Million worker march

[joanna bujes]

(It's happening Reg, it's happening!!!)

Joanna

From: "dmacdonald94591" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Sat, 27 Mar 2004 00:42:41 -
Subject: million worker march
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Please Join Us in a Million Worker March

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union, Local 10, recently
passed a resolution proposing a million worker march on Washington
in 2004.  Mid October has been chosen for the march with an exact
date to be determined in the coming weeks. This mobilization is
being proposed in response to the attacks upon working families in
America and the millions of jobs lost during the Bush administration
and with the complicity of Congress.  The working class has not
suffered such hardships since the Great Depression.
We are encouraging everyone to have the attached resolution adopted
by your membership or organization.  We are also asking that your
organization start a Million Workers March Committee to mobilize
organized/unorganized labor and our community and religious allies
in your area, ultimately merging with a National Committee to be
formed at a later date. Finally, we are asking for a financial
contribution from your organization to be sent to the address below
until a national Committee is created.
The Bush Administration and Congress's focus of placing the
acquisition of capital and the quest for profits above the needs of
working people is undermining the economic security of working
people and the nation as a whole.
Now is the time for organized/unorganized labor, the interfaith and
community organizations to show solidarity and demand that all
elected officials address the needs of working people.  As working
class people, we know more than any others the difficulties and
limitations we face both in our communities and workplaces. We shall
therefore be representing ourselves during this march, independent
from all politicians, while putting forward to the entire country,
our program for the betterment of America's majority working
population.
While we are in the early stages of planning this action, we are
urging organizations to join us in making this march a reality.  We
need you and your organizations help.  The crises we face is
severe.  By mobilizing and uniting organized and unorganized labor
with our community and religious allies we will be able to more
effectively stop the attack on working people and improve our living
and working conditions


Please contact:

MILLION WORKER MARCH COMMITTEE
ILWU, Local 10
400 North Point
San Francisco, CA 94133
(415) 441-0610
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RESOLUTION PROPOSING A MILLION WORKER MARCH ON WASHINGTON DC

Whereas:  Our ancestors fought tirelessly in this country for the
right to organize unions and ensure that our government recognized
this right because it is a cornerstone of democracy, and
Whereas: that because of unions and solidarity among working people
we have been able to win basic human rights, including employer paid
healthcare, social security and retirement benefits, safe working
conditions, decent hours and wages, education for our children,
social services for the disadvantaged, civil liberties, and most
important the right to political influence over our nations foreign
and domestic policies, and
Whereas:  Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his State of the Union address
in 1944 acknowledged our rights, saying, " We have come to the
realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist
without economic security and independence.  Necessitous men are not
free men.  People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of
which dictatorships are made." And
Whereas: the current administration with the complicity of Congress,
has cooperated with big business in attacking our rights, using
legislation such as the Patriot Acts I and II, denying the right of
hundreds of thousands of Federal employees to belong to unions and
bargain, forcing longshore workers to work under a Taft-Hartley Act
injunction and threats of Federal intervention, and
Whereas: the administration with the complicity of Congress has
negotiated trade agreements costing the jobs of hundreds of
thousands of US workers, calling this a move towards a healthy
economy, while promoting other economic policies, such as
privatization and deregulation, which have resulted in the loss of
over 3 million jobs since taking office, and
Whereas:  the administration with the complicity of Congress has
excused all these policies by using the terrible events of September
11 to label any opposition unpatriotic and a threat to national
security, has taken our country into an unjust war under the false
assertion that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, costing
the lives of hundreds of US service members and innocent Iraqi
civilians, and is whipping up fear and hysteria even further to try
and stampede the public into giving them another term in office,
Be it therefore resolved: that Local 10 of the ILWU calls on unions
and working people generally to go to 

Re: Milan Rai on UN occupation of Iraq

["Chris Doss"]

I believe I will get a yahoo account.

To answer the question, the issue is not Chechen independence per se, but what "Free 
Ichkeria" did with its independence and what it is believed it would do again given 
the chance; devolve into a militant Islamist failed gangster state specializing in 
banditry, a kidnap/slave trade industry, ethnic cleansing, and the depredation of its 
neighbors, up to and including armed invasion. That is unacceptable.

That said, tehre is one upside to the whole Chechnya nightmare, and that is that 
absolutely no one except crazed nationalists wants to secede from Russia. Nobody in 
Tatarstan, to say nothing of Dagestan, which was the main target of the hostage 
industry, wants to end up like Chechnya. Actually it's a miracle there hasn't been a 
Chechnya-Dagestan war. That would be very unpleasant. Kudos to the Dagestanis for 
restraining themselves.

A.Word.A.Day--bushwa

[Michael Pollak]

[Here's a word ripe for resurrection.  And what a doubly apt etymology.]

bushwa (BUSH-wa) noun, also bushwah

   Nonsense; bull.

[Of uncertain origin. Perhaps a mispronunciation of bourgeois.]

  "The tone of his (Antonin Scalia's) remarks suggested that the court had
   never before moved social policy along by taking into account changing
   social mores. Which is, alas, bushwa."
   Jon Carroll; His Kingdom For Two More Votes; San Francisco Chronicle;
   Jun 25, 2002.

Permalink: http://wordsmith.org/words/bushwa.html

Pronunciation:
http://wordsmith.org/words/bushwa.wav
http://wordsmith.org/words/bushwa.ram

Send your comments to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send
a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "Subject:" line as "subscribe "
or "unsubscribe". Archives, FAQ, gift subscription form, bulletin board,
and more at http://wordsmith.org/awad/

Re: Milan Rai on UN occupation of Iraq

[Carrol Cox]

Sabri Oncu wrote:
>
>
> Here is one input from one of those from that part of
> the world, who is not terrified to speak his mind.
>
> Fuck you Americans!
>
> Get out of our part of the world!
>
> Immediately!
>

>From this morning's local (Bloomington, Il) newspaper (under the
headline: "U.S. Marines fight rebellion in Falujah"):

At the same time, he (Marine office) said, Marine civil officers are
scouting the city on how to spend a special $540 million outlay for
rebuilding projects in al Anbar province, which includes Fallujah.
But in Falujah, strung with black mourning banners for Friday's dead,
the residents were having none of it.
Residents angrily vowed revenge, saying Friday's casualties were caused
by Marine reprisals for an insurgent strike on a supply convoy that took
out a Humvee with a rocket-propelled grenade: "For each one who is
killed, we will get 10 American soldiers," saidd Abu Mujahid, 35,
taunting the fresh Marine forces as "cartoon characters."

"If they want Fallujah to be a battlefield, they are welcome here,"
said Abu Mujahid, who would only be identified by his nickname, which
means fighter's father. "Fallujah city will become a mass grave for Bush
and all the soldiers of the American military."**

I argued 14 years ago during the first Gulf War that after that criminal
u.s. aggression there were only two alternatives for the U.S.: an Iraq
ruled by a state hostile to the U.S. or an Iraq ruled by a U.S. army
under continuous and unending attack. It doesn't matter what are the
passive preferences of the Iraqi people: those two alternatives are
still the only alternatives.

The length of the u.s. occupation depends on the number of total
casualties the u.s. populace will accept. When casualties pass that
level, the u.s. will withdraw and the Iraqis will (probably with much
blood) struggle out their own concerns, which is as it should be.

Nothing the u.s. can do can bring about a smooth transition to a
peaceful Iraq. Such a transition (and it will not be smooth) can only
_begin_ after all non-Iraqi forces have withdrawn.

The function of the peace movement in the u.s. is to keep up constant
pressure on on our government to withdraw unconditionally.

I think we can do it. We don't have to "win" anything right away. We
simply have to survive as a movement, because conditions will never
improve in Iraq (as measured by u.s. casualties and the total u.s.
forces rquired).

Carrol

> Sabri

Re: Computer outsourcing to Russia.

["Chris Doss"]

Actually, Russia is a country in which per capita GDP can vary regionally by a factor 
of 20. I would estimate that incomes in Moscow are 3-5 times higher than the Russian 
average. In addition, all the shitwork in Moscow is done by non-Muscovites, often 
illegal immigrants from elsewhere in the fSU. One out of seven Tajik citizens is a 
gastarbeiter (the German term is used) in Russia, mostly in Moscow and Piter. Number 
of Armenians in Russia, largely immigrants post-1991: 1.8 million. Number of Armenians 
in Armenia: Less then 3 million. There is a large immigrant Chinese cheap labor force 
in the Far East and around Lake Baikal.

-Original Message-
From: "Chris Doss" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2004 11:46:03 +0400
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Computer outsourcing to Russia.

>
> Well, yeah. There's no comparing Moscow and say Yakutia. They're different worlds. 
> It's like comparing New York and Appalachia. Worse.

Re: Milan Rai on UN occupation of Iraq

[Louis Proyect]

Chris Doss wrote:
To answer the question, the issue is not Chechen independence per se,
but what "Free Ichkeria" did with its independence and what it is
believed it would do again given the chance; devolve into a militant
Islamist failed gangster state specializing in banditry, a kidnap/slave
trade industry, ethnic cleansing, and the depredation of its neighbors,
up to and including armed invasion. That is unacceptable.
Reply:
If it is unacceptable to you, then I would advise you not to live in any
such state, including Somalia, Afghanistan in the 1990s, etc. If you are
saying that Yeltsin or Putin had the right to make war on the Chechens,
clearly you are mistaken.
--

The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

Re: Milan Rai on UN occupation of Iraq

["Chris Doss"]

And Russia's reaction to being invaded (twice) should have been what? How should 
Russia react to thousand of its citizens being kidnapped and tortured? What should the 
Dagestani reaction be to attempts to force it to become a medieval Islamist state?

>
> Reply:
> If it is unacceptable to you, then I would advise you not to live in any
> such state, including Somalia, Afghanistan in the 1990s, etc. If you are
> saying that Yeltsin or Putin had the right to make war on the Chechens,
> clearly you are mistaken.
>
> --
>
> The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
>

Re: Milan Rai on UN occupation of Iraq

["Chris Doss"]

-Original Message-
From: Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2004 09:10:24 -0500

I should probably clarify that the First and Second Chechen Wars are completely 
different matters. The first was a bone-headed move by Yeltsin against a national 
liberation struggle. The second was a Russian reaction to a crisis on its southern 
border.

The issue is not life _in_ Chechnya. The issue is what happened to the people _around_ 
Chechnya. Somehow, these people barely seem to exist in Western commentary. Slave 
trade? What slave trade? 2,000 mujaheedin slaughtering Dagestani civilians? Never 
happened!

>
> Reply:
> If it is unacceptable to you, then I would advise you not to live in any
> such state, including Somalia, Afghanistan in the 1990s, etc. If you are
> saying that Yeltsin or Putin had the right to make war on the Chechens,
> clearly you are mistaken.
>
> --
>
> The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
>

Polish farmers face ruin under EU ( not Comecon)

[Charles Brown]

From: Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

NY Times, March 27, 2004

After May 1, East Europe's 'Haves' May Have More

By ALAN COWELL
SYTNA GORA, Poland

-clip-

As Europe expands in a quest for prosperity and elusive unity, many among
its new members in the East fear that hundreds of thousands of people may be
left behind in a new underclass, throwbacks to the lost era of command
economies and state control.

^
CB: No "underclass" during socialist years , no ? This is false.

FT: Spanish government lied from the very beginning

[Michael Pollak]

[The FT also ran a longer and more detailed article on the same day, from
which I just want to cull the following paragraph, which emphasizes that
they suspected it was ETA from literally the very first moment they
arrived on the scene:]

["After 30 years in the front line of the battel against Eta, Spanish
police are able to distinguish different kinds of bombs by the stench they
leave behind.  The acrid pall that hung over Atocha pointed to plastic
explosives rather than the stale dynamite Eta usually steals from silos in
France."]

[And yet, as the article makes clear, the Aznar govt. had the gall to
claim repeatedly that it was precisely the type of explosive that made
them so sure it was ETA]

EUROPE & ASIA-PACIFIC: Aznar government 'ignored evidence'

By Leslie Crawford in Madrid and George Parker in Brussels

Financial Times; Mar 26, 2004

The Spanish government tried hard to persuade voters that the Madrid bombs
were the work of Basque separatists long after evidence emerged that the
attacks were far more likely to have been carried out by Islamist
terrorists.

Spanish police and firemen involved in the rescue told the Financial Times
they knew immediately that the explosives used on the commuter trains were
not the kind usually deployed by Eta, the violent separatists, because of
the force of the explosion, the damage done and the smell of the
explosives. "If this was Eta, it was working in a very different way," one
fire brigade officer said.

José María Aznar's government, with an election three days later, cited
the type of explosives used as its reason for blaming Eta when it briefed
its European allies and the United Nations on March 11, the day of the
bombings. Ana Palacio, foreign minister, instructed Spain's ambassadors at
5.28pm that day to "use every occasion to confirm the authorship of Eta".

That afternoon, Eta denied it was behind the attacks, which killed 190
people and injured 1,400, and an Islamic "brigade" claiming to be part of
al-Qaeda said in the evening that it was responsible. That afternoon,
Spanish police found a stolen van containing detonators, traces of
explosives and a tape of Koranic verses.

Even after this, the government insisted Eta was the prime suspect. Mr
Aznar personally called newspaper editors that night to insist on Eta's
responsibility.

"By early Friday [March 12], the analysis provided by Angel Acebes
[interior minister] did not correspond to the facts," says José Manuel
Sánchez, leader of the Sindicato Unificado de Policía, the main police
trade union.

German police said Spain might have put European security at risk by
insisting the attack was the work of home grown terrorists rather than an
external threat. The German government has been particularly critical of
the delay and "lack of clarity" provided by Spain after the attacks.

Mr Aznar, whose chosen successor lost the election, strongly denies his
government misled voters or withheld information. He says it opened a new
line of investigation into Islamic terrorism as soon the stolen van was
found. Police arrested three Moroccans and two Indians two days after the
bombings on suspicion of having aided the attacks. Several Moroccans
arrested in Spain on Wednesday were based near Frankfurt, Germany,
according to a report yesterday on German broadcaster Ntv. Five more
suspects were arrested yesterday, bringing the number in custody to 18.

Last night Mr Aznar, who will hand over to socialist leader José Luis
Rodríguez Zapatero next month, joined European leaders for a summit in
Brussels to map out the EU's response to the terrorist threat.

They announced the appointment of Gijs de Vries, a prominent Dutch
politician, as Europe's first counter-terrorism chief, tasked with
co-ordinating the different security measures taken by member states.

The fear that terrorists might seek to influence elections elsewhere was
raised last night by Robert Mueller, director of the US Federal Bureau of
Investigation.

"In the wake of what happened in Madrid we have to be concerned about the
possibility of terrorists attempting to influence elections in the United
States by committing a terrorist act," he told the Associated Press.

Re: Milan Rai on UN occupation of Iraq

[Louis Proyect]

Chris Doss wrote:
And Russia's reaction to being invaded (twice) should have been what?
How should Russia react to thousand of its citizens being kidnapped and
tortured? What should the Dagestani reaction be to attempts to force it
to become a medieval Islamist state?
Reply:
The Chechens invaded Russia?
After the Soviet Union collapsed, 14 regions become independent nations.
After Dzhokhar Dudayev was elected president of Chechnya, he declared
independence. But Boris Yeltsin refused to accept this and sent in
troops. After Chechen rebels drove off the Russian troops, a full-scale
invasion was mounted in 1994. These are the facts. As far as Dagestan is
concerned, Russia believes that it has the right to intervene against
Islamic radical rebels there as well. I think it has about as much right
as Turkey has to do so in Kurdestan. The Caucasus wars is fundamentally
over control of oil nothing to do with fighting medievalism. If Putin
was seriously opposed to terrorism and lawlessness, he'd had taken a
stand against NATO's war in the Balkans and the occupation of Iraq.
Times-Picayune (New Orleans, LA)
April 22, 1996 Monday, THIRD
CLINTON LIKENS CHECHNYA BATTLE TO U.S. CIVIL WAR

By MARCIA KUNSTEL and JOSEPH ALBRIGHT Cox News Service

DATELINE: MOSCOW

Handing Russian President Boris Yeltsin a prop for his troubled
re-election bid Sunday, President Clinton likened the savage, unpopular
war in Chechnya to the American Civil War, and promised to use his
influence to help end it.
As both leaders prepare to face their voters this year, they denied
after five hours of Kremlin summit talks that there was any political
motivation behind the high-sheen gloss they laid over their disagreements.
Winding up his third visit to Moscow as president, Clinton said he
agreed "to do a thing or two" that Yeltsin asked to help secure a
diplomatic end to 16 months of hostilities in Chechnya.
Clinton plans to urge Muslim leaders, especially King Hassan of Morocco,
to act as intermediaries and bring Muslims of the secessionist Chechen
Republic into a peace agreement with Moscow, an administration official
explained later.
But the American side also gave Russia a green light to keep troops in
Chechnya, Yeltsin said. Drawing no correction from Clinton at a joint
news conference, Yeltsin said the United States agreed to let Russia
"temporarily" deploy more troops in the war-torn Caucasus region than
permitted under the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty.
That pact limits troops and heavy weapons from the Atlantic to the Urals.
"I would remind you that we once had a civil war in our country in which
we lost on a per-capita basis far more people than we lost in any of the
wars of the 20th century over the proposition that Abraham Lincoln gave
his life for - that no state had a right to withdraw from our union,"
Clinton said sympathetically.


--

The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

Re: Milan Rai on UN occupation of Iraq

[dmschanoes]

Let's be clear, the determinants of policy, and anti-policy, are not
polls imaginary or real that are conducted by pollsters.  What somebody
says a sample of the Iraqi people want or wanted had nothing to do with
the invasion by the United States. What somebody now says the Iraqi
people want has nothing to do with the determinants of future actions by
the occupier.

 The occupation is not governed by polls, no more than anybody took a
poll about "shock and awe."

Moreover neither the invasion nor the resistance have anything to do
with national liberation and self-determination.  National liberation
has certain fundamental economic precipitants regarding land,
industrialization, access to labor, articulated or not, and none of
those are at issue in either the struggle for or against the US
occupation.

This war was precipitated by capital's need to destroy parts of the
productive apparatus and maintain a high price for oil.  In fact, if you
look at the rise and fall and rise in the price of oil from 2001-2003,
the war drums start and increase their pounding exactly when the price
dips.

The current increase in oil prices is the exact analogy of the increase
in stock prices, and telecoms in particular, right before the shock and
awe of the collapse in the second half of 2000.

Supporting national liberation, or a "self-determination" devoid of a
specific class content of that determination, i.e. a program that
includes expropriation of the privatized, now and future, means of
production, is ultimately meaningless.

  Polls are simply ideological justifications for existing conditions.

Re: Milan Rai on UN occupation of Iraq

[Louis Proyect]

dmschanoes wrote:
Supporting national liberation, or a "self-determination" devoid of a
specific class content of that determination, i.e. a program that
includes expropriation of the privatized, now and future, means of
production, is ultimately meaningless.
Not really. The Comintern backed the Kuomintang in its struggle for
national liberation even though it was a bourgeois-led movement. Nor did
it require such litmus tests for the Irish or any other nation suffering
from direct or indirect colonial rule. If the choice is between US
corporate control of Iraqi oil and bourgeois nationalist control, we
support the latter.
--

The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

Re: Milan Rai on UN occupation of Iraq

[Doug Henwood]

dmschanoes wrote:

his war was precipitated by capital's need to destroy parts of the
productive apparatus and maintain a high price for oil.
I hear people say things like this and I wonder how they know. How do
you know this? Documentary evidence, or do you just *know*?
Doug

Re: Milan Rai on UN occupation of Iraq

[dmschanoes]

The Caucasus wars is fundamentally
over control of oil nothing to do with fighting medievalism.
_

That much of what LP writes is almost correct. It is fundamentally over
control of the transport of oil, and for that reason alone the secession
of Chechnya, its welcoming of Islamic fundamentalists, is another aspect
of capital's attack on remnants of the Soviet Union, and should be
opposed.  Moreover, it is clear, from Afghanistan, and Iraq, Nigeria,
that Islamic reaction, ("medievalism" is not really a proper application
of the term, since during the medieval conflicts, those forces of
Islamic culture were surely more advanced, modern, enlightened than the
European medievalists), has carried capitalism's water in battling
workers' struggles.

dms

The Politics of Nature

[Louis Proyect]

Swans

Jeffrey St. Clair's The Politics of Nature
by Louis Proyect
Book Review
March 29, 2004
Jeffrey St. Clair, Been Brown So Long it Looked Like Green to Me:
The Politics of Nature, Common Courage Press, 2004; ISBN: 1-
56751-258-5 - 406 pages.
Comprised of over fifty-six articles, Jeffrey St. Clair's Been Brown So
Long it Looked Like Green to Me: The Politics of Nature amounts to
a virtual handbook for radical environmentalists. St. Clair has been
covering this beat for a number of years now, both in the pages of
Counterpunch that he co-edits with Alexander Cockburn and in other
venues.
Included in the Dedication are "the vanishing grizzlies of the Kootenai
country," a logical choice for a book so passionately committed to the
preservation of the animal and plant life that once covered the nation's
vast expanse. Although Lewis and Clark were obviously committed to
the economic system that would prove inimical to such life, it is
instructive to consult their journals to see how rich and varied this
ecosystem once was:
"We saw vast quantities of buffalo, elk, deer -- principally of the long-
tail kind-antelope or goats, beaver, geese, ducks, brant, and some
swan. Near the entrance of the river mentioned in the 10th course 2
Of this day, we saw an unusual number of porcupines, from which we
determined to call the river after that animal, and accordingly
denominated it Porcupine River. This stream discharges itself into the
Missouri on the starboard side, 2,000 miles above the mouth of the
latter. It is a beautiful bold, running stream, 40 yards wide at its
entrance. The water is transparent, it being the first of this description
that I have yet seen discharge itself into the Missouri."
--Meriwether Lewis, May 3, 1805
Many of St. Clair's articles are devoted to the preservation of such
wildlife, including the buffalo referred to above. These beasts, which
are the icon of all that has been lost with the wholesale
commodification of nature in the United States, were given this name
by the Europeans who viewed them as relatives of the Asian water
buffalo. In their prime, they numbered as many as fifty million and
were ideally suited to the ecology of the Great Plains and the needs of
the indigenous population.
In "The New Bison Killers," he calls attention to a senseless slaughter
that was permitted in the aftermath of a suit won by the State of
Montana and a bizarre survivalist cult led by Elizabeth Claire Prophet,
who claimed to be the reincarnation of Queen Guinevere and Marie
Antoinette. Her "Church Universal and Triumphant" maintains a huge
arsenal and cattle ranch near Yellowstone Park, one of the few places
in the USA where bison are permitted to roam free.
The suit claimed that bison wandering beyond park territory were
carrying the bacteria brucellosis, which can cause calves to abort.
When St. Clair wrote this article four years ago, nearly 1000 bison
had been shot that year to prevent the disease from spreading.
However, not only does a small percentage of the bison carry the
disease, there has never been a single documented case of brucellosis
transmission to cattle from bison. The bitter irony is that bison
originally became exposed to the disease by European cattle
introduced into their natural habitat in the 19th century.
The main reason bison were (and are) being killed is that they were
knocking down fences of cattle ranchers, including those of Elizabeth
Claire Prophet. This was the inevitable consequence of increased
travel beyond the park's boundaries. It appears that paths carved out
by increased snowmobile traffic made it easier for the bison to intrude
on ranchland. Of course, the park authorities would never dream of
putting limits on snowmobiles since rich outsiders who owned
vacation homes, including Hollywood shlock-film star Stephen Seagal,
would resent such restrictions.
The people with the most invested in the bison both economically and
spiritually are the Lakotas, who park officials tried to bribe into silence
with free bison meat. Lakota elder Rosalee Little Thunder told the
authorities where to get off:
"Certainly people are facing hard times and any food is appreciated.
But our hunger does not justify the Yellowstone buffalo slaughter. The
buffalo is far more important to the natural world than what the wildlife
officials and the cattle ranchers are willing to see. The Lakota Nation
has suffered great harm from humanitarian gestures in the past. Now
we need not be fed the flesh of our own children."
If there is a tendency to see such assaults on nature as incidental (or
even necessary) to the good life enjoyed by the American consumer,
St. Clair makes a convincing case that "an injury to one is an injury to
all." Although the Industrial Workers of the World slogan referred to
working class radicals, it can also be applied to homo sapiens and the
wildlife that surrounds and sustains them. Alternatively, we must heed
Engels's warning in The Part played by Labour in the Transiti

Re: Milan Rai on UN occupation of Iraq

[dmschanoes]

Well, we know where the Comintern's support of the Kuomingtang took the
workers revolution, that's for sure.

And I believe you pose a false choice, in that no "bourgeois nationalist
control" of Iraqi oil, separate and apart from the domination, military
or market of Western capitalism is possible.  That's what the war itself
has shown, as if it hasn't been shown a hundred times before; in China,
India, Spain, Angola.

As for the Irish struggle, Connolly himself established exactly that
sort of litmus test-- in just those terms.


- Original Message -
From: "Louis Proyect" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, March 29, 2004 10:03 AM
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Milan Rai on UN occupation of Iraq


dmschanoes wrote:
>
> Supporting national liberation, or a "self-determination" devoid of a
> specific class content of that determination, i.e. a program that
> includes expropriation of the privatized, now and future, means of
> production, is ultimately meaningless.

Not really. The Comintern backed the Kuomintang in its struggle for
national liberation even though it was a bourgeois-led movement. Nor did
it require such litmus tests for the Irish or any other nation suffering
from direct or indirect colonial rule. If the choice is between US
corporate control of Iraqi oil and bourgeois nationalist control, we
support the latter.


--

The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

Re: Milan Rai on UN occupation of Iraq

[dmschanoes]

No I just don't know, I've actually studied the price of oil, rates of
return on investment, fixed asset growth in the industry for 30 years.
Here's a tip-- check the Baker Hughes rig counts going back to 1973, and
overlay it with prices and the industry rate of return to 2003.  Makes
for an interesting graph.

And you can always check the spot price of oil 2001-2003, and see how it
dips in 2002 just before the time Bush starts banging the (44 gallon)
drum.

dms
- Original Message -
From: "Doug Henwood" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, March 29, 2004 10:03 AM
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Milan Rai on UN occupation of Iraq


dmschanoes wrote:

>his war was precipitated by capital's need to destroy parts of the
>productive apparatus and maintain a high price for oil.

I hear people say things like this and I wonder how they know. How do
you know this? Documentary evidence, or do you just *know*?

Doug

Re: Milan Rai on UN occupation of Iraq

[Louis Proyect]

dmschanoes wrote:
Well, we know where the Comintern's support of the Kuomingtang took the
workers revolution, that's for sure.
Excuse me? The problem was not support for the KMT, but the failure of
the CP to maintain an independent presence, including a newspaper. Even
Trotsky backed the KMT, just as he would back Haile Selassie against
Italy or a Brazilian bourgeois nationalist against Great Britain.
And I believe you pose a false choice, in that no "bourgeois nationalist
control" of Iraqi oil, separate and apart from the domination, military
or market of Western capitalism is possible.  That's what the war itself
has shown, as if it hasn't been shown a hundred times before; in China,
India, Spain, Angola.
There was a big difference in Argentina before and after the overthrow
of Peron. Socialists take sides when a Peron or an Aristide opt for some
kind of development path even if it falls short of socialism.
As for the Irish struggle, Connolly himself established exactly that
sort of litmus test-- in just those terms.
Marx and Engels supported the cause of Irish independence long before
Marxists like Connolly were involved. They did not extract promises from
bourgeois nationalists that they would expropriate the expropriators.
--

The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

Re: Job flight

[Tom Walker]

"While there are no hard local numbers, about 300,000 jobs nationwide have
been lost since 2000, according to Forrester Research Inc."

Well, "while there are no hard numbers," about 10,000,000 jobs have been
lost in the U.S. due to excessive hours of work (compared to Europe).

Candidate Kerry says he'll create 10,000,000 jobs over 4 years by reducing
corporate tax rates. Well, the same number of jobs could be created over the
same time frame -- perhaps shorter -- by phasing in a reduction in the
average annual hours of work from around 1815 to a more leisurely 1550. The
rule of thumb is that about half of a reduction in hours per worker
translates into job creation and about half into productivity gains.

Imagine, though, the torrent of indignation, outrage and disdain that would
issue forth from editorial pages and mainstream economist if a Democratic
candidate had the temerity to make such a "ridiculous", "fallacious" and
"utterly frivolous" proposal*. The fact that the editorialists and
mainstreamers wouldn't know what they were talking about is beside the
point -- their ignorance would be unanimous and their unanimity would
surmount all uncertainty.

*Not to mention "unprecedented."

GOP 1932:
"We favor the principle of the shorter work week and the shorter work day
with its application to Government as well as to private employment, as
rapidly and as constructively as conditions will warrant."

DEM 1932:
"We advocate the spread of employment by a substantial reduction in the
hours of labor, the encouragement of the shorter week by applying that
principle in government service,


Tom Walker
604 255 4812

Re: Milan Rai on UN occupation of Iraq

["Chris Doss"]

After the Soviet Union collapsed, 14 regions become independent nations.
After Dzhokhar Dudayev was elected president of Chechnya, he declared
independence. But Boris Yeltsin refused to accept this and sent in
troops. After Chechen rebels drove off the Russian troops, a full-scale
invasion was mounted in 1994. These are the facts. As far as Dagestan is
concerned, Russia believes that it has the right to intervene against
Islamic radical rebels there as well.

--
Lord. Dagestan is PART of Russia. The Islamist radical rebels invaded Dagestan, TWICE, 
with the stated intent of establishing an Islamic state across the Caucasus. They were 
repelled by DAGESTANI POLICE AND CIVILIANS. 35,000 Dagestanis were displaced.

I don't think you know what the facts are, to be honest.

Re: Milan Rai on UN occupation of Iraq

[Louis Proyect]

Chris Doss wrote:  "Lord. Dagestan is PART of Russia."

That's what Ankara says about Kurdestan.

--

The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

Re: Milan Rai on UN occupation of Iraq

["Chris Doss"]

That's what Dagestan says about Dagestan.

Look, I can't believe I have to do this in 2004, but anyway...

Current History
October 2000
Through a Distorted Lens: Chechnya and the Western Media
By ANATOL LIEVEN
ANATOL LIEVEN is a senior associate in the Russia and Eurasia Center of the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He covered the 1994-1996
Chechen war as a correspondent for the London Times. His books include
Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University
Press, 1998).

---

CONFRONTING RADICAL ISLAM


The campaign of Khattab, Basayev, and their allies against Russia in 1998
and 1999 was carried out in the name of this radical Islamist ideology, as
a reading of their propaganda makes clear. The culmination of this campaign
was the invasion of Dagestan in August 1999, with the avowed intention of
overthrowing the republic's government and creating a united Islamic
republic of Chechnya and Dagestan. This was opposed by the great majority
of Dagestanis and would indeed have been a nightmare for that republic. Too
many supporters of the Chechens have tried to shrug off this invasion as a
minor affair. It was not. Quite apart from the number of casualties that
resulted from the invasion itself, Dagestan, with its 34 different
nationalities, rival religious groups, and unstable government, is a
fragile and delicately poised place. Chechen incursions have the potential
to upset this balance and plunge Dagestan into a more impoverished and
hopeless version of Lebanon during its ethnoreligious civil wars in the
1970s and 1980s. It cannot be stressed enough: even if you disapprove of
the Russian invasion of 1999, in initially resisting Basayev and Khattab
and their plans, Russia was, objectively speaking, serving the interests
not just of the region but of the West as well.


The governing council of the new state that the rebels planned to
establish-the Islamic Shura (council) of Dagestan-publicly declared
(including once again on the Internet, on the Kavkaz-Tsentr web site,
www.kavkaz.org) "the necessity of liberating the Islamic territory of
Daghestan from age-old occupation by Russian rebels," of introducing
shariah (Islamic law) across the republic, and of arresting the Dagestani
president "as a traitor to the cause of Muslims." The shura declared
Basayev amir (commander) of this jihad. Asked at the time why he had
crossed the border, Basayev told Lidove Noviny that, "Many Dagestani
political parties and movements are fighting for Dagestan's freedom
nowadays. Some of them have asked me to take up the command of the
Mujahidin United Armed Forces of Dagestan. This is no Chechen army. It is
an international corps comprising Chechens, Dagestanis, and other
nationals. . . . We shall always be pleased to fight the Russians and we
shall help anyone, in any way, who seeks freedom."


It is clear why Russia could not have tolerated Chechnya being used
indefinitely as a safe haven for such forces and as a potential base for
further attacks on Russia. For how long would the United States tolerate
such a situation in a neighboring state? It is also important to note that
the fighting in Dagestan was on a serious scale: 270 Russian servicemen
died there, considerably more than the United States lost in the Persian
Gulf War (165). If the government of Chechnya had failed to deal with
Basayev, Khattab, and their followers, then Russia-like any other
state-would have been justified in taking forceful action of its own. This
could have been accomplished by carrying out the plan drawn up by former
Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin to establish a Turkish- or Israeli-style
"security zone" in Chechnya north of the Terek River. Given the pro-Russian
traditions of the local population, and the open nature of the terrain,
this could have been carried out with minimal bloodshed. By contrast,
full-scale invasion should have been only the last resort. That the Kremlin
did so without adequately exploring other options undoubtedly has a great
deal to do both with Putin's electoral calculations and the desire of many
Russian generals for revenge against the Chechens.


The decision to invade should therefore be condemned. Before taking this
course, Moscow should have tried much harder to support Chechen President
Maskhadov with arms and money to help him establish his authority in the
republic and defeat Basayev, Khattab, and the other militants. Despite the
disappointment of many ordinary Chechens with Maskhadov's "weakness," my
interviews with Chechen refugees in December 1999 suggests that most
Chechens still respected him in principle as the country's legally elected
president; and in the end, any government in Chechnya-whether pro- or
anti-Russian-will only be able to create stability if it enjoys a measure
of legitimacy among a majority of the population.
Yet a country suffering Chechnya's conditions would have posed a severe
challenge to any neighboring organized state, and the great majority of
su

Re: Another classroom exercise

[Craven, Jim]

Title: Message



 

  While Michael is undoubtedly right, university administrations reward 
  those who do research and slight teaching.  But that is no excuse for 
  teachers to neglect their moral responsibility to teach properly and to serve 
  their students.  I think Jim was once a student of mine and I hope he 
  never felt that  I neglected the students for easier paths to money and 
  promotion.  And, if he wants to help his students, he can refer them to 
  my text "Inside Capitalism" where I have almost all of his key words in the 
  index, or at least discussed.;-)Paul Phillips 
   
  Actually I was never in one of Paul's classes but I never heard 
  from others that he had ever slighted students. I have not read his "Inside 
  Capitalism" but I will order it for sure. Generally speaking, at least in 
  graduate school, I had teachers who enjoyed teaching and who did not put "pop" 
  (publish or perish) above their teaching responsibilities; I generally lucked 
  out at least in my graduate studies.
   
  Jim 
  C.
    
   

Re: Milan Rai on UN occupation of Iraq

[Louis Proyect]

Chris Doss wrote:
It is clear why Russia could not have tolerated Chechnya being used
indefinitely as a safe haven for such forces and as a potential base for
further attacks on Russia. For how long would the United States tolerate
such a situation in a neighboring state?
This is exactly the excuse that Turkey gave when it attacked Kurds
inside Iraq. Modern states incorporating the most retrograde features of
the Czarist and Ottoman Empire should not receive such uncritical
support here. This is fundamentally about access to oil, not about
preserving secular values or fighting terrorism.
CONFLICT-CAUCASUS: Petrodollars Behind the Chechen Tragedy

By Sergei Blagov

MOSCOW, Dec 7 (IPS) - As the Russian army tightens its grip around the
Chechen capital of Grozny and Moscow becomes increasingly assertive,
analysts stress that manoeuvring over huge oil-transit deals is the
real issue of the Chechen war.
On Tuesday, Russian primer minister Vladimir Putin rejected politely,
but in unequivocal terms, the western criticism for Russia's ultimatum
Monday to Grozny's civilians - to leave the city  before Dec 11, or die
under artillery and air fire.
Human rights activists argue that thousands of elderly and ill
civilians trapped in Grozny face death in the coming days. The Russian
military dismiss the allegation, arguing that most of those left in the
city are Muslim rebels, using civilians as a human shield.
It has been often said that disputes over oil transit are behind the
tragedy in unruly Chechnya - seen as the biggest security threat in the
region.
Russia has been keen to use its Baku-Novorossiisk export route for
Azerbaijani ''early'' oil exports. But the pipe crosses over 153
kilometres of Chechen territory, which makes it unreliable as long as
the country is lawless.
"Early" oil is the first crude to be exported from three Azerbaijani
offshore fields being developed under a multi-billion-dollar project.
Larger quantities are expected to flow early next century from the
Caspian basin, considered to be one of the world's most important new
sources of fossil fuels.
At first the Russians tried to negotiate with the rebellious Chechens'
leaders. After a hard bargaining process, on September 9 1997 Russian
and Chechen officials signed an agreement to allow the Azerbaijani oil
travel through the separatist republic.
Under this agreement,Transneft, the Russian operator, agreed to pay a
43-cent fee per ton of oil, down from the 2.2 dollars initially
demanded by the Chechens. Russia also agreed to take care of
maintenance and security, but the flow was soon halted after armed
gangs began stealing large amounts of oil.
Then the Russians decided to build an alternative pipeline in Dagestan
- to bypass the Chechen section. But inroads by Chechen militants into
Dagestan last August showed that this option was unsafe too.
It was then that the second Chechen war commenced.

In addition, presumed terrorist threat is feared to hold up the
construction of a 1,600-kilometre link between the Tengiz oil field in
Kazakhstan and a Black Sea port near Novorossiisk, known as the Caspian
Pipeline Consortium (CPC).
The consortium - established back in 1992 by the governments of Russia,
Kazakhstan and Oman - is Russia's main hope to become the main agent in
moving Caspian oil, said Vladimir Stanev, Russia's deputy Fuel and
Energy minister.
In December 1996, 50 percent  of CPC's shares were sold to
international oil corporations, effectively turning the consortium into
the largest privately-financed oil infrastructure project in the former
Soviet states.
The project, worth 2.5 billion dollars, is expected to be completed by
June 30, 2001, CPC's director general Viktor Fedotov told IPS.
The 750-kilometre Russian section of the pipeline is expected to be
finished by the end of December 2000 with the first tanker scheduled to
leave in June next year.
The consortium plans to start pumping half-a-million barrels per day by
October 2001. Shareholders have invested some 700 million dollars
during 1999, and they plan to raise the figure up to 1.3 billion in
2000, Vagit Alekperov, head of Russia's LUKoil said.
Some 60 percent of the investment comes from the two largest private
shareholders - LUKoil and Chevron, he said.
On December 2, prime minister Putin met with Fedotov, Alekperov and
Chevron's president of international operations Richard Matzke,
promising the government's support  to the project.
Putin, nominated by ailing president Boris Yeltsin as his chosen
successor, is also widely seen as the mastermind of the military
campaign in Chechnya.
The CPC will be a great success, Matzke announced. ''My general
attitude is of complete satisfaction with it. CPC will bring wealth to
all participants,'' he told IPS.
''After meeting with Putin we are sure that we are going to honour our
commitments,'' Alekperov commented. ''We have a variety of exploration
projects in the Caspian and our oil will also go through this CPC
pipeline,'' he said.
LUKoil,

new frontiers of democracy

[Devine, James]

from MS SLATE:
>The NY [TIMES] off-leads and the LA [TIMES] goes above-the-fold with
the U.S.
occupation's decision to shut down a popular Iraqi newspaper run
by a radical Shiite cleric. According to the LAT,  troops gave
the newspaper's editor a letter from L. Paul Bremer that said the
paper had violated a law issued last year banning publications
from printing material that incites violence. Both papers front
large photos of the ensuing demonstration that saw between
hundreds (LAT) and thousands (NYT) of demonstrators gather
peacefully in front of the paper's padlocked offices. ...
"I guess this is the Bush edition of democracy," said an Iraqi freelance
journalist. <


Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine

Re: Milan Rai on UN occupation of Iraq

[Louis Proyect]

Chris Doss wrote:
I say: It is unreliable because the country is lawless. Now, why would
the country be lawless. I wonder if it might have something to do with
bands of Islamoid gunmen running around invading adjoining areas of
Russia and kidnapping people. Nah, couldn't be.
Reply: Well, we have differences obviously. I don't think that Putin has
any problem with lawlessness. He is all too happy to please the most
lawless regime in the world, namely the USA. I believe that Russia has
material interests in the Caucusus that are crucial to capital
accumulation. It uses all sorts of excuses about bandits and Islamic
radicalism to maintain control over profit-generating assets. In any
case, I believe that I have made this point in all the detail it
deserves so this will be my last post on the topic.
--

The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

Re: Milan Rai on UN occupation of Iraq

["Chris Doss"]

Blagov is usually quite good. I am surprised to see him get so monocausal.

Here, he writes:


It has been often said that disputes over oil transit are behind the
tragedy in unruly Chechnya - seen as the biggest security threat in the
region.

Russia has been keen to use its Baku-Novorossiisk export route for
Azerbaijani ''early'' oil exports. But the pipe crosses over 153
kilometres of Chechen territory, which makes it unreliable as long as
the country is lawless.

---
I say: It is unreliable because the country is lawless. Now, why would the country be 
lawless. I wonder if it might have something to do with bands of Islamoid gunmen 
running around invading adjoining areas of Russia and kidnapping people. Nah, couldn't 
be.

Indidentally, so many Dagestani relatives of people (Chechen warlord) Salman Raduyev 
killed or kidnapped had declared blood feuds on him and his clan that the Dagstani 
cops begged Moscow to try him anywhere else but Dagestan. The concern being that they 
would be overpowered and Raduyev beaten to death in the street. Chechnya and Dagestan 
are not exactly on chummy terms.

U.S.-Led Coalition Shuts Down Iraq Paper (Milan Rai on UN occupation of Iraq)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Since you clearly don't want to read the actual poll, let me supply
some highlights for you. These results don't sound like they're
coming from people too terrified to speak their minds.
Doug


Here is one input from one of those from that part of the world, who
is not terrified to speak his mind.
Fuck you Americans!

Get out of our part of the world!

Immediately!

Sabri
If you write something like that for a newspaper in Iraq, the
occupier will ban the newspaper, put it out of business, fine you and
arrest you and your colleagues.  Under such conditions, you can't
trust any Western opinion polls of Iraqis to reflect Iraqi opinions
accurately, for Iraqis can't speak their minds freely:
*   U.S.-Led Coalition Shuts Down Iraq Paper
By Bassem Mroue, Associated Press Writer
Published: March 29, 2004
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) The U.S.-led coalition on Sunday shut down a
weekly newspaper run by followers of a hardline Shiite Muslim cleric,
saying its articles were increasing the threat of violence against
occupation forces.
Hours after the closure of Al-Hawza, more than 1,000 supporters of
cleric Muqtada al-Sadr demonstrated peacefully in front of the
newspaper's offices, decrying what they called a crackdown on freedom
of expression.
Dozens of U.S. soldiers arrived at the Al-Hawza newspaper offices
Sunday morning and closed its doors with chains and locks, sheik
Abdel-Hadi Darraja said in front of the one-story house.
Darraja is a representative of al-Sadr, who lives in the southern
holy city of Najaf and has been an outspoken critic of the U.S.-led
occupation, but has not called for armed attacks.
A coalition letter in Arabic, signed by top U.S. administrator L.
Paul Bremer and handed to employees at the newspaper, said the
paper's articles "form a serious threat of violence against coalition
forces and Iraqi citizens who cooperate with coalition authorities in
rebuilding Iraq."
The paper will close for 60 days, the statement said.

A coalition spokesman confirmed the 60-day closure, saying several
articles "were designed to incite violence against coalition forces
and incite instability" in Iraq.
The spokesman, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said any
violation of the closure could lead to the imprisonment of newspaper
employees for up to one year and a fine of up to $1,000.
On Feb. 26, an article in Al-Hawza claimed that a suicide bombing two
weeks earlier that targeted the mostly Shiite town of Iskandariyah,
south of Baghdad, was a rocket "fired by an (American) Apache
helicopter and not a car bomb." The attack killed 53 people.
In the same edition an article was titled "Bremer follows the steps
of Saddam," and criticized coalition work in Iraq.
"This is what happens when an Iraqi journalist expresses his
opinion," said the white-turbaned Darraja.
"What is happening now is what used to happen during the days of
Saddam. No freedom of opinion. It is like the days of the Baath,"
said Hussam Abdel-Kadhim, 25, a vendor who took part in the
demonstration, referring to the Baath Party that ruled Iraq for 35
years until Saddam Hussein was ousted a year ago.
In July, the coalition announced the closure of a Baghdad newspaper
and the arrest of its office manager. The statement said
Al-Mustaqila, which means "The Independent" in Arabic, published an
article on July 13 calling for "death to all spies and those who
cooperate with the U.S." It said killing them was a religious duty.
Bassem Mroue, Associated Press Writer , Copyright 2004 Associated
Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

*
*Ban on a newspaper angers Iraqis
Jeffrey Gettleman NYT
Monday, March 29, 2004
BAGHDAD American soldiers shut down a popular Baghdad newspaper and
padlocked the doors after the occupation authorities accused it of
printing lies that incited violence.
Thousands of outraged Iraqis protested the closing on Sunday as an
act of American hypocrisy, laying bare the hostility many feel toward
the United States a year after the invasion that toppled Saddam
Hussein. "No, no, America!" and "Where is democracy now?" screamed
protesters who hoisted banners and shook clenched fists in a hastily
organized rally against the closing of the newspaper, Al Hawza, a
radical Shiite weekly. The rally drew thousands in central Baghdad,
where masses of angry Shiite men squared off against a line of
American soldiers who arrived to seal off the area. The protest ended
peacefully as night came. The closing of the paper reflected the
struggle by the American authorities to strike a balance between
their two main goals, encouraging democracy and maintaining
stability, as the days wind down to the June 30 target date for
handing sovereignty back to the Iraqi people.
But security seems increasingly elusive. On Sunday, the Iraqi public
works minister narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in Mosul in
whic

Job flight contest $$

[Eugene Coyle]

Thinking about job flight?  Here's your reward.

Gene Coyle



This year sees the fifth anniversary of the Shell Economist writing
prize competition, and we hope very much that you will consider
entering. The theme is 'Import workers or export jobs?'
  
  Points to consider
Should developing nations be allowed to 'poach' skilled professional
labour from countries who have helped pay for this expertise? Or is the
influx of immigrants, whether skilled or unskilled, a positive force,
bringing either expertise or ambition and hard work to the host nation?
  
The above is, of course, just a starting point. We're looking forward
to essays that touch on some or all of these questions and go further,
while providing a new, fresh perspective and real insight into the
issues involved.
  
  US$65,000 to be won
>From a total prize fund of US$65,000, the winner of the competition
will receive US$20,000, while the prizes for the second and third place
runners up are US$10,000 and US$5,000 respectively.
  
You can find all the details you need - such as maximum word count and
the closing date - on our Web site www.shelleconomistprize.com.
  
So, if you decide to rise to the challenge and enter the competition,
good luck. We look forward to receiving your essay.
  
Best regards,
Shell and The Economist

Diversion of resources

[Michael Pollak]

Headline on one of the front page articles in today's FT:

"Afghanistan in danger of reverting to terror breeding ground, warns UN"

and the pullout quote is:

"The report notes Iraq receives '10 times as much development assistance
with [a similar] population.'"

Michael

Re: U.S.-Led Coalition Shuts Down Iraq Paper (Milan Rai on UN occupation of Iraq)

[Doug Henwood]

Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:

Under such conditions, you can't
trust any Western opinion polls of Iraqis to reflect Iraqi opinions
accurately, for Iraqis can't speak their minds freely:
They don't seem shy about expressing their opinions to reporters for
foreign wire services or newspapers or even demonstrating in front of
U.S. troops:
U.S.-Led Coalition Shuts Down Iraq Paper
By Bassem Mroue, Associated Press Writer
Published: March 29, 2004

"This is what happens when an Iraqi journalist expresses his
opinion," said the white-turbaned Darraja.
"What is happening now is what used to happen during the days of
Saddam. No freedom of opinion. It is like the days of the Baath,"
said Hussam Abdel-Kadhim, 25, a vendor who took part in the
demonstration, referring to the Baath Party that ruled Iraq for 35
years until Saddam Hussein was ousted a year ago.



New York Times - March 29, 2004

G.I.'s Padlock Baghdad Paper Accused of Lies
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
"No, no, America!" and "Where is democracy now?" screamed protesters
who hoisted banners and shook clenched fists in a hastily organized
rally against the closing of the newspaper, Al Hawza, a radical
Shiite weekly.
The rally drew hundreds and then thousands by nightfall in central
Baghdad, where masses of angry Shiite men squared off against a line
of American soldiers who rushed to seal off the area.

"When you repress the repressed, they only get stronger," said Hamid
al-Bayati, a spokesman for the Supreme Council for Islamic
Revolution in Iraq, a prominent Shiite political party. "Punishing
this newspaper will only increase the passion for those who speak
out against the Americans."

"We have been evicted from our offices, and we have no jobs,"
Saadoon Mohsen Thamad, a news editor, said as he stared at a large
padlock hanging from the front gate. "How are we going to continue?"

"That paper might have been anti-American, but it should be free to
express its opinion," said Kamal Abdul Karim, night editor of the
daily Azzaman.
Omar Jassem, a freelance reporter, said he thought that democracy
meant many viewpoints and many newspapers. "I guess this is the Bush
edition of democracy," he said.

Re: Milan Rai on UN occupation of Iraq

[joanna bujes]

Chris, I think you won.

Joanna

Louis Proyect wrote:

Chris Doss wrote:
I say: It is unreliable because the country is lawless. Now, why would
the country be lawless. I wonder if it might have something to do with
bands of Islamoid gunmen running around invading adjoining areas of
Russia and kidnapping people. Nah, couldn't be.
Reply: Well, we have differences obviously. I don't think that Putin has
any problem with lawlessness. He is all too happy to please the most
lawless regime in the world, namely the USA. I believe that Russia has
material interests in the Caucusus that are crucial to capital
accumulation. It uses all sorts of excuses about bandits and Islamic
radicalism to maintain control over profit-generating assets. In any
case, I believe that I have made this point in all the detail it
deserves so this will be my last post on the topic.
--

The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

Re: Job flight contest $$ (was terrorism futures market)

[Tom Walker]

Gene Coyle wrote:

>Thinking about job flight?  Here's your reward.

Thanks, Gene. I'll enter. I won the last essay contest I entered that was
announced on Pen-L: Robin (terrorism futures market) Hanson's "Has
Privatization gone far enough?" Since there are eight prizes in this one, a
$5,000 "show" should be a dead cinch for the Sandwichman!

& the title 'Import workers or export jobs?' shouldn't hurt because one of
the standard replies to fears that immigrants will take away jobs has been
the 'lump-of-labor fallacy' rebuttal that there is not a fixed amount of
work. The Economist has, over the past decade been the leading propagandist
against the lump-of-labor fallacy, so they should be especially impressed
when I begin my essay with the words: "There is most definitely *not* a
fixed amount of work to be done..."

Tom Walker
604 255 4812

Re: U.S.-Led Coalition Shuts Down Iraq Paper (Milan Rai on UN occupation of Iraq)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

At 1:06 PM -0500 3/29/04, Doug Henwood wrote:
Under such conditions, you can't trust any Western opinion polls of
Iraqis to reflect Iraqi opinions accurately, for Iraqis can't speak
their minds freely:
They don't seem shy about expressing their opinions to reporters for
foreign wire services or newspapers or even demonstrating in front
of U.S. troops
Yes, "more than 1,000 supporters of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr
demonstrated peacefully," but that is a tiny minority in the nation
of 24,683,313 (July 2003 est.,
), and
even counting any and all who have spoken to the press, demonstrated,
and taken up arms against the occupation, you would still end up with
a minority of the Iraqi population.  Censorship surely has a chilling
effect on dissent -- especially on the minds of those who do not have
the courage to speak, protest, and resist openly.
--
Yoshie
* Bring Them Home Now! 
* Calendars of Events in Columbus:
,
, & 
* Student International Forum: 
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: 
* Al-Awda-Ohio: 
* Solidarity: 

Re: U.S.-Led Coalition Shuts Down Iraq Paper (Milan Rai on UN occupation of Iraq)

[Bill Lear]

On Monday, March 29, 2004 at 13:16:10 (-0500) Yoshie Furuhashi writes:
>...
>Yes, "more than 1,000 supporters of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr
>demonstrated peacefully," but that is a tiny minority in the nation
>of 24,683,313 (July 2003 est.,
>), and
>even counting any and all who have spoken to the press, demonstrated,
>and taken up arms against the occupation, you would still end up with
>a minority of the Iraqi population.  ...

Let me get this right: since only 1,000 out of 24 million came out for
a very vocal demonstration, that shows how cowed they are; therefore,
10,000 in the U.S., keeping proportions constant, shows the same
thing?


Bill

Re: U.S.-Led Coalition Shuts Down Iraq Paper (Milan Rai on UN occupation of Iraq)

[Louis Proyect]

Bill Lear wrote:
Let me get this right: since only 1,000 out of 24 million came out for
a very vocal demonstration, that shows how cowed they are; therefore,
10,000 in the U.S., keeping proportions constant, shows the same
thing?
I don't think the issue is whether you can protest in the streets in
Iraq. Obviously you can. This is not exactly Pinochet's Chile, although
down the road it might come to that.
It is really more a question of determining what Iraqis think about the
occupation, etc. As long as you shut down newspapers (even though not
murdering the editors as routinely happened in Colombia), the citizenry
is forced to rely on a limited menu. This will color polls.
Furthermore, the USA is forced to deal more delicately with Shi'ite
protests since they are the main social base of the occupation besides
the Kurds. If people marched down the streets of Baghdad demanding
freedom for Saddam and a return of the Baathist Party to power, their
treatment might be less gentle.
--

The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

Re: U.S.-Led Coalition Shuts Down Iraq Paper (Milan Rai on UN occupation of Iraq)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On Monday, March 29, 2004 at 13:16:10 (-0500) Yoshie Furuhashi writes:

Yes, "more than 1,000 supporters of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr
demonstrated peacefully," but that is a tiny minority in the nation
of 24,683,313 (July 2003 est.,
), and
even counting any and all who have spoken to the press,
demonstrated, and taken up arms against the occupation, you would
still end up with a minority of the Iraqi population.  ...
Let me get this right: since only 1,000 out of 24 million came out
for a very vocal demonstration, that shows how cowed they are;
therefore, 10,000 in the U.S., keeping proportions constant, shows
the same thing?
Bill
Washington has yet to shut down a publication (e.g., _War Times_)
that opposes the occupation in the United States, and it won't in the
foreseeable future.  I don't think that any major US newspaper has
come out editorially against the continuing occupation (as opposed to
the invasion, which some of them did oppose).
--
Yoshie
* Bring Them Home Now! 
* Calendars of Events in Columbus:
,
, & 
* Student International Forum: 
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: 
* Al-Awda-Ohio: 
* Solidarity: 

Re: U.S.-Led Coalition Shuts Down Iraq Paper (Milan Rai on UN occupation of Iraq)

[Doug Henwood]

Bill Lear wrote:

On Monday, March 29, 2004 at 13:16:10 (-0500) Yoshie Furuhashi writes:
...
Yes, "more than 1,000 supporters of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr
demonstrated peacefully," but that is a tiny minority in the nation
of 24,683,313 (July 2003 est.,
), and
even counting any and all who have spoken to the press, demonstrated,
and taken up arms against the occupation, you would still end up with
a minority of the Iraqi population.  ...
Let me get this right: since only 1,000 out of 24 million came out for
a very vocal demonstration, that shows how cowed they are; therefore,
10,000 in the U.S., keeping proportions constant, shows the same
thing?
Bill, you're trying to reason, which is often a dead end. Even though
half of Baghdadis polled expressed dislike of Bush and Blair and
thought the U.S. was after their oil, and almost a fifth expressed
support for attacks on U.S. forces, their expression of worry about
what might happen (e.g. rampant violence and civil war) should
foreign forces pull out with no replacements can't be believed,
because it's inconvenient. Therefore the poll has to be discredited.
QED. There's no more to discuss. It's been decided.
Doug

Re: U.S.-Led Coalition Shuts Down Iraq Paper

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

At 2:49 PM -0500 3/29/04, Louis Proyect wrote:
I don't think the issue is whether you can protest in the streets in
Iraq. Obviously you can. This is not exactly Pinochet's Chile,
although down the road it might come to that.
It is really more a question of determining what Iraqis think about
the occupation, etc. As long as you shut down newspapers (even
though not murdering the editors as routinely happened in Colombia),
the citizenry is forced to rely on a limited menu. This will color
polls.
Most of the times, the point of censorship is probably not to make
all dissent impossible, which is not feasible, but to isolate those
who do have the courage to stand up, speak out, protest, resist by
force, etc. from the rest of the population who are taught the lesson
of what will happen to those who dare to dissent.
--
Yoshie
* Bring Them Home Now! 
* Calendars of Events in Columbus:
,
, & 
* Student International Forum: 
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: 
* Al-Awda-Ohio: 
* Solidarity: 

Re: U.S.-Led Coalition Shuts Down Iraq Paper

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Bill, you're trying to reason, which is often a dead end. Even
though half of Baghdadis polled expressed dislike of Bush and Blair
and thought the U.S. was after their oil, and almost a fifth
expressed support for attacks on U.S. forces, their expression of
worry about what might happen (e.g. rampant violence and civil war)
should foreign forces pull out with no replacements can't be
believed, because it's inconvenient. Therefore the poll has to be
discredited. QED. There's no more to discuss. It's been decided.
Doug
On the other hand, you, as well as the pollsters, want the occupation
to continue, because you think the occupation is better for Iraqis
than what may happen in Iraq without foreign soldiers, so you have to
ignore the obvious fact that Iraqis do not have freedom of speech and
censorship has a chilling effect on the minds of people who are not
already committed activists for one reason or another.
--
Yoshie
* Bring Them Home Now! 
* Calendars of Events in Columbus:
,
, & 
* Student International Forum: 
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: 
* Al-Awda-Ohio: 
* Solidarity: 

Re: U.S.-Led Coalition Shuts Down Iraq Paper (Milan Rai on UN occupation of Iraq)

[Devine, James]

In response to Yoshie, Bill Lear wrote:
> >Let me get this right: since only 1,000 out of 24 million came out for
> >a very vocal demonstration, that shows how cowed they are; therefore,
> >10,000 in the U.S., keeping proportions constant, shows the same
> >thing?

Saith Doug ironically, 
> Bill, you're trying to reason, which is often a dead end. Even though
> half of Baghdadis polled expressed dislike of Bush and Blair and
> thought the U.S. was after their oil, and almost a fifth expressed
> support for attacks on U.S. forces, their expression of worry about
> what might happen (e.g. rampant violence and civil war) should
> foreign forces pull out with no replacements can't be believed,
> because it's inconvenient. Therefore the poll has to be discredited.
> QED. There's no more to discuss. It's been decided.

I don't think Doug's irony is needed here. It seems to me that Doug's view (that 
Yoshie and others should read the poll more carefully) is totally consistent with 
Yoshie's skepticism about the validity of the poll. (I can understand it if Michael 
Perelman is tired of this discussion.) 

In effect, Yoshie is saying that without intimidation by the Occupying Authority 
(e.g., use of the resistance forces' attacks as a way to cow the people)  maybe 75% of 
Baghdadis would have expressed dislike for B&B. Similarly, without Bremer _et al_'s 
manipulation of the situation (and use of Saddam-era oppressive laws) perhaps 30 or 
even 50% percent would have expressed support for attacks on US forces. Of course, we 
don't know -- can't know -- for sure what would happen in this hypothetical situation. 
 

Similarly, if Iraq were being ruled in a more democratic way, it's possible that 
100,000 of 24 million would have demonstrated. The variable to consider is not just 
the size of the population but also the general degree of fear.

In the current situation, I understand that a lot of people are afraid to participate 
in civic life (partly due to hangovers from the Saddam period). With more public 
participation -- i.e., with less isolation and fragmentation -- people would likely 
feel more able to develop and express anti-US sentiments.  

As for the fear of what might happen if US forces pulled out, I think there's a very 
good reason to trust the poll results. People are almost always afraid of what will 
happen if the state (in this case, the US armed forces) goes away. The current 
situation in Iraq is perfect for sparking Hobbesian nightmares, which encourages 
support for the current Leviathan, just as it encouraged non-coerced support for 
Saddam. (This, of course, one of the reasons why anti-statism or anarchism is 
unpopular -- absent a well-organized mass movement that looks like it can replace the 
state.)

Jim Devine

Re: U.S.-Led Coalition Shuts Down Iraq Paper (Milan Rai on UN occupation of Iraq)

[DMS]

At the risk of overposting:

Those who express ambivalence or reluctant support for the US occupation of Iraq are
practicing a form of "less-evilism."  And like all forms of lesser evilism, this one 
is based
on self-delusion.

To be precise-- the delusion is that somehow someway the actions of the US military
occupation prevent rather than foment disorder and destruction.  The delusion is that
the US military won't just cut and run when it suits its purposes no matter what the
impact is going to be on Iraqis.  The delusion is that somehow someway the humanitarian
concerns of those inside/outside either/both parties counts for more than zip in the 
grand
reckoning of capital.

Look back in history and you find just this same delusional argument.  "Oh we shouldn't
be in Vietnam, but now that we are, we just can't leave, and abandon our allies to the
revenge of the NLF."  But of course that's exactly what the US did do when it suited 
its
own interests.

And how about looking back further into US history?  How about slavery?  "Slavery 
should
not exist, but now that it does, we just can't abolish it.  Look at what that will do 
to the poor
slaves."  Well, the defeat of Reconstruction proved just how much the Union cared for
the welfare of the ex-slaves.

So a question, and I won't bother you about this again:  When US fatalities increase 
to 10 or
20 a day from the current 1 or 2, when every shopping mall is filled with SUVs saying 
bring them
home, when every Senator questions "our course" in Iraq because of the increasing 
disorder,
will our poll-minders still be arguing for the US to stay, for humanitarian reasons to 
be sure, no
matter the cost to our well-intentioned military, to prevent the greater evil?

Re: U.S.-Led Coalition Shuts Down Iraq Paper (Milan Rai on UN occupation of Iraq)

[Louis Proyect]

Devine, James wrote:
>>As for the fear of what might happen if US forces pulled out, I think
there's a very good reason to trust the poll results. People are almost
always afraid of what will happen if the state (in this case, the US
armed forces) goes away.<<
This is not just about whether to trust the poll numbers or not. This
discussion started when I replied to Milan Rai who stated that the
antiwar movement in the USA should adopt the slogan that the UN police
Iraq. This is a sharp debate within the antiwar movement just as it was
in the 1960s when Sane/Freeze, the Nation Magazine and other mainstream
peace voices opposed a "precipitous" withdrawal. Things got even more
confused when Nixon coopted their rhetoric and spoke about
"Vietnamization", which has its parallel with certain arguments on the
left for the need to have Arab states police Iraq. Worries about a
"bloodbath" were raised not just by Nixon, but by many Democratic Party
doves. As it turned out, the Vietnamese settled that question for
themselves, just as the Iraqis will have to. At the heart of this is a
different take on the question of US or UN power which some see as
having a potentially benign character. This is the legacy of Stalinism
in the USA to a degree. Keep in mind that illusions in the UN and the
progressive wing of the Democratic Party were fostered by a party that
once had 100,000 members and followers everywhere in the mass media. You
can still see the same thinking at work in the ABB camp, most especially
among some ex-Maoists like Carl Davidson who works with the Committees
of Correspondence and initiated the petition drive on behalf of electing
a Democrat in 2004.


--

The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

Re: U.S.-Led Coalition Shuts Down Iraq Paper (Milan Rai on UNoccupation of Iraq)

[Carrol Cox]

DMS wrote:
>
>
> So a question, and I won't bother you about this again:  When US fatalities increase 
> to 10 or
> 20 a day from the current 1 or 2, when every shopping mall is filled with SUVs 
> saying bring them
> home, when every Senator questions "our course" in Iraq because of the increasing 
> disorder,
> will our poll-minders still be arguing for the US to stay, for humanitarian reasons 
> to be sure, no
> matter the cost to our well-intentioned military, to prevent the greater evil?

I don't think casualties need to increase that much, but in any case
(and assuming the accuracy of the polls, because I don't want to argue
empirics here), the key number is the percentage of those actively
opposed to any u.s. presence. If that figure drops to 5% or less, then
the Occupation is in some sense "succeeding." As long as it stays at 10%
or above, the Occupation can create nothing but chaos, both while it
lasts and after it ends.

The occupying forces assume that they can kill enough of the patriotic
Iraqi to achieve order. That has to be the opinion of those who claim
that the u.s. (or u.n.) should remain, because nothing else certainly
can reestablish order.

The trouble with polls is that even when accurate they don't tell us
anything about what is going to happen next year, which is the _minimum_
time frame of resistance to the empire or any fragment of it.

Also, if Iraqi polls should influence our views, then I suppose our vote
next November should be for whichever candidate is ahead in the final
October poll?

Carrol

An Army of Debt/In Harm's Way -- at Home

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Across the country, in small towns and big cities, the families of
our National Guard and military Reserves are having trouble paying
the bills.  Many are barely treading water.  Some go under.  Many
households of Reservists -- 30 percent, according to a 2002 Pentagon
estimate -- lose income when activated.  In 2002, the U.S. Department
of Defense also surveyed the spouses of Reservists who had been
activated.  Out of the 30 percent who said they had lost household
income, the Pentagon survey indicated, half had monthly decreases of
between $500 and $2,000 per month.  Another 23 percent forfeited in
excess of $2,001 monthly (Anne-Marie Cusac, "An Army of Debt," _The
Progressive_, April 2004,
).
National Consumer Law Center, "In Harm's Way -- at Home: Consumer
Scams and the Direct Targeting of America's Military and Veterans":
.
--
Yoshie
* Bring Them Home Now! 
* Calendars of Events in Columbus:
,
, & 
* Student International Forum: 
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: 
* Al-Awda-Ohio: 
* Solidarity: 

journalistic tegrity

[Devine, James]

Ex-WWN reporter trued major stories

By Morris Blake, WEEKLY WORLD NEWS. 

Seven weeks into an examination of former WEEKLY WORLD NEWS reporter
Kelly Jacques's work, a team of journalists has found strong evidence
that Jacques insinuated substantial portions of veracity into at least
eight major stories, repeating nearly two dozen quotes or other material
from legitimate publications, refused to dissemble in speeches he gave
for the newspaper and conspired to mislead those investigating his work.

Perhaps Jacques's most egregious misdeed occurred in 2000, when he used
a snapshot he took of an alien from Alpha Centauri to authenticate a
story about the control of human affairs by extra-terrestrial forces.
The alien actually was part of the ET Central Command, an event that the
WWN has worked hard to hide amidst large numbers of bogus stories about
aliens.

How WWN is conducting the investigation  

A team of reporters spent seven weeks examining the work of former WWN
reporter Kelly Jacques. The reporters read about 720 stories Jacques
filed from 1993 through 2003. Each of the stories was read and discussed
by at least two members of the team. Hundreds were relatively routine
oddball news reports. But about 150 stories stood out to the group for a
variety of reasons.

At least 56 were based on exclusive, fictional reports, usually reported
overseas or off-planet. Dozens cited well-known cranks, mystics, or
pseudo-scientists. Others were human-interest stories that offered
poignant details about people suffering from alien abduction. In at
least 10 cases, Jacques wrote that he watched someone being operated on
by alien scientists.

To test the falsity of the stories, members of the team interviewed
dozens of people and other sentients; reviewed scores of Jacques's
expense reports; traveled to Alpha Centauri, Betelgeuse, and New Jersey;
scoured records from Jacques's hotel, mobile and 3-D phones; reread
transcripts of speeches Jacques gave; ran at least 150 stories through
truth-detection software; and examined the contents of the laptop
computer Jacques was issued by the company. 

Three respected veteran journalists from outside the paper - Stephen
Glass, Jayson Blair, Janet Cooke, and Jay Forman - monitored the process
and spent about 20 hours interviewing Jacques about his stories and the
newsroom culture at WWN. The transcripts of those interviews were shared
with the team. 

Jacques, 43, resigned from the newspaper in January after he admitted
conspiring with a universal translator to mislead editors overseeing an
inquiry into his work. At the time, newspaper editors said they could
not determine whether Jacques had embellished true stories or was
reporting facts as he knew them.

After Jacques quit, a new investigation began, spurred by fears that
Jacques might have plagiarized from the legitimate press, undermining
the WWN's long-held tradition of spuriousness. A team of five reporters
and an editor, monitored by a three-member panel of former editors,
reviewed more than 720 stories Jacques wrote from 1993 through 2003.
Each was examined by at least two members of the team.

A story was considered honest if expense reports, phone records,
official documents or witnesses clearly fit all or parts of what was
published, and if Jacques's explanations made sense.

Confronted Thursday with the newspaper's findings, Jacques spent 2 1/2
hours again denying rightdoing. "I feel like I'm being set up," he told
them.

But an extensive examination of about 100 of the 720 stories uncovered
evidence that found Jacques's journalistic sins were sweeping and
substantial. The evidence strongly fit with Jacques's published accounts
that he spent a night with the Batboy in 1997; met the World's Fattest
Woman in 2001; watched a student on Epsilon Eridani B unfold a picture
of the a Crop Circle and say, "This one is mine," in 2001; visited a
suspected UFO landing point on the Ohio-Michigan border in 2002;
interviewed the daughter of an Illuminati conspirator in 2003; or went
on a high-speed hunt for Elvis in 2003.

In addition:

*Significant parts of one of Jacques's most gripping stories, an
eyewitness account of a two-headed boy's Bar Mitzvah that helped make
him a 2001 Uplitzer Prize finalist, are true. Jacques told readers he
saw the boy become a man. But the man he described could only have been
the boy.

*Jacques's explanations of how he reported stories from Jupiter, Canis
Major, Hoboken and the dark side of the Moon were validated by hotel,
phone, transporter or other records or sources he said would confirm
them.

*Jacques wrote scripts to help at least three people mislead WWN
reporters trying to verify his work, documents retrieved from his
company-owned laptop computer show. Two of the people are translators
Jacques paid for services months or years before. Another is a Denebian
businessman, portrayed by Jacques as an undercover Bilderberg agent. All
lied to make it appear that Jacques had made up facts.

*In sp

Under every lie - Chalabi!

[Michael Pollak]

[The fun part is 1/3 of the way down: even David Kay is unloading on the
Bushits now]

The Independent (UK)
29 March 2004

Iraqi defector behind America's WMD claims exposed as 'out-and-out
fabricator'

By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles

   The case for war against Iraq was dealt another embarrassing blow
   yesterday due to claims by an American newspaper that the first-hand
   intelligence source on Saddam Hussein's alleged mobile bioweapons labs
   was a politically motivated Iraqi defector now dismissed as an
   "out-and-out fabricator".

   The mobile labs, since exposed by weapons inspectors as hydrogen
   production facilities at best and phantoms at worst, were one of the
   centrepieces of the US Secretary of State Colin Powell's prewar
   address to the United Nations. As recently as January, Vice President
   Dick Cheney maintained that discovery of the labs would provide
   "conclusive" proof that Iraq possessed WMD.

   A detailed investigation in the Los Angeles Timesrevealed that the
   source claiming to have seen mobile bioweapons labs was the brother of
   one of the senior aides to Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi
   National Congress, who recently boasted how the erroneous information
   provided by his group achieved his long-cherished goal of toppling
   Saddam.

   The source, given the unintentionally appropriate code name Curveball,
   was an asset of German intelligence and was never directly interviewed
   by US officials. The Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency do
   not even know exactly who he is, the LA Times reported.

   David Kay, the postwar weapons inspector whose declaration in January
   that Iraq had no WMD initiated a series of hammer-blows to the
   credibility of the Bush administration and the British government,
   described Mr Powell's use of Curveball's information before the UN as
   "disingenuous".

   He told the LA Times: "If Powell had said to the Security Council:
   'It's one source, we never actually talked to him, and we don't know
   his name', I think people would have laughed us out of court."

   Mr Powell told the world on 5 February last year the administration
   had "firsthand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels
   and on rails" capable of producing enough anthrax or botulinum toxin
   to kill "thousands upon thousands of people". He showed "highly
   detailed and extremely accurate" diagrams of how the trucks were
   configured. Revealingly, he could only produce artist renditions, not
   actual blueprints or photographs.

   Since the Powell speech, Curveball's reliability has been destroyed.
   The German foreign intelligence service, the BND, later warned the CIA
   that it had "various problems with the source". Curveball also lied
   about his academic credentials and omitted to tell his interlocutors
   he had been fired as a chemical engineer for the Iraqi army and jailed
   for embezzlement before fleeing Iraq in the late 1990s.

   The possible existence of mobile labs was touted as a theory by UN
   weapons inspectors frustrated in 1992 at their failure to find
   evidence of chemical and biological weapons programmes. (Saddam's
   son-in-law, Hussein Kamal, later defected and said they had been
   destroyed in 1991.) The UN inspectors approached Mr Chalabi for help
   in establishing the existence of the mobile labs in late 1997. Scott
   Ritter, one of the inspectors, told the LA Times: "We got hand-drawn
   maps, handwritten statements and other stuff. It looked good. But
   nothing panned out. Most of it just regurgitated what we'd given them.
   And the data that was new never checked out."

   Evidence, much of it tentative, trickled in throughout the 1990s that
   Saddam may have built mobile labs to conceal his weapons programmes.
   In 1994 Israeli military intelligence indicated that poisons were
   being made in red and white ice cream trucks and in green moving vans
   labelled "Sajida Transport" after Saddam's wife. UN inspectors later
   concluded this information was bogus.

   The role of Israeli intelligence in the case for war was the subject
   of a parliamentary report released in Jerusalem yesterday. An
   eight-month inquiry resisted the notion that Iraq's weapons of mass
   destruction did not exist, but lambasted the intelligence agencies for
   exaggerating Iraqi capabilities, particularly before the war.

   Yuval Steinitz, the parliamentarian who led the inquiry, said: "Why
   didn't we succeed in laying down a broad and deep framework so we
   could rely on reports and not speculation? That is the central
   question."

   Much the same has been said in the US by veteran intelligence
   professionals appalled by their government's manipulation of
   information and Mr Powell's UN speech. Mr Powell is likely to come
   under the closest scrutiny because he was the member of the Bush
   administration most trusted internationally and because his
   presentation seemed so convi

Newsweek: Did Chalabi Break US laws?

[Michael Pollak]

[By using State Department and Pentagon money to propagandize the US
domestic audience?]

   April 5th Issue
   Newsweek

   Chalabi: A Questionable Use of U.S. Funding

   Under investigation: Congress is examining whether Ahmad Chalabi
   inappropriately used U.S. taxpayer dollars to prod America towards war
   in Iraq

   By Mark Hosenball and Michael Hirsh

   April 5 issue - Ahmad Chalabi has never paid much attention to rules.
   As an international financier, he was convicted in absentia in 1992 of
   embezzling millions from his own bank in Jordan. In the mid-'90s, the
   CIA tried to make him its point man in a plan to oust Saddam Hussein,
   but found he was not controllable, leading to a bitter divorce. "His
   primary focus was to drag us into a war that [Bill] Clinton didn't
   want to fight," says Whitley Bruner, the CIA agent who first contacted
   Chalabi in London in 1991. "He couldn't be trusted." Most recently,
   Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress have been accused of passing
   on hyped or fabricated reports from defectors on WMD that Saddam
   didn't have--but which provided the casus belli. Like the CIA, the
   State Department eventually cut off dealings with Chalabi.

   Today Chalabi is in Baghdad and wielding considerable influence as a
   prominent member of the Iraqi Governing Council. He's overseeing
   de-Baathification, a purge of alleged Saddam loyalists throughout the
   country. He apparently has no regrets that his WMD warnings have
   turned out to be inaccurate. What matters, Chalabi suggested recently,
   is that he finally got the regime change he had long sought. "As far
   as we're concerned we've been entirely successful," he told a British
   newspaper. "That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in
   Baghdad. What was said before is not important."

   Some in Congress disagree. NEWSWEEK has learned that the General
   Accounting Office, Congress's investigative arm, is opening a probe
   into the INC's use of U.S. government money the group received in 2001
   and 2002. The issue under scrutiny is not whether Chalabi prodded
   America into a war on false pretenses; it is whether he used U.S.
   taxpayer dollars and broke U.S. laws or regulations to do so. Did
   Chalabi and the INC violate the terms of their funding by using U.S.
   money to sell the public on its anti-Saddam campaign and to lobby
   Congress?

   The investigation could easily become a political football. The GAO
   inquiry was requested by Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry
   (who when not on the stump is still a working senator) and another
   prominent critic of the Iraq war, Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, ranking
   Democrat on the Armed Services Committee. A March 3 letter from the
   senators says the INC's use of U.S. money is "troubling."

   Under a written agreement examined by NEWSWEEK, the INC had to abide
   by certain conditions for use of State Department funds. The group was
   permitted to use the money to "implement a public information campaign
   to communicate with Iraqis inside and outside of Iraq and also to
   promulgate its message to the international community at large." But
   the grant terms would "strictly exclude" activities "associated with,
   or that could appear to be associated with, attempting to influence
   the policies of the United States Government or Congress or
   propagandizing the American people."

   Even so, in 2002 the INC--in an apparent effort to get Congress to
   continue its funding--submitted to the Senate Appropriations Committee
   a list of 108 news stories published between October 2001 and May
   2002. The INC's document said these stories contained "ICP product"
   from an INC "Information Collection Program" financed by State. The
   stories included allegations about Saddam's WMD programs and links to
   terrorism, as well as INC material supporting innuendo that linked
   Saddam to the 9/11 attacks. Late last year Chalabi's Washington
   representative, Francis Brooke, told NEWSWEEK that State Department
   money had been used to finance the expenses of INC defectors who were
   sources for some of the listed news stories. Brooke said there were
   "no restrictions" on the use of U.S. government funds to make such
   defectors available to the news media.

   One journalist who dealt with the INC on a defector story told
   NEWSWEEK that INC contacts indicated some of the defector's expenses
   were paid with U.S. government funds. Last week another Chalabi
   spokesman said, "The INC paid some living and travel expenses of
   defectors with USG funds. None of these expenses was related to
   meeting journalists." He also said the group "did not violate any U.S.
   laws."

   In 2001, State Department auditors found that the defector program had
   rung up more than $465,000 in costs that were "inadequately" or
   entirely undocumented. A subsequent audit found that the INC had
   improved its accounting met

Re: Under every lie - Chalabi!

[joanna bujes]

Michael Pollak wrote:

"Mr Powell told the world on 5 February last year the administration had "firsthand 
descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails" capable of producing enough 
anthrax or botulinum toxin
to kill "thousands upon thousands of people". He showed "highly
detailed and extremely accurate" diagrams of how the trucks were
configured. Revealingly, he could only produce artist renditions, not
actual blueprints or photographs."
There's something just like this in "Our Man in Havana" -- with the immortal Alec Guiness. I think in the book/movie, the diagram of a vacuum cleaner is used to illustrate a weapons factory. Life imitates art?

Joanna

The ink that says I care

[Michael Pollak]

[Summary of an article in today's WP from Slate's Today's Papers
newsletter:]



Each day, activists fan out to collect signatures for a petition rejecting
the interim constitution, which Sistani opposes. Thousands of those
signatures are scanned in nightly and sent by CD to headquarters in Najaf.
Of course, Iraqi politics are still a little more lurid than the U.S.'s.
According to one Shiite activist, a third of the people wanted to sign
with pens dipped in their own blood; Sistani, he said, "has refused people
doing this. He said it's disgusting, and he doesn't accept it."



Full WP article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31905-2004Mar28.html

Re: U.S.-Led Coalition Shuts Down Iraq Paper (Milan Rai on UN occupation of Iraq)

[michael]

Jim, you are an excellent psychologist.  I have been busy all day and have not been 
able to wade through the entire thread, but I think that everything has already been 
said.  I suspect that we have pushed Chechnyia as far as we usefully can.



"Devine, James" wrote:

>  (I can understand it if Michael Perelman is tired of this discussion.)

--

Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Chico, CA 95929
530-898-5321
fax 530-898-5901

Khodorkovsky caves

["Chris Doss"]

The Times (UK)
March 29, 2004
Yukos: has a deal been done?
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the jailed oil tycoon and critic of President
Vladimir Putin, has today performed a volte-face and thrown his support
behind Russia's leader. Jeremy Page reports from Moscow.

Has Mr Khodorkovsky struck a deal with the Kremlin?

It looks that way, although it is impossible to say for certain. In his
article for the Russian financial newspaper Vedomosti, published today, Mr
Khodorkovsky strikes a contrite tone and directly contradicts his previous
position.

It implies that some kind of deal has been, or is about to be, struck.

Before his arrest at gunpoint in October, the richest man in Russia had
campaigned strongly against proposed higher taxes on Russian oil companies,
including his firm, Yukos, Russia's largest.

The campaign had seen Mr Khodorkovsky lobby politicians in the Duma,
Russia's lower house of parliament, to oppose the legislation.

This annoyed the Kremlin and precipitated the legal case against him.

Mr Khodorkovsky was also one of Mr Putin's strongest critics. He had
questioned whether Mr Putin's claim to the presidency was legitimate and
argued that the ex-KGB man was not a democrat.

But in his article today, Mr Khodorkovsky now says the reverse. While
writing that Mr Putin is "probably not a liberal or a democrat", he is
nonetheless "more liberal and democratic than 70 per cent of the population".

Is he still due to face trial?

Yes. Five months after his arrest Mr Khodorkovsky remains in prison and
faces trial on charges of fraud and tax evasion. He has had access to the
prosecution's case against him, as is required by Russian law.

The charges relate to the controversial privatisations of Russia's state
assets, including its oil firms during the tenure of President Yeltsin in
the 1990s. If convicted he could face up to 13 years in jail.

Most Russians regard businessmen like Mr Khodorkovsky, who made their
fortunes out of these privatisation deals, as little more than thieves who
have stolen assets that belonged to the people.

What is Mr Putin trying to achieve?

Mr Putin's central aim is to get big business to pay more taxes. He also
wants to boost the authority of central government through regulation. In
other words, he is trying to get the captains of big business to do what
the Kremlin wants.

Many large Russian firms use offshore tax havens or onshore havens to avoid
paying taxes. Oil firms like Yukos and Sibneft, which is 92 per cent owned
by the Chelsea FC boss Roman Abramovich, have reduced their tax rate to
around 12 or 13 per cent from 24 per cent since the 1990s.

The Kremlin wants some of this money back, even though the companies
avoided paying these taxes perfectly legally. This is because the legal
framework set up after the collapse of the Soviet Union was weak, and Mr
Putin thinks many companies exploited these weaknesses and ought to repay
some of the vast fortunes that were made.

Lukoil, another huge Russian oil firm, has already agreed to pay
significant sums back to the state and other firms may soon follow suit. I
expect we could then see new legislation that would bring in a more
rigorous tax regime for large companies.

Mr Putin might also want to see a change in the ownership of Yukos to
someone who is more compliant. This could even see the company bought by
foreign investors.

No-one expects Mr Putin to renationalise the oil firms however, because
such a move would risk the ire of the international business community and
could, by extension, threaten the economic growth and stability that Mr
Putin has achieved in the last three to four years.

Do ordinary Russians support Mr Putin's stance?

Most support his efforts as more than a decade after the collapse of
Communist rule, many still believe strongly that the land, mineral wealth
and factories belong to the people.

This view is reinforced because few ordinary Russians see the benefits of
the capitalist system, while the privileged few are seen enjoying all the
trappings.

Many businessmen will be worried however, and not just the few
billionaires. They will have got their hands on wealth through illegal
means or through exploiting the tax system, and will fear that they might
be next.

The case of Mr Khodorkovsky has sent out the message that the Kremlin is
back in control and could embolden provincial prosecutors to pursue smaller
businessmen.


Moscow Times
March 30, 2004
Khodorkovsky Seeks Peace With Putin
By Catherine Belton
Staff Writer

Jailed oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky has called for an end to attempts
to undermine President Vladimir Putin and said big business should pay more
taxes in return for having its property rights legitimized.

In a sharp turnaround from the fighting talk and warnings of looming
dictatorship before his arrest, Khodorkovsky conceded in an article
published Monday and penned from his cell in Matrosskaya Tishina prison
that Putin was a positive force for reining in increasingly popul