WORLD

U.S UNDERMINES LABOR MOVEMENT IN IRAQ
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2005/0504.harwood.html
April 2005

MATTHEW HARWOOD, WASHINGTON MONTHLY - Americans have largely left the Iraqi unions to fend for themselves, and in some cases actively undercut them. As a result, Iraq has been significantly deprived of the movement perhaps most willing and best equipped to nurture along a nascent national democracy in a religiously and ethnically divided country: organized labor.
From Poland to Brazil to post-apartheid South Africa, organized labor has played a critical role in helping new democracies emerge and stabilize. America's own history of successful occupation teaches the same lesson. After the Japanese surrender in World War II, the country's newly-appointed premier knocked on the door of Gen. Douglas MacArthur and was greeted with a memorandum outlining the framework for Japan's democratization. First on the list was the "emancipation of the women of Japan through their enfranchisement." Second was "the encouragement of the unionization of Labor." Had the American administrators in Iraq followed MacArthur's model and placed a similar emphasis on nurturing labor, that move alone would not have turned Iraq into a stable, civil society. But given the history of labor in emerging democracies and the dearth of other nation-building alternatives in Iraq, sheltering and encouraging a union movement ought to have been pretty close to first in the reconstruction playbook. Instead, it seems to have come somewhere near last. . .
From the time the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) took possession of Iraq, the Americans running the country not only declined to engage the labor movement in the process of building a nation, but also worked actively to undermine labor's ability to play a constructive role.
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US SOLDERS TOLD TO 'BEAT THE F**K OUT OF PRISONER
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/fisher.php?articleid=5415

WILLIAM FISHER, ANTI-WAR - The American Civil Liberties Union is charging that U.S. Army documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that the mistreatment of detainees in Iraq was much more widespread than the government has admitted. The advocacy group also accused the Army of failing to comply with a court order to release the documents and of manipulating the media "to minimize coverage and public access."
The ACLU said the reason for the delay in delivering the more than 1,200 pages of documents was "evident in the contents," which include reports of brutal beatings, "exercise until exhaustion," and sworn statements that soldiers were told to "beat the f**k out of" detainees. One file cites evidence that military intelligence personnel in Iraq "tortured" detainees held in their custody. . .
The newest documents include:
A high school student had his jaw broken, requiring his mouth to be wired shut, and could eat only through a straw. The victim was told "to say that I've fallen down and no one beat me." . . .
Abu Malik Kenami died while in detention in Mosul, Iraq. On the day he died, Kenami had been "punished with several ups and downs – a correctional technique of having a detainee stand up and then sit-down rapidly, always keeping them in constant motion. . . and [had] his hands flex-cuffed behind his back." He was also hooded, with "a sandbag placed over [his] head." . . .
One soldier reports, "He continued to mess with his mask/sandbag so I took his handcuffs off and put them behind his back and smoked him for another 20 minutes before I sat him down." At night, the prisoner had to sleep with the sandbag on his head and his hands cuffed behind his back. On the morning of the fourth day, he was found dead in his cell. . .


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AUSTRALIANS FEAR AMERICAN EXTREMISM AS MUCH AS ISLAMIC VERSION
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8398.htm

SYDNEY MORNING HERALD - Australians are as just as concerned about United States foreign policy as Islamic extremism and regard the US as more dangerous than a rising China, according to a new poll. The Australians Speak: 2005 survey, commissioned by the Lowy Institute for International Policy, found 57 per cent of Australians were "very worried" or "fairly worried" about the external threat posed by both US foreign policy and Islamic extremism.
"We asked about a series of threats from the outside," said the institute's executive director, Allan Gyngell. "Most startling of all was the precise equivalence of Islamic fundamentalism and US foreign policy as a source of concern. . .
More than two-thirds - 68 per cent - said Australia took too much notice of the US in its foreign policy deliberations. The findings would not be welcomed by the Howard Government, which has railed against perceived anti-Americanism and emphasized the importance of the alliance as the US takes a more unilateralist and activist posture in world affairs. . .
Fifty-eight per cent of those surveyed viewed the US positively, compared with 94 per cent for New Zealand, 86 per cent for Britain, 84 per cent for Japan, and 69 per cent for China.