Of the new Governing Council (of about 18 members) announced with great fanfare by the Americans today (the fifth attempt, if my memory is correct) he said: "It's ridiculous. I know of most of the members. Only three have any sort of administrative experience. The remainder are jokes." Then there was a clip of an American spokesman in Baghdad saying that the new Governing Council would have real powers -- for example, one member [with a 'ministerial' title I didn't catch] would be in charge of 27,000 security police in Baghdad. Dr Jawad responded to this by saying: "This is nonsense. No Iraqi will be given any such powers by the Americans."
------------
More snippets of news:
The insurance premium asked by British insurance companies for anybody who absolutely has to go to Iraq for any reason is between US$6,000 and US$9,000 per month.
The Ministry of Defence are finding it impossible to recruit 200 senior British police officers to go to Iraq to train Iraqis in British police methods despite financial inducements [though I don't know how much].
The Ministry of Defence are offering US$1,500 a day to doctors to go to Iraq. [The British army units in Basra must obviously find themselves with little or no medical staff at the present time. Amazingly, a unit of the Medical Corps was withdrawn from Basra about 6 weeks after the occupation. Considering that British soldiers are being shot at about every three days then there is something very strange about all this. What is interesting, and possibly very significant, is that, as far as I'm aware -- and I watch the news on BBC and Channel 4 quite frequently -- no British soldier or officer has given an interview for several weeks past. There were plenty of interviews that I can recall while the occupation was taking place, but none since. I would guess there is something approaching total demoralisation among British troops in Basra.]
Keith Hudson, 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
_______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
