4.26.08 Print it out: color best. Pass it on. GI Special: thomasfbarton@earthlink.net

GI SPECIAL 6D18:

“I Think They Ought To Bring Our Boys Home And Call It Quits,” She

Said: 100th Area Soldier To Die In Iraq

Gets A Hero’s Farewell

April 18, 2008 By RENÉE C. LEE, Houston Chronicle HUNTSVILLE — Army Sgt. Shaun Paul Tousha, the 100th service member from the Houston area to die in the Iraq war, was remembered Thursday for his love of being a soldier. Tousha, like thousands of Americans in military service, gave up his most valuable possession — his life — to protect his country, the Rev. Paul Corley told the standing-room-only crowd at the Sam Houston Memorial Funeral Home chapel. “He chose to lay down his life for his friends,” Corley said. “When a man is willing to lay down his life for his friends, he has heart and conviction. That’s why he loved being a soldier ... This was his way to preserve the freedoms of this country.” Tousha, 30, of Hull, died April 9 in Baghdad from wounds suffered after a homemade bomb exploded near his vehicle, according to the Department of Defense. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 66th Armor Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, Fort Hood. Tousha, who joined the Army in 2000, was serving his third tour in Iraq. During the service, Army officials presented his wife of three years, Christy Tousha, with his military honors: the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart and the Combat Action Badge. Corley said Tousha’s widow told him her husband loved his job, that it was what he did and who he was. Brig. Gen. Kendall Cox, who said he did not know Tousha, called him a true American hero because “he was willing to put his boots on the ground to enable others to live free.” Cox said soldiers who knew Tousha described him as an outgoing person with a positive attitude. They said he cared for his soldiers and believed in excellence. He also loved his Dallas Cowboys, he said. Tousha was raised in Hull, about 60 miles northeast of Houston, and graduated from Hull-Daisetta High School, where he played football. He was the youngest of three children. His parents died years ago, family members said. His aunt, Deb Tousha, said her nephew was a country boy who enjoyed dancing and riding bulls. “He loved to wear his tight jeans and cowboy boots,” she said. “He also loved his brother, Tiger, and his sister, Becky.” Tousha continued a family tradition when he joined the Army. “His grandparents, his great-uncles were all in the Army,” Deb Tousha said. “We’re an Army family.” Sister Becky Tousha, who wore a silver pendant with a picture of her brother, said he always was the life of the party and a ladies’ man. She said she last talked with him at Christmas, and, as usual, he was in good spirits.

She said his distinction as the 100th casualty for the Houston area was disheartening. “I think they ought to bring our boys home and call it quits,” she said. In addition to his wife and sister, Tousha is survived by his stepson, Colton Burns; stepdaughter, Maycee Burns; and brother, Tommy Tousha Jr.

DO YOU HAVE A FRIEND OR RELATIVE IN THE SERVICE?

Forward GI Special along, or send us the address if you wish and we’ll send it regularly. Whether in Iraq or stuck on a base in the USA, this is extra important for your service friend, too often cut off from access to encouraging news of growing resistance to the war, inside the armed services and at home. Send email requests to address up top or write to: The Military Project, Box 126, 2576 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10025-5657. Phone: 917.677.8057

IRAQ WAR REPORTS

Michigan Soldier Killed In Iraq

Private First Class John Thomas Bishop, 22, of Gaylord, Mich., was killed in Iraq Wednesday April 23, 2008. (AP Photo/Family Photo via the Detroit News)

IED Kills U.S. Soldier Somewhere Or Other In Iraq

April 25, 2008 Public Affairs Office, Camp Victory RELEASE No. 20080425-06 BAGHDAD – A Multi-National Division – Center Soldier was killed in an improvised explosive device attack south of Baghdad, April 24.

Va. Soldier Slain While Taking Wife’s Place In Iraq

Apr 12, 2008 By REX BOWMAN, TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER A Virginia National Guardsman who re-enlisted so his wife, also a member of the National Guard, wouldn’t have to go back to Iraq was killed Wednesday when his vehicle struck a roadside bomb south of Baghdad. Staff Sgt. Jesse Ault of Dublin in Pulaski County was 28. He was serving with E Company in the 429th Brigade Support Battalion out of Roanoke. A native of Wheeling, W.Va., who grew up in Middlebourne, W.Va., Ault joined the U.S. Army while still in high school and joined the National Guard after moving to Virginia. Yesterday, his wife, Betsy Ault, said she and her husband were dating in 2004 when their unit was deployed to Balad, Iraq. They returned to Virginia and married, she said, and her husband was “100 percent family,” relishing time spent playing with her son, Nathan, 10, and their toddler, Adam, 1. He was so devoted to the family, she said, that he decided to take her place after her unit was told it was being sent to Iraq. “Jesse separated from the Guard after the deployment, but I was still serving when my unit was alerted early 2007,” she said. “Jesse loved our family so much and saw how important it was for me to stay with my sons, he joined the National Guard again to take my place on the deployment. “The day he landed in Kuwait, I found out we were pregnant. He was allowed emergency leave to come home to see the birth of our daughter, Rachel.” Rachel is now 4 months old. Mrs. Ault is still a member of the Guard but is in the process of being discharged, according to Guard Maj. Alfred Puryear. Ault was killed just three days after another Virginia National Guardsman, Staff Sgt. Jeremiah McNeal of Norfolk, was killed near Baghdad. Mrs. Ault said her husband “was a loving and dedicated father and husband and a brave and loyal soldier.”

“Jesse loved all things University of West Virginia and Jeff Gordon,” she added. “He cheered for the Denver Broncos and the Atlanta Braves. He liked fishing and golf and loved to ride sleds down the hill with Nathan.”

Kenosha Marine Killed In Iraq April 15, 2008 By Tina Shah, Chicago Tribune When Marine officers came to Susan Nelson’s Wisconsin home Monday night with the news of her son’s death, she shut the door on them four times before accepting reality. She had just talked to her son, Cpl. Richard Nelson, Saturday--as they do weekly--and he reassured her that his second deployment to Iraq was God’s will. “He said, ‘As much as I don’t care to be here, I know God has a plan,’.” she said. She did not expect to hear about his death two days later. Cpl. Richard Nelson, 23, of Kenosha died Monday. He was in a combat operation when an improvised explosive device detonated about 4:30 p.m., said Lt. Patrick Evans, a military spokesman. Nelson died a week before his first wedding anniversary, which is next Monday, said his mother, who lives near Kenosha in Pleasant Prairie. Lance Cpl. Dean D. Opicka, 29, of Waukesha, Wis., also died with Nelson. Both were assigned to the Marine Forces Reserve’s 2nd Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment, 4th Marine Division at the Milwaukee-based Fox Company. Nelson said her son joined the Marines after he graduated from Christian Life School in Kenosha. He was 18 and did not plan to make a lifelong commitment to the Marine Corps. Instead, he wanted to go back to college and become an elementary school teacher because he got along so well with children, his mother said. “He never dreamed he’d be going to Iraq,” said Nelson, 54. But her son was deployed to Iraq twice, once from July 2005 to April 2006 and again last September. Growing up, Richard Nelson was outgoing and religious, Susan Nelson said, but he was not always enthusiastic about gatherings with his extended family. Yet after he returned from his first deployment in Iraq, Nelson said, her son was closer to his family, but quieter and more pensive. “He had been there before, he knew what war was,” Nelson said.

He took every chance he got to spend time with his family, especially his high school sweetheart and wife, Kristen. Yet, despite his anxiety about leaving his family and the effects of war penetrating into his life, Nelson said, her son was fearless. “He’s a Marine,” Nelson said. “Those Marines--even if they are afraid, they don’t tell you.”

GUESS WHO’S WORRIED GUESS WHO ISN’T

GUESS WHY ALL HOME NOW

U.S. Army soldiers from 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment in Sadr City in Baghdad, Iraq, April 23, 2008. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

More Fighting In Sadr City 04-25-2008 (AFP) & AP & 4.26.08 Associated Press Fierce overnight clashes between Mahdi Army fighters and US and Iraqi forces in east Baghdad’s Sadr City killed at least 11 people and wounded 45 others, a medical official told AFP on Friday. The medic from Sadr City said the dead included four old men, two women and a child.

The wounded included women and children, he added. At least 12 Iraqis were wounded Saturday in sporadic clashes in the sprawling slum district of Sadr City, a stronghold of al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia, officials said. No U.S. or Iraqi troop casualties were reported.

TROOP NEWS

THIS IS HOW BUSH BRINGS THE TROOPS HOME: BRING THEM ALL HOME NOW, ALIVE

The casket of Army Staff Sgt. Christopher M. Hake, 26, of Enid, Okla., April 8, 2008, at Arlington National Cemetery. Hake was killed March 23 by a roadside bomb in Baghdad. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

“I Am Tired Of The Bad Decisions Being Made By The U.S. Army Research, Development And

Engineering Command” The Army Combat Uniform is already a dead product. Any soldier who has tried to keep noise discipline with ACUs knows it is near impossible. When you need to get into a pocket or you rub against a tree you hear the loud ripping sound of the Velcro opening.

Letters To The Editor Army Times 4.21.08 I am tired of the bad decisions being made by the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command, Program Executive Officer Soldier and their staffs. I am calling on all soldiers to call their senators and congressmen and let them know that we are not getting the equipment we need and want. The Army is wasting money on insufficient equipment that it will need to scrap in the next five to 10 years. The Army Combat Uniform is already a dead product. Any soldier who has tried to keep noise discipline with ACUs knows it is near impossible. When you need to get into a pocket or you rub against a tree you hear the loud ripping sound of the Velcro opening. Should I even say anything about the color or pattern? All-purpose in what environment? I guess if we invade the moon we will be able to blend in. I don’t understand how ACU beat out Multicam. On the issue over the M4 and M16, the Army needs to appoint a team of officers and noncommissioned officers who have been to combat in the last decade and have an idea of what the Army needs to replace this 40-year-old technology. I will give some great ideas: the Heckler & Koch 416, SIG 556, FNH (SCAR), Magpul Masada, and Patriot Ordnance Factory P308 or P415. I read that the infantry branch and Program Executive Office Soldier could not agree on the future rifle for the Army. It makes me wonder if it was because PEO Soldier had the wrong idea of what was really needed in the field. It angers me when I hear the Army has decided to spend another $300 million on a weapon system that in most people’s eyes is due to retire. Maybe I am naïve, but if you gave me the above weapons, I would have an answer for a new replacement in 90 days. I would be able to put each weapon through the most extreme conditions possible and shoot enough rounds to melt the barrels. I think we rely on lab studies too much.

Put me in Antarctica, the Kuwait desert and a Florida swamp for a month and you will get some good field tests. I ask everyone, please let’s make this a top priority and stop ignoring the problem. Look what they have done to the Asymmetric Warfare Group by taking away their H&K 416s. I know there are many soldiers like myself who keep waiting for the brass to fight it out. If we don’t speak up now and let our voices be heard, only God knows how long this battle will go on and how many millions will be wasted. Staff Sgt. Christopher R. Tallant Fort Bragg, N.C.

Picatinny Arsenal Shells New Jersey Citizen’s Bed; Family Cat KIA

April 28, 2008 Army Times The Army is suspending outdoor weapons testing at a New Jersey base after a wayward artillery shell fragment crashed through the roof of a home miles away, fatally injuring a pet cat, the base’s commanding officer said April 12. Picatinny Arsenal officials will investigate how a 2-pound piece of artillery fired from the base ended up crashing through the roof of a Jefferson Township home the afternoon of April 11, Brig. Gen. William N. Phillips said in a statement. The hot metal landed on a bed, and the family cat was injured. The cat was later euthanized. Phillips said he visited the home that night and apologized.

IRAQ RESISTANCE ROUNDUP

Resistance Action

4.26.08: Smoke from an exploded oil pipeline engulfs the southern city of Basra.

(AFP/Essam al-Sudani) April 25 (Reuters) & AP & April 26 (Reuters) Assailants on Friday killed an Iraqi journalist who had been working for a local radio station run by a political party that is the chief rival of nationalist Muqtada al-Sadr, the station and police said. Jassim al-Batat, 38, was killed by gunmen in a speeding car as he left his house in the town of Qurna in his own car, said Adnan al-Asadi, the head of the local al-Nakhil radio station based in the southern city of Basra. Qurna is 55 miles north of Basra. Al-Nakhil radio is run by the [pro-occupation] Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council. Its leader Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim has sided with the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki [and the U.S. occupation command in Baghdad] since Iraqi security forces launched a crackdown on the nationalist Mahdi Army militia in Basra a month ago.

********************************************* 10 guards were wounded in a blast and fire on Friday at a fuel pipeline near Iskandariya, south of Baghdad. An Iraqi police officer in Babil province said the pipeline had been bombed in an attack near the town of Musayyib, south of Baghdad. A roadside bomb killed two members of U.S.-backed neighbourhood patrols in southern Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, police said. Guerrillas shot dead a policeman in western Mosul, police said. A bomb implanted beneath a Friday prayers preacher’s seat exploded in al-Raqeeb mosque in al-Julan area, northwestern Falluja, 50km (30 miles) west of Baghdad, wounding two policemen, police said. A fuel tanker driven by a bomber wounded 15 when it blew up at military base in Mosul, police said.

A home-made bomb struck a police patrol in central Tikrit on Friday night, wounding four policemen, police said. A road sidebomb struck an Iraqi army checkpoint in the al-Slaikh neighbourhood of northern Baghdad, injuring three soldiers, police said. A car bomber struck a U.S.-backed neighbourhood patrol checkpoint in western Baghdad, killing two and wounding eight, including the head of the neighbourhood unit, police said. Insurgents wounded three traffic police when they opened random in al-Wathiq Square, central Baghdad, said police. Armed men attacked a police car on Friday in Hatra, south of Mosul, killing two policemen.

IF YOU DON’T LIKE THE RESISTANCE END THE OCCUPATION

FORWARD OBSERVATIONS “What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.” Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, 1787. “The mighty are only mighty because we are on our knees. Let us rise!” -- Camille Desmoulins “When someone says my son died fighting for his country, I say, “No, the suicide bomber who killed my son died fighting for his country.” -- Father of American Soldier Chase Beattie, KIA in Iraq One day while I was in a bunker in Vietnam, a sniper round went over my head. The person who fired that weapon was not a terrorist, a rebel, an extremist, or a so-called insurgent. The Vietnamese individual who tried to kill me was a citizen of Vietnam, who did not want me in his country. This truth escapes millions. Mike Hastie U.S. Army Medic Vietnam 1970-71 December 13, 2004

Winter Soldier II Investigation

From: Mike Hastie To: GI Special Sent: April 21, 2008 Subject: Winter Soldier II Investigation Winter Soldier II Investigation Silver Spring, Maryland March 13-16, 2008 I will restore to you the years which the swarming locust has eaten. Joel 2:25

Photo and caption from the I-R-A-Q (I Remember Another Quagmire) portfolio of Mike Hastie, US Army Medic, Vietnam 1970-71. (For more of his outstanding work, contact at: (hastiemike@earthlink.net) T)

NEED SOME TRUTH? CHECK OUT TRAVELING SOLDIER

Telling the truth - about the occupation or the criminals running the government in Washington - is the first reason for Traveling Soldier. But we want to do more than tell the truth; we want to report on the resistance - whether it’s in the streets of Baghdad, New York, or inside the armed forces.

Our goal is for Traveling Soldier to become the thread that ties working-class people inside the armed services together. We want this newsletter to be a weapon to help you organize resistance within the armed forces. If you like what you’ve read, we hope that you’ll join with us in building a network of active duty organizers. http://www.traveling-soldier.org/ And join with Iraq War vets in the call to end the occupation and bring our troops home now! (www.ivaw.org/)

A Different Kind Of Slavery; New Atlanta Museum Will Honor

Wealthy Citizens Who Used Water Boarding, Whipping, False Imprisonment, Forced Labor & Prisoner Murder To

Rebuild The City After The Civil War:

“Guards Had Recently Adopted For Punishment Of The Workers The ‘Water Cure,’ In Which Water Was Poured Into The Nostrils And

Lungs Of Prisoners” “Guards Holding Long Horse Whips

Struck Any Worker Who Slowed To A Walk Or Paused” “If You Ain’t Dead,

I Will Make You Dead If You Don’t Go To Work,” Shouted A Guard:

“Forced Workers In His Coal Mines Could Never Be Whipped Too Much”

A prisoner receives punishment in a Georgia labor camp around 1930.

On Sundays, white men came to the Chattahoochee brickyard to buy, sell and trade black men as they had livestock and, a generation earlier, slaves on the block. “They had them stood up in a row and walked around them and judged of them like you would a mule,” testified one former guard at the camp. A string of witnesses told the legislative committee that prisoners at the plant were fed rotting and rancid food, housed in barracks rife with insects, driven with whips into the hottest and most-intolerable areas of the plant, and continually required to work at a constant run in the heat of the ovens. March 29, 2008 By DOUGLAS A. BLACKMON, Wall St. Journal

At the center of a massive new real-estate development in Atlanta, an $18 million monument designed to honor 2,000 years of human achievement is nearing completion. When it opens this summer, a museum inside the Millennium Gate also will pay special tribute to the accomplishments and philanthropy of some of the founding families of modern Atlanta. Organizers say plans for the exhibit don’t include one overlooked aspect of two of the city’s post-Civil War leaders: the extensive use of thousands of forced black laborers. The builders of the 73-foot archway say the museum is too small to convey every aspect of the city’s founders and that it’s appropriate to focus on the positive aspects of these men. In this adaptation from his new book, “Slavery by Another Name,” Douglas A. Blackmon, Atlanta bureau chief of The Wall Street Journal, chronicles how companies owned by these two men used forced labor to help rebuild Atlanta -- a practice that was widespread through the South. Millions of bricks used to make the sidewalks and streets of Atlanta’s oldest neighborhoods -- many of them still in use today -- came from a factory owned by James W. English, the city’s former mayor, and operated almost entirely with black forced laborers. Many had been convicted of frivolous or manufactured crimes and then leased by the city to Mr. English’s company, Chattahoochee Brick Co. Between the Emancipation Proclamation and the beginning of World War II, millions of African-Americans were compelled into or lived under the shadow of the South’s new forms of coerced labor. Under laws enacted specifically to intimidate blacks, tens of thousands were arbitrarily detained, hit with high fines and charged with the costs of their arrests. With no means to pay such debts, prisoners were sold into coal mines, lumber camps, brickyards, railroad construction crews and plantations. Others were simply seized by southern landowners and pressed into years of involuntary servitude. At the turn of the 20th century, at least 3,464 African-American men and 130 women lived in forced labor camps in Georgia, according to a 1905 report by the federal Commissioner of Labor. Beginning in July 1908, a commission established by the Georgia Legislature convened a series of hearings into the state’s system of leasing prisoners to private contractors. Meeting early every day and late into the night to escape the city’s excruciating heat, the panel called more than 120 witnesses over three weeks to give testimony in the state Capitol’s regal Room No. 16.

Joel Hurt, who one guard said believed the forced workers in his coal mines could never be whipped too much, was also chairman of Atlanta’s Trust Company Bank. Leveraging his interests in real estate and mines worked by prisoners, Mr. Hurt was Atlanta’s most energetic deal maker and buyout artist.

Accounts of Brutalities Witness after witness -- ranging from former guards to legislators to freed slaves -- gave vivid accounts of the system’s brutalities. Wraithlike men infected with tuberculosis were left to die on the floor of a storage shed at a farm near Milledgeville. Laborers who attempted escape from the Muscogee Brick Co. were welded into ankle shackles with three-inch-long spikes turned inward -- to make it impossibly painful to run again. Guards everywhere were routinely drunk and physically abusive. Testimony described hellish conditions at Chattahoochee Brick and other operations owned by Mr. English, a luminary of the Atlanta elite and a man hardly anyone in the reviving city would have associated with human cruelty. But by 1908, Mr. English -- despite having never owned antebellum slaves -- was a man whose great wealth was inextricably tied to the enslavement of thousands of men. Born in 1837 near New Orleans and orphaned as a teenager, he served as a young man in the Confederate army, rising to become a captain in a prominent Georgia brigade. After the South’s defeat, he went to Atlanta to establish himself in the business and politics of the bustling new capital of southern commerce. He led a drive to make the city

the state capital of Georgia, cementing its foundation as an economic center. In 1880 he was elected mayor. Presiding from an elegant home, Mr. English, a portly man with a thick shock of white hair and a matching mustache, fostered a collection of enterprises that grew as Atlanta emerged from its Civil War ruin.

A prisoner is tied around a pickaxe for punishment in a Georgia labor camp in the early 1930s. Georgia had as many as 14 different labor camps at the beginning of the 20th century. The camps held men convicted on often-bogus charges, and then leased them to state and local officials to pay off fines or fulfill hard-labor sentences.

Chattahoochee Brick The base of his wealth, Chattahoochee Brick, relied on forced labor from its inception, in 1878, and by the early 1890s, more than 150 prisoners were employed in the wilting heat of its fires. By 1897, Mr. English’s enterprises controlled 1,206 of Georgia’s 2,881 convict laborers, engaged in brick making, cutting crossties, lumbering, railroad construction and making turpentine. Mr. English parlayed his industrial wealth to become one of the South’s most important financiers as well. In 1896, he founded Atlanta’s Fourth National Bank and became its first president.

Mr. English strenuously denied to the Georgia committee that any “act of cruelty” had ever been “committed upon a convict” under the control of himself or any member of his family. He insisted that he and his son were essentially absentee owners of the brick factory, having little to do with its daily operations. “If a warden in charge of those convicts ever committed an act of cruelty to them,” Mr. English said, “and it had come to my knowledge, I would have had him indicted and prosecuted.” Yet his testimony affirmed how Chattahoochee Brick -- like so many other Southern enterprises -- forced laborers to their absolute physical limits to extract modern levels of production using archaic manufacturing techniques. Once dried, the bricks were carried at a double-time pace by two dozen laborers running back and forth -- under almost continual lashing by Mr. English’s overseer, Capt. James T. Casey. Witnesses testified that guards holding long horse whips struck any worker who slowed to a walk or paused. By the end of the century, the forced laborers churned out 300,000 hot red rectangles of hardened clay every day. Millions were sold to the Atlanta City Council to pave streets and line the sidewalks of Atlanta’s flourishing new Victorian neighborhoods, according to company and city records. The prisoners of the brickyard produced nearly 33 million bricks in the 12 months ending in May 1907, generating sales of $239,402 -- or about $5.2 million today. Of that, the English family pocketed the equivalent of nearly $1.9 million in profit -- an almost-unimaginable sum at the time. A string of witnesses told the legislative committee that prisoners at the plant were fed rotting and rancid food, housed in barracks rife with insects, driven with whips into the hottest and most-intolerable areas of the plant, and continually required to work at a constant run in the heat of the ovens. On Sundays, white men came to the Chattahoochee brickyard to buy, sell and trade black men as they had livestock and, a generation earlier, slaves on the block. “They had them stood up in a row and walked around them and judged of them like you would a mule,” testified one former guard at the camp. Another guard told the committee that 200 to 300 floggings were administered each month. “They were whipping all the time. It would be hard to tell how many whippings they did a day,” testified Arthur W. Moore, a white former employee. A rare former convict who was white testified that after a black prisoner named Peter Harris said he couldn’t work because of a grossly infected hand, the camp doctor carved off the affected skin tissue with a surgeon’s knife and then ordered him back to work. Instead, Mr. Harris, his hand mangled and bleeding, collapsed after the procedure.

The camp boss ordered him dragged into the brickyard and whipped 25 times. “If you ain’t dead, I will make you dead if you don’t go to work,” shouted a guard. Mr. Harris was carried to a cotton field. He died lying between the rows of cotton. Similar testimony emerged from camps owned by Joel Hurt, the rich Atlanta real-estate developer and investor most remembered as the visionary behind the city’s earliest and most-elegant subdivisions. Mr. Hurt was also the founder of Atlanta’s Trust Company Bank -- the city’s other pre-eminent financial institution.

The ‘Water Cure’ In 1895, Mr. Hurt bought a group of bankrupt forced-labor mines and furnaces on Lookout Mountain, near the Tennessee state line. Guards there had recently adopted for punishment of the workers the “water cure,” in which water was poured into the nostrils and lungs of prisoners. (The technique, preferred because it allowed miners to “go to work right away” after punishment, became infamous in the 21st century as “waterboarding.”) An elderly black man named Ephraim Gaither testified during the state’s hearings as to the fate of a 16-year-old boy at a lumber camp owned by Mr. Hurt and operated by his son George Hurt. The teenager was serving three months of hard labor for an unspecified misdemeanor. “He was around the yard sorter playing and he started walking off,” Mr. Gaither recounted. “There was a young fellow, one of the bosses, up in a pine tree and he had his gun and shot at the little negro and shot this side of his face off,” Mr. Gaither said as he pointed to the left side of his face. The teenager ran into the woods and died. Days later, a dog appeared in the camp dragging the boy’s arm in its mouth, Mr. Gaither said. The homicide was never investigated. Called to testify before the commission, Mr. Hurt lounged in the witness chair, relaxed and unapologetic for any aspect of the sprawling businesses. Another witness before the commission, former chief warden Jake Moore, testified that no prison guard could ever “do enough whipping for Mr. Hurt.” “He wanted men whipped for singing and laughing,” Mr. Moore told the panel. In response to the revelations, Gov. Hoke Smith called a special session of the state Legislature, which authorized a public referendum on the fate of the system. In October 1908, Georgia’s nearly all-white electorate voted by a 2-to-1 margin to abolish the system as of March 1909. Without prison labor, business collapsed at Chattahoochee Brick. Production fell by nearly 50% in the next year. Total profit dwindled to less than $13,000.

The apparent demise of Georgia’s system of leasing prisoners seemed a harbinger of a new day. But the harsher reality of the South was that the new post-Civil War neoslavery was evolving -- not disappearing.

This abandoned convict “keep” at a lime quarry in Lee County, Ala., held forced workers at night. MORE:

The World War II Effect: “On The Eve Of World War II, Across The South, Many African-Americans

Were Still Toiling As Coerced Laborers”

“There Still Existed No Federal Statute That Made Holding Slaves A Punishable

Crime” March 29, 2008 By DOUGLAS A. BLACKMON, Wall St. Journal

On the eve of World War II, across the South, many African-Americans were still toiling as coerced laborers. Though states such as Georgia and Alabama no longer were leasing convicts to corporations, thousands of men still were forced to work for private enterprises. But now, the practice was mainly carried out through informal arrangements with city and county courts. Abusive sharecropping arrangements and the peonage system -- which allowed farmers to use bogus debts and the threat of violence to keep workers on their land indefinitely -- hung over millions of African-Americans. Federal investigations into peonage, also known as debt slavery, were rare and ineffective. Although the antebellum version of slavery had been unconstitutional for decades, there still existed no federal statute that made holding slaves a punishable crime. On Oct. 13, 1941, a man named Charles E. Bledsoe pleaded guilty in Alabama federal court to peonage. Mr. Bledsoe didn’t resist the charge and trusted that officials wouldn’t deal harshly with a white. He was correct. His penalty was a fine of $100 and six months of probation. Less than two months later, Imperial Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Caught unprepared for war, U.S. officials frantically planned for a massive national mobilization and a crash propaganda effort. President Franklin D. Roosevelt expressed to advisors his worry that the mistreatment of blacks would be used in propaganda by Japan and Germany to undercut support for the war by African-Americans. Attorney General Francis Biddle shared the president’s concerns with his top assistants. Mr. Biddle was informed that federal policy had long been to cede virtually all allegations of slavery to local jurisdiction -- effectively guaranteeing they would never be prosecuted. Mr. Biddle, who hailed from an elite Northern family in Philadelphia, was shocked. Mr. Biddle said that in an all-out war, in which millions of African-Americans would be called upon to serve, the U.S. government needed to take a stand: Those who continued to practice any form of slavery, in violation of 1865’s Thirteenth Amendment, had to be prosecuted as criminals. Five days after the Japanese attack, on Dec. 12, 1941, Mr. Biddle issued a directive -- Circular No. 3591 -- to all federal prosecutors acknowledging the history of unwritten federal policy to ignore most reports of involuntary servitude. He wrote: “It is the purpose of these instructions to direct the attention of the United States Attorneys to the possibilities of successful prosecutions stemming from alleged peonage complaints which have heretofore been considered inadequate to invoke federal prosecution.”

The Justice Department recently had formed its Civil Rights Section, created primarily to investigate cases related to anti-organized-labor efforts. It began shifting its focus to discrimination and racial abuse -- issues more commonly associated with the term “civil rights” today. Mr. Biddle wrote: “In the United States one cannot sell himself as a peon or slave -- the law is fixed and established to protect the weak-minded, the poor, the miserable. ...Any such sale or contract is positively null and void and the procuring and causing of such contract to be made violates [the] statutes.” He ordered all Department of Justice investigators to entirely drop reference to peonage in their written reports. Instead, they were to label every file “Involuntary Servitude and Slavery.” In August 1942, a letter from a 16-year-old black boy arrived at the Department of Justice alleging that Charles Bledsoe -- the Alabama man who had received a $100 fine for peonage -- still was holding members of the teen’s family against their will. Despite Mr. Biddle’s strong directive, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover initially saw no need to pursue the matter. The U.S. attorney in Mobile, Ala., Francis H. Inge, was similarly uninterested. “No active investigation will be instituted,” Mr. Hoover wrote to Assistant Attorney General Wendell Berge. But seven months into World War II, with the nation anxious to mobilize every possible soldier and counter every thrust of Japan’s and Germany’s propaganda machines, Mr. Berge directed Mr. Hoover to look further. “In accordance with the request of the Attorney General that we expedite cases related to Negro victims, it will be appreciated if this matter is given preference,” Mr. Berge wrote in a terse letter ordering Mr. Inge into action. “Enemy propagandists have used similar episodes in international broadcasts to the colored race, saying that the democracies are insincere and that the enemy is their friend,” Mr. Berge continued. “There have been received from the President an instruction that lynching complaints shall be investigated as soon as possible; that the results of the investigation be made public in all instances, and the persons responsible for such lawless acts vigorously prosecuted. The Attorney General has requested that we expedite other cases related to Negro victims. Accordingly, you are requested to give the matter your immediate attention.” Mr. Biddle’s civil-rights lawyers began to reassess the legal breadth of the constitutional amendments ending slavery, the Reconstruction-era statutes passed to enforce them and other largely forgotten laws, such as the antebellum Slave Kidnapping Act. That pre-Civil War measure made it illegal to capture or hold forced laborers in U.S. territory where slavery was prohibited. As World War II progressed, the Department of Justice vigorously prosecuted U.S. Sugar Co. in Florida for forcing black men into its sugarcane fields. Sheriffs who colluded with the company were brought to trial.

Early in September 1942, a team of FBI agents, highway patrolmen and deputies descended on a remote farm near Beeville, Texas. There they arrested a white farmer, Alex Skrobarcek, and his adult daughter, Susie Skrobarcek. The two initially were charged in a state court with maiming a mentally retarded black worker named Alfred Irving. But a month later, lawyers at the Department of Justice drew a federal indictment alleging that the pair had held Mr. Irving in slavery for at least four years. They were accused of repeatedly beating the man with whips, chains and ropes -- so much so that he was physically disfigured from the abuse. Signaling the significance of the case, a special assistant to Mr. Biddle actively participated in prosecuting the trial. The defendants were found guilty and sentenced to prison. Federal officials made clear that the case was intended to send a message: The U.S. government was finally serious about ending involuntary servitude. “The Skrobarczyk trial and its conclusion undoubtedly will be said...to have given a decisive setback to the enemy propaganda machine...urging...negroes that their proper place in this conflict is with the yellow race,” editorialized the Corpus Christi Times. Two years later, President Truman’s Committee on Civil Rights recommended bolstering the antislavery statute to plainly criminalize involuntary servitude. In 1948, the entire federal criminal code was dramatically rewritten, further clarifying such laws.

Troops Invited:

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OCCUPATION REPORT

The Great Iraqi Troop Training Fiasco Rolls On:

“The Actual Number Of Present-For-Duty Soldiers Was About One-Half To Two-

Thirds Of Those Being Paid” April 25, 2008 The Associated Press [Excerpts] [T]here are no reliable numbers on how many Iraqi forces are on the job at any given time, says the report being made public Friday by Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. Bowen had been asked to assess last month’s Defense Department report on Iraq, one in a series of quarterly documents required by Congress to measure progress toward military and political security there. He did not give any details on how many might be receiving pay while being absent, but noted the Pentagon once reported the actual number of present-for-duty soldiers was about one-half to two-thirds of those being paid. Bowen said that for his report, commanders in charge of the training gave him an updated figure, saying early this month 70 percent of soldiers on Iraq’s Army payroll may be present for duty on any given day. He also noted that Iraqis have a shortage of officers and still rely on coalition forces for substantial logistical support -- two common themes also previously acknowledged by commanders in the field.

Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., who requested the report, said he found it “bizarre” that a Defense Department assessment as recently as September showed that Iraqis only estimated a need for 390,000 security forces -- a number that jumped by March to nearly 573,000

OCCUPATION ISN’T LIBERATION BRING ALL THE TROOPS HOME NOW!

U.S. Embassy Staff Unprotected Against Indirect Fire

Apr 25 By BRADLEY BROOKS, Associated Press Writer [Excerpts] The new U.S. Embassy complex does not have enough fortified living quarters for hundreds of diplomats and other workers, who must remain temporarily in trailers without special rooftop protection against mortars and rockets, government officials have told The Associated Press. Sorting out the housing crunch and funding could further delay moving all personnel into the compound until next year and exposes shortcomings in the planning for America’s more than $700 million diplomatic hub in Iraq. More than a dozen people have been killed in the Green Zone in the latest waves of attacks, including a U.S. civilian government worker whose housing trailer was hit. Staffers also were ordered not to sleep in their trailers, and hundreds of cots were placed inside the current embassy — a former Saddam Hussein palace. But there is not enough blast-resistant housing at the new site for “hundreds” of embassy workers, said Patrick Kennedy, undersecretary of state for management. One reason is because staffing levels are more than double than projected in 2005 when the compound was being designed. The precise figure for the looming housing shortfall was not disclosed. Currently, the trailers behind the embassy hold more than 1,000 people including diplomats, embassy employees, translators, civilian support staff and others. That means a significant portion of embassy personnel will remain in the trailers behind the former Saddam palace. Some trailers have sandbags, but no strengthened roof coverings that are common at the embassies of other nations and the villas of many private companies. A senior State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the trailers at the palace will receive some “enhanced protection” but that it would not include overhead shielding.

The official, who was not authorized to speak to journalists, would not provide more details. It’s left some embassy staffers bitter.

DANGER: POLITICIANS AT WORK

CLASS WAR REPORTS

How It Is: “Capitalist Courts Never Have Done, And Never Will Do, Anything For The Working

Class.” – Eugene V. Debs

4.26.08: New Yorkers march on Queens Blvd after the three detectives in the shooting death of Sean Bell were found not guilty in New York City, April 25, 2008. (Joshua Lott/Reuters)

A woman holds a sign after the verdict in the Sean Bell case was announced near the Queens County Criminal Courts Building, April 25, 2008, Queens, New York. Three detectives were acquitted of all charges Friday in the 50-shot killing of an unarmed man on his wedding day after a trial that that put the NYPD at the center of another highly charged case involving allegations of excessive firepower. (AP Photo/Jason DeCrow) [Thanks to Pham Binh, Traveling Soldier & Military Project, for the quote and heads up on the verdict.]

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William Hardgraves, 48, an electrician from Harlem, brought his 12-year-old son and 23-year-old daughter to hear the verdict. “I hoped it would be different this time. They shot him 50 times,” Hardgraves said. “But of course, it wasn’t.” TOM HAYS, Associated Press Writer, 4.25.08

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