, homicide.” The Pentagon said yesterday that the choice of “homicide” did not necessarily mean that the dead person had been unlawfully killed. There was no box which would indicate that a pathologist was uncertain how a person had died.

It is believed that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, described as the number three in al-Qaida, is being interrogated at Bagram. He is said to have started providing information about the possible whereabouts of Osama bin Laden whom he is said to have met in Pakistan last month. Most al-Qaida suspects are being held outside the US, which means that they are not entitled access to the US judicial system.

Two former prisoners at the base, Abdul Jabar and Hakkim Shah, told the New York Times this week that they recalled seeing Dilawar at Bagram. They said that they had been kept naked, hooded, and shackled and were deprived of sleep for days on end. Shah said that American guards kicked him to stop him from falling asleep, and that on one occasion he had been kicked by a woman interrogator, while her male colleague held him in a kneeling position.

The commander of the coalition forces in Afghanistan, General Daniel McNeill, said that prisoners were made to stand for long periods but he denied that they were chained to the ceiling. “Our interrogation techniques are adapted,” he said.

“They are in accordance with what is generally accepted as interrogation techniques, and if incidental to the due course of this investigation, we find things that need to be changed, we will certainly change them.”

In January, in his state of the union address, President George Bush announced that “3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries” and “many others have met a different fate” and “are no longer a problem to the United States.”

The other death being investigated is that of Mullah Habibullah, the brother of a former Taliban commander. His death certificate indicates that he died of a pulmonary embolism, or a blood clot in the lung.

Source: Guardian (UK)

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