The Age of Anxiety
Geological equipment in baggage leads to evacuation of Ottawa airport Last Updated Wed, 07 Jul 2004 14:30:25 OTTAWA - A piece of geological research equipment found in a passenger's luggage prompted the evacuation of the Ottawa International Airport on Wednesday, authorities say. Airport officials closed the airport after a suspicious package was found at 8:30 a.m. in some checked baggage during screening. Airport security thought it was an explosive device and called Ottawa police. The bag belonged to an Ottawa scientist, who was detained by police. After inspecting the bag and talking with the scientist, the all-clear was given and the scientist was freed. Between 400 and 500 passengers and staff had to be escorted from the building. Twelve flights were cancelled and many others were delayed. Flights were grounded, and some planes were cleared after passengers had already boarded. Planes that had recently landed were kept away from the building. Officials began allowing passengers and staff back into the terminal building at 1 p.m. The airport authority said this was the first total evacuation of the airport. Written by CBC News Online staff
Arar inquiry. Government stonewalls on providing info.
So that every word of an 89 page report on Arar/s detention is blacked out is not evidence that the government is trying to hide anything from the inquiry. Huh? Cheers, Ken Hanly Ottawa pressed to make Arar files public By COLIN FREEZE >From Monday's Globe and Mail Ottawa — A legal showdown will begin playing out Monday in Ottawa, as one man's quest for justice and the public's right to know will be pitted against state secrecy invoked to protect the public from terrorist threats. Maher Arar, a Canadian jailed in Syria as a suspected al-Qaeda member, has filed a motion for a vast public disclosure of government documents related to his ordeal. The motion will be heard by Mr. Justice Dennis O'Connor as he begins his third week of presiding over the fact-finding inquiry into Mr. Arar's detention. Only contextual evidence has been heard until this point, and now Mr. Arar's lawyers are trying to get down to the nitty-gritty. They argue Ottawa officials must finally come clean about what they know — and cough up documents involving Mr. Arar's coerced confessions in Syria, and his previous interviews with U.S. border guards. Mr. Arar's lawyers say their client falsely incriminated himself under torture in Syria after being deported there by the United States in 2002. They say that Canada has documents stemming from the torture sessions and that standard national-security secrecy clauses typically used by the state to keep such information secret no longer hold — leaks and media reports have established that RCMP officers were investigating the possibility of an al-Qaeda cell in Ottawa, that these Mounties became suspicious of Mr. Arar before the U.S. sent him to Syria. But lawyers acting for the Attorney General continue to push for secrecy saying Mr. Arar's request for disclosure should be tossed out entirely — as it relies on an “incomplete record, without a proper context” and is being made “without regard to ongoing investigations.” In a rebuttal released this weekend, the government argues that “the premature and unfounded conclusion that the government has acted in bad faith” can't be used to justify disclosing information “which for legitimate reason must be protected.” While a roomful of government documents on the Arar affair already exists and may be easily perused by Mr. O'Connor as he seeks to find the facts, it's unknown whether the public or even Mr. Arar will ever get to see them. That's because even though the broader public may want to get at the truth, the state fears the public may not be able to handle it. The position is that Canadian officials must be allowed to closely guard their methods of investigation, their confidential sources, their secret swapping with other countries, and their ongoing investigations. Otherwise, much is risked — including the country's security and its relationship with other states. “[Any] perceptions of a relative weakening in Canada's ability to ensure protection of information could create a lessening of sensitive information and/or a downgrading,” argues the Attorney General. Atop fears that international community could get jittery about Canada becoming an intelligence blabbermouth, there are also insinuations that sinister forces are watching the Arar inquiry, ever ready to inductively reason big pictures from benign tidbits. “Seemingly innocuous information...in the hands of an informed reader, can disclose more about an investigation than would otherwise be obvious,” argues the government. It says that Mr. Arar's motion is unreliable because it is based largely “on media reports, which may not be accurate, cannot properly be considered as evidence...and are nothing more than conjecture and generalizations.” Finally, the government, which last week blacked out every word of an 89-page report about Mr. Arar's detention, says it is being as accommodating as it can be under the circumstances. “There is no basis for the suggestion...that the government is trying to ‘cover up' or ‘hide' information from any kind or type from the inquiry,” it says.
Imaginary Sowell Dialogue
Sowell..I came to reject Marxism when I was studying affirmative action programmes for black entrepreneurs. Commentator: HOw is that?? Sowell..Well this black business owner benefitted from special loan rates and other govt. incentives. However, he still had to pay a minimum wage. He complained that these minimum wages were causing his profit to decline to where he would soon be bankrupt and that he needed an increase in loan rebates and other incentives.. Competitors claimed that the decline in his business was the result of his products being inferior. Commentator: Well what has this to do with Marx? Sowell. Well when I suggested that we do an empirical study to find out that if it was the inferiority of his proudcts that actually was causing the decline in his business profts or the minimum wage requirements he rejected this outright. He insisted that it was the level of incentives and government subsidies combined with the minimum wage requirements. Commentator : So how does this relate to Marx? Sowell. Well isnt it obvious. This guy has an incentive to explain things as lack of govt subsidies since he is dependent upon these affirmative action programme and the complaint about minimum wages is an excuse for more subsidies.. He wasnt interested in empirical truth or in finding which explanation was correct. Now Marx thought that it was the goal that was important but I now understood that Marx was wrong it is the incentives that are most important in understanding this black businessman's answer not his goal. Commentator. But wouldnt Marx say that the goal is maximising profit and since this man's profits are dependent upon govt. subsidies then this goal provides him with the incentive to explain his lack of profits a priori by suggesting that they are not large enough in the light of his being required to pay minimum wages? Sowell..Sorry. Im out of time. I have some hack wrirting to do for some guy named Shemano.
Re: Sowell
But what one earth has deciding that incentives rather than goals are more important in determining the way the world works got anything to do with rejecting Marxism or showing that there is something lacking in Marxism.? Also, why is what Sowell notices inconsistent with considering goals to be more significant than incentives in understanding the world? If the goal of the bureaucracy is to promote its own power and influence, this goal would explain why there is an incentive to promote price and wage controls as these will advance the power and influence of the bureaucracy. Not only do his observations have zilch to do with Marxism, they do not show anything to support his thesis that incentives rather than goals are important in determining how things work. Cheers Ken Hanly "David B. Shemano" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, July 02, 2004 1:23 PM Subject: Re: Sowell > >> retaliate against the minimum wage hike. On analogy to> > I am going to say this one more time. Sowell does not say that he started to change his mind because he discovered that minimum wage laws cause unemployment. The whole discussion of minimum wage laws is irrelevant to the point. The point is that when Sowell suggested an empirical test to answer the question, he discovered that the bureaucrats were entirely uninterested in why, as a matter of fact, unemployment was rising, because the bureacracy had an institutional interest in assuming the usefullness of wage and price controls. At that point, it clicked in his mind that incentives, as opposed to goals, are critical in understanding the way the world works. > > David Shemano
Re: Sowell
Exactly! One wonders how anyone with even a minimal understanding of Marxism would think this somehow showed its shortcomings. At the same time the conclusion that minimum wages necessarily lead to greater unemployment is surely not that evident nor does this example show that to be the case. Are those countries or states with minimum wages those with higher unemployment rates than those with minimum wage rates? Anyway even if the conclusion were correct, the conventional economic explanation assumes some sort of idealised capitalist economic system. Why would a Marxist not conceive of ways to counteract these effects rather than just accepting them. For example by nationalising industries and subsidising them to ensure at lest a living wage etc. by putting controls on capital flight etc.etc. Passages such as this just confirm that Sowell hasnt a clue about Marxism . Prima facie even for a Marxist if wages go up then capital will tend to flow to a lower wage regime other things being equal and would thus reduce employment. Capitalists want to maximise their return after all. But then there may be no lower wage regime with equal labor skills or equal productivity, costs of moving might outweigh benefits and so and so on and on. Why is such a bright light seemingly blind to the obvious. Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: "Doug Henwood" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, July 01, 2004 11:16 AM Subject: Re: Sowell > Grant Lee wrote: > > > > The wonders of the internet. Here is Sowell explaining his shift away > >from Marxism: http://www.salon.com/books/int/1999/11/10/sowell/index1.html > >> > >> David Shemano > >> > > > >From that interview: > > > >"So you were a lefty once. > > > >Through the decade of my 20s, I was a Marxist. > > > >What made you turn around? > > > >What began to change my mind was working in the summer of 1960 as an intern > >in the federal government, studying minimum-wage laws in Puerto Rico. It was > >painfully clear that as they pushed up minimum wage levels, which they did > >at that time industry by industry, the employment levels were falling. I was > >studying the sugar industry. There were two explanations of what was > >happening. One was the conventional economic explanation: that as you pushed > >up the minimum-wage level, you were pricing people out of their jobs. The > >other one was that there were a series of hurricanes that had come through > >Puerto Rico, destroying sugar cane in the field, and therefore employment > >was lower. The unions preferred that explanation, and some of the liberals > >did, too." > > So how is incompatible with Marxism that raising wages above market > levels can reduce employment? He just decided that the living > conditions of sugar workers were less important than the needs of > "the economy." > > Doug
Re: Enron
Sorry about the Lockean tabula rasa.. I meant to add a few comments to my earlier reply. If you mean by "private property", personal property appropriated in a certain manner then perhaps the justness of private property in that sense is assumed in saying that private property is theft. However the context of discussion is capitalism and the relevant private property is private property in the means of production and associated laws that allow appropriation of value produced from what is owned: interest, rent, and profits. Proudhon himself says at another place that property as personal possession is freedom not theft. Cheers, Ken Hanly] - Original Message - From: "David B. Shemano" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, June 30, 2004 8:48 PM Subject: Re: Enron > In defense of David Shemano, Michael Perelman writes: > > >> David is a conservative. He speaks English with a right wing dialect, but he does so > >> with humor (not snottiness). We can disagree with him. I usually do, but we can > >> still be polite. > >> > >> I don't see him as a red meat class warrior, but as a sincere [albeit misguided] > >> conservative]. > > As a I said when I first participated on this list so many years ago, I am here to learn, and believe learning results from dialectic argument. The argument that capitalism is legalized fraud and theft is a very interesting thesis which I would love to explore. (For instance, doesn't that statement, as a normative statement, assume the justness of private property, because if not, what is wrong with theft?). However, as Prof. Craven does not appear to suffer from any doubt, I doubt he would enjoy such an exchange with me. You can't please everybody. > > David Shemano
Re: Enron
- Original Message - From: "David B. Shemano" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, June 30, 2004 8:48 PM Subject: Re: Enron > In defense of David Shemano, Michael Perelman writes: > > >> David is a conservative. He speaks English with a right wing dialect, but he does so > >> with humor (not snottiness). We can disagree with him. I usually do, but we can > >> still be polite. > >> > >> I don't see him as a red meat class warrior, but as a sincere [albeit misguided] > >> conservative]. > > As a I said when I first participated on this list so many years ago, I am here to learn, and believe learning results from dialectic argument. The argument that capitalism is legalized fraud and theft is a very interesting thesis which I would love to explore. (For instance, doesn't that statement, as a normative statement, assume the justness of private property, because if not, what is wrong with theft?). However, as Prof. Craven does not appear to suffer from any doubt, I doubt he would enjoy such an exchange with me. You can't please everybody. > > David Shemano
Re: Enron
Why does the statement assume the justness of private property? Surely it assumes the opposite. Of course the thesis is common Proudhon in fact wrote a book on property that coined the expression property as theft. In spite of the great bitterness Marx shows towards his views, Proudhon ,as Marx, thinks of the theft as basically appropriation of value of labor without the exchange being equivalent--- very much like Marx's appropriation of surplus value through ownership of means of production etc. by capitalists. What is assumed as just is that a person should be able to appropriate the value of what they produce through their labor and that private property in the means of production makes this impossible and so is inherently unjust. Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: "David B. Shemano" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, June 30, 2004 8:48 PM Subject: Re: Enron > In defense of David Shemano, Michael Perelman writes: > > >> David is a conservative. He speaks English with a right wing dialect, but he does so > >> with humor (not snottiness). We can disagree with him. I usually do, but we can > >> still be polite. > >> > >> I don't see him as a red meat class warrior, but as a sincere [albeit misguided] > >> conservative]. > > As a I said when I first participated on this list so many years ago, I am here to learn, and believe learning results from dialectic argument. The argument that capitalism is legalized fraud and theft is a very interesting thesis which I would love to explore. (For instance, doesn't that statement, as a normative statement, assume the justness of private property, because if not, what is wrong with theft?). However, as Prof. Craven does not appear to suffer from any doubt, I doubt he would enjoy such an exchange with me. You can't please everybody. > > David Shemano
Reports finds Iraq worse off in some areas than before war.
Iraq is worse off than before the war began, GAO reports By Seth Borenstein Knight Ridder Newspapers WASHINGTON - In a few key areas - electricity, the judicial system and overall security - the Iraq that America handed back to its residents Monday is worse off than before the war began last year, according to calculations in a new General Accounting Office report released Tuesday. The 105-page report by Congress' investigative arm offers a bleak assessment of Iraq after 14 months of U.S. military occupation. Among its findings: -In 13 of Iraq's 18 provinces, electricity was available fewer hours per day on average last month than before the war. Nearly 20 million of Iraq's 26 million people live in those provinces. -Only $13.7 billion of the $58 billion pledged and allocated worldwide to rebuild Iraq has been spent, with another $10 billion about to be spent. The biggest chunk of that money has been used to run Iraq's ministry operations. -The country's court system is more clogged than before the war, and judges are frequent targets of assassination attempts. -The new Iraqi civil defense, police and overall security units are suffering from mass desertions, are poorly trained and ill-equipped. -The number of what the now-disbanded Coalition Provisional Authority called significant insurgent attacks skyrocketed from 411 in February to 1,169 in May. The report was released on the same day that the CPA's inspector general issued three reports that highlighted serious management difficulties at the CPA. The reports found that the CPA wasted millions of dollars at a Hilton resort hotel in Kuwait because it didn't have guidelines for who could stay there, lost track of how many employees it had in Iraq and didn't track reconstruction projects funded by international donors to ensure they didn't duplicate U.S. projects. Both the GAO report and the CPA report said that the CPA was seriously understaffed for the gargantuan task of rebuilding Iraq. The GAO report suggested the agency needed three times more employees than what it had. The CPA report said the agency believed it had 1,196 employees, when it was authorized to have 2,117. But the inspector general said CPA's records were so disorganized that it couldn't verify its actual number of employees. GAO Comptroller General David Walker blamed insurgent attacks for many of the problems in Iraq. "The unstable security environment has served to slow down our rebuilding and reconstruction efforts and it's going to be of critical importance to provide more stable security," Walker told Knight Ridder Newspapers in a telephone interview Tuesday. "There are a number of significant questions that need to be asked and answered dealing with the transition (to self-sovereignty)," Walker said. "A lot has been accomplished and a lot remains to be done." The GAO report is the first government assessment of conditions in Iraq at the end of the U.S. occupation. It outlined what it called "key challenges that will affect the political transition" in 10 specific areas. The GAO gave a draft of the report to several different government agencies, but only the CPA offered a major comment: It said the report "was not sufficiently critical of the judicial reconstruction effort." "The picture it paints of the facts on the ground is one that neither the CPA nor the Bush administration should be all that proud of," said Peter W. Singer, a national security scholar at the centrist Brookings Institution. "It finds a lot of problems and raises a lot of questions." One of the biggest problems, Singer said, is that while money has been pledged and allocated, not much has been spent. The GAO report shows that very little of the promised international funds - most of which are in loans - has been spent or can't be tracked. The CPA's inspector general found the same thing. "When we ask why are things not going the way we hoped for," Singer said, "the answer in part of this is that we haven't actually spent what we have in pocket." He said the figures on electricity "make me want to cry." Steven Susens, a spokesman for the Program Management Office, which oversees contractors rebuilding Iraq, conceded that many areas of Iraq have fewer hours of electricity now than they did before the war. But he said the report, based on data that's now more than a month old, understates current electrical production. He said some areas may have reduced electricity availability because antiquated distribution systems had been taken out of service so they could be rebuilt. "It's a slow pace, but it's certainly growing as far as we're concerned," Susens said. Danielle Pletka, the vice president of foreign and defense policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said other issues are more important than the provision of services such as electricity. She noted that Iraqis no longer live in fear of Saddam Hussein. "It's far better to live in the da
Naomi Klein on Iraq Reconstruction
Time to hear from a left hack, radical chic jab from the left... Cheers, Ken Hanly www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=5786 ZNet | Iraq June 26, 2004 The Robbery of Reconstruction by Naomi Klein Good news out of Baghdad: the Program Management Office, which oversees the $18.4bn in US reconstruction funds, has finally set a goal it can meet. Sure, electricity is below pre-war levels, the streets are rivers of sewage and more Iraqis have been fired than hired. But now the PMO has contracted the British mercenary firm Aegis to protect its employees from "assassination, kidnapping, injury and" - get this - "embarrassment". I don't know if Aegis will succeed in protecting PMO employees from violent attack, but embarrassment? I'd say mission already accomplished. The people in charge of rebuilding Iraq can't be embarrassed, because, clearly, they have no shame. In the run-up to the June 30 underhand (sorry, I can't bring myself to call it a "handover"), US occupation powers have been unabashed in their efforts to steal money that is supposed to aid a war-ravaged people. The state department has taken $184m earmarked for drinking water projects and moved it to the budget for the lavish new US embassy in Saddam Hussein's former palace. Short of $1bn for the embassy, Richard Armitage, the deputy secretary of state, said he might have to "rob from Peter in my fiefdom to pay Paul". In fact, he is robbing Iraq's people, who, according to a recent study by the consumer group Public Citizen, are facing "massive outbreaks of cholera, diarrhoea, nausea and kidney stones" from drinking contaminated water. If the occupation chief Paul Bremer and his staff were capable of embarrassment, they might be a little sheepish about having spent only $3.2bn of the $18.4bn Congress allotted - the reason the reconstruction is so disastrously behind schedule. At first, Bremer said the money would be spent by the time Iraq was sovereign, but apparently someone had a better idea: parcel it out over five years so Ambassador John Negroponte can use it as leverage. With $15bn outstanding, how likely are Iraq's politicians to refuse US demands for military bases and economic "reforms"? Unwilling to let go of their own money, the shameless ones have had no qualms about dipping into funds belonging to Iraqis. After losing the fight to keep control of Iraq's oil money after the underhand, occupation authorities grabbed $2.5bn of those revenues and are now spending the money on projects that are supposedly already covered by American tax dollars. But then, if financial scandals made you blush, the entire reconstruction of Iraq would be pretty mortifying. From the start, its architects rejected the idea that it should be a New Deal-style public works project for Iraqis to reclaim their country. Instead, it was treated as an ideological experiment in privatisation. The dream was for multinational firms, mostly from the US, to swoop in and dazzle the Iraqis with their speed and efficiency. Iraqis saw something else: desperately needed jobs going to Americans, Europeans and south Asians; roads crowded with trucks shipping in supplies produced in foreign plants, while Iraqi factories were not even supplied with emergency generators. As a result, the reconstruction was seen not as a recovery from war but as an extension of the occupation, a foreign invasion of a different sort. And so, as the resistance grew, the reconstruction itself became a prime target. The contractors have responded by behaving even more like an invading army, building elaborate fortresses in the green zone - the walled-in city within a city that houses the occupation authority in Baghdad - and surrounding themselves with mercenaries. And being hated is expensive. According to the latest estimates, security costs are eating up 25% of reconstruction contracts - money not being spent on hospitals, water-treatment plants or telephone exchanges. Meanwhile, insurance brokers selling sudden-death policies to contractors in Iraq have doubled their premiums, with insurance costs reaching 30% of payroll. That means many companies are spending half their budgets arming and insuring themselves against the people they are supposedly in Iraq to help. And, according to Charles Adwan of Transparency International, quoted on US National Public Radio's Marketplace programme, "at least 20% of US spending in Iraq is lost to corruption". How much is actually left over for reconstruction? Don't do the maths. Rather than models of speed and efficiency, the contractors look more like overcharging, underperforming, lumbering beasts, barely able to move for fear of the hatred they have helped generate. The problem goes well beyond the latest reports of Halliburton drivers abandoning $85,000 trucks on the road because they don't carry spare tyres. Private contractors are also accused of playing leadership roles in the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. A landmark class-a
More "progress" in Russia
This is old but I dont think it has been posted. Perhaps Chris has something to say about it. Russia is trying hard to catch up with and surpass the west in elimination of the safety net. Cheers, Ken Hanly Russian unions protest cuts to social benefits Last Updated Thu, 10 Jun 2004 12:02:46 MOSCOW - Russian trade unions held demonstrations across the country on Thursday to protest against government plans to slash social benefits. A Kremlin-approved bill, soon to go before parliament, would end billions of dollars of Soviet-era subsidies. If passed, the law would cut free bus service for pensioners and for disabled people, end subsized drugs for veterans and phase out subsidies on electricity and water bills. About 1,500 people gathered in front of the government headquarters in Moscow, while similar demonstrations were planned in dozens of other cities across the country. Economist Oxana Sinyavskaya said the government plans to compensate those hardest hit by the elimination of subsidies with monthly cash payments. The theory behind the reform is to make sure help goes to those who need it most, she said. "These benefits are not shared equally, they go more to wealthy people than to poor people," said Sinyavskaya. Trade union leaders say unless the government listens to their demands, they will hold a nationwide strike in September. Almost 20 per cent of Russia's population lives below the poverty line. cbc news june 10
Re: Low Taxes Do What!?
Im not an economist but I think you have the description wrong. This is a dull jerk from the right. Almost pure ideology, put down and genuflecting before the idols. . Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: "Grant Lee" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, June 28, 2004 2:12 AM Subject: Low Taxes Do What!? > [A sharp jab from the right. Would the economists among us like to comment?] > > > Low Taxes Do What? by Thomas Sowell > > The high cost of economic illiteracy. > > Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.Some years ago, > the distinguished international-trade economist Jagdish Bhagwati was > visiting Cornell University, giving a lecture to graduate students during > the day and debating Ralph Nader on free trade that evening. During his > lecture, Professor Bhagwati asked how many of the graduate students would be > attending that evening’s debate. Not one hand went up. > > Amazed, he asked why. The answer was that the economics students considered > it to be a waste of time. The kind of silly stuff that Ralph Nader was > saying had been refuted by economists ages ago. The net result was that the > audience for the debate consisted of people largely illiterate in economics, > and they cheered for Nader. > > Professor Bhagwati was exceptional among leading economists in understanding > the need to confront gross misconceptions of economics in the general > public, including the so-called educated public. Nobel laureates Milton > Friedman and Gary Becker are other such exceptions in addressing a wider >
More on Iraq sovereignty
Well at least Bremer didnt outlaw headscarves in school. Cheers, Ken Hanly BAGHDAD, June 26 -- U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer has issued a raft of edicts revising Iraq's legal code and has appointed at least two dozen Iraqis to government jobs with multi-year terms in an attempt to promote his concepts of governance long after the planned handover of political authority on Wednesday. Some of the orders signed by Bremer, which will remain in effect unless overturned by Iraq's interim government, restrict the power of the interim government and impose U.S.-crafted rules for the country's democratic transition. Among the most controversial orders is the enactment of an elections law that gives a seven-member commission the power to disqualify political parties and any of the candidates they support. The effect of other regulations could last much longer. Bremer has ordered that the national security adviser and the national intelligence chief chosen by the interim prime minister he selected, Ayad Allawi, be given five-year terms, imposing Allawi's choices on the elected government that is to take over next year. Bremer also has appointed Iraqis handpicked by his aides to influential positions in the interim government. He has installed inspectors-general for five-year terms in every ministry. He has formed and filled commissions to regulate communications, public broadcasting and securities markets. He named a public-integrity commissioner who will have the power to refer corrupt government officials for prosecution. Some Iraqi officials condemn Bremer's edicts and appointments as an effort to exert U.S. control over the country after the transfer of political authority. "They have established a system to meddle in our affairs," said Mahmoud Othman, a member of the Governing Council, a recently dissolved body that advised Bremer for the past year. "Iraqis should decide many of these issues." Bremer has defended his issuance of many of the orders as necessary to implement democratic reforms and update Iraq's out-of-date legal code. He said he regarded the installation of inspectors-general in ministries, the creation of independent commissions and the changes to Iraqi law as important steps to fight corruption and cronyism, which in turn would help the formation of democratic institutions. "You set up these things and they begin to develop a certain life and momentum on their own -- and it's harder to reverse course," Bremer said in a recent interview. As of June 14, Bremer had issued 97 legal orders, which are defined by the U.S. occupation authority as "binding instructions or directives to the Iraqi people" that will remain in force even after the transfer of political authority. An annex to the country's interim constitution requires the approval of a majority of Allawi's ministers, as well as the interim president and two vice presidents, to overturn any of Bremer's edicts. A senior U.S. official in Iraq noted recently that it would "not be easy to reverse" the orders. It appears unlikely that all of the orders will be followed. Many of them reflect an idealistic but perhaps futile attempt to impose Western legal, economic and social concepts on a tradition-bound nation that is reveling in anything-goes freedom after 35 years of dictatorial rule. The orders include rules that cap tax rates at 15 percent, prohibit piracy of intellectual property, ban children younger than 15 from working, and a new traffic code that stipulates the use of a car horn in "emergency conditions only" and requires a driver to "hold the steering wheel with both hands." Iraq has long been a place where few people pay taxes, where most movies and music are counterfeit, where children often hold down jobs and where traffic laws are rarely obeyed, Iraqis note. Other regulations promulgated by Bremer prevent former members of the Iraqi army from holding public office for 18 months after their retirement or resignation, stipulate a 30-year minimum sentence for people caught selling weapons such as grenades and ban former militiamen integrated into the Iraqi armed forces from endorsing and campaigning for political candidates. He has also enacted a 76-page law regulating private corporations and amended an industrial-design law to protect microchip designs. Those changes were intended to facilitate the entry of Iraq into the World Trade Organization, even though the country is so violent that the no commercial flights are allowed to land at Baghdad's airport. Some of the new rules attempt to introduce American approaches to fighting crime. An anti-money-laundering law requires banks to collect detailed personal information from customers seeking to make transactions greater than &dol;3,500, while the Commission on Public Integrity has been given the power to reward whistleblowers with 25 percent of the funds recovered by the government from corrupt practices they have identified. In some cases Bremer's regulations di
Sovereignty lite in Iraq
Of course many jails will also be still under US control including Abu Ghraib. The interim govt. itself was chosen by the UN and vetted by US. The government is not to make laws but to be a caretaker. The laws are those passed by the occupation authorities including a recent law that gives US troops and contractors immunity from Iraq law, although there is dispute about how wide the exclusion will extend. Final say on security issues rests with US commanded multinational fig-leaf forces. The CPA is rushing to award all sorts of contracts that will bind new govt. once "sovereignty" is handed over to Iraqis.TheUS and its minions will continue to be kings of Saddam's castle. The US just recently noted that the new Iraq govt. will not be able to impose martial law.Only the US multinational force has authority to do that. Cheers, Ken Hanly Iraq's air and sea ports to stay under foreign control By Nicolas Pelham Published: June 24 2004 5:00 | Last Updated: June 24 2004 5:00 Iraq's air and sea ports will remain under foreign security control despite a formal transfer of sovereignty on June 30 to the interim government, according to coalition officials and security companies. In the dying weeks of its rule, the occupation administration says it is issuing contracts worth tens of millions of dollars to British security contractors in an effort to prolong foreign oversight of strategic ports that are vital to the US-led reconstruction effort. "We hired a private contractor to train Iraqis and train themselves out of a job," says one of 16 coalition advisers at the transport ministry who will remain after June 30. Responsibility for security at the sea port of Umm Qasr has been awarded to the British company Olive. The coalition administration has also awarded Stevedoring Services of America a three-month contract to handle the administration and collection of revenue at the port, says SSA's John Walsh. An American company, Skylink, will continue to oversee air-traffic control at Baghdad airport at least until the end of September. Last-minute manoeuvring to keep a tight rein on security illustrates the coalition's nervousness at the transfer of power over strategic assets to Iraqis. Iraqi officials who had hoped the airport would return to Iraqi hands have voiced frustration at this month's United Nations resolution binding them to uphold the contracts awarded from the Development Fund of Iraq, the deposit for Iraq's oil revenues which the US-led administration is using to pay contractors. "I prefer my people to secure the airport. It's a matter of sovereignty," says Louay al-Erris, Iraq's newly appointed transport minister. "I don't think foreigners are more capable than Iraqi police and security." Iraqi officials have repeatedly alleged that military use of Baghdad International Airport (BIAP), has hampered its opening to commercial passenger traffic. Pent-up demand for travel in a country isolated by 25 years of sanctions and war is intense. While 500 aircraft land at BIAP daily, all but 50 are military craft. Coalition officials respond that they have gone out of their way to prepare BIAP for the handover. BIAP has been the largest American base in Iraq during the 16-month occupation, and the relocation of 15,000 troops to two adjacent camps, say US officials, amounts to a big concession. "The coalition is making a sacrifice to give that airport back to Iraq," says the transport adviser, who adds that he has persuaded US military commanders they would still have access to Iraq's 160 other airfields. According to his plan, the ministry of transport would regain control of BIAP's eastern runway and terminals on July 1 and the western military runway by mid-August. He said he foresaw security contractors and Iraqi police working side by side. It remained unclear, he said, who would decide whether to lift the ban on Iraqi taxis entering the airport perimeter, for fear they were booby-trapped. But the security contractor at BIAP, Custerbattles, says its word on access to the airport remains final. "We have the final say and the legal liability and that will carry over into the next contract," says Don Ritchie, programme manager for Custerbattles. But he added: "If I was the Iraqi general in charge, I'd be upset because there's a security company doing things I think I should be doing." Iraqi officials also resent the contractors' recourse to foreign guards, viewing the presence of Nepalese, South African and British private security forces as an extension of the occupation. Bahnam Boulos, Iraq's former transport minister, who was replaced with the appointment of a new government on June 1, is sceptical of American US assurances that the security contracts will be short term. * A strike by US forces that destroyed a house in the Iraqi city of Falluja overnight killed about 20 foreign fighters, a senior military official said on Wednesday.Reuters reports from Baghdad. The US military says the stri
Re: Putin
Bentham thought that his body ought to be useful after death and so he arranged for it to be dissected. It was later reconstructed as per the rest of the story..This is from the shorter Brittanica story After Bentham's death, in accordance with his directions, his body was dissected in the presence of his friends. The skeleton was then reconstructed, supplied with a wax head to replace the original (which had been mummified), dressed in Bentham's own clothes and set upright in a glass-fronted case. Both this effigy and the head are preserved in University College, London. - Original Message - From: "Devine, James" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, June 24, 2004 12:11 PM Subject: Re: Putin > I thought it was at LSE. But Bentham is perhaps the "exception that proves the rule," a true wierdo. > jd > > -Original Message- > From: PEN-L list on behalf of Ted Winslow > Sent: Thu 6/24/2004 10:02 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Cc: > Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Putin > > > > James Devine wrote: > > > I doubt that anyone wants to be put on permanent display. > > I think at his own request, Bentham;s stuffed and clothed skeleton > adorned with a wax replica of his head is permanently on display in > University College. The original head is in a box between his feet. > > Ted > > >
Perle chickens out..
The Perle-Hersh Transcript Watch Richard Perle promised us a 90-page Sy Hersh dossier. So, where is it? By Jack Shafer Posted Thursday, June 17, 2004, at 2:19 PM PT Fifteen months ago, Richard N. Perle very publicly promised to sue Seymour M. Hersh for libel in an English court over Hersh's investigative profile, "Lunch With the Chairman," published in The New Yorker. When Perle made his threat, I denounced him as a libel tourist for exporting his lawsuit to England, where libel law favors plaintiffs, rather than bringing the suit in an American court. I also predicted that Perle wouldn't file before the one-year statute of limitations ran out because his case was groundless. For the next 12 months, I rode Perle like a herring-gutted nag in this column. Every time he surfaced in the news—which turned out to be about once a month—I penned a fresh installment of the "Richard Perle Libel Watch," daring him to sue. On the first anniversary of his libel threat, the bully Perle chickened out. Citing the advice of his attorneys, Perle told the New York Sun (March 12, 2004) that instead of a filing in an English docket, he would try his case in the court of public opinion. The Sun reported: Mr. Perle will plan to make available either on the Web or through a news conference 80 to 90 pages of transcripts from his lawyer's interviews with individuals interviewed by Mr. Hersh that he said "make it absolutely clear that his reporting in his article is false," Mr. Perle said. "With the benefit of that information I would expect The New Yorker to make a correction." As a scholar of journalism and a distinguished fellow in Perlean studies, I would very much like to see those transcripts. Christ knows I could squeeze another Perle column out of them. So where are they? It can't possibly take three months to rent some server space and upload 90 pages of text to a Web site. Maybe Perle's stumbling block is technological. If that's the case, Perle can messenger or e-mail the transcripts to me, and I'll get them posted on the Web overnight. I'll even send the URL for the transcript pages to David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, so he can weigh whether a correction is in order. If you're reading, Mr. Perle, my e-mail address is [EMAIL PROTECTED] I hope to hear from you at your earliest convenience. If not, you'll be hearing from me. Frequently
Independent nation. No jurisdiction.
It is interesting that Afghanistan does not get to try this guy nor have any say about the issue even though the crime happened in Afghanistan and was not even by a member of the multinational forces in the country. This same sort of exemption of contractors is a key bone of contention with the Iraqi interim govt. to be. CHeers, Ken Hanly June 17, 2004 — A CIA civilian contractor was arrested today and charged in the beating death of a prisoner held in Afghanistan, ABC News has learned. David Passaro, 37, was arrested today at his place of work in North Carolina, sources said. Passaro is charged in connection with the death of a prisoner who was detained at a U.S. holding facility in Afghanistan's Kunar province, near the Pakistan border. According to military officials, the man was captured on June 18, 2003, and died five days later, on June 23. His death was announced the same day. It was the earliest of three cases the CIA sent to the Justice Department last month for criminal prosecution against agency staff and contractors accused in association with the deaths of prisoners in both Afghanistan and Iraq, said a Justice official. The two other cases — both in Iraq — involve the November 2003 death of a detainee at the Abu Ghraib facility near Baghdad and the death of Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush, a former commander of Saddam Hussein's air defenses, in Qiam, Iraq, that same month. Both deaths may have involved CIA officers or independent contractors. Passaro, a former U.S. Army Ranger, was to be taken to the federal courthouse in Raleigh, N.C. ABC News' Jason Ryan and Mary Walsh contributed to this report
Agent Orange in Vietnam
Seems the US is a failed state in terms of failing to take responsibility for its actions and accepting the rules of law and warfare as applying only to others not to itself. It is not surprising it bribes states to exempt it from being tried for war crimes. Cheers, Ken Hanly Vietnam's war against Agent Orange By Tom Fawthrop Cu Chi district, Vietnam The Vietnam War ended in 1975, but the scourge of dioxin contamination from a herbicide known as Agent Orange did not. "The damage inflicted by Agent Orange is much worse than anybody thought at the end of the war," said Professor Nguyen Trong Nhan, the vice-president of the Vietnam Victims of Agent Orange Association (VAVA). Between 1962 and 1970, millions of gallons of Agent Orange were sprayed across parts of Vietnam. Professor Nhan, the former president of the Vietnamese Red Cross, denounced the action as "a massive violation of human rights of the civilian population, and a weapon of mass destruction". But since the end of the Vietnam War, Washington has denied any moral or legal responsibility for the toxic legacy said to have been caused by Agent Orange in Vietnam. The unresolved legacy and US denials of responsibility triggered three Vietnamese to take unprecedented legal action in January 2004. The plaintiffs alleged war crimes against Monsanto Corporation, Dow Chemicals and eight other companies that manufactured Agent Orange and other defoliants used in Vietnam. The case has been brought by VAVA, which was set up to promote an international campaign to gain justice and compensation for Agent Orange victims. Preliminary hearings began in January at the US Federal Court in New York, presided over by senior judge Jack Weinstein. Birth defects Agent Orange was designed to defoliate the jungle and thus deny cover to Vietcong guerrillas. It contained one of the most virulent poisons known to man, a strain of dioxin called TCCD. First it killed the rainforest, stripping the jungle bare. In time, the dioxin then spread its toxic reach to the food chain - which some say led to a proliferation of birth deformities. In a small commune in the heavily sprayed Cu Chi district, the family of 21-year-old Tran Anh Kiet struggles with the problems of daily living. His feet, hands and limbs are twisted and deformed. He writhes in evident frustration, and his attempts at speech are confined to plaintive and pitiful grunts. Kiet has to be spoon-fed. He is an adult stuck inside the stunted body of a 15-year-old, with a mental age of around six. He is what the local villagers refer to as an Agent Orange baby. In Vietnam, there are 150,000 other children like him, whose birth defects - according to Vietnamese Red Cross records - can be readily traced back to their parents' exposure to Agent Orange during the war, or the consumption of dioxin-contaminated food and water since 1975. VAVA estimates that three million Vietnamese were exposed to the chemical during the war, and at least one million suffer serious health problems today. Some are war veterans, who were exposed to the chemical clouds. Many are farmers who lived off land that was sprayed. Others are a second and third generation, affected by their parents' exposure. Some of these victims live in the vicinity of former US military bases such as Bien Hoa, where Agent Orange was stored in large quantities. Dr Arnold Schecter, a leading expert in dioxin contamination in the US, sampled the soil there in 2003, and found it contained TCCD levels that were 180 million times above the safe level set by the US environmental protection agency. Calls for US help Professor Nhan is sadly disappointed by the US response to calls to help Vietnamese sufferers. "Vietnam can't solve the problem on its own. Hanoi helped the US military to track down remains of MIAs (US servicemen missing in action), and we asked them to reciprocate with humanitarian aid for victims of Agent Orange," he said. Around 10,000 US war veterans who were exposed to Agent Orange receive disability benefits for various types of cancer and other serious health problems that have been linked to dioxin. "American victims of Agent Orange will get up to $1500 a month. However most Vietnamese families affected receive around 80,000 Dong a month (just over $5 dollars) in government support for each disabled child," Professor Nhan said. When former US President Bill Clinton visited Hanoi four years ago, Vietnamese president Tran Duc Long made an appeal to the US "to acknowledge its responsibility to de-mine, detoxify former military bases and provide assistance to Agent Orange victims". But Washington offered nothing beyond funding scientific conferences and further research. Chuck Searcy, vice-president of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund based in Hanoi, said: "I am baffled that the US has not offered even a small gesture of cooperation and assistance to the Vietnamese, beyond the endless talk about scientific research. Such a step w
Re: Nick Berg and Ben Linder
I found the NYT article very suspicious. It ignores or does not resolve important questions and leaves out important details. Although the article notes at one point that Iraqi police and US officials both deny they had custody of Berg it also recounts as fact that he was in Iraqi police custody. What sort of crappy journalism is that? Also it does not mention such important details as the part in the video execution where the executioners claim he is being executed because a deal could not be made to trade Berg for Abu Ghraib prisoner(s). Nor as you suggest it doesnt discuss the execution video details either. Nor does it mention the fact that Berg was said to have been in possession of a Koran and anti-semitic literature. The article is a human interest entertainment fluff job. Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: "Paul Zarembka" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 2004 9:01 AM Subject: Re: Nick Berg and Ben Linder > I find the question of whether Berg was actually killed by beheading and > by whom far more interesting than the NYT article about Berg's > personality. See, for example, "The Nicholas Berg execution: A working > hypothesis and a resolution for the orange jumpsuit mystery" > > http://www.brushtail.com.au/nick_berg_hypothesis.html > > Paul Z. > > * > Vol.21-Neoliberalism in Crisis, Accumulation, and Rosa Luxemburg's Legacy > RESEARCH IN POLITICAL ECONOMY, Zarembka/Soederberg, eds, Elsevier Science > ** http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PZarembka
Liability of contractors for torture in Iraq
May 26, 2004 THE LAW Who Would Try Civilians of U.S.? No One in Iraq By ADAM LIPTAK hough civilian translators and interrogators may have participated in the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison, prosecuting them will present challenges, legal experts say, because such civilians working for the military are subject to neither Iraqi nor military justice. On the basis of a referral from the Pentagon, the Justice Department opened an investigation on Friday into the conduct of one civilian contractor in Iraq, who has not been identified. "We remain committed to taking all appropriate action within our jurisdiction regarding allegations of mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners," Mark Corallo, a Justice Department spokesman, said in a statement. Prosecuting civilian contractors in United States courts would be "fascinating and enormously complicated," said Deborah N. Pearlstein, director of the U.S. law and security program of Human Rights First. It is clear, on the other hand, that neither Iraqi courts nor American courts-martial are available. In June 2003, L. Paul Bremer III, the chief American administrator in Iraq, granted broad immunity to civilian contractors and their employees. They were, he wrote, generally not subject to criminal and civil actions in the Iraqi legal system, including arrest and detention. That immunity is limited to their official acts under their contracts, and it is unclear whether any abuses alleged can be said to have been such acts. But even unofficial conduct by contractors in Iraq cannot be prosecuted there, Mr. Bremer's order said, without his written permission. Similarly, under a series of Supreme Court decisions, civilians cannot be court-martialed in the absence of a formal declaration of war. There was no such declaration in the Iraq war. In theory, the president could establish new military commissions to try civilians charged with offenses in Iraq, said Jordan Paust, a law professor at the University of Houston and a former member of the faculty at the Army's Judge Advocate General's School. The commissions announced by President Bush in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks do not, however, have jurisdiction over American citizens. That leaves prosecution in United States courts. There, prosecutors might turn to two relatively narrow laws, or a broader one, to pursue their cases. A 1994 law makes torture committed by Americans outside the United States a crime. The law defines torture as the infliction of severe physical or mental pain or suffering. But some human rights groups suspect that the administration may be reluctant to use the law, because its officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, have resisted calling the abuse at Abu Ghraib torture. "If they don't want to use the word `torture,' " Ms. Pearlstein said, "prosecutions under the torture act aren't likely." A 1996 law concerning war crimes allows prosecutions for violations of some provisions of the Geneva Conventions, including those prohibiting torture, "outrages upon personal dignity" and "humiliating and degrading treatment." Bush administration lawyers cited potential prosecutions under the law as a reason not to give detainees at Guantánamo Bay the protections of the Geneva Conventions. But the administration has said that the conventions apply to detainees in Iraq. Both the torture law and the war-crimes law provide for long prison sentences, and capital punishment is available in cases involving the victim's death. The broader law, the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, allows people "employed by or accompanying the armed forces outside the United States" to be prosecuted in United States courts for federal crimes punishable by more than a year's imprisonment. People who are citizens or residents of the host nations are not covered, but Americans and other foreign nationals are. The law has apparently been invoked only once, in a case involving charges that the wife of an Air Force staff sergeant murdered him in Turkey last year. The case will soon be tried in federal court in Los Angeles. The law was passed to fill a legal gap that had existed since the 1950's, when Supreme Court decisions limited the military's ability to prosecute civilians in courts-martial during peacetime. In 2000, a three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in New York, citing that gap, reluctantly overturned the conviction of an American civilian who had sexually abused a child in Germany. In an unusual move, the judges sent their decision to two Congressional committees. That helped encourage enactment of the law that year. The law requires the Pentagon, in consultation with the State and Justice Departments, to establish regulations on how to carry it out. Though it was enacted four years ago, the regulations are still under consideration. In any event, there are gaps and uncertainties in the law. For one thing, it applies only to contractors employed by the Defense Department. Contractors
Modest proposals for psyops
May 26, 2004 Psyops In Fourth Generation War by William S. Lind I recently received an invitation to speak at a conference at Ft. Bragg on psychological operations, or psyops. Regrettably, a schedule conflict prevented me from accepting, but the invitation got me thinking: what are psyops in Fourth Generation war (4GW)? It is clear what they are not: leaflets saying, "No on can hope to fight the American military, surrender now," or "We are here to liberate you." After the Iraq debacle, those messages will be met with open derision. The only way such leaflets are likely to be useful is if they are printed on very soft paper. Colonel John Boyd said that the greatest weakness a person or a nation can have at the highest level of war, the moral level, is a contradiction between what they say and what they do. From that I think follows the basic definition of psyops in Fourth Generation war: psyops are not what you say, but what you do. If we look at the war in Iraq through that lens, we quickly see a number of psyops we could have undertaken, but did not. For example, what if instead locating the CPA in Saddam's old palace in Baghdad and putting Iraqi prisoners in his notorious Abu Ghraib prison, we had located the CPA in Abu Ghraib and put the prisoners in Saddam's palace? That would have sent a powerful message. What if, when we get in a firefight and Iraqis are killed, General Kimmitt the Frog, our military spokesman in Baghdad, announced that with regret instead of in triumph? We could use every engagement as a chance to reiterate the message, "We did not come here to fight." That message would be all the more powerful if we treated Iraqi wounded the same way as American wounded, offered American military honors to their dead and sent any prisoners home, quickly, with a wad of cash in their pockets. Years ago, my father, David Lind, whose career was in advertising, said, "If the day World War II ended, Stalin had sent all his German prisoners home, giving them a big box of food for their families and a wallet full of Reichsmarks, the Communists would have taken all of Western Europe." He may have been right. In Fallujah, the Marines just showed a brilliant appreciation of psyops in 4GW. How? They let the Iraqis win. At the tactical level, the Marines probably could have taken Fallujah, although the result would have been a strategic disaster. Instead, by pulling back and letting the Iraqis claim victory, they gave Iraqi forces of order inside the city the self-respect they needed to work with us. Washington and the CPA seem to define "liberation" as beating the Iraqis to a pulp, then handing them their "freedom" like a gift from a master to a slave. In societies where honor, dignity and manliness are still important virtues, that can never work. But "losing to win" sometimes can. The CPA's complete inability to appreciate psyops in 4GW was revealed in a recent episode that suggested Laurel and Hardy are in command. It seems our Boys in Baghdad decided the "new Iraq" needed a new flag. Never mind that the new flag suggested Iraq is still a province of the Ottoman Empire and also conveniently included the same shade of blue found on the Israeli flag. What giving any new flag to Iraq's Quisling government in Baghdad really did was give the Iraqi resistance something it badly needed - its own flag, in the form of the old Iraqi flag. Couldn't anybody over there see that coming? Hello? Perhaps our most disastrous failure (beyond Abu Ghraib) to realize that psyops are what we do, not what we say, is our ongoing fight with the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr. At the beginning of April, Sadr had almost no support in the Shi'ite community outside Baghdad's Sadr City, while Ayatollah Sistani, who has passively cooperated with the occupation, had overwhelming support. Now, thanks to our attacks on Sadr and his militia, polls taken in Iraq show Sadr with more than 30% support among Shi'ites while Sistani has slipped to just over 50%. The U.S. Army has been Sadr's best publicity agent. Maybe it should send him a bill. Some of our psyops people probably understand all of this. Unfortunately, the people above them, in Iraq and in Washington, appear to grasp none of it. The end result is that, regardless of who wins the firefights, our enemies win one psychological victory after another. In a type of war where the moral and mental levels far outweigh the physical level, it is not hard to see where that road ends. http://www.antiwar.com/lind/?articleid=2662
Draft of UN resolution
The resolution makes no mention of UNMOVIC. Does this mean that the US will make the final report to the UN onf WMD or what? THe UN seems to suffer from severe memory loss. Does it not remember that inspectors were given a day or so to clear out of Iraq or be bombed by the USUK forces? USUK simply ignored the UN and did not invite inspectors back in to finish the job. Order of the day was to have a UN resolution legimitising the occupation. Things have not changed. Now the hand-picked interim government vetted by the US (and UK?) is now to be legitimised. There is no mention that the interim government lacks the power to enact new laws that I can see but my understanding is that it will simply enforce laws passed under the occupation. Is this just understood but unwritten? Item 6 says that the mandate of the international force shall be reviewed in 12 months or at the request of the Transitional Government of Iraq. The problem is that no such entity is mentioned earlier just the Interim Government and the Trasitioal National Assembly. If the latter is meant then the interim government has no say. It is also clear that the US commanded multinational force has the say over security. The rest about consultation etc. seems to be windowdressing. No where does it say that the government has control over its own troops. What about jails etc.? Of course multinational forces continue to be immune from Iraqi law. What of all the private contractors and security guards? The emphasis upon terrorism in the document is hardly surprising. It will provide ammunition for the Bush garbage that Iraq is central to the war on terrorism. No doubt any resistance after the transfer of sovereignty will be dubbed terrorist. I hear that the new jail in Iraq will be called Guantanamo II.. Cheers, Ken Hanly The Security Council, Recalling its previous relevant resolutions on Iraq, in particular resolutions 1483 (2003) and 1511 (2003), Reaffirming the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iraq, Recognizing the importance of international support, particularly that of countries in the region, Iraq's neighbors, and regional organizations, for the people of Iraq in their efforts to achieve security and prosperity, Determined to mark a new phase in Iraq's transition to a democratically elected government, and looking forward, to this end, to the end of the occupations, and the assumption of authority by & sovereign Interim Government of Iraq by 30 June 2004, Welcoming the ongoing efforts of the Special Advisor to the Secretary-General to assist the people of Iraq in achieving the formation of a sovereign Interim Government of Iraq, Welcoming the progress made in implementing the arrangements for Iraq's political transition referred to in resolution 1511 (2003) Affirming the importance of the principles of rule of law, including respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and of democracy, including free and fair elections Recalling the establishment of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) on 15 August 2003, and determined that the United Nations should play a leading role in assisting the Iraqi people in the formation of institutions for representative government. Recognizing the international support for restoration of stability and security is essential to the well-being of the people of Iraq as well as the ability of all concerned to carry o out their work on behalf of the people of Iraq, and welcoming Member State contributions in this regard under resolution 1483 (2003) of 22 May 2003 and resolutions 1511 (2003) of 16 October 2003, Recalling the report provided to the Security Council on 16 April 2004 under resolution 1511 (2003) on the efforts and progress made by the multinational force authorized under that resolution, welcoming the willingness of the multinational force to continue efforts to contribute to the maintenance of security and stability in Iraq in support of the political transition, especially for upcoming elections, and to provide security of the UN presence in Iraq, as further described in the letter to the President of the Security Council on XX XX 2004, and recognizing the importance of the consent of the sovereign government of Iraq for the presence of the multinational force and of close coordination between the multinational force and that government, Noting that the multinational force will operate in accordance with generally accepted principles of international law and cooperate with relevant international organizations, Affirming the important of international assistance in reconstruction and development of the Iraqi economy, Recognizing the benefits to Iraq of the Immunities and privileges enjoyed by the Iraqi oil revenues and by the Development Fund for Iraq, and noting the importance of providing for continued disbursements of this fund by the Interim Government of Iraq and its successors upon dissolution of the Coalition Provisional Authority. Determining t
Solution to the torture problem: Ban Cameras
Rumsfeld bans camera phones >From correspondents in London May 23, 2004 MOBILE phones fitted with digital cameras have been banned in US army installations in Iraq on orders from Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, The Business newspaper reported today. Quoting a Pentagon source, the paper said the US Defence Department believes that some of the damning photos of US soldiers abusing Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad were taken with camera phones. "Digital cameras, camcorders and cellphones with cameras have been prohibited in military compounds in Iraq," it said, adding that a "total ban throughout the US military" is in the works. Disturbing new photos of Iraqi prisoner abuse, which the US government had reportedly tried to keep hidden, were published on Friday in the Washington Post newspaper. The photos emerged along with details of testimony from inmates at Abu Ghraib who said they were sexually molested by female soldiers, beaten, sodomised and forced to eat food from toilets. http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,9643950%255E401,00.html
The New UN resolution on sovereignty
The text does not seem available as yet but there are some odd sections and some odd omissions. The article does not mention the fact that the government will in effect not have any legislative functions. The law in effect will be that passed under the occupation. Obviously any corruption in expenditures from oil revenues will be internationalised. The Iraqis apparently are not to be entrusted with expenditure of their own assets without proper supervision in the interests of foreign investors. The US will be in command of security through a multinational force. There is no mention of the opt-out provisions where Iraqi troops could refuse to take part in missions. Why should UN members agree not to file any lawsuits against Iraq for 12 months? Given that all the officials are to be chosen by Brahmini after first being vetted by the US (and UK?) the govt. is not likely to ask the multi-national force to leave. Furthermore it seems that there are advisors attached to ministries just to keep them in line and also other groups that have been set up by the CPA that will have real powers. I wonder who will be the private mercenaries awarded the special contract to protect UN personnel. Cheers, Ken Hanly By Evelyn Leopold UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A new U.S.-British drafted U.N. Security Council resolution endorsing sovereignty for an Iraqi caretaker government approves the presence of the U.S.-led force there but sets no date for the troops to leave. The resolution, distributed to council members on Monday, would endorse the formation of a "sovereign interim government" that would take office by June 30 and says that government would "assume the responsibility and authority for governing a sovereign Iraq." The draft emerged as President Bush prepared a televised speech later on Monday mapping out his plans for Iraq, where violent attacks on occupying forces have dimmed U.S. hopes for a peaceful transfer to democratic rule. The definition of sovereignty is a contentious issue, with the Bush administration attempting to assure U.N. Security Council members they would not be asked to approve an occupation under another name. British ambassador Emyr Jones Parry told reporters the resolution "underlines clearly that all sovereignty will be returned to the Iraqis, that the interim Iraqi government will assume total responsibility for its own sovereignty." But the text is bound to run into criticism by France, Germany, Russia and others. It does not give a definite timetable for deployment of the U.S.-led force and instead calls for a review after a year, which a new Iraqi government can request earlier. A review, however, would be similar to an open-ended mandate and would not mean the force would leave unless the Security Council, where the United States has veto power, decides it should do so. The resolution, contrary to expectations, does not give an "opt out" clause that would allow Iraqi troops to refuse a command from the American military. Instead it calls for arrangements "to ensure coordination between the two." As part of the transition process, U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, now in Baghdad, is due to name a president, a prime minister, two vice presidents and 26 ministers before the end of May. They would stay in office until elections for a national assembly, expected to be held by January 2005. The resolution also says a separate force would be created within the multinational force for the sole purposes of providing security for U.N. staff and operations within Iraq. On oil, the draft resolution says Iraq would have control over its oil revenues. But it would keep in place an international advisory board, which audits accounts, to assure investors and donors that their money was being spent free of corruption, U.N. envoys said. Under a May 2003 Security Council resolution adopted after the fall of Saddam Hussein, all proceeds of Iraq's oil and gas sales were deposited into a special account called the Development Fund for Iraq, controlled by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority. The new measure calls on all U.N. member-states to take steps to ensure that no law suits are filed against Iraq or any of its state-owned enterprises for a period of 12 months. Curtailing an existing U.N. arms embargo, the draft would allow the importation of arms by either the multinational force or the Iraqi government. ((Editing by David Storey; Reuters messaging: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; 1-212-355-7424) © Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.
Bush and the Carlyle Group revisited
When War is Swell Bush's Crusades and the Carlyle Group By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR Across all fronts, Bush's war deteriorates with stunning rapidity. The death count of American soldiers killed in Iraq will soon top 800, with no end in sight. The members of the handpicked Iraqi Governor Council are being knocked off one after another. Once loyal Shia clerics, like Ayatollah Sistani, are now telling the administration to pull out or face a nationalist insurgency. The trail of culpability for the abuse, torture and murder of Iraqi detainees seems to lead inexorably into the office of Donald Rumsfeld. The war for Iraqi oil has ended up driving the price of crude oil through the roof. Even Kurdish leaders, brutalized by the Ba'athists for decades, are now saying Iraq was a safer place under their nemesis Saddam Hussein. Like Medea whacking her own kids, the US turned on its own creation, Ahmed Chalabi, raiding his Baghdad compound and fingering him as an agent of the ayatollahs of Iran. And on and on it goes. Still not all of the president's men are in a despairing mood. Amid the wreckage, there remain opportunities for profit and plunder. Halliburton and Bechtel's triumphs in Iraq have been chewed over for months. Less well chronicled is the profiteering of the Carlyle Group, a company with ties that extend directly into the Oval Office itself. Even Pappy Bush stands in line to profit handsomely from his son's war making. The former president is on retainer with the Carlyle Group, the largest privately held defense contractor in the nation. Carlyle is run by Frank Carlucci, who served as the National Security advisor and Secretary of Defense under Ronald Reagan. Carlucci has his own embeds in the current Bush administration. At Princeton, his college roommate was Donald Rumsfeld. They've remained close friends and business associates ever since. When you have friends like this, you don't need to hire lobbyists.. Bush Sr. serves as a kind of global emissary for Carlyle. The ex-president doesn't negotiate arms deals; he simply opens the door for them, a kind of high level meet-and-greet. His special area of influence is the Middle East, primarily Saudi Arabia, where the Bush family has extensive business and political ties. According to an account in the Washington Post, Bush Sr. earns around $500,000 for each speech he makes on Carlyle's behalf. One of the Saudi investors lured to Carlyle by Bush was the BinLaden Group, the construction conglomerate owned by the family of Osama bin Laden. According to an investigation by the Wall Street Journal, Bush convinced Shafiq Bin Laden, Osama's half brother, to sink $2 million of BinLaden Group money into Carlyle's accounts. In a pr move, the Carlyle group cut its ties to the BinLaden Group in October 2001. One of Bush Sr.'s top sidekicks, James Baker, is also a key player at Carlyle. Baker joined the weapons firm in 1993, fresh from his stint as Bush's secretary of state and chief of staff. Packing a briefcase of global contacts, Baker parlayed his connections with heads of state, generals and international tycoons into a bonanza for Carlyle. After Baker joined the company, Carlyle's revenues more than tripled. Like Bush Sr., Baker's main function was to manage Carlyle's lucrative relationship with Saudi potentates, who had invested tens of millions of dollars in the company. Baker helped secure one of Carlyle's most lucrative deals: the contract to run the Saudi offset program, a multi-billion dollar scheme wherein international companies winning Saudi contracts are required under terms of the contracts to invest a percentage of the profits in Saudi companies. Baker not only greases the way for investment deals and arms sales, but he also plays the role of seasoned troubleshooter, protecting the interests of key clients and regimes. A case in point: when the Justice Department launched an investigation into the financial dealings of Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, the Saudi prince sought out Baker's help. Baker is currently defending the prince in a trillion dollar lawsuit brought by the families of the victims of the 9/11 attacks. The suit alleges that the prince used Islamic charities as pass-throughs for shipping millions of dollars to groups linked to al-Qaeda. Baker and Carlyle enjoy another ace in the hole when it comes to looking out for their Saudi friends. Baker prevailed on Bush Jr. to appoint his former law partner, Bob Jordan, as the administration's ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Carlyle and its network of investors are well positioned to cash in on Bush Jr.'s expansion of the defense and Homeland Security department budgets. Two Carlyle companies, Federal Data Systems and US Investigations Services, hold multi-billion dollar contracts to provide background checks for commercial airlines, the Pentagon, the CIA and the Department of Homeland Security. USIS was once a federal agency called the Office Federal Investigations, but it was privatized in 1996 at
Qatar to legalise unions
Qatar labour law opens door to unions Thursday 20 May 2004, 15:05 Makka Time, 12:05 GMT The state of Qatar has issued a new labour law allowing for workers in the tiny Gulf emirate the right to form trade unions and go on strike. An official statement released from Amir Shaikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani's office on Thursday said the new law will come into force in six months. Qatar's Housing and Civil Affairs Minister Shaikh Falah bin Jassim al-Thani said the legislation allows workers to set up unions within the establishments in which they work. It also introduces "the right to go on strike when amicable settlements cannot be reached between employees and employers," he said. The legislation bans employing youth aged under 16, sets the working day at eight hours and grants women equal rights with men, in addition to a paid 50-day maternity leave. "Qatar tends to follow its own agenda, it's hard to say if other countries will follow" Angus Hindley, Deputy Editor, MEED The new law comes just a week after the Qatari ruler allowed the formation of professional associations for the first time in the gas-rich state, which has only some 150,000 nationals among a population of 650,000. Angus Hindley, Deputy Editor of Middle East Economic Digest told Aljazeera.net that Qatar's new labour law is part of the country's democratisation programme. "This new law is part of the reforming process which has in effect been going on for more than four years," Hindley said. 'Step by step reform' "It is part of Qatar's gradual process of liberalisation and reform." "Things are happening step by step, from deregulating the media to women rights - and the next step that is coming will be federal elections," he added. Qatar recently introduced a series of reforms, including a first written constitution that will usher in a partly-elected Shura (consultative) Council later this year. Often seen as a trailblazer in the Arab world, analysts remain uncertain whether other Arab nations will follow Qatar's example of gradual democratisation. "Qatar tends to follow its own agenda, it's hard to say if other countries will follow - Bahrain is a possibility - but I doubt other countries will do the same," Hindley said.
Avoidgin the Geneva Conventions etc.
Has anyone ever tried to bring a charge under the 1996 Federal War Crimes Act? Cheers, Ken Hanly http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/21/politics/21MEMO.html?ei=1&en=fa2af4bbd3884368&ex=1086154392&pagewanted=print&position=May 21, 2004 GENEVA CONVENTIONS Justice Memos Explained How to Skip Prisoner Rights By NEIL A. LEWIS ASHINGTON, May 20 - A series of Justice Department memorandums written in late 2001 and the first few months of 2002 were crucial in building a legal framework for United States officials to avoid complying with international laws and treaties on handling prisoners, lawyers and former officials say. The confidential memorandums, several of which were written or co-written by John C. Yoo, a University of California law professor who was serving in the department, provided arguments to keep United States officials from being charged with war crimes for the way prisoners were detained and interrogated. They were endorsed by top lawyers in the White House, the Pentagon and the vice president's office but drew dissents from the State Department. The memorandums provide legal arguments to support administration officials' assertions that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to detainees from the Afghanistan war. They also suggested how officials could inoculate themselves from liability by claiming that abused prisoners were in some other nation's custody. The methods of detention and interrogation used in the Afghanistan conflict, in which the United States operated outside the Geneva Conventions, is at the heart of an investigation into prisoner abuse in Iraq in recent months. Human rights lawyers have said that in showing disrespect for international law in the Afghanistan conflict, the stage was set for harsh treatment in Iraq. One of the memorandums written by Mr. Yoo along with Robert J. Delahunty, another Justice Department lawyer, was prepared on Jan. 9, 2002, four months after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. The 42-page memorandum, entitled, "Application of treaties and laws to Al Qaeda and Taliban detainees," provided several legal arguments for avoiding the jurisdiction of the Geneva Conventions. A lawyer and a former government official who saw the memorandum said it anticipated the possibility that United States officials could be charged with war crimes, defined as grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. The document said a way to avoid that is to declare that the conventions do not apply. The memorandum, addressed to William J. Haynes, the Pentagon's general counsel, said that President Bush could argue that the Taliban government in Afghanistan was a "failed state" and therefore its soldiers were not entitled to protections accorded in the conventions. If Mr. Bush did not want to do that, the memorandum gave other grounds, like asserting that the Taliban was a terrorist group. It also noted that the president could just say that he was suspending the Geneva Conventions for a particular conflict. Prof. Detlev Vagts, an authority on international law and treaties at Harvard Law School, said the arguments in the memorandums as described to him "sound like an effort to find loopholes that could be used to avoid responsibility." One former government official who was involved in drafting some of the memorandums said that the lawyers did not make recommendations but only provided a range of all the options available to the White House. On Jan. 25, 2002, Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel, in a memorandum to President Bush, said that the Justice Department's advice was sound and that Mr. Bush should declare the Taliban as well as Al Qaeda outside the coverage of the Geneva Conventions. That would keep American officials from being exposed to the federal War Crimes Act, a 1996 law, which, as Mr. Gonzales noted, carries the death penalty. The Gonzales memorandum to Mr. Bush said that accepting the recommendations of the Justice Department would preserve flexibility in the global war against terrorism. "The nature of the new war places a high premium on other factors such as the ability to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists and their sponsors in order to avoid further atrocities against American civilians," said the memorandum, obtained this week by The New York Times. The details of the memorandum were first reported by Newsweek. Mr. Gonzales wrote that the war against terrorism, "in my judgment renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners." Mr. Gonzales also says in the memorandum that another benefit of declaring the conventions inapplicable would be that United States officials could not be prosecuted for war crimes in the future by prosecutors and independent counsels who might see the fighting in a different light. He observed, however, that the disadvantages included "widespread condemnation among our allies" and that other countries would also try to avoid jurisdiction of the Geneva Conventi
Schmeiser loses again
Monsanto can hold plant patent: SCOC Ottawa - Biotechnology giant Monsanto can hold a patent on its genetically-modified plant, the Supreme Court of Canada said Friday, ruling against a Saskatchewan farmer. In a 5-4 decision, the court upheld Monsanto's patent over its Roundup Ready canola. The company alleged farmer Percy Schmeiser grew the patented canola seeds without paying for them, infringing on the company's patent. Schmeiser argued the canola seed blew onto his property from a nearby farmer's truck without his knowledge. He has said the plants "polluted" his fields. Monsanto inserts a gene into a canola plant to make it pesticide resistant, and holds patents on the gene and the insertion process. It argued the patents should extend to control of the plant. In a small victory for Schmeiser, the Supreme Court ruled he does not have to pay to Monsanto the $19,000 he made from his 1998 crop harvest. In 2002, the Federal Court of Appeal upheld an earlier ruling that found Schmeiser guilty of illegally planting the Monsanto canola on his property. He was ordered to pay $175,000 in damages, plus court costs. In 2003, the government of Ontario intervened in Schmeiser's Supreme Court case, saying it has "important implications for the development of public policy in Ontario, including the delivery of health care to its residents." Ontario argued a gene molecule can be patented, but not the genetic information within the molecule. The Supreme Court of Canada has already ruled against patenting a higher life form in the case of the Harvard mouse. http://calgary.cbc.ca/regional/servlet/View?filename=ca_monsanto20040521
Blow by blow on Reuters staff abuse...
http://199.249.170.220/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000515956 Reuters Stands by Iraq Abuse Reports, Releases Timeline on Incident By Greg Mitchell Published: May 20, 2004 4:00 PM EST NEW YORK Despite official military statements denying any wrongdoing -- and an announcement today that the case is "closed" -- Reuters is standing by allegations that three of its employees were abused by U.S. soldiers while confined near Falluja in January. A chronology produced by Reuters detailing events surrounding the alleged abuse of three of its staffers in Iraq, obtained by E&P today, appears to support the agency's contention that it has repeatedly pressed the military for a full and objective probe of this incident from the beginning, with sometimes disquieting results. The detailed chronology reveals that the agency's Baghdad bureau chief, Andrew Marshall, received an e-mail from the military on Jan. 29 containing an executive summary of the U.S. investigation and its final results, which claimed no abuse of the staffers -- while the investigation, according to the Pentagon, was still underway. And none of the three Reuters detainees had been interviewed by the military. The military said the summary had been sent in error, but when the final report was sent to Reuters nearly a month later, the executive summary had not changed. On Wednesday, General Ricardo Sanchez reiterated his belief that the investigation of this case was "thorough" and he stood by the military's conduct in the matter. (The official military report on the incident was posted today at Raleigh's newsobserver.com.) "Our investigation found no abuse of any kind," Maj. Jimmie Cummings, spokesman for the 82nd Airborne Division, which was responsible for detaining the Reuters' employees, told the Associated Press today. "This is a closed case." Reuters told E&P today that it had "no reason to doubt" the testimony of its staffers. Responding to questions about why Reuters seemingly "waited" until now to press this issue, Stephen Naru, Reuters' global head of media relations, said, "The suggestion that Reuters has not been prepared to go public on this story until now is just not true. Since the incident first occurred in early January, we have been open about and consistent in our efforts to secure a fair and independent investigation into the incident. ... Reuters took significant steps to provide information and evidence to the Pentagon and field commanders in this case. This includes testimonies of the three individuals, which we have no reason to doubt. These testimonials took place many months before any prisoner abuse claims became public. "Suggestions that the three are motivated by 'anti-coalition' motives are totally unfounded. Given the awful experiences these individuals went through these kind of remarks are regrettable. Until the U.S. army takes the time to interview the three individuals as part of a thorough investigation it is not really in a position to evaluate the veracity of their evidence." Here is the internal timeline, created by Reuters, and obtained by E&P, that details the agency's version of its reaction to the alleged abuse of its staffers in early January, and the response from the U.S. military since: Jan. 2: First indication of detentions of three Iraqis working for Reuters and an Iraqi working for NBC in Falluja following the shooting down of a U.S. helicopter. Military spokesman Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt tells a Baghdad news briefing that "enemy personnel" posing as journalists had fired on U.S. forces and had later been detained. Baghdad bureau informs 82nd Airborne and other military personnel of identity and status of the detainees within first hours of their detentions. Jan. 3-4: Baghdad Bureau Chief Andrew Marshall working with [Combined Joint Task Force] and [Coalition Provisional Authority] officials in Baghdad and 82nd in Falluja/Ramadi to try to secure employees' release. Marshall and Baghdad office manager Khaled al-Ramahi travel to [Forward Operating Base]Volturno near Falluja but are not allowed inside and not allowed to see the detainees. Captain Ryan Deruoin tells Marshall outside the base that the detainees are well and are being properly treated. Jan. 4: Marshall and NBC Bureau Chief Karl Bostic meet Kimmitt in Baghdad to seek releases. Kimmitt said the detainees would be released the following day. Jan. 5: Marshall provides 82nd Airborne, at its request, with footage shot in Falluja on 2 Jan by Salem Ureibi. Footage is of worshippers in Falluja at Friday prayers at a mosque and demonstrates that there is no basis for U.S. assertion that Ureibi and others were seen in the area where the helicopter was shot down. Jan. 5: Washington Bureau Chief Rob Doherty, Reuters Global Managing Editor David Schlesinger and Reuters Americas Television Editor John Clarke meet with [Chief Pentagon spokesman Lawrence] Di Rita and [Pentagon spokesman Bryan] Whitman at Pentagon. Detainees r
US again wants UN to place it beyond the law
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The Bush administration wants the U.N. Security Council to renew a controversial resolution exempting American peacekeepers from prosecution by the new International Criminal Court. Two years ago the same resolution was adopted unanimously after the United States threatened to veto U.N. peacekeeping missions, one by one. A year ago, three countries abstained. This year at least four nations -- Brazil, Spain, Germany and France -- are expected to abstain. But the measure will probably reach the minimum nine votes needed for adoption in the 15-nation council, diplomats said. Although all 15 European Union nations have ratified the treaty creating the court and are financing most of its costs, close U.S. ally Britain is expected to vote in favour. As the first permanent global criminal court, the ICC was set up to try perpetrators for the world's worst atrocities -- genocide, mass war crimes and systematic human rights abuses. The tribunal went into operation in The Hague, Netherlands, this year and is investigating massacres in the Congo and by the brutal Lord's Resistance Army in northern Uganda. The draft resolution, introduced by the United States on Wednesday, would place U.S. troops and officials serving in U.N.-approved-missions beyond the reach of the court. Specifically, it would exempt "current or former officials" from prosecution or investigation if the individual comes from a country that did not ratify a 1998 Rome treaty that established the tribunal. The United States argues it cannot put itself under the jurisdiction of a foreign court it did not authorise and says its many troops abroad would be open to politically motivated prosecutions. Proponents of the court say that there are enough safeguards in its statutes to protect countries like the United States, which has a functioning judicial system that would take priority over egregious cases. "It's outrageous, considering everything that has happened to U.S. armed forces in Iraq -- and then to flip it through with less than 48 hours notice," said Richard Dicker, a counsel with the New York-based Human Rights Watch. Of the 15 Security Council members, Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Brazil, Romania and Benin are among the 94 nations whose legislatures have ratified the treaty creating the court. Russia, Chile, Algeria, Angola and the Philippines have signed but not ratified it and China and Pakistan have neither signed nor ratified. The United States, under former President Bill Clinton, was one of 135 nations that signed the treaty, but the Bush administration rescinded the signature. http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=to pNews&storyID=5205172
Re: New York Times on Scarcity
I thought the appropriate psychological orientation for success in capitalism was to be a psychopath. At least that is the hypothesis of the Corporation documentary. http://www.thetyee.ca/Entertainment/current/The+Corporation+Shrinking+the+Psychopath.htm By a quirk of legal fiction, our courts treat a corporation as if it were a person. Alas, that person is by design a psychopath, conclude a team of B.C. filmmakers who put the "dominant institution of our time" on the couch and apply to its behaviour the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. - Original Message - From: "Charles Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, May 20, 2004 9:18 AM Subject: New York Times on Scarcity > -clip- > > My reading of Mirowsky is that he argues that Nash > formulated the problem the way he did because he was > paranoid schizophrenic. I don't think Nash's paranoid > schizophrenic equilibrium is wrong. I just think it is > paranoid schizophrenic. > > Sabri > > ^^ > If we say that capitalism has mostly crazy ,socio-economic environments, > then in a way being crazy is a rational response to getting on in it. Maybe > his paranoia was well founded generalized fear, and may be many of the > players of the bourgeois game in reality ( not theoretically) have well > founded fears. Don't successful Americans have to have a knack for watching > their backs ? Don't they have to have the ability to change their > personalities on a dime , turn on others and stab them in the back, etc. - > socalled schizophrenia ? > > Charles
US planes attack wedding party killing 40
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20040519/D82LPGOG0.html U.S. Reportedly Kills 40 Iraqis at Party Email this Story May 19, 1:24 PM (ET) By SCHEHEREZADE FARAMARZI Google sponsored links We Can Help You - Avoid Bankruptcy & Get out of Debt All Canadians Coast to Coast www.nccc.ca Refinance/Renew Centre - Lower your rate/consolidate bills up to 100% of you home value www.canadianmortgagefinder.c BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - A U.S. helicopter fired on a wedding party early Wednesday in western Iraq, killing more than 40 people, Iraqi officials said. The U.S. military said it could not confirm the report and was investigating. Lt. Col Ziyad al-Jbouri, deputy police chief of the city of Ramadi, said between 42 and 45 people died in the attack, which took place about 2:45 a.m. in a remote desert area near the border with Syria and Jordan. He said those killed included 15 children and 10 women. Dr. Salah al-Ani, who works at a hospital in Ramadi, put the death toll at 45. Associated Press Television News obtained videotape showing a truck containing bodies of those allegedly killed. About a dozen bodies, one without a head, could be clearly seen. but it appeared that bodies were piled on top of each other and a clear count was not possible. Iraqis interviewed on the videotape said partygoers had fired into the air in a traditional wedding celebration. American troops have sometimes mistaken celebratory gunfire for hostile fire. "I cannot comment on this because we have not received any reports from our units that this has happened nor that any were involved in such a tragedy," Lt. Col. Dan Williams, a U.S. military spokesman, wrote in an e-mail in response to a question from The Associated Press. "We take all these requests seriously and we have forwarded this inquiry to the Joint Operations Center for further review and any other information that may be available," Williams said. The video footage showed mourners with shovels digging graves. A group of men crouched and wept around one coffin. Al-Ani said people at the wedding fired weapons in the air, and that American troops came to investigate and left. However, al-Ani said, helicopters attacked the area at about 3 a.m. Two houses were destroyed, he said. U.S. troops took the bodies and the wounded in a truck to Rutba hospital, he said. "This was a wedding and the (U.S.) planes came and attacked the people at a house. Is this the democracy and freedom that (President) Bush has brought us?" said a man on the videotape, Dahham Harraj. "There was no reason." Another man shown on the tape, who refused to give his name, said the victims were at a wedding party "and the U.S. military planes came... and started killing everyone in the house." In July 2002, Afghan officials said 48 civilians at a wedding party were killed and 117 wounded by a U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan's Uruzgan province. An investigative report released by the U.S. Central Command said the airstrike was justified because American planes had come under fire.
Those abused never interviewed in investigation
Reuters, NBC Staff Abused by U.S. Troops in Iraq http://news.myway.com/top/article/id/392678|top|05-18-2004::14:44|reuters.html May 18, 2:30 PM (ET) By Andrew Marshall BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. forces beat three Iraqis working for Reuters and subjected them to sexual and religious taunts and humiliation during their detention last January in a military camp near Falluja, the three said Tuesday. The three first told Reuters of the ordeal after their release but only decided to make it public when the U.S. military said there was no evidence they had been abused, and following the exposure of similar mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. An Iraqi journalist working for U.S. network NBC, who was arrested with the Reuters staff, also said he had been beaten and mistreated, NBC said Tuesday. Two of the three Reuters staff said they had been forced to insert a finger into their anus and then lick it, and were forced to put shoes in their mouths, particularly humiliating in Arab culture. All three said they were forced to make demeaning gestures as soldiers laughed, taunted them and took photographs. They said they did not want to give details publicly earlier because of the degrading nature of the abuse. The soldiers told them they would be taken to the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, deprived them of sleep, placed bags over their heads, kicked and hit them and forced them to remain in stress positions for long periods. The U.S. military, in a report issued before the Abu Ghraib abuse became public, said there was no evidence the Reuters staff had been tortured or abused. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of ground forces in Iraq, said in a letter received by Reuters Monday but dated March 5 that he was confident the investigation had been "thorough and objective" and its findings were sound. The Pentagon has yet to respond to a request by Reuters Global Managing Editor David Schlesinger to review the military's findings about the incident in light of the scandal over the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Asked for comment Tuesday, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said only: "There are a number of lines of inquiry under way with respect to prison operations in Iraq. If during the course of any inquiry, the commander believes it is appropriate to review a specific aspect of detention, he has the authority to do so." The abuse happened at Forward Operating Base Volturno, near Falluja, the Reuters staff said. They were detained on January 2 while covering the aftermath of the shooting down of a U.S. helicopter near Falluja and held for three days, first at Volturno and then at Forward Operating Base St Mere. The three -- Baghdad-based cameraman Salem Ureibi, Falluja-based freelance television journalist Ahmad Mohammad Hussein al-Badrani and driver Sattar Jabar al-Badrani -- were released without charge on Jan. 5. "INADEQUATE" INVESTIGATION "When I saw the Abu Ghraib photographs, I wept," Ureibi said Tuesday. "I saw they had suffered like we had." Ureibi, who understands English better than the other two detainees, said soldiers told him they wanted to have sex with him, and he was afraid he would be raped. NBC, whose stringer Ali Muhammed Hussein Ali al-Badrani was detained along with the Reuters staff, said he reported that a hood was placed over his head for hours, and that he was forced to perform physically debilitating exercises, prevented from sleeping and struck and kicked several times. "Despite repeated requests, we have yet to receive the results of the army investigation," NBC News Vice President Bill Wheatley said. Schlesinger sent a letter to Sanchez on January 9 demanding an investigation into the treatment of the three Iraqis. The U.S. army said it was investigating and requested further information. Reuters provided transcripts of initial interviews with the three following their release, and offered to make them available for interview by investigators. A summary of the investigation by the 82nd Airborne Division, dated January 28 and provided to Reuters, said "no specific incidents of abuse were found." It said soldiers responsible for the detainees were interviewed under oath and "none admit or report knowledge of physical abuse or torture." "The detainees were purposefully and carefully put under stress, to include sleep deprivation, in order to facilitate interrogation; they were not tortured," it said. The version received Monday used the phrase "sleep management" instead. The U.S. military never interviewed the three for its investigation. On February 3 Schlesinger wrote to Lawrence Di Rita, special assistant to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, saying the investigation was "woefully inadequate" and should be reopened. "The military's conclusion of its investigation without even interviewing the alleged victims, along with other inaccuracies and inconsistencies in the report, speaks volumes about the seriousness with
Cockburn on raiding the Iraq piggybank
Salon.com Raiding Iraq's Piggy Bank If the Bush administration is truly committed to the nation's sovereignty, it should let Iraqis retake control of their own oil revenues. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Andrew Cockburn May 17, 2004 | As the occupation of Iraq dissolves further into bloody chaos, the colonial overseers in Baghdad are keeping their eyes fixed on what is really important: Iraq's money and how to keep it. Whatever apology for a "sovereign" Iraqi government is permitted to take office after June 30 -- and U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi admits in private that he "has to do" whatever the Americans tell him to do -- the United States is making sure that the Iraqis do not get their hands on their country's oil revenues. We are talking about big money here: Iraq's oil exports are slated to top $16 billion this year alone. U.N. Security Resolution 1483, rammed through by the United States a year ago, gives total control of the money from oil sales -- currently the only source of revenue in Iraq -- to the occupying power, i.e., the United States. The actual repository for the money is an entity called the Development Fund for Iraq, which in effect functions as a private piggy bank for Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority. The DFI is directed by a Program Review Board of 11 members, just one of whom is Iraqi. In case anyone should be moved to challenge this massive looting exercise in the courts, President Bush followed up the May 2003 resolution with Executive Order 13303, which forbids any legal challenge to the development fund or any actions by the United States affecting Iraq's oil industry. Since then, the Iraqi oil ministry, famously secured by the U.S. military during post-invasion riots and looting, has been kept under the close supervision of a senior U.S. advisor, former ExxonMobil executive Gary Vogler. Now, whatever President Bush or his officials may spout in public about the transfer of power being a "central commitment," there is absolutely no intention in Washington of changing the arrangement concerning oil revenues. Queried on this crucial topic, the CPA has stated that it will continue to control the revenues beyond June 30 "until such time as an internationally recognized, representative government of Iraq is properly constituted." Whatever entity is unveiled for June 30, it apparently will not fit these requirements, so the hand-over date is, essentially, meaningless. The development fund is not solely dependent on oil money -- of which it had collected $6.9 billion by March. Under the terms of 1483 the DFI also took over all funds -- $8.1 billion so far -- in the U.N.'s oil-for-food program accounts (Russian and Chinese support for the resolution was bought by agreeing to keep the oil-for-food racket running for a few more months); various caches of Saddam Hussein's frozen assets around the world, amounting to $2.5 billion; and further cash left behind by Saddam inside Iraq, estimated at about $1.3 billion. The money is kept in an account at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York. In theory, these vast sums were to be spent in an open, transparent manner solely for the benefit of the Iraqi people. But how can we be sure they have been? Along with the development fund, there was meant to be a supervisory group, the International Advisory and Monitoring Board -- made up of officials from the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, U.N. and Arab Fund for Development -- to oversee where the money goes. However, according to a trenchant report from the Soros Foundation-funded group Iraq Revenue Watch, which has been keeping an informed eye on the Iraq boondoggle, because of dogged resistance by the occupation authorities, combined with bureaucratic sloth by the IAMB, the board got its first look at the books only this March, 10 months late. Needless to say, there are no Iraqis on the board, though two have recently and reluctantly been designated as observers. Free from independent scrutiny, the DFI piggy bank has disbursed $7.3 billion. For months Bremer's merry men refused to disclose even the most minimal information on where the money was going, and even now the CPA releases only the most generalized breakdown, for example: "Restore Oil Infrastructure -- $80,197,742.82." Assuming that line item is accurate, that would be money paid to Halliburton -- which as it happens is a fine example of how the piggy bank has been used by the administration to get around irksome constitutional restrictions on government spending without congressional approval. Late last year, when the stench of Halliburton contracts for Iraq became so strong that even Congress noticed, the $18.4 billion supplemental appropriations bill for Iraqi reconstruction specifically forbade the award of any contract worth more than $5 million that had not been competitively bid. This might have put a spoke in the Halliburton wheel, except that the CPA simply reached into the DFI to pay Dick Cheney's old com
Quote of the day
"Whereas detainees used to cry at the very thought of Abu Ghraib, for many the living conditions now are better in prison than at home. At one point we were concerned they wouldn't want to leave." - Army Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the U.S. commander in Iraq in charge of the prison system /apparatus of terror. Published December 14, 2003: "Her job: Lock up Iraq's bad guys," St. Petersburg Times
Rumsfeld and Abu Ghraib by S.Hersch
THE GRAY ZONE by SEYMOUR M. HERSH How a secret Pentagon program came to Abu Ghraib. Issue of 2004-05-24 Posted 2004-05-15 The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had been focussed on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld's decision embittered the American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of élite combat units, and hurt America's prospects in the war on terror. According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, the Pentagon's operation, known inside the intelligence community by several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq. A senior C.I.A. official, in confirming the details of this account last week, said that the operation stemmed from Rumsfeld's long-standing desire to wrest control of America's clandestine and paramilitary operations from the C.I.A. Rumsfeld, during appearances last week before Congress to testify about Abu Ghraib, was precluded by law from explicitly mentioning highly secret matters in an unclassified session. But he conveyed the message that he was telling the public all that he knew about the story. He said, "Any suggestion that there is not a full, deep awareness of what has happened, and the damage it has done, I think, would be a misunderstanding." The senior C.I.A. official, asked about Rumsfeld's testimony and that of Stephen Cambone, his Under-Secretary for Intelligence, said, "Some people think you can bullshit anyone." The Abu Ghraib story began, in a sense, just weeks after the September 11, 2001, attacks, with the American bombing of Afghanistan. Almost from the start, the Administration's search for Al Qaeda members in the war zone, and its worldwide search for terrorists, came up against major command-and-control problems. For example, combat forces that had Al Qaeda targets in sight had to obtain legal clearance before firing on them. On October 7th, the night the bombing began, an unmanned Predator aircraft tracked an automobile convoy that, American intelligence believed, contained Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban leader. A lawyer on duty at the United States Central Command headquarters, in Tampa, Florida, refused to authorize a strike. By the time an attack was approved, the target was out of reach. Rumsfeld was apoplectic over what he saw as a self-defeating hesitation to attack that was due to political correctness. One officer described him to me that fall as "kicking a lot of glass and breaking doors." In November, the Washington Post reported that, as many as ten times since early October, Air Force pilots believed they'd had senior Al Qaeda and Taliban members in their sights but had been unable to act in time because of legalistic hurdles. There were similar problems throughout the world, as American Special Forces units seeking to move quickly against suspected terrorist cells were compelled to get prior approval from local American ambassadors and brief their superiors in the chain of command. Rumsfeld reacted in his usual direct fashion: he authorized the establishment of a highly secret program that was given blanket advance approval to kill or capture and, if possible, interrogate "high value" targets in the Bush Administration's war on terror. A special-access program, or sap-subject to the Defense Department's most stringent level of security-was set up, with an office in a secure area of the Pentagon. The program would recruit operatives and acquire the necessary equipment, including aircraft, and would keep its activities under wraps. America's most successful intelligence operations during the Cold War had been saps, including the Navy's submarine penetration of underwater cables used by the Soviet high command and construction of the Air Force's stealth bomber. All the so-called "black" programs had one element in common: the Secretary of Defense, or his deputy, had to conclude that the normal military classification restraints did not provide enough security. "Rumsfeld's goal was to get a capability in place to take on a high-value target-a standup group to hit quickly," a former high-level intelligence official told me. "He got all the agencies together-the C.I.A. and the N.S.A.-to get pre-approval in place. Just say the code word and go." The operation had across-the-board approval from Rumsfeld and from Condoleezza Rice, the national-security adviser. President Bush was informed of the existence of the program, the former intelligence official said. The people assigned to the program worked by the book, the former intelligence official told me. They created code words, and recruited, after careful screening, highly tr
US control behind the scenes
Behind the Scenes, U.S. Tightens Grip On Iraq's Future Hand-Picked Proxies, Advisers Will Be Given Key Roles In Interim Government Facing Friction Over the Army By YOCHI J. DREAZEN and CHRISTOPHER COOPER Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL May 13, 2004; Page A1 BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Haider al-Abadi runs Iraq's Ministry of Communications, but he no longer calls the shots there. Instead, the authority to license Iraq's television stations, sanction newspapers and regulate cellphone companies was recently transferred to a commission whose members were selected by Washington. The commissioners' five-year terms stretch far beyond the planned 18-month tenure of the interim Iraqi government that will assume sovereignty on June 30. The transfer surprised Mr. Abadi, a British-trained engineer who spent nearly two decades in exile before returning to Iraq last year. He found out the commission had been formally signed into law only when a reporter asked him for comment about it. "No one from the U.S. even found time to call and tell me themselves," he says. As Washington prepares to hand over power, U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer and other officials are quietly building institutions that will give the U.S. powerful levers for influencing nearly every important decision the interim government will make. In a series of edicts issued earlier this spring, Mr. Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority created new commissions that effectively take away virtually all of the powers once held by several ministries. The CPA also established an important new security-adviser position, which will be in charge of training and organizing Iraq's new army and paramilitary forces, and put in place a pair of watchdog institutions that will serve as checks on individual ministries and allow for continued U.S. oversight. Meanwhile, the CPA reiterated that coalition advisers will remain in virtually all remaining ministries after the handover. In many cases, these U.S. and Iraqi proxies will serve multiyear terms and have significant authority to run criminal investigations, award contracts, direct troops and subpoena citizens. The new Iraqi government will have little control over its armed forces, lack the ability to make or change laws and be unable to make major decisions within specific ministries without tacit U.S. approval, say U.S. officials and others familiar with the plan. The moves risk exacerbating the two biggest problems bedeviling the U.S. occupation: the reluctance of Iraqis to take responsibility for their own country and the tendency of many Iraqis to blame the country's woes on the U.S. Nechirvan Barzani, who controls the western half of the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq, warns that the U.S. presence in the country will continue to spark criticism and violence until Iraqis really believe they run their own country. For his part, Mr. Abadi, the communications minister, says that installing a government that can't make important decisions essentially "freezes the country in place." He adds, "If it's a sovereign Iraqi government that can't change laws or make decisions, we haven't gained anything." U.S. officials say their moves are necessary to prevent an unelected interim government from making long-term decisions that the later, elected government would find difficult to undo when it takes office next year. U.S. officials say they are also concerned that the interim government might complicate the transition process by maneuvering to remain in power even after its term comes to an end. The fear is not a hypothetical one: The U.S.-appointed Governing Council embarrassed and angered the U.S. by publicly lobbying to assume sovereignty this summer as Iraq's next rulers. Those concerns are shared by the country's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. With Shiites making up nearly 60% of Iraq, Mr. Sistani and his followers don't want important decisions made until an elected government -- which he expects Shiites to dominate -- takes power. U.S. officials say many Iraqi political leaders also tacitly approve severely restricting the powers of the new government, even if they don't say so publicly. "The Iraqis know we don't want to be here, and they know they're not ready to take over," says a State Department official with intimate knowledge of the Bush administration's plans for Iraq. "We'd love a welcoming sentiment from the Iraqis, but we'll accept grim resignation." Currently, the Coalition Provisional Authority, which answers to the Pentagon, has total control of the governance of Iraq. It can issue decrees on virtually any topic, which then immediately become law. It will formally cease to exist on June 30. The Governing Council exists largely as an advisory body. Its members can pass laws, but the legislation must be approved by Mr. Bremer. The council has no control over the U.S. military, and in practice has little influence on civil matters. It's unclear what powers the
Anything follows from a contradiction
therefore the US will stay no matter what...unless it decides to bail out is in its interest. Cheers, Ken Hanly When first asked by House International Relations Committee members whether an interim Iraqi government could force U.S. troops to leave, Grossman stressed that Iraqi leaders wanted them to remain. He also said that the Iraqi interim constitution and a U.N. resolution gave them authority to do so. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican, kept asking Grossman, ''If they ask us to leave, we will leave, will we not?'' Pressed for a yes-or-no answer, Grossman eventually said yes. But he later agreed with another panelist, Lt. Gen. Walter L. Sharp, that the interim constitution and U.N. resolution gave U.S.-led forces responsibility for Iraqi security for the immediate future. After the hearing, Grossman was asked if that meant U.S. forces would not leave if asked by the interim government. ''That is correct,'' he said. http://www.boston.com/dailynews/135/world/Bremer_tells_Iraqi_leaders_US_:.shtml
News source on Iraq
This is a US govt. funded news source but it nevertheless is a treasure of world press reports on Iraq. It includes quite a few videos from Islamic militants as well. With translations. http://tides.carebridge.org/ Cheers, Ken Hanly
Bremer the prophet
Source: Lucy May, "Homeland security adviser speaks to local business leaders", Business Courier, 25 February 2003, http://cincinnati.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/stories/2003/02/24/daily23.html Bremer estimated a war would be over within four to six weeks but said the process of rebuilding Iraq afterwards is likely to take years. "We're going to be on the ground in Iraq as soldiers and citizens for years. We're going to be running a colony almost," Bremer said, adding that one of the most important reasons to get more international support before launching a war is to get more help in rebuilding the country afterwards.
Re: a victory of sorts in india...
Huh. Many parliamentary systems have first past the post systems and not systems of proportional representation etc. Canada for example, and the UK. I believe Australia and New Zealand use this system as well but I am not positive. While this system is a disadvantage for smaller parties it hasnt kept third parties from getting seats or even forming the government in provinces in Canada. The Communists (CPI-M) and CPI did very well in Kerala. The left won 18 of 20 seats. Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: "Louis Proyect" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, May 13, 2004 1:28 PM Subject: Re: a victory of sorts in india... > > No, but yesterday there would have been plenty around > > to tell us how voting Communist Party (of your choice) > > would throw the election to the BJP. > > > > Shane > > Not really. India, like most civilized countries, has a parliamentary > system. This means that all parties can get some representation no > matter how small. The USA has a "winner take all" system that was if not > designed to marginalize smaller parties certainly has that effect. That > being said, it is fascinating to see the similarities between John > Kerry, the Congress Party and Putin. They all represent something not > quite as bad as the party to the right. With the deepening crisis of > world capitalism, you can be sure that lesser-evil scenarios for > "stopping fascism" will be played out until either the world blows > itself up or we finally expropriate the expropriators. > > -- > > The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Background to Berg Beheading
Entire analysis is at http://www.kathymcmahon.utvinternet.com/mrn/NickBergEnemiesList.htm NOTE: Quite a bit of the stuff is speculation by conspiracy buffs but the particular material below is a plausible explanation as to why Berg was detained in Iraq. He was confused with his dad who is strongly anti-war. Actually Nick supported it. Mainstream media seem to be silent about all this. Since this came out the Mosul police have denied ever having custody of Berg a direct contradiction of the official US story. Some conspiracy buffs see the beheading as a clever black psyops operation to distract attention away from US prison abuse and to create a counter outrage to neutralise revelations of US torture. Cheers, Ken Hanly The family firm of beheaded American Nick Berg, was named by a conservative website in a list of 'enemies' of the Iraq occupation. That could explain his arrest by Iraqi police --a detention which fatally delayed his planned return from Iraq and may have led directly to his death. At the time the list was posted, Nick Berg had just come back from an Iraq trip lasting from late December to Feb. 1. He had reported no problems whatsoever with Iraqi police during that visit. Yet, within two weeks of the list being posted, Nick Berg --back in Iraq on his final fatal trip-- was reportedly detained in Mosul at an Iraqi police checkpoint. The official explanation is that authorities thought his identification might have been forged and were checking his authenticity. But a more likely reason is that by then authorities in Iraq had discovered that a 'Berg' of Prometheus Methods Tower Service was in the country, and issued a detention instruction to Iraqi police because they misidentified Nick Berg as an antiwar activist entering Iraq to work for the 'enemy'. That could explain why he was held incommunicado for 13 days, without recourse to a lawyer; why US officialdom was singularly unheeding of his mother's pleas; why the FBI visited his family to question them; why it took a US court order secured by the family to pressure his release.
Mercenaries in Iraq
Vancouver Sun May 11, 2004 Americans have outsourced their Iraq dirty work to a mixed bunch By Jonathan Manthorpe A brief news story from Iraq on Sunday night said a bomb had exploded near a hotel bar in Baghdad "wounding six British and Nepalese." One does not have to have spent much time in the world's trouble spots to know that when one comes across Nepalese in such places one is not talking about ordinary people from the mountain kingdom of Nepal. One is talking about members past or present of the Brigade of Gurkhas, which for nearly 200 years has formed perhaps the most feared and effective infantry unit in the British army. Retired members of the brigade are much sought after by private security companies. Former Gurkhas can be found doing everything from providing protection for United Nations compounds in Angola to guarding against robberies in banks in Hong Kong. No wonder, then, Gurkhas are also in Iraq where the inability of coalition forces to establish security has put a premium on what are officially called "security consultants" but whom many simply call "mercenaries." To an astonishing degree, the United States-led forces in Iraq have out-sourced security in the country. There are about 15,000 mercenaries in Iraq and they constitute the third largest armed force in the country after the American and British military contingents. They are a very mixed bunch ranging from the Gurkhas at the top end to known war criminals from South Africa and the Balkans at the other. In between are people who do indeed have the military experience set out on their CVs. But many others are pure fantasists playing out their Walter Mitty dreams and getting paid up to $1,200 Cdn a day for doing it. The loud sucking noise of fortunes to be made in Iraq's outsourced war is causing all kinds of turmoil. Britain's elite Special Air Service and Special Boat Service, the most desired record on a mercenary's CV, recently sent a message to former members asking them to please stop recruiting current members. About one in six members of the SAS and the SBS have recently asked permission to quit their jobs and the British government is getting peeved because they cost about $4 million Cdn each to train. In South Africa, President Thabo Mbeke has lost about half his 100-strong personal security service to the lure of Iraq gold. It was in South Africa earlier this year that the dubious background of many of the mercenaries flocking to Iraq first appeared. On Jan. 28, a suicide bomber hit Baghdad's Saheen Hotel. The bomb killed four people and wounded scores of others. One of the killed was a South African named Frans Strydom. Among the wounded was Deon Gouws. Both men were working for a British-based company, Erinys International, which has an $80-million US contract to protect Iraqi oil installations. The conglomerate which hired it includes Haliburton, U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney's former company. Erinys also has strong connections to Ahmed Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress whose dubious intelligence information did much to persuade the White House that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. But let's come back to Strydom and Gouws. Both men were granted amnesties by South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission after confessing to killing blacks during the days of apartheid. Strydom was a leading member of Koevoet, the Afrikaans for "Crowbar," a death squad maintained at arm's length by the white South African government to kill black activists both at home and in Namibia. Gouws was a member of another apartheid death squad called Vlakplaas. When he appeared before the reconciliation commission, Gouws asked for absolution for killing 15 blacks and firebombing the homes of up to 60 anti-apartheid militants. Last month, another South African death squad member, Gray Branfield, originally a Rhodesian police inspector, was killed in Iraq. In the South African army, Branfield was in charge of death squad operations in neighbouring Zimbabwe, Botswana and Zambia. These three are among 1,500 South Africans, most of them white remnants of the apartheid regime, working for security companies in Iraq. Not all the mercenaries in Iraq are undesirables and not all the dubious characters are South Africans. Shortly before the American-led invasion last year, Saddam Hussein hired a dozen Serb air-defence specialists, some of whom are wanted in Europe for their paramilitary activities during the Balkan wars. The arrival of the U.S. forces did not trouble the Serbs, some of whom have now signed on with American security companies for large salaries. How many contract employees and security guards have been killed in Iraq is unclear. Haliburton says 34 of its employees have been killed in the region. This situation is chaotic enough. It borders on the sinister with the evidence from Abu Ghraib prison that the military police conducted their much-photographed torture under the directions
Martin Knows Where the WMD are..Bush probably told him..
Tue, May 11, 2004 Terrorists have Iraq's WMD: PM Martin's views run counter to those of French, German leaders By STEPHANIE RUBEC, Ottawa Bureau Prime Minister Paul Martin says he believes Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and they've fallen into the hands of terrorists. Martin said the threat of terrorism is even greater now than it was following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks against the U.S. because terrorists have acquired nuclear, chemical and biological weapons from the toppled Iraqi leader. "The fact is that there is now, we know well, a proliferation of nuclear weapons, and that many weapons that Saddam Hussein had, we don't know where they are," Martin told a crowd of about 700 university researchers and business leaders in Montreal. "That means terrorists have access to all of that." The PM's comments run counter to leaders in countries such as France and Germany who have accused the U.S. and Britain of fudging evidence of WMDs in Iraq to justify the war. When asked to assess the threat level since Hussein was captured by U.S. troops, Martin said he believes it has increased. "I believe that terrorism will be, for our generation, what the Cold War was to generations that preceded us," the PM said. "I don't think we're out of it yet." Martin disagreed with former Prime Minister Jean Chretien who publicly blamed poverty for terrorism and the Sept. 11 attacks. "The cause of terrorism is not poverty, it is hatred," Martin said, adding he'll lead the charge to convince countries to work together to combat terrorism and make sure the Third World has the tools to stamp it out. Martin said he's lobbying the international community to set up an informal organization comprised of a maximum of 20 heads of state to tackle world issues such as terrorism. Martin said he got the nod from U.S. President George W. Bush during his visit to Washington D.C. last month, and will take his idea to the European Union and Latin America next. Martin also announced a $100-million contribution to treat millions of people who have AIDS. The money will be given to a new initiative of the World Health Organization to treat three million people with AIDS by the end of 2005. The contribution of new money has made Canada the largest donor to the program so far. http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/WinnipegSun/News/2004/05/11/454532.html
Re: Who's at fault for gas prices? Partly, it's us
Isn't gas consumption up considerably in some developing countries such as China? Also I understand that inventories are at low levels. No mention is made of the fact that Humvees, tanks, military jets etc. must use a considerable amount of fuel. Is there any breakdown of how much of total fuel consumption is military related? Cheers, Ken Hanly PS. Larger fuel tanks are hardly a cause of increased fuel consumption! - Original Message - From: "Charles Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, May 11, 2004 3:47 PM Subject: Who's at fault for gas prices? Partly, it's us > "Us" ? Speak for yourself. And "we" didn't invade Iraq , either, to the > extent that that raised gas prices. YOU invaded Iraq. > > Charles > > ^^ > > > > Who's at fault for gas prices? Partly, it's us > > > Big autos, longer commutes gobbling up supplies > > > May 11, 2004 > > BY JOCELYN PARKER > FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER > > Sorry folks: We're at least partly to blame for the ongoing pain at the gas > pump. > > BIG VEHICLES, > BIG DEMAND > > The surge in fuel consumption over the last 14 years tracks closely with the > growth in SUV and pickup-truck sales. > > So you can thank the advent of the Ford Explorer and full-size SUVs like the > Ford Expedition and the Cadillac Escalade for the spike in gas use in recent > years. > > Those vehicles, which use more gasoline than most passenger cars on the road > because of larger fuel tanks, are what made the light-truck craze take off > in the first place. > >
How many history books cite Winnie as War Criminal?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6171.htm History Forgave Churchill, Why Not Blair and Bush? by Mickey Z. 19 July 2003 "dissidentvoice.org" -- On July 17, 2003, U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair addressed a joint meeting of the U.S. House and Senate. The subject of WMD, of course, was on the front burner. "If we are wrong, then we will have destroyed a threat that was at its least responsible for inhuman carnage and suffering,'' Blair said. "I am confident history will forgive.'' Blair's confidence is justified. History has forgiven U.K. leaders for plenty. How else, for example, could U.S. News and World Report have dubbed Winston Churchill "The Last Hero" in a 2000 cover story? In that article, Churchill was said to believe in "liberty, the rule of law, and the rights of the individual." As Sir Winston himself declared: "History will be kind to me for I intend to write it." This is precisely why so few of us ever discuss Churchill as a war criminal or racist. In 1910, in the capacity of Home Secretary, he put forth a proposal to sterilize roughly 100,000 "mental degenerates" and dispatch several thousand others to state-run labor camps. These actions were to take place in the name of saving the British race from inevitable decline as its inferior members bred. History has forgiven Churchill for his role in the Allied invasion of the Soviet Union in 1917. England's Minister for War and Air during the time, Churchill described the mission as seeking to "strangle at its birth" the Bolshevik state. In 1929, he wrote: "Were [the Allies] at war with Soviet Russia? Certainly not; but they shot Soviet Russians at sight. They stood as invaders on Russian soil. They armed the enemies of the Soviet Government. They blockaded its ports, and sunk its battleships. They earnestly desired and schemed its downfall." Two years later, Churchill was secretary of state at the war office when the Royal Air Force asked him for permission to use chemical weapons against "recalcitrant Arabs" as an experiment. Winston promptly consented (Yes, Churchill's gassing of Kurds pre-dated Hussein's by nearly 70 years). "I am strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes," he explained, a policy he espoused yet again in July 1944 when he asked his chiefs of staff to consider using poison gas on the Germans "or any other method of warfare we have hitherto refrained from using." Unlike in 1919, his proposal was denied...not that history would not have forgiven him anyway. In language later appropriated by the Israelis, Winston Churchill had this to say about the Palestinians in 1937: "I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place." When not scheming a Bolshevik downfall, gassing the uncivilized, or comparing Palestinians to dogs, Churchill found time to write soulmate Benito Mussolini. In January 1927, Sir Winston gushed to Il Duce, "if I had been an Italian, I am sure I would have been entirely with you from the beginning to the end of your victorious struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism." Even after the advent of WWII, Churchill found room in his heart for the Italian dictator, explaining to Parliament in 1940:"I do not deny that he is a very great man but he became a criminal when he attacked England." Mussolini's criminality aside, Churchill certainly took note of Axis tactics...cavalierly observing that "everyone" was bombing civilians. "It's simply a question of fashion," he explained, "similar to that of whether short or long dresses are in." Sir Winston must have been a slave to fashion because he soon ordered a fire-bombing raid on Hamburg in July 1943 that killed at least 48,000 civilians, after which he enlisted the aid of British scientists to cook up "a new kind of weather" for larger German city. In his wartime memoirs, Winston Churchill forgave himself for the countless civilians slaughtered in Dresden. "We made a heavy raid in the latter month on Dresden," he wrote benignly, "then a centre of communication of Germany's Eastern Front." Surely the Nazis were hiding WMD there, right? Mickey Z. is the author of The Murdering of My Years: Artists and Activists Making Ends Meet ( www.murderingofmyyears.com ) and an editor at Wide Angle ( www.wideangleny.com). He can be reached at: [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Forget Al Jazeera. Don't read Fox News says Pentagon
Saturday, May. 08, 2004 -Original Message- From: Dunn, Daniel, CTR, OSD-POLICY Sent: Thursday, May 06, 2004 10:11 PM To: MLA POL ALL POLICY Subject: FW: URGENT IT BULLETIN: Tugabe Report (FOUO) Importance: High This applies to all Policy users as well. If you have accessed this document on the Internet, CALL POLICY IT SECURITY IMMEDIATELY! 703-696-0668 -- Daniel R. (Dan) Dunn, EE, CISSP, CCSA/CCSE USD(P) IA Officer Office of the Under Secretary of Defense, Policy Policy Automation Services Security Team p: 703-696-0668, x153 f: 703-696-0588 -Original Message- From: Easterling, Ron, CTR, OSD-POLICY Sent: Thursday, May 06, 2004 2:00 PM To: Mauer, Bill, CTR, OSD-POLICY; Dunn, Daniel, CTR, OSD-POLICY Subject: FW: URGENT IT BULLETIN: Tugabe Report (FOUO) Importance: High -Original Message- From: Information Services Customer Liaison, ISD Sent: Thursday, May 06, 2004 12:45 PM To: MLA dd - USD(I) - ALL; MLA dd - NII ALL Subject: URGENT IT BULLETIN: Tugabe Report (FOUO) Importance: High FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY AUDIENCE All ISD Customers SUMMARY Fox News and other media outlets are distributing the Tugabe report (spelling is approximate for reasons which will become obvious momentarily). Someone has given the news media classified information and they are distributing it. THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS REPORT IS CLASSIFIED. ALL ISD CUSTOMERS SHOULD: 1) NOT GO TO FOX NEWS TO READ OR OBTAIN A COPY 2) NOT comment on this to anyone, friends, family etc. 3) NOT delete the file if you receive it via e-mail, but 4) CALL THE ISD HELPDESK AT 602-2627 IMMEDIATELY This leakage will be investigated for criminal prosecution. If you don't have the document and have never had legitimate access, please do not complicate the investigative processes by seeking information. Again, THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS REPORT IS CLASSIFIED; DO NOT GO TO FOX NEWS TO READ OR OBTAIN A COPY. ASSISTANCE If you have any questions, please contact the ISD Helpdesk at 703-602-2627 or via email at [EMAIL PROTECTED] Thank you for your cooperation. INFORMATION SERVICES DIRECTORATE This may contain information exempt from mandatory disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA
Cut and Run...
Globe and MailCoomment Saturday, May 8, 2004 - Page A23 Cut and run, and do it now To hell with Wilsonian crusades -- the U.S. must get out of Iraq. The longer it stays, the worse things will get for everyone By John MacArthur Not long before U.S. soldiers made news with their sadistic, co-ed photo shoot of Iraqi prisoners, I dined with a small group of pedigreed New York liberals -- the ones known as Bush-haters -- and a ghost. The conversation was following a predictable course -- contempt for the President pouring forth as freely as the wine -- so I didn't think twice about proposing a unilateral withdrawal of U.S. troops, the very opposite of saving face, and a strategy already labelled "cut and run" by Karl Rove. All the living beings at the table were old enough to remember the crazy rhetoric of Vietnam troop escalation, as well as the cruelly absurd policies of de-escalation, Vietnamization and peace with honour, so why the awkward silence when I had finished? Suddenly the ghost spoke -- through the medium of a law school professor, who informed me that America had a "moral obligation" to remain in Iraq. Before the medium could go on, his socially astute wife aborted the seance, and we moved on to safer topics. The ghost was Woodrow Wilson. Sadly, every debate on Iraq is dominated by his notion of moral obligation, not by George W. Bush's lies about atomic-bomb threats; not by the mounting corpses; not by the foolish distraction from tracking al-Qaeda; not by the war profiteering by Mr. Bush's friends and patrons; not by the violation of the U.S. Constitution and the Geneva Convention; not by the waste of money that could rebuild the United States's degraded public school system; not by the lessons from Vietnam. The Democratic "opposition" carps, but its presidential candidate suggests escalation -- more troops (some in different uniforms) to stabilize a situation that cannot be stabilized. Mr. Bush and his friends from Halliburton are busy looting Iraq to enrich their temporal bank accounts, but Wilsonian liberals remain preoccupied with their immortal souls. The high-spirited U.S. volunteer army builds pyramids out of terrified, naked detainees, and John Kerry insists that "we cannot let the actions of a few overshadow the tremendous good work that thousands of soldiers are doing every day in Iraq and all over the world." What will people say about us if we pull out? Last week, a Democratic congressman too young to remember Vietnam even told me that U.S. credibility is at stake in Iraq, that "we can't leave . . . can't cut and run." Who says we can't leave? Sir Woodrow of the 14 points, that's who. Liberals rarely invoke Mr. Wilson by name, yet I can always hear the pious, self-righteous and intolerant intellectual from Virginia creeping into their voices. If ever there was a time to argue against Mr. Wilson's faith-based ideology, it's now, before too many more people die guarding gas stations and oil-field contractors. Mainstream historians typically attribute Mr. Wilson's simplistic, Manichean view of the world to his fervent Presbyterian beliefs -- what political historian Walter Karp summarized as "Wilson's tendency to regard himself as an instrument of Providence and to define personal greatness as some messianic act of salvation." Mr. Wilson's relentless perversion of Enlightenment ideals struck a chord in predominantly Protestant America, this country having been formed partly on a Calvinist idea of an elect people. At the same time, he sought to impose Rousseau's and Paine's rights of man on the non-elect peoples of the world, whether or not these noble savages wanted any part of them. "The world must be made safe for democracy," he famously cried in his war message to Congress in April, 1917. Forcing democracy down the throats of tribal-based Arab clans was likely not at the top of Mr. Wilson's agenda at the Paris Peace Conference, but his lofty language masked the essential contradiction of ordering self-government at the point of a gun. (When they colonized Iraq, the British didn't hesitate to borrow Wilsonian rhetoric about self-determination and liberation from Turkish despotism.) Mr. Wilson had made a test run of his ideals with his senseless and bloody interference in domestic Mexican politics, at Vera Cruz in 1914, but it was the U.S. intervention in the First World War that set the course of 20th-century U.S. foreign policy. Most Americans wanted to remain neutral in the European butchery; indeed, political self-interest compelled Mr. Wilson to campaign for re-election in 1916 on a promise to keep us out of the Great War. But before long, on the grounds that "the right is more precious than peace," Mr. Wilson was sending unwitting farm boys off to inhale poison gas and die in the trenches of Flanders. Didn't the Wilsonian Bush-haters like my dinner acquaintance note Mr. Bush's cynical invocation of St. Woodrow during his state visit to London in November? Ref
Which newspaper will first suggest pulling out?
When Will the First Major Newspaper Call for a Pullout in Iraq? The once unthinkable suddenly becomes thinkable. By Greg Mitchell (May 07, 2004) -- After a month of uprisings in Iraq, an unexpected hike in U.S. casualties, and a prison abuse scandal that shattered goodwill in the Arab street, what do American newspapers have to say? So far, not very much, at least in terms of advising our leaders how to clean up or get out of this mess. But then, they are not alone. Republicans have been cackling for weeks over John Kerry's inability to distinguish his position on the war from the president's -- after Bush agreed to bring into the picture the United Nations, NATO and anyone else who might bail us out. The two candidates also seem to agree that sending more U.S. troops to Iraq might turn the tide. Most newspapers like that idea, too. Last month an E&P survey revealed that the vast majority of America's large newspapers favored this approach to Iraq: Stay the course. There's no easy strategy for success, but the question is: are newspaper editorial pages ready to sustain that position now? And if that means calling for more troops, or remaining in Iraq at present levels indefinitely, are they willing to accept responsibility (along with the White House, Pentagon and Congress) for the continuing carnage and the unmentionable expense? This, of course, must also be considered in the context of whatever other responsibility newspapers share for embracing the dubious pre-war claims on weapons of mass destruction and endorsing the invasion in the first place. In fact, one might argue that the press has a special responsibility for helping undo the damage. In a remarkable episode of ABC's "Nightline" last night, retired Army Lt. General William Odom, director of the National Security Agency during the Reagan administration, called for a phased U.S. pullout from Iraq over the next six to nine months. And yet no major newspaper has explored this idea. That is not to say that calling for a U.S. pullout from Iraq is the only moral, rational or political choice. But if newspaper editors are not going to endorse that -- then what is YOUR solution? A month ago, few questioned that the U.S. ought to stay in Iraq. Maybe we went to war based on lies and fabrications; but now we had to make things right for the average citizens. As Colin Powell put it: we broke it, we owned it, but maybe we could patch it up, or buy a better one. Now this must be contemplated: After our military adventures of the past month and, particularly, after Abu Ghraib, is the U.S. actually the problem and not the solution? In other words, as hostile occupiers -- and, in some cases, torturers -- we are no longer facilitating but possibly standing in the way of progress in Iraq. If we are doing more harm than good, then all arguments about our duty to stay (after we build a few dozen more hospitals and schools) become moot. And an argument that has been out there all along -- that we should be deploying our limited military personnel and resources against terrorists elsewhere (who really can do us harm) -- becomes even more pertinent. No one should underestimate the impact of the prison torture scandal, whether Donald Rumsfeld loses his job or not. Last month, when I interviewed The Washington Post's Rick Atkinson for a column, he told me that every war inevitably becomes corrupt. "Even righteous wars corrupt soldiers," he said. Two weeks later, the pictures from Abu Ghraib appeared. But what really got me to thinking the unthinkable -- a phased U.S. pullout from Iraq -- was a letter that Bill Mitchell (no relation) of Atascadero, Calif. wrote to his son's former commanding officer in Iraq. His son, Army SSG Mike Mitchell, was killed in Iraq in early April, as I documented in a news story last week. In that letter, Bill wrote about the "irony" that his son "was killed by the very people that he was liberating. This is insanity!!!" He added: "I am having a major problem with being OK with his death under these circumstances and I really do not believe that Iraq, the world, or the lives of his family and friends are better due to his death." Imagine the pain behind those lines. Steve Chapman, in a Chicago Tribune column last weekend, played a cruel game of logic. He applied it to Sen. Kerry's position on the war but he could have been referring to the editorial positions of most American newspapers. Chapman summed up the "stay the course" predicament like this: "We can't manage an increasingly turbulent Iraq with the forces we have. We don't have many extra troops to send. We can't turn over security to Iraqis because they can't be trusted. We can't get other countries to help us out. And things keep getting worse." Yet, he pointed out, "Democrats and Republicans agree that we have to go on squandering American lives because we don't know what else to do." So what do the editors of American newspapers think we should do? Are you ready
Business as usual for intelligence torturers
Bush sickened, but suspects still at work By Marian Wilkinson, Herald Correspondent in Washington May 8, 2004 Page Tools Email to a friend Printer format Standing in the Rose Garden at the White House, President George Bush declared that the graphic photographs of US military guards abusing Iraqi prisoners "made us sick to our stomachs". Apologising for the first time to the prisoners and their families, he promised that "the wrongdoers will be brought to justice". Yet as he spoke, two of the central figures named in a US Army report two months ago as most likely responsible for the abuses were still in their jobs. They are the head of the army's military intelligence unit in Baghdad, Colonel Thomas Pappas, and a shadowy private defence contractor who worked as an interrogator with that unit at the Abu Ghraib prison, Steven Stephanowicz. "I can't believe that," said one of the lawyers defending a junior officer charged in the scandal when told by the Herald. But the Pentagon confirmed this week that Colonel Pappas was still commanding his unit even though he has been reprimanded over the scandal and there are reports he may soon be criminally charged. It appears to be part of a systemic pattern of abuse by military intelligence and the CIA that spun out of control. One of the latest photographs given to The Washington Post reportedly shows a senior military intelligence officer standing among the guards while Iraqi detainees lie in a naked heap on the floor of the cell. Gary Myers, a defence officer for one of the MPs charged, told the Herald that military intelligence officers would enter the cell blocks in "sterile" uniforms, showing no names or ranks, making it difficult to track their activities. Mr Stephanowicz's employer, a military contractor to the Pentagon, said he too had not been removed from his job. The Pentagon had not even asked his company, CACI, for his resignation. "We have not received any information to stop any of our work, to terminate or suspend any of our employees," said CACI's chief executive, Jack London. The secret army report on the scandal by General Antonio Taguba had called for Mr Stephanowicz to be sacked back on March 8. But evidence in the report, and from US military officers and human rights organisations, indicates that what happened at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad was not just the action of a handful of military police. The report was handed to US Central Command and other senior Pentagon officials who knew by then that shocking photographs of US military officers sexually humiliating prisoners supported evidence of the abuses at Abu Ghraib. General Taguba's report clearly stated that Mr Stephanowicz, a private contractor to US Army military intelligence, was heavily implicated and recommended that he never be employed by the army again and be stripped of his government security clearance. The report found that he had instructed the military guards at Abu Ghraib to help set up conditions to "facilitate" interrogations knowing that "his instructions equated to physical abuse". Yet no one in the US command in Iraq or at the Pentagon has removed Mr Stephanowicz, a highly prized interrogator, or penalised his employer, CACI. Since the report, CACI has won more lucrative contracts with the Pentagon including one worth $US650 million ($906 million) announced just weeks after General Taguba's damning findings. As calls mount for the resignation of the Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, evidence is growing that the abuse of detainees in US military custody from Iraqi to Afghanistan has been suppressed by the Pentagon and the CIA in their drive for "actionable intelligence" against insurgents and terrorists. The Pentagon has now admitted that at least 10 suspicious deaths are being investigated. Two more deaths have been ruled as murders. With fresh allegations daily, Mr Rumsfeld is under fire from an angry Congress, and even Mr Bush, for blindsiding them on the scandal. But Mr Rumsfeld is aggressively insisting there is no cover-up and says he is taking "whatever steps are necessary to hold those accountable who violated the military code of conduct". Mr Bush said he would not sack Mr Rumsfeld but is said to have rebuked him for failing to warn him about the photographs before they were published. Mr Bush's interviews with Arab television this week were an admission that the photographs have inflicted untold damage at home and abroad. The Secretary of State, Colin Powell, compared the scandal with the My Lai massacre, the defining event that galvanised US public opinion against the Vietnam War. But he said it would be dealt with by "telling the people of the world that this is an isolated incident". But this defence is crumbling. There is no doubt that a few individual officers took pleasure in abusing detainees at Abu Ghraib. One of the six junior officers charged so far in the scandal, Specialist Charles Granier, has a history of vicious domes
Bush apology?
Bush actually said that he apologised to the King of Jordan for the torture of Iraqis by US personnel. Why didn't he directly apologise to the Iraqi people and the victims and their families? Why this strange and roundabout way of going about the act of apology. Why should be he be apologising to the King of Jordan rather than to the Iraqis concerned! First, he refuses to apologise at all and now he apologises second hand through an apology to the King of Jordan. Weird. Is there a third instalment? Cheers, Ken Hanly
Article on Chalabi
From Casi-news clippings originally from Salon. Sorry about the formatting, thats the way it came to me, but it seems a worthwhile article on Chalabi's background and machinations. Cheers, Ken Hanly This is long How Ahmed Chalabi conned the neocons The hawks who launched the Iraq war believed the deal-making exile when he = promised to build a secular democracy with close ties to Israel. Now the Is= rael deal is dead, he's cozying up to Iran -- and his patrons look like the= y're on the way out. A Salon.com exclusive. - - - - - - - - - - - - By John Dizard May 4, 2004 | When the definitive history of the current Iraq war is finall= y written, wealthy exile Ahmed Chalabi will be among those judged most resp= onsible for the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq and topple Sa= ddam Hussein. More than a decade ago Chalabi teamed up with American neocon= servatives to sell the war as the cornerstone of an energetic new policy to= bring democracy to the Middle East -- and after 9/11, as the crucial antid= ote to global terrorism. It was Chalabi who provided crucial intelligence o= n Iraqi weaponry to justify the invasion, almost all of which turned out to= be false, and laid out a rosy scenario about the country's readiness for a= n American strike against Saddam that led the nation's leaders to predict -= - and apparently even believe -- that they would be greeted as liberators. = Chalabi also promised his neoconservative patrons that as leader of Iraq he= would make peace with Israel, an issue of vital importance to them. A year= ago, Chalabi was riding high, after Saddam Hussein fell with even less trouble than expecte= d. Now his power is slipping away, and some of his old neoconservative allies = -- whose own political survival is looking increasingly shaky as the U.S. o= ccupation turns nightmarish -- are beginning to turn on him. The U.S. rever= sed its policy of excluding former Baathists from the Iraqi army -- a polic= y devised by Chalabi -- and Marine commanders even empowered former Republi= can Guard officers to run the pacification of Fallujah. Last week United Na= tions envoy Lakhdar Brahimi delivered a devastating blow to Chalabi's futur= e leadership hopes, recommending that the Iraqi Governing Council, of which= he is finance chair, be accorded no governance role after the June 30 tran= sition to sovereignty. Meanwhile, administration neoconservatives, once uni= ted behind Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress he founded, are now spli= t, as new doubts about his long-stated commitment to a secular Iraqi democr= acy with ties to Israel, and fears that he is cozying up to his Shiite co-r= eligionists in Iran, begin to emerge. At least one key Pentagon neocon is said to be on his way= out, a casualty of the battle over Chalabi and the increasing chaos in Ira= q, and others could follow. "Ahmed Chalabi is a treacherous, spineless turncoat," says L. Marc Zell, a = former law partner of Douglas Feith, now the undersecretary of defense for = policy, and a former friend and supporter of Chalabi and his aspirations to= lead Iraq. "He had one set of friends before he was in power, and now he's= got another." While Zell's disaffection with Chalabi has been a long time = in the making, his remarks to Salon represent his first public break with t= he would-be Iraqi leader, and are likely to ripple throughout Washington in= the days to come. Zell, a Jerusalem attorney, continues to be a partner in the firm that Feit= h left in 2001 to take the Pentagon job. He also helped Ahmed Chalabi's nep= hew Salem set up a new law office in Baghdad in late 2003. Chalabi met with= Zell and other neoconservatives many times from the mid-1990s on in London= , Turkey, and the U.S. Zell outlines what Chalabi was promising the neocons= before the Iraq war: "He said he would end Iraq's boycott of trade with Is= rael, and would allow Israeli companies to do business there. He said [the = new Iraqi government] would agree to rebuild the pipeline from Mosul [in th= e northern Iraqi oil fields] to Haifa [the Israeli port, and the location o= f a major refinery]." But Chalabi, Zell says, has delivered on none of them= . The bitter ex-Chalabi backer believes his former friend's moves were a de= liberate bait and switch designed to win support for his designs to return = to Iraq and run the country. Chalabi's ties to Iran -- Israel's most dangerous enemy -- have also alarme= d both his allies and his enemies in the Bush administration. Those ties we= re highlighted on Monday, when Newsweek reported that "U.S. officials say t= hat electronic intercepts of discussions between Iranian leaders indicate t= hat Chalabi and his entourage told Iranian contacts about American politica= l plans in Iraq." According to one government source, some of the informati= on he gave Iran "could get people killed." A Chalabi aide denied the allega= tion. According to Newsweek, the State Department and the CIA -- Chal
Re: Iraq Communist Party statement on Atrocities at Abu Ghraib
I thought imperialism was in part one nation exerting its control over another usually against that nation's and not in self defence. Certainly the US attacked Iraq against its will without asking "people on the ground". The PNAC website makes it clear that the aim is to project US might into the Middle East and no doubt help protect Israel and also secure vital energy resources. That is the imperialism that is at issue. THe issue is the status of those who side with imperialist occupiers when there are obvious resistant forces at work. Groups that side with the occupiers are prima facie quislings. Even if it is merely a tactical move it is exceedingly dangerous and liable to result in loss of any credibility. Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: "Grant Lee" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, May 05, 2004 10:10 AM Subject: Re: Iraq Communist Party statement on Atrocities at Abu Ghraib > Michael said: > > > I cannot understand what kind of communist party would join with the US, > or why we > > should take such a party seriously. > > I don't think that's the real issue. No-one knows whether the insurgents are > more popular than the US-backed council; it will take an election to > establish that. And what is "imperialism", if not the presumption that one > knows better than people on the ground? Why should we take _our_ views --- > few of us being experts on Iraqi history or politics --- more seriously than > the views of Iraqis who live in Iraq at the moment, and have also lived > there throughout Saddam's regime? > > regards, > > Grant.
Being right means being a prisoner
Why being right on WMD is no consolation to Iraqi scientist labelled enemy of America Chief link to UN weapons inspectors held in solitary confinement for year Jonathan Steele in Baghdad Wednesday May 5, 2004 The Guardian By any measure Amer al-Saadi ought to feel vindicated. The dapper British-educated scientist who was the Iraqi government's main link to the United Nations inspectors before the US invasion repeatedly insisted that Iraq had destroyed its weapons of mass destruction years earlier. David Kay, the American inspector who headed the Iraq Survey Group and was sure he would find such weapons when he went to Iraq after the war, now accepts Dr Saadi was right. So does Hans Blix, the chief UN inspector, who up to a month before the war still thought Iraq might have had WMD. Yet, astonishingly, Dr Saadi does not know of their change of mind or of the political fallout their views have caused in western countries. He is like a lottery winner who is the last person to be told he has hit the jackpot. Held in solitary confinement in an American prison at Baghdad's international airport, Dr Saadi is denied the right to read newspapers, listen to the radio, or watch television. "In the monthly one-page letters I am allowed to send him through the Red Cross I cannot mention any of this news. I can only talk about family issues," says his wife, Helma, as she sits in the couple's home less than half a mile from US headquarters in Baghdad. Barely three days after the statue of Saddam Hussein was pulled down by US troops in central Baghdad Dr Saadi approached the Americans and became the first senior Iraqi to hand himself in. It was the last time his wife saw him. He was sure he would soon be released, Mrs Saadi says. He was a scientist who had never been part of Saddam's terror apparatus, or even a member of the Ba'ath party. Interviews CIA interrogators have repeatedly interviewed him. Had there been any WMD to discover Dr Saadi would have had an obvious incentive to reveal their location once the regime had collapsed. But from the reports of the Iraq Survey Group it can only be assumed that he has maintained his line that they were eliminated long ago. Dr Saadi is described officially by the Americans as an "enemy prisoner of war". This allows them to detain him indefinitely without access to a lawyer or visiting rights from his family until George Bush declares the war to be over. Whether he is still held out of spite or to hide Washington's embarrassment is not clear. He has already been in custody for more than a year. His CIA interrogators have finished their work and apparently feel awkward about his continued detention. "My handlers have appealed to higher authorities for my release but it seems it's political and God doesn't meddle in politics," Dr Saadi wrote in one letter. "It would speak well for them if they admitted they were mistaken. They would look human," Mrs Saadi says. German by birth, she and her husband have always conversed in English. They were married in Wandsworth register office in south London 40 years ago last October, when he was studying chemistry at Battersea College of Technology. The prison letters she shares with the Guardian reflect the tenderness of a long and successful partnership. Despite the censorship they resonate with affection and occasional whimsical flashes of humour, as well as periods of depression. "Leave the brooding to me. I have time enough. Be constructive," he urged her in one letter. By a second cruel stroke of fate, she was in the UN headquarters last August, seeking help for her husband, when a suicide bomber blew it up. Twenty-two people died, including the woman she was talking to when the upper floor caved in. Mrs Saadi was unconscious for 48 hours and awoke in a US military hospital. The couple's children have lived most of their lives in Germany. "We didn't want them to develop under the regime. He never saw his children grow up. It breaks my heart," Mrs Saadi says. She spent 20 years bringing them up in Hamburg and making only short visits to Baghdad. Dr Saadi was not allowed to go abroad except on official business. The regime urged him to divorce her but he refused. In prison under US custody he is not even allowed pen and paper, except to compose his one-page Red Cross letter. He does crosswords by filling in the blanks in his head. His wife sent him a computerised chess set but was not allowed to provide replacement batteries when the first ones ran out. He has been teaching himself German. "If it were not for impressing the grandchildren, I wouldn't bother," he wrote last year. Last month he joked about Paul Bremer, the top US official in Iraq. "Bremer I found out from the German lessons I am giving myself is a man from Bremen! Yet another German!" Dr Saadi is kept in his cell all day except for an hour of exercise in a supervised area. His wife was able to send him running shoes. Conditions In October he wrote that h
Analysis of Fallujah situation
This is a bit out of date since it seems that the US is now selecting another Iraqi general and also saying it is still in Fallujah..ie talking out of both sides of its mouth and with multiple voices, but it seems interesting and of some relevance. ' Cheers, Ken Hanly -MIME-Autoconverted: from 8bit to quoted-printable by gmoblfmail2.net.voda= fone.it id i44JxkE2009722 http://www.uruknet.info/?p=3D2379 Dear comrades, dear readers... Abu Nicola al Yunani (Free Arab Voice) This message was prompted by messages by Baath Simpson and Hazem Biqaen, who have, respectively, asked for information and offered their opinions on the current situation in Iraq in general and al Fallujah in particular. I wrote this message yesterday, but for technical reasons have not been able to post it. It is interesting that in the 1 day that passed, new evidence is coming in to support the positions elaborated herein. On Al Fallujah and Jassem Mohamed Salah I would submit that few people outside Fallujah (and a few American high-ranking officials) know what Jassem Muhammad Salah intends to do. But his intentions count for little, actually. Under the appropriate circumstances, individuals can influence the course of history. But when bigger historic forces are in motions, individuals are forced - often against their will - to act in accordance with those forces > I have a question about that general who should control al Faludja: > Jassem Mohamed Salah. I heard via TV he wa general of the republican > guard. But how US can accept him? The question is, did they have a choice? When US troops entered Baghdad little more than a year ago, they were under the delusion that they had won the war (in fact, the real war had NOT been waged, and they only "won" due to the defection of a group of people in the Iraqi leadership - the actual war was lying ahead of them, not behind them). Acting arrogantly under the influence of this delusion, they dissolved the army and security services, and fired all baathists from state positions. At that time, placing a former republican guard general in charge of a city would have been unthinkable. Only a calendar year has passed since then - but in the political sense this year is equivalent to ages. Nowadays, the resistance has driven some sense into the empty heads of even the most arrogant and stupid neocons. They are no longer in a position to choose. Could they have acted more intelligently a year ago? I believe yes. Hitler, to name just one case, was much more intelligent. He knew he would need whatever local help he could get. He placed general Petain (the hero of WWI) in charge of France. In Greece, the general Tsolakoglou, who had led the army corps that resisted the invasion by Italian and later German troops, was placed at the head of the occupation government. In both cases, the people selected had proven their ability, and had (initially) some prestige in the occupied country. Even in the zionist state, we see that some of the less idiotic rulers have chosen to use people like Arafat and Rajoub to control the Palestinians - people, once again, who had proven ability and enjoyed prestige. In the case of Iraq, it would have been much more intelligent to use the old security services and army, gradually purging them from patriotic elements, and in combination with new puppet forces of informers etc. One would assume that the British, who are more subtle, experienced and intelligent, would have acted thus if they had a choice. But well-trained dogs don't raise objections against their masters, and Blair was not in a position to influence the neo-cons, of course. Would the situation be significantly better for the U.S. if they had acted differently from the beginning? Hitler was more intelligent than Bush, but he too was defeated in the end. Even a genious can not do in an intelligent way something that is inherently stupid. If the occupiers of Iraq had acted more prudently, they might have won a couple of months, but I doubt if it would be more. They would, of course, have been faced with another set of problems in that case (those arising from the inevitable infiltration of the resistance into "their" Iraqi forces). Anyway, their half-hearted attempt to use the Baath NOW is "too little, too late". > Is he one of the traitors. > It woud be very useful if you could tell me about that general. I doubt any personal information would be of any use. There are at least three possible explanations for this "deal", when viewed from a vantage point that concentrates on general Salah: a) That the general would like to be a collaborator, to control al Fallujah FOR THE AMERICANS. b) That the general would like to play his own game, BETWEEN the Americans and the resistance, balancing each against the other. c) That the general is acting in the name of, and for the interests of, the resistance, and that the Americans have in essence recognised their defeat, only attem
Is the tide of outsourcing now retreating?
It is official. Events in Iraq have shown that US intelligence operatives are patriots. Rather than rendering those to be interrogated to Syria or other countries where torture is commonplace, they are developing advanced torture capacities within US controlled prisons. At the same time they are providing recreational facilities where guards can ease their boredom and frustrations. Of course torture is unpleasant and no doubt bleeding heart liberal namby pambies will be outraged. But surely red-blooded patriotic Americans can do the dirty work that we now contract out to those filthy scum in Axis of Evil jails. Why waste taxpayer money on them? Why not support our own? Cheers, Ken Hanly
Re: The Empire Falls Back - Niall Ferguson
Come on..the post says EVEN North Korea. As a bully the US has the power to inflict appalling destruction while sustaining only minimal damage to itself because bullied countries do not have the power to respond. Russia and China are not included in the circle of those to be bullied at least not by inflicting appalling destruction. But one might argue that Iraq and Vietnam show that the political and economic damage caused by playing the bully may be too high eventually. Strange that the media never seems to detect any immorality at the sight of the most powerful nation in the world attacking countries such as Afghanistan, Panama, Grenada and Iraq that are completely outmatched. The dominant story is the justice of the cause as if the bully were a kindly benevolent policeman restoring peace and democracy. But this story would not have the slightest credibility if there were complete wanton destruction. This is why the US always talks of precision bombing, avoiding civilian casualties etc. while at the same time often targetting hydro plants, water treatment facilities, etc. using crippling sanctions imposed by the UN etc.etc. Civilian casualties will always be collateral damage. By the way is there confirmation of the use of cluster bombs in the recent Fallujah battles? Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: "Chris Doss" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, May 03, 2004 6:04 AM Subject: Re: The Empire Falls Back - Niall Ferguson > The United States has the capability to inflict appalling destruction > while sustaining only minimal damage to itself. There is no regime it > could not terminate if it wanted to-including North Korea. > > --- > Why do people keep saying this? One Russian Oskar-class submarine can destroy the Eastern Seaboard. >
Transitional Law and Occupation Might
Sovereignty and Iraq after June 30 2004 By James O'Neill 04/29/04 "ICH" -- At his press conference of 14 April 2004 the United States President George W. Bush reaffirmed his determination that "sovereignty" would pass to Iraq on June 30 2004. The precise legal basis of this transition is to be found in a number of documents. After the American and British led invasion of Iraq, the legal basis of which is widely regarded as untenable, the United Nations Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1483 of May 22 2003: (1) Reaffirming the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iraq (2) Stressed the right of the Iraqi people to freely determine their own political future and control their own natural resources. (3) Called upon all concerned to comply fully with their obligations under international law. (4) Supported the formation by the people of Iraq, with the help of the Coalition Authority, of an Iraqi interim administration as a transitional administration run by Iraqis, until an internationally recognised representative government is established by the people of Iraq and assumes the responsibility of the Authority. The "Authority" referred to in these clauses is the so-called Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), a body whose membership was chosen by the United States as one of the two occupying powers (the other being the U.K.) The CPA in turn appointed a Governing Council to carry out administrative functions, with each administrative unit under the control of a member of the occupying powers. The Governing Council's membership is heavily drawn from former Iraqi exiles, the most prominent of whom is the convicted fraudster Ahmed Chalabi, an especial favourite of the Pentagon. Until recently the Governing Council has been operating at the pleasure of Paul Bremer the American "pro-consul" appointed by President Bush. Any "agreements" reached between the Governing Council and the American government and/or military have to be interpreted in the same way as agreements between a ventriloquist and his dummy. Resolution 1483 was passed in the immediate aftermath of the invasion and the defeat of the Iraqi armed forces. It contained few specifics as to how the Iraqi people were to freely determine their own future. That lacuna was addressed in United Nations Security Council Resolution 1511 unanimously passed on October 16 2003. There are four clauses in the resolution of particular interest. Clause 1 reaffirms the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iraq and underscores in that context the temporary nature of the exercise by the CPA of its authority and obligations under Resolution 1483. Those powers are to cease when an internationally recognised representative government is established by the people of Iraq and sworn in and assumes the responsibilities of the Authority as set out elsewhere in the resolution. Clause 4 determines that the Governing Council and its Ministers are the principal bodies of the Iraqi interim administration which embodies the sovereignty of the State of Iraq during the transition period. Clause 13 authorises a multinational force under unified command to take all necessary measures to contribute to the maintenance of security and stability in Iraq. It is this clause that provides the cloak of legitimacy to the occupying powers. It does not exempt them of course from observance of their obligations under international law (that Resolution 1483 specifically endorsed). It is almost certainly the case that the bombing of civilian areas; arbitrary detention of civilians; restrictions on freedom of movement; and the removal of Mr Hussein from the territory of Iraq to confinement in Qatar, to cite just some examples, are breaches of the Hague Regulations 1907 and the Geneva Convention of 1949. Clause 15 decides that the mandate of the multinational force under clause 13 shall expire upon the completion of the political process that is elsewhere set out in the Resolution. The relevant political process is the setting up of a Governing Council in the terms specified in the Resolution. It is with that background that the members of the Governing Council laboured to produce a blueprint enabling the completion of the steps to the resumption of self-government set out in Resolution 1511. It is important to note that at no stage of all of these events has Iraq ever not been a sovereign nation. The ability to exercise sovereignty, i.e. independent self-government with dominion over its own affairs, was of course compromised by the realities of foreign invasion, conquest and occupation. It is also important to note however, that the United Nations resolutions clearly envisage the suspension of real sovereignty to be a temporary phase that terminates with the swearing in of an internationally recognised representative government. After some problems all members of the Governing Council signed the "Law of Administration for the State of Iraq for the Transitional Period" to gi
Reverse De-Baathification
FALLUJAH - A former general in Saddam Hussein's army will be responsible for security in the Iraqi city of Fallujah under a new deal reached on Thursday. The Fallujah Protective Army will include up to 1,100 Iraqi soldiers and will be led by a former division commander under Saddam. It will move into the hotbed of anti-U.S. insurgency beginning on Friday, U.S. marine Lt.-Col. Brennan Byrne said source CBC news cbc.ca Why didn't the US just hire the insurgents to provide security in the first place? ;) The US has always claimed that they are mainly remnants of Saddam's forces. It looks as if Chalabis and INC campaign of getting rid of all former Baathists is being rejected with a vengeance. I understand that former Baath intelligence officers have been hired to the new Iraqi intelligence service as well.. Of course these people may simply be regarded as turncoats. Maybe the commander will direct security operations from the Green Zone in Baghdad. Cheers, Ken Hanly
More on the Iraqi Flag
Burning with anger: Iraqis infuriated by new flag that was designed in London By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad and David Usborne in Baghdad 28 April 2004 For many Iraqis it was the final insult. Again and again they expressed outrage yesterday that Iraq's United States-appointed and unelected leaders had, overnight, abolished the old Iraqi flag, seen by most Iraqis as the symbol of their nation, and chosen a new one. "What gives these people the right to throw away our flag, to change the symbol of Iraq?" asked Salah, a building contractor of normally moderate political opinions. "It makes me very angry because these people were appointed by the Americans. I will not regard the new flag as representing me but only traitors and collaborators." The outburst of fury over the flag highlights the extraordinary ability of US leaders and the Iraqi Governing Council to alienate ordinary Iraqis, already angered by the bloody sieges of Fallujah and Karbala. And yesterday, in the hotbed of Iraqi rebellion, the flag was burnt in public in a demonstration of public anger. When, as expected, the controversial new flag is hoisted inside the security of the Green Zone in Baghdad today, there is little prospect that the flag will be fluttering over other Iraqi cities. When security officers at the United Nations undertake the daily ritual this morning of raising the standards of the 191 member countries up the white poles arrayed outside UN headquarters in New York's First Avenue, for Iraq it will be the familiar flag of Saddam Hussein's rule that is unfurled. "So far, we haven't received anything about this from Baghdad," said Igor Novichenko, who is in charge of such matters in the UN's protocol unit. For now, he added, the old Iraqi flag of green and black, with "God is Great" in Arabic script across it, will retain its place outside UN headquarters. That is not to say that the new version may not be fluttering on First Avenue one day. There are no great formalities involved in changing a country's flag. All that is required is for the mission of that country in New York - and the Iraqi mission is still open - to inform the UN of the new design. But in Iraq greater problems loom where insurgents will be able to strengthen their patriotic credentials by sticking with the old and popular Iraqi flag and portraying the new one as a sign of subservience to foreign occupiers. Already anti-US guerrillas are adopting the old red, white and black banner as their battle flag, tying it to their trucks and sticking it in the ground where they have their positions. This blend of nationalism and religion has proved highly successful in spreading resistance to the occupation. It is increasingly unlikely that the Allies will have any legitimate Iraqi authority to whom they can transfer power on 30 June, as President George Bush has promised. As the security situation deteriorates in Baghdad, Iraqis are more often refusing to reveal their family names when interviewed. Jassim, standing behind the counter in his grocery shop, said: "That flag is not Saddam's flag. It was there before Saddam and it represents Iraq as a country. The whole world knows Iraq by its flag." A further reason for popular anger is that many Iraqis are convinced that their new flag is modelled on the Israeli flag. It is white with two parallel blue strips along the bottom representing the Tigris and Euphrates rivers with a yellow strip in between symbolising the Kurds. Above the stripes is a blue crescent to represent Islam. Iraqis say the blue stripes are suspiciously like those on the Israeli flag. They also ask why the Kurds have a stripe in the new flag but not the 80 per cent of Iraqis who are Arabs. Could it be because the Kurds are the only Iraqi community fully supporting the US? The old Iraqi flag was modified but was otherwise unchanged by Saddam Hussein. It had red and black bands across the top and bottom and three green stars on the white stripe separating them. Just before the 1990-91 Gulf War the words "Allahu Akbar",God is Great, were added to boost the religious credentials of Saddam Hussein's secular regime. The flag won the loyalty of many Iraqis who did not support the old regime. Dhurgham, a 23-year-old student, said: "We cheered Iraqi footballers under that flag for a long time. I feel it represents me as an Iraqi. I don't like this new flag. It does not look Iraqi. It is more like the Turkish or Israeli flags. The main reason I don't like it is that it comes from the Americans." When the idea of getting a new flag was first talked about last year, it stirred up strong feelings against change. But the Iraqi Governing Council, made up of former opponents of Saddam Hussein and Iraqis in exile during his rule, has a well-established reputation for being wholly out of touch with Iraqi opinion. The council approved the new flag, only asking the artist to make the crescent a deeper blue. "This is a new era," said Hamid al-Kafaei, the s
Articleon Iraq
Apologies if this is a repeat. I had computer problems just as I sent it first... http://www.helsinginsanomat.fi/english/article/1076152581256 The weakness of power COLUMN By Pentti Sadeniemi The United States occupation authority in Iraq seems to be undecided over whether or not it wants to act tough and violent, like Israel in its own occupied territories, or whether it prefers to try to patiently win over the "hearts and minds" of the Iraqis. An occupier that wants to relinquish its power should choose the latter policy, while resorting to the former only on rare occasions, when there are no options. This is difficult in a country like Iraq that is full of conflicts, but it is certainly not impossible; the British seem to have succeeded at least reasonably well in their own occupation zone. The worst alternative is unpredictable vacillation between those two types of policy. Nevertheless, this is the option chosen by the United States. It is one of the characteristics of the occupation of Iraq that make it almost impossible for an outsider to figure out what Washington is actually up to. A brutal quadruple murder took place in Falluja, in the area of the Sunni Arabs. It is understandable that the occupying power did not feel it could refrain from reacting in some way or another. The reaction came, but it was quite incredible. A US spokesman with the rank of a general insisted that the occupying power does not plan to blindly march into the city. He promised that the operation would be determined, precise, and overwhelming. Then the US Marines marched blindly into the city, causing between 500 and 700 deaths. After apparently getting a bit of a fright themselves, the Americans stopped their operation and began to negotiate a truce. In other words, there was plenty of arbitrary destruction, but no results. The Americans=92 prestige did not grow - it suffered. In Najaf, a rebel trainee cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, barricaded himself inside a Shiite shrine after days of provoking the occupiers. The United States moved a significant proportion of its military firepower to the edge of the city, and gave orders to "either kill or capture" the violator of the peace. The Americans were reminded that the Shiites, who are a majority in Iraq, would not look kindly on the desecration of their holy city. At the time of writing, negotiations over a rather flimsy agreement are still going on. After making disdainful threats, the occupiers=92 restraint did not win it any goodwill or achieve any other benefit. As was the case in Falluja, the prestige and credibility of the United States received a blow in Najaf - something which could have been easily avoided with some consideration. As if that were not enough, the Americans in Najaf imitated one of the most disgusting aspects of Israeli policy. It is not the role of the occupier to choose members of the population to be murdered on the basis of a simple administrative decision. Undoubtedly al-Sadr himself does not hesitate to have people killed if they are in the way. He faces prosecution for just such a crime. However, this fact is no excuse for the actions taken by the United States. To justify the occupation of Iraq, Washington has invoked the blessings of democracy, the rule of law, and civil liberties - all values which should make such action impossible. The everyday tactical mistakes in the occupation are more than matched by equally clumsy strategic mistakes in controlling the overall situation in Iraq. What is wrong with the Washington administration of George W. Bush? One would have to dig through political history with a lantern to find another group of powerful people that would have acted so consistently for the destruction of their own best purposes. Before the invasion, Bush=92s inner circle did everything it could to undermine the prestige and credibility of the United Nations. Now, a year later, the occupier wants nothing more than to borrow these very characteristics from the UN. The invasion itself was described as an attack against international terrorism. Now few would have the temerity to deny that the breeding ground for international terrorism has expanded and deepened in the past year. The conquest of Iraq was supposed to be a demonstration that the whole world would understand of the overall leadership position of the United States. A year later it is the most graphic example of the political and psychological limits of military superiority. Explanations of the events will continue for a long time to come. With the help of a columnist=92s licence - devoid of any responsibility - at least two come to mind: a disdain for facts and likelihoods typical of ideologues, and the illusion of omnipotence resulting from overwhelming military power. A combination of the two seems to have seduced the Bush administration into this massive project, whose costs and prospects for success it thoroughly miscalculated. The ideology dictated that th
Article on Iraq
http://www.helsinginsanomat.fi/english/article/1076152581256 The weakness of power COLUMN By Pentti Sadeniemi The United States occupation authority in Iraq seems to be undecided over whether or not it wants to act tough and violent, like Israel in its own occupied territories, or whether it prefers to try to patiently win over the "hearts and minds" of the Iraqis. An occupier that wants to relinquish its power should choose the latter policy, while resorting to the former only on rare occasions, when there are no options. This is difficult in a country like Iraq that is full of conflicts, but it is certainly not impossible; the British seem to have succeeded at least reasonably well in their own occupation zone. The worst alternative is unpredictable vacillation between those two types of policy. Nevertheless, this is the option chosen by the United States. It is one of the characteristics of the occupation of Iraq that make it almost impossible for an outsider to figure out what Washington is actually up to. A brutal quadruple murder took place in Falluja, in the area of the Sunni Arabs. It is understandable that the occupying power did not feel it could refrain from reacting in some way or another. The reaction came, but it was quite incredible. A US spokesman with the rank of a general insisted that the occupying power does not plan to blindly march into the city. He promised that the operation would be determined, precise, and overwhelming. Then the US Marines marched blindly into the city, causing between 500 and 700 deaths. After apparently getting a bit of a fright themselves, the Americans stopped their operation and began to negotiate a truce. In other words, there was plenty of arbitrary destruction, but no results. The Americans=92 prestige did not grow - it suffered. In Najaf, a rebel trainee cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, barricaded himself inside a Shiite shrine after days of provoking the occupiers. The United States moved a significant proportion of its military firepower to the edge of the city, and gave orders to "either kill or capture" the violator of the peace. The Americans were reminded that the Shiites, who are a majority in Iraq, would not look kindly on the desecration of their holy city. At the time of writing, negotiations over a rather flimsy agreement are still going on. After making disdainful threats, the occupiers=92 restraint did not win it any goodwill or achieve any other benefit. As was the case in Falluja, the prestige and credibility of the United States received a blow in Najaf - something which could have been easily avoided with some consideration. As if that were not enough, the Americans in Najaf imitated one of the most disgusting aspects of Israeli policy. It is not the role of the occupier to choose members of the population to be murdered on the basis of a simple administrative decision. Undoubtedly al-Sadr himself does not hesitate to have people killed if they are in the way. He faces prosecution for just such a crime. However, this fact is no excuse for the actions taken by the United States. To justify the occupation of Iraq, Washington has invoked the blessings of democracy, the rule of law, and civil liberties - all values which should make such action impossible. The everyday tactical mistakes in the occupation are more than matched by equally clumsy strategic mistakes in controlling the overall situation in Iraq. What is wrong with the Washington administration of George W. Bush? One would have to dig through political history with a lantern to find another group of powerful people that would have acted so consistently for the destruction of their own best purposes. Before the invasion, Bush=92s inner circle did everything it could to undermine the prestige and credibility of the United Nations. Now, a year later, the occupier wants nothing more than to borrow these very characteristics from the UN. The invasion itself was described as an attack against international terrorism. Now few would have the temerity to deny that the breeding ground for international terrorism has expanded and deepened in the past year. The conquest of Iraq was supposed to be a demonstration that the whole world would understand of the overall leadership position of the United States. A year later it is the most graphic example of the political and psychological limits of military superiority. Explanations of the events will continue for a long time to come. With the help of a columnist=92s licence - devoid of any responsibility - at least two come to mind: a disdain for facts and likelihoods typical of ideologues, and the illusion of omnipotence resulting from overwhelming military power. A combination of the two seems to have seduced the Bush administration into this massive project, whose costs and prospects for success it thoroughly miscalculated. The ideology dictated that the Iraqis should be seen as a large oppressed nation which would, right after libera
Re: Bush, the lesser evil?
But at the present juncture both Kerry and Bush take a multilateralist stand. Bush is not multilateralist just in terms of a coalition of the billing but also wants the UN to participate and bless US control of security through a UN force with the US in command. Bush also seems to have accepted the State department line rather than the Pentagon and is not complaining that the UN will sideline Chalabi and many of the present IGC. For his part Chalabi and others are no doubt trying to use the UN oil for food scandal as a means to discredit the UN and advance their own agenda. Obviously the hiring of some former Baath generals will not sit well wtih the INC which always pushed for a wholesale de_Baathification. Chalabi spouts off that allowing Baathists element back in is like allowing Nazis to govern post-war Germany. Well heck Heisenberg was OK for US rocket programmes Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: "Chris Burford" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, April 26, 2004 4:23 PM Subject: Re: Bush, the lesser evil? > - Original Message - > From: "Mike Ballard" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Sent: Monday, April 26, 2004 9:54 AM > Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Bush, the lesser evil? > > > > Chris, > > > > Does this mean that you don't think it mattered > > In my opinion the difference between Kerry and Bush is not of this > magnitude. It is a policy difference not a class difference. They are > both imperialists and both hegemonic imperialists. But Bush's policy > has been to use the massive preponderance of US military might > unilaterally to impose its hegemony. Kerry would obviously use this, > but appears by his background, his utterances, and his position on > Iraq to favour a more multi-lateralist hegemonic position. This may > matter more outside the US than within it. Even outside it is a matter > of judgement whether the advantages outweigh the disadvantages for the > progressive forces of the world versus international finance capital > headed by US capital, to have Empire consolidated under the more > complex hegemonic leadership of a Kerry type figure rather than > fragmented and dramatised by a Bush type figure. > > Chris Burford
The new Occupation Flag in Iraq
This seems to be a stupid act. Surely this a total insult to the dignity of Iraqis that they now have a flag opposed upon them. The liberation holiday didnt work out..Neither will this. Maybe some US company has the contract to make them and thus will have an endless contract as they are burned up and have to be replaced.. Cheers, Ken Hanly BAGHDAD: Iraq's Governing Council has adopted a new national flag to replace the one flown by Saddam Hussein, with emblems to represent peace, Islam and Iraq's Kurdish population, spokesman Hamid al-Kefaae said today. The new flag consists of a pale blue crescent on a white background and has a yellow strip between two lines of blue at the bottom. It will be raised over government buildings within days, he said. http://www.hipakistan.com/en/detail.php?newsId=en62743&F_catID=&f_type=source
Iranian influence in Iraq
Analysis: Iran's influence in Iraq An official Iranian delegation is in Baghdad at Washington's request to hel= p resolve the impasse between the US occupation authorities and Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr. Middle East analyst Dilip Hiro says this underlies the influence that the predominantly Shia Iran has on the neighbouring Iraqi Shias. The Iranian influence is exercised through different channels - a phenomeno= n helped by the fact that there is no single, centralised authority in Iran. The different centres of power include the offices of the Supreme Leader an= d the President; the Majlis (parliament) and the judiciary; the Expediency Council; and offices of the Grand Ayatollahs in the holy city of Qom, and their social welfare networks throughout the Shia world. It was the decision of Grand Ayatollah Kadhim Husseini al-Hairi - an Iraqi cleric who had gone to Qom for further theological studies 30 years ago, never to return - to appoint Moqtada Sadr as his deputy in Iraq in April 2003 that raised the young cleric's religious standing. The more senior Ayatollah Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a member of the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council (IGC), is even more beholden to Iran. He is the leader of the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri), which was established in 1982 in Tehran by the Iranian government. He returned to Iraq after spending 22 years in Iran. Shia militia Sciri's 10,000-strong militia, called the Badr Brigades, has been trained and equipped by Iran. Ayatollah Hakim underscored his continued closeness to Iran on 11 February, the 25th anniversary of Iran's Islamic revolution. Opening a book fair in Baghdad, sponsored by the Iranian embassy, he praised the Vilayat-e Faqih (ie Rule of Religious Jurisprudent) doctrine on which the Iranian constitution is founded. Sooner or later, the Americans will be obliged to leave Iraq in shame and humiliation Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei Then there is Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the most senior Shia cleric, who is now being routinely described by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) as a moderate, even pro-Western, even though he refuses to meet eithe= r the CPA chief Paul Bremer or any of his envoys, limiting his contacts strictly to IGC members. Ayatollah Sistani was born and brought up in the Iranian city of Mashhad, and despite his 53 years in Iraq, speaks Arabic with a Persian accent. Most of his nine charitable ventures, primarily providing housing for pilgrims and theology students, are in Iran. So too are the four religious foundations sponsored by him. Increasing influence Outside official circles, there are signs of growing Iranian influence amon= g Iraqi Shias. The religious foundations run by pre-eminent clerics in Iran are funding partially the social welfare services being provided to Iraqi Shias by thei= r mosques at a time when unemployment is running at 60%. Iran's present co-operation with Washington is a tactical move. They want t= o help stabilise the situation in Iraq to facilitate elections there so the Shia majority can assume power through the ballot box, and hasten the departure of the Anglo-American occupiers If there is any day-to-day Iranian involvement in the workings of the Sadr network in Iraq, it is in the sphere of social welfare. There is no need for Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard to train the militiamen of Sadr's Mehdi Army since all Iraq males have received three years of military training under the Baathist regime and the country is awash with small arms and ammunition. Also, Iranian Shias are pouring into Iraq, which has six holy Shia sites, across the unguarded border at the rate of 10,000 a day. They are thus bolstering the Iraqi economy to the tune of about $2bn a year= , equivalent to two-fifths of Iraq's oil revenue in 2003. Covert activities Then there are covert activities purportedly sponsored by Iran. Soon after Saddam's downfall, some 100 "security specialists" of the Lebanese Hezbollah arrived in Basra, at the behest of the Iranian intelligence agency, according to the Anglo-American sources. Since then two groups of Iraqi Shias calling themselves Hezbollah have emerged, one of them allegedly sponsored by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard, with its headquarters in Amara and branches in other cities. This is widely seen as a move to establish an Iranian intelligence infrastructure in Iraq. However, such a network can hardly compete with its Anglo-American rival. Until a few days ago, conceding any role to the Islamic Republic of Iran ha= s been anathema to the George Bush administration. It is hell bent on seeing that the Iraqi politicians refrain from declaring Iraq an Islamic republic. Paul Bremer publicly announced that if those writing the transitional constitution made any such move, he would veto the document. But present signs are that a large majority of Shias, led by Ayatollah Sistani, favour an Islamic entity of some sort for Iraq. About
Perle's of Wisdom
'Iraq Expert' Perle Shills for Chalabi at Senate Panel by Juan Cole It was quite an experience to be on the same panel on Tuesday with Richard Perle and Toby Dodge, before the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Perle wasn't added until the last minute, and it is mysterious why he was there, since ours was supposed to be an "expert" panel. Dodge has an important book on Iraq. Originally Ahmad Hashim was going to be on with us (he came Wednesday instead), and then we heard Perle had been put on. Perle, of course, is no Iraq expert. He doesn't know a word of Arabic, and has never lived anywhere in the Arab world. Perle's entire testimony was a camouflaged piece of flakking for Ahmad Chalabi. He complained that the State Department and the CIA had not created a private army for Chalabi and had not cooperated with him. Perle did not mention Chalabi's name, but it was clear that was who he was talking about (State and CIA famously dropped Chalabi in the mid-1990s when they asked him to account for the millions they had given him, and he could not). In fact, Perle kept talking about "the Iraqis" when it was clear he meant Chalabi. He said the US should have turned power over to "the Iraqis" long before now. But here's an interesting contradiction. I said at one point that I thought Bremer should have acquiesced in Grand Ayatollah Sistani's request for open elections to be held this spring, and that if they had been, it might have forestalled the recent blow-up. I had in mind that Muqtada al-Sadr in particular would have been kept busy acting as a ward boss, trying to get his guys returned from East Baghdad & Kufa, etc. Perle became alarmed and said that scheduling early elections would not have prevented the "flare-up" because the people who mounted it were enemies of freedom and uninterested in elections. Perle has this bizarre black and white view of the world and demonizes people right and left. A lot of the Mahdi Army young men who fought for Muqtada are just neighborhood youth, unemployed and despairing. Some are fanatics, but most of them don't hate freedom - most of them have no idea what it is, having never experienced democracy. But anyway, what struck me was the contradiction between Perle's insistence that the US should have handed power over to Iraqis months ago, and his simultaneous opposition to free and fair elections. The only conclusion I can draw is that he wants power handed to Chalabi, who would then be a kind of dictator and would not go to the polls any time soon. Perle also at one point said he didn't think the events of the first two weeks of April were a "mass uprising" and said he thought Fallujah was quiet now. (Nope). It is indicative of the Alice in Wonderland world in which these Washington Think Tank operators live that Perle could make such an obviously false observation with a straight face. Even a child who has been watching CNN for the past three weeks would know that there was a mass uprising. (Even ten percent of the American-trained police switched sides and joined the opposition, and 40% of Iraqi security men refused to show up to fight the insurgents.) I replied, pointing out that the US had lost control of most of Baghdad, its supply and communications lines to the south were cut, and a ragtag band of militiamen in Kut chased the Ukrainian troops off their base and occupied it. It was an uprising. I suppose Perle hopes that if he says it wasn't an uprising, at least some people who aren't paying attention will believe him. It is bizarre. It reminded me of the scene in Ladykillers where the fraudsters set off an explosion in a lady's basement, and she hears it while outside in a car, and is alarmed, and the Tom Hanks character says in a honeyed southern accent, "Why, Ah don't believe Ah heard anything at all." I could just see Perle in a Panama hat at that point playing the character. It is deeply shameful that Perle is still pushing Chalabi, and may well succeed in installing him. Chalabi is wanted for embezzling $300 million from a Jordanian bank. He cannot account for millions of US government money given him from 1992 to 1996. He was flown into Iraq by the Pentagon (Perle was on the Defense Advisory Board, a civilian oversight committee for the Pentagon) with a thousand of his militiamen. The US military handed over to Chalabi, a private citizen, the Baath intelligence files that showed who had been taking money from Saddam, giving Chalabi the ability to blackmail large numbers of Iraqi and regional actors. It was Chalabi who insisted that the Iraqi army be disbanded, and Perle almost certainly was an intermediary for that stupid decision. It was Chalabi who insisted on blacklisting virtually all Baath Party members, even if they had been guilty of no crimes, effectively marginalizing all the Sunni Iraqi technocrats who could compete with him for power. It was Chalabi who finagled his way onto the Interim Governing Council even though he has no grassro
Cognitive Dissonance in US on Iraq
http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=2374 Majority Still Believe in Iraq's WMD, al-Qaeda Ties by Jim Lobe U.S. public perceptions about former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's alleged ties to al-Qaeda and stocks of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) continues to lag far behind the testimony of experts, boosting chances that President George W Bush will be reelected, according to a survey and analysis released Thursday. Despite statements by such officials as the Bush administration's former chief weapons inspector, David Kay; its former anti-terrorism chief, Richard Clarke; former chief United Nations weapons inspector Hans Blix, as well as admissions by senior administration officials themselves, a majority of the public still believes Iraq was closely tied to the al-Qaeda terrorist group and had WMD stocks or programs before US troops invaded the country 13 months ago. "The public is not getting a clear message about what the experts are saying about Iraqi links to al-Qaeda and its WMD program," said Steven Kull, director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland, which conducted the survey. "The analysis suggests that if the public were to more clearly perceive what the experts themselves are saying on these issues, there is a good chance this could have a significant impact on their attitudes about the war and even on how they vote in November," he added. The survey and analysis found a high correlation between those perceptions and support for Bush himself in the upcoming presidential race in November. Among the 57 percent of respondents who said they believed Iraq was either "directly involved" in carrying out the 9/11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon or had provided "substantial support" to al-Qaeda, 57 percent said they intended to vote for Bush and 39 percent said they would choose his Democratic foe, John Kerry. Among the 40 percent of respondents, who said they believed there was no connection at all between Saddam and al-Qaeda or that ties consisted only of minor contacts or visits, on the other hand, only 28 percent said they intended to vote for Bush, while 68 percent said their ballots would go to Kerry. The survey, which was based on interviews with a random sample of 1,311 respondents in March, was released amid a series of polls that indicate that Bush and Kerry are in a virtual tie less than seven months before the actual election. While Kerry appeared to be leading in the wake of last month's congressional testimony by Clarke, who accused the administration of being insufficiently seized with the threat posed by al-Qaeda before the 9/11 attacks, Bush, who in recent weeks has spent an unprecedented amount of money on television advertising so early in the campaign, has closed the gap and, according to one 'Washington Post' poll published earlier this week, pulled slightly ahead. The latest PIPA study is remarkable because it shows that public perceptions about Iraq, or at least about the threat it posed before the US invasion, are lagging far behind what acknowledged experts have themselves concluded and whose findings have been reported in the mass media. Virtually all independent experts and even senior administration officials have concluded since the war that ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda before the war were virtually nonexistent, and even Bush himself has explicitly dismissed the notion that Baghdad had a hand in the 9/11 attacks. Yet the March poll found that 20 percent of respondents believe that Iraq was directly involved in the attacks - the same percentage as on the eve of the war, in February 2003. Similarly, the percentages of those who believe Iraq provided "substantial support" to al-Qaeda (37 percent) and those who believe contacts were minimal (29 percent) are also virtually unchanged from 13 months before. As of March 2004, 11 percent said there was "no connection at all," up four percent from February 2003. Some - but surprisingly little - change was found in answers to whether Washington had found concrete evidence since the war that substantiated a Hussein-al-Qaeda link. Thus, in June 2003, 52 percent of respondents said evidence had been found, while only 45 percent said so last month. As to WMD, about which there has been significantly more media coverage, 60 percent of respondents said Iraq either had actual WMD (38 percent) or had a major program for developing them (22 percent). In contrast, 39 percent said Baghdad had limited WMD-related activities that fell short of an active program - what Kay as the CIA's main weapons inspector concluded in February - or no activities at all. Moreover, the message conveyed by Kay and other experts appears not to be getting through to the public, adds the survey, which found a whopping 82 percent of respondents saying either, "experts mostly agree Iraq was providing substantial support to al-Qaeda" (47 percent) or, "experts are evenly divided on the question" (
Re: mixed economic signals
Sabri wrote I knew that you were going to say this but "noise traders" are the irrational ones and for their existence, there has to be "non-noise traders", that is, the rational ones. My claim is that all market participants are "noise traders", which makes the term meaningless. Comment: I don't see this. That a class contains all of a given group does not mean that the class term is meaningless. Consider people killable by nuclear bombs and those non-killable by nuclear bombs. The latter class is empty I assume but this does not mean the phrase people killable by nuclear bombs is meaningless. The situation does not change if you choose classes that exhaust the universal class ie non (people who are killable by nuclear bombs). Cheers, Ken Hanly
Re: NYT/Using MRI to See Politics on the Brain
Won't it be a question of finding out what brain cells need to be destroyed to cause people to vote for the GOP?: Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: "Devine, James" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, April 22, 2004 1:39 PM Subject: Re: NYT/Using MRI to See Politics on the Brain > eventually, they'll figure out which parts of the brain to stimulate (using electrodes) to make people vote GOP. > JD > > -Original Message- > From: Michael Hoover [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Thu 4/22/2004 10:34 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Cc: > Subject: [PEN-L] NYT/Using MRI to See Politics on the Brain > > > > > By JOHN TIERNEY > Using M.R.I. to See Politics on the Brain > >
Snowbirds seek new haven..
N.S. votes to invite Turks and Caicos to join it Last Updated Thu, 22 Apr 2004 14:16:50 HALIFAX - Nova Scotia's three political parties voted unanimously Wednesday to invite Turks and Caicos to join the province, if the Caribbean islands ever become part of Canada. INDEPTH: Turks and Caicos Bill Langille Tory backbencher Bill Langille has never been to the 40-island chain, but he thinks the union is a natural, given historical trade connections and a sea-going culture. He introduced the non-binding resolution in hopes of spurring talks at the federal level. Prime Minister Paul Martin agreed last month to meet with Michael Misick, the Turks and Caicos chief minister, to talk about possibly forming some sort of relationship. Talks about forming some kind of alliance were first brought up by Prime Minister Robert Borden in 1917, and have surfaced several times in the succeeding decades. However, Canada has turned down an alliance three times, largely because it doesn't want to be seen as being neocolonialist. The islands, which are a British colony, are financially self-sufficient and run a balanced budget. Edmonton Tory MP Peter Goldring has taken up the latest campaign, visiting the islands for a fact-finding mission last January. His sales pitch is that the islands already host 16,000 Canadians each year and would provide a stable retirement and vacation destination. Thirty per cent of hotels and resorts are Canadian-owned. He also says the islands could be the Canadian hub for Caribbean trade. It's not clear what an alliance between Canada and the Turks and Caicos would look like, but comparisons have been made with New Zealand and the Cook Islands or even France and Martinique. As for Nova Scotia, at least one MP wasn't amused with the idea of annexing a tropical paradise. Glace Bay MP Dave Wilson said Nova Scotia already has one island to take care of - Cape Breton. Written by CBC News Online staff
Employee sacked for photographing coffins
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/04/22/1082616268111.html?from=storyrhs Last Sunday a newspaper in Seattle, Washington, published a rare photograph of soldiers' coffins, each of them containing the body of an American who had died in Iraq. The coffins, each draped with the Stars and Stripes, had been loaded into the back of a cargo aircraft for a final journey to the US, where they would be buried. There were at least 18 of them in the picture, which was taken by a 50-year-old civilian contractor, Tami Silicio. On Wednesday Ms Silicio was sacked from her job, for taking the photograph and sharing it with news organisations. Ms Silicio worked for Maytag Aircraft Corporation, which has a $US18 million ($25 million) contract to handle cargo for the US Government at Kuwait airport. As part of that job she would often see soldiers' coffins in the back of aircraft, on their way from Iraq to burial in the US. Earlier this month - which has been one of the deadliest for coalition soldiers - Ms Silicio decided to photograph the coffins. She asked a friend, Amy Katz, to forward the image to her local newspaper, The Seattle Times. Ms Katz said she was "amazed" when she saw the photo. "I immediately picked up the telephone and because [Ms Silicio] is from Washington state, I called The Seattle Times," she said. "Tami wanted to share the image with the American people." The US military generally bans photographs of soldiers' coffins, and few have been published in US newspapers during the war in Iraq. On Wednesday Ms Silicio engaged an agent, who offered her photograph to newspaper outlets for $1400 for one-time, non-exclusive use. The editor of the Times, Mike Fancher, said in a column this week that he decided to publish the photograph on the front page because it was "undeniably newsworthy". Readers would have "differing reactions to the photo, depending on their views of the war", he said. The managing editor of The Seattle Times, David Boardman, told the magazine Editor & Publisher this week that "we weren't attempting to convey any sort of political message". He disagreed with the military ban on photographs of coffins, saying: "The Administration cannot tell us what we can and cannot publish." Ms Katz said that after the picture was published Ms Silicio was "called into her supervisor's office and severely reprimanded. She explained why she did it, but they sacked her and her husband [David Landry] too". She said Ms Silicio "really wanted mothers of the soldiers to know how the coffins were handled". In an interview with The Seattle Times, Ms Silicio said the coffins were prayed over and saluted before being shipped. "Everyone salutes with such emotion and respect," she said. "The families would be proud to see their sons and daughters saluted like that." She said she had seen a coffin accompanied by the wife and, in another case, by the father of the fallen soldier. William Silva, the president of Maytag Aircraft, was quoted by The Seattle Times as saying the sackings had been for violating US government and company regulations.
Re: capitalism = progressive?
Didnt many enterprises pay by the piece and give bonuses based upon how much was produced as in the Stakhanovite movement. Were there medals for productive achievement as there were in other areas such as the Hero of SOviet Motherhood etc. Both provide some sort of incentives. Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: "Chris Doss" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, April 22, 2004 11:06 AM Subject: Re: capitalism = progressive? > I am no expert, but I believe this to be the case. One of Gorbachev's many blunders was to increase wages a great deal without a corresponding increase in consumer goods, resulting in huge lines. > > -Original Message- > From: "Devine, James" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2004 07:18:48 -0700 > Subject: Re: [PEN-L] capitalism = progressive? > > > one reason why (money) wages weren't increased was that consumer-goods shortages meant that there was nothing to buy with the extra wages, right? people hoarded a lot of cash since there wasn't much to buy. > > Jim Devine
The new ambassador to Iraq
Web Exclusives Editor Matthew Rothschild comments on the news of the day. April 20, 2004 Negroponte, a Torturer's Friend Bush's announcement that he intends to appoint John Negroponte to be the U.S. ambassador to Iraq should appall anyone who respects human rights. Negroponte, currently U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., was U.S. ambassador to Honduras in the 1980s and was intimately involved with Reagan's dirty war against the Sandinistas of Nicaragua. Reagan waged much of that illegal contra war from Honduras, and Negroponte was his point man. According to a detailed investigation the Baltimore Sun did in 1995, Negroponte covered up some of the most grotesque human rights abuses imaginable. The CIA organized, trained, and financed an army unit called Battalion 316, the paper said. Its specialty was torture. And it kidnapped, tortured, and killed hundreds of Hondurans, the Sun reported. It "used shock and suffocation devices in interrogations. Prisoners often were kept naked and, when no longer useful, killed and buried in unmarked graves." The U.S. embassy in Honduras knew about the human rights abuses but did not want this embarrassing information to become public, the paper said. "Determined to avoid questions in Congress, U.S. officials in Honduras concealed evidence of human rights abuses," the Sun reported. Negroponte has denied involvement, and prior to his confirmation by the Senate for his U.N. post, he testified, "I do not believe that death squads were operating in Honduras." But this is what the Baltimore Sun said: "The embassy was aware of numerous kidnappings of leftists." It also said that Negroponte played an active role in whitewashing human rights abuses. "Specific examples of brutality by the Honduran military typically never appeared in the human rights reports, prepared by the embassy under the direct supervision of Ambassador Negroponte," the paper wrote. " The reports from Honduras were carefully crafted to leave the impression that the Honduran military respected human rights." So this is the man who is going to show the Iraqis the way toward democracy? More likely, as the insurgency increases, this will be the man who will oversee and hush up any brutal repression that may ensue. -- Matthew Rothschild http://www.progressive.org/webex04/wx042004.html
Pentagon as Slum Lord
The Pentagon as Global Slumlord By Mike Davis The young American Marine is exultant. "It's a sniper's dream," he tells a Los Angeles Times reporter on the outskirts of Fallujah. "You can go anywhere and there so many ways to fire at the enemy without him knowing where you are." "Sometimes a guy will go down, and I'll let him scream a bit to destroy the morale of his buddies. Then I'll use a second shot." "To take a bad guy out," he explains, "is an incomparable 'adrenaline rush.'" He brags of having "24 confirmed kills" in the initial phase of the brutal U.S. onslaught against the rebel city of 300,000 people. Faced with intransigent popular resistance that recalls the heroic Vietcong defense of Hue in 1968, the Marines have again unleashed indiscriminate terror. According to independent journalists and local medical workers, they have slaughtered at least two hundred women and children in the first two weeks of fighting. The battle of Fallujah, together with the conflicts unfolding in Shiia cities and Baghdad slums, are high-stakes tests, not just of U.S. policy in Iraq, but of Washington's ability to dominate what Pentagon planners consider the "key battlespace of the future" -- the Third World city. The Mogadishu debacle of 1993, when neighborhood militias inflicted 60% casualties on elite Army Rangers, forced U.S. strategists to rethink what is known in Pentagonese as MOUT: "Militarized Operations on Urbanized Terrain." Ultimately, a National Defense Panel review in December 1997 castigated the Army as unprepared for protracted combat in the near impassable, maze-like streets of the poverty-stricken cities of the Third World. As a result, the four armed services, coordinated by the Joint Staff Urban Working Group, launched crash programs to master street-fighting under realistic third-world conditions. "The future of warfare," the journal of the Army War College declared, "lies in the streets, sewers, high-rise buildings, and sprawl of houses that form the broken cities of the world." Israeli advisors were quietly brought in to teach Marines, Rangers, and Navy Seals the state-of-the-art tactics -- especially the sophisticated coordination of sniper and demolition teams with heavy armor and overwhelming airpower -- so ruthlessly used by Israeli Defense Forces in Gaza and the West Bank. Artificial cityscapes (complete with "smoke and sound systems") were built to simulate combat conditions in densely populated neighborhoods of cities like Baghdad or Port-au-Prince. The Marine Corps Urban Warfighting Laboratory also staged realistic war games ("Urban Warrior") in Oakland and Chicago, while the Army's Special Operations Command "invaded" Pittsburgh. Today, many of the Marines inside Fallujah are graduates of these Urban Warrior exercises as well as mock combat at "Yodaville" (the Urban Training Facility in Yuma, Arizona), while some of the Army units encircling Najaf and the Baghdad slum neighborhood of Sadr City are alumni of the new $34 million MOUT simulator at Fort Polk, Louisiana. This tactical "Israelization" of U.S. combat doctrine has been accompanied by what might be called a "Sharonization" of the Pentagon's worldview. Military theorists are now deeply involved in imagining how the evolving capacity of high-tech warfare can contain, if not destroy, chronic "terrorist" insurgencies rooted in the desperation of growing megaslums. To help develop a geopolitical framework for urban war-fighting, military planners turned in the 1990s to the RAND Corporation: Dr. Strangelove's old alma mater. RAND, a nonprofit think tank established by the Air Force in 1948, was notorious for war-gaming nuclear Armageddon in the 1950s and for helping plan the Vietnam War in the 1960s. These days RAND does cities -- big time. Its researchers ponder urban crime statistics, inner-city public health, and the privatization of public education. They also run the Army's Arroyo Center which has published a small library of recent studies on the context and mechanics of urban warfare. One of the most important RAND projects, initiated in the early 1990s, has been a major study of "how demographic changes will affect future conflict." The bottom line, RAND finds, is that the urbanization of world poverty has produced "the urbanization of insurgency" (the title, in fact, of their report). "Insurgents are following their followers into the cities," RAND warns, "setting up 'liberated zones' in urban shantytowns. Neither U.S. doctrine, nor training, nor equipment is designed for urban counterinsurgency." As a result, the slum has become the weakest link in the American empire. The RAND researchers reflect on the example of El Salvador where the local military, despite massive U.S. support, was unable to stop FMLN guerrillas from opening an urban front. Indeed, "had the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front rebels effectively operated within the cities earlier in the insurgency, it is questionable how much the Unit
Conservatives Becoming more divided over Iraq
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/19/politics/19CONS.html?ei=5062&en=3ead1edf3c2212dd&ex=1082952000&pagewanted=print&position= April 19, 2004 Lack of Resolution in Iraq Finds Conservatives Divided By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK growing faction of conservatives is voicing doubts about a prolonged United States military involvement in Iraq, putting hawkish neoconservatives on the defensive and posing questions for President Bush about the degree of support he can expect from his political base. The continuing violence and mounting casualties in Iraq have given new strength to the traditional conservative doubts about using American military power to remake other countries and about the potential for Western-style democracy without a Western cultural foundation. In in the eyes of many conservatives, the Iraqi resistance has discredited the more hawkish neoconservatives - a group closely identified with Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, and William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard. Considered descendants of a group of mostly Jewish intellectuals who switched from the political left to the right at the height of the cold war, the neoconservatives are defined largely by their conviction that American military power can be a force for good in the world. They championed the invasion of Iraq as a way to turn that country into a bastion of democracy in the Middle East. "In late May of last year, we neoconservatives were hailed as great visionaries," said Kenneth R. Weinstein, chief operating officer of the Hudson Institute, a center of neoconservative thinking. "Now we are embattled, both within the conservative movement and in the battle over postwar planning. "Those of us who favored a more muscular approach to American foreign policy and a more Wilsonian view of our efforts in Iraq find ourselves pitted against more traditional conservatives, who have more isolationist instincts to begin with, and they are more willing to say, `Bring the boys home,' " Mr. Weinstein said. Richard A. Viguerie, a conservative stalwart and the dean of conservative direct mail, said the Iraq war had created an unusual schism. "I can't think of any other issue that has divided conservatives as much as this issue in my political lifetime," Mr. Viguerie said. Recent events, he said, "call into question how conservatives see the White House. It doesn't look like the White House is as astute as we thought they were." Although Mr. Bush appears to be sticking to the neoconservative view, the growing skepticism among some conservatives about the Iraqi occupation is upending some of the familiar dynamics of left and right. To be sure, both sides have urged swift and decisive retaliation against the Iraqi insurgents in the short term, but some on the right are beginning to support a withdrawal as soon as is practical, while some Democrats, including Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the likely presidential nominee, have called for sending more troops to Iraq. In an editorial in this week's issue of The Weekly Standard, Mr. Kristol applauded Mr. Kerry's stance. Referring to the conservative commentator Patrick J. Buchanan, an outspoken opponent of the war and occupation, Mr. Kristol said in an interview on Friday: "I will take Bush over Kerry, but Kerry over Buchanan or any of the lesser Buchananites on the right. If you read the last few issues of The Weekly Standard, it has as much or more in common with the liberal hawks than with traditional conservatives." In contrast, this week's issue of National Review, the magazine founded by William F. Buckley and a standard-bearer for mainstream conservatives, adopted a newly skeptical tone toward the neoconservatives and toward the occupation. In an editorial titled "An End to Illusion," the Bush administration was described as having "a dismaying capacity to believe its own public relations." The editorial criticized the administration as having "an underestimation of the difficulty of implanting democracy in alien soil, and an overestimation in particular of the sophistication of what is still fundamentally a tribal society and one devastated by decades of tyranny." The editorial described that error as "Wilsonian," another term for the neoconservatives' faith that United States military power can improve the world and a label associated with the liberal internationalism of President Woodrow Wilson. "The Wilsonian tendency has grown stronger in conservative foreign policy thought in recent years," the editorial continued, adding, "As we have seen in Iraq, the world isn't as malleable as some Wilsonians would have it." The editorial was careful to emphasize that the war served legitimate United States interests and that violence against Americans in Iraq deserved harsh retribution. But it concluded: "It is the Iraqis who have to save Iraq. It is their country, not ours." Some co
Growing Afghanistans Economy
Record poppy crop makes mockery of Afghanistan's 'jihad' on opium By Nick Jackson in Kabul 18 April 2004 Blossoms of ripe opium poppies blanket the valleys of Nangarhar province - colourful proof that another war is not working: Afghanistan's "jihad" against opium production. President Hamid Karzai's promise that 25 per cent of the opium harvest in Afghanistan would be destroyed is no closer to being realised. Last year, the harvest provided three quarters of the world's heroin, and 95 per cent of Europe's. This year a record harvest is expected. Robert Charles, a narcotics expert from the US State Department, says that 300,000 acres of opium poppies will be harvested, 30 per cent more than the previous highest. Already 10 million people worldwide are addicted to Afghan opiates. At a conference in Berlin this month, US Secretary of State Colin Powell linked the aid package of $2.3bn pledged to Afghanistan for 2004-05 to the destruction of the opium harvest. It was then that Mr Karzai called on farmers to fight opium production with the same commitment as they would a holy war. "This is not a real policy," says Haji Din Mohammad, the governor of Nangarhar. "We have only told farmers at the end of the season. It is only now being decided whose fields will be destroyed." Anger at the destruction of the harvest has led to demonstrations by farmers, including a 3,000-strong street protest in Kama district in Nangarhar last week. The fact that the central government did not work out which plots were to be destroyed earlier has passed control of the destruction to local authorities. District authorities are responsible for overseeing the destruction of the local harvest. Police chiefs in Behsood district and Kama district have been ordered to destroy 600 acres of opium. The farmer is paid $2,500 for 12kg of opium that each acre of poppies provides. An acre of wheat is worth only $120. Each district of 50 villages faces losing more than $1.5m. The local authorities do not have the funds to replace the massive revenues from opium farming. Hazrat Ali, the military commander of Nangarhar, admits that they are not doing their job. "Our local administration is lazy and corrupt when destroying opium," he says. "They can be paid off." Bribes of about $100 per half acre are being paid to prevent the destruction of fields, according to reports from Kandahar. It is only the big landlords who can afford to pay off the police chiefs in this way. All local authorities in Nangarhar province talk of a negotiation with the local elders, the richest landlords. Abdul Rahib, the police chief in Behsood district, says they control the selection of fields to be destroyed. Haji Ajif Khan, District Mayor of Kama, adds: "Some people have 100 or 200 acres of land, and we take money from these people." He claims that it is then distributed to poorer farmers. When the big landlords who own hundreds of acres of poppies are targeted, the fields have been carefully selected. In Behsood district only half an acre of local landlord Haji Jilal Gul's massive crop was being cut down. It is possible to tell if an opium bud can produce opium or not by the smell of its seeds. Ripe opium buds smell fresh, like wet grass; buds that have gone off have a sickly sweet smell. The field destroyed would have been unable to produce a significant crop. The field next to it, owned by the same man, was ripe and being harvested. Local worthies use other methods to counter the opium jihad. Many fields targeted had already yielded up to 50 per cent of their opium. Every day the buds are cut with four small slits, the next day or the day after the opium that seeps out is collected and four more slits cut. A small opium bud can be harvested over three days, a large opium bud over eight days. In Shergar village in Kama the opium buds of a local elder which were being destroyed had been harvested for at least four days. The opium that has been harvested from these fields is not destroyed. Neither are the stockpiles of opium that have been built up over the years, and can still be used to make heroin 10 years after they have been harvested. One government did cut through the influence of local landlords and the notoriously corrupt Afghan civil service and radically reduce the opium harvest - the Taliban. Between 1999 and 2001 the opium harvest fell from 225,000 acres to 20,000 acres, according to UN estimates. But the executions carried out by the Taliban are not acceptable in the new Afghanistan. Even imprisonment is considered a draconian measure, even though Hazrat Ali believes it would be the best way to stop the harvest. This is a dramatic transition from the policy of compensation used in 2002 by the new government, which Hazrat Ali supported, offering $350 per acre destroyed. With $28bn pledged to Afghanistan for development over the next few years at the Berlin conference, Haji Din Mohammad hopes that development projects and loans for new busines
Nutcase rock and roll psy warfare ops
http://www.dailysouthtown.com/southtown/dsindex/17-ds3.htm Dirty deeds done dirt cheap Along Fallujah's front line, U.S. uses rock 'n' roll to snag insurgents Saturday, April 17, 2004 By Jason Keyser The Associated Press FALLUJAH, Iraq - In Fallujah's darkened, empty streets, U.S. troops blast AC/DC's "Hell's Bells" and other rock music full volume from a huge speaker, hoping to grate on the nerves of this Sunni Muslim city's gunmen and give a laugh to Marines along the front line. Unable to advance farther into the city, an Army psychological operations team hopes a mix of heavy metal and insults shouted in Arabic - including, "You shoot like a goat herder" - will draw gunmen to step forward and attack. But no luck Thursday night. The loud music recalls the Army's use of rap and rock to help flush out Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega after the December 1989 invasion on his country, and the FBI's blaring progressively more irritating tunes in an attempt to end a standoff with armed members of the Branch Davidian cult in Waco, Texas, in 1993. The Marines' psychological operations came as U.S. negotiators were pressing Fallujah representatives to get gunmen in the city to abide by a cease-fire. Six days after negotiations halted a U.S. offensive against insurgents in the city, the Marines continue carving out front-line positions and hope for orders to push forward. Many are questioning the value of truce talks with an enemy who continues to launch attacks. "These guys don't have a centralized leader; they're just here to fight. I don't see what negotiations are going to do," said Capt. Shannon Johnson, a company commander for the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment. Word of truce talks last week forced his battalion to halt its plunge into the northeast section of the city just hours after arriving to back up other Marines. In the meantime, perhaps the fiercest enemy - everyone here seems to agree - is the boredom, and worst of all the flies that pepper this dusty Euphrates River city west of Baghdad. Marines burn them, using matches to turn cans of flammable bug spray into mini blow torches. They also try to kill them by sprinkling diesel fuel over fly colonies. They joke about calling in air strikes. Fallujah's front lines remain dangerous. On Friday, insurgents fired several mortars at U.S. forces. One of the shells blasted a chunk out of a house where Marines are positioned, filling the building with dust and smoke. No one was injured. A short time later, an F-16 jet dropped a 2,000-pound bomb on the city, sending up a massive spray of dirt and smoke and destroying a building where Marines had spotted gunmen. "The longer we wait to push into the city, the more dangerous it's going to be," said Cpl. Miles Hill, 21, from Oklahoma, playing a game of chess with a fellow Marine in a house they control. "(The insurgents) have time to set stuff up." He guesses the insurgents are likely rigging doors with explosives, knowing Marines will kick them in during searches if they sweep the city. Up on the roof, Pfc. James Cathcart, 18, kept watch from a sandbagged machine-gunner's nest Friday. His platoon commander passed along word that troops found a weapons cache that included a Soviet-made sniper rifle with a night-sight. "A night-sight, sir?" he said, surprised that insurgents had the technology. His commander told him to keep his head down. "Everyone here wants to push forward. Here, you're just a target," Cathcart said. The young Marine looked out over grim city blocks around a dusty soccer pitch and a trash-strewn lot, as a rain shower passed over. He said during the long hours of duty, he wonders what the insurgents are doing, how many there are and if they're watching him. Adding to the eery feeling up, he said, are the music and speeches in Arabic that come over mosque loudspeakers. Unable to advance farther, Marines holed up in front-line houses have linked the buildings by blasting or hammering holes through walls between them and laying planks across gaps between rooftops, a series of passageways they call the "rat line." Lying on his stomach on a rooftop and wearing goggles and earplugs, a Marine sniper keeps an eye to his rifle sight. His main task in recent days has been trying to hit the black-garbed gunmen who occasionally dash across the long street in front of him. To dodge his shots, one of the gunmen recently launched into a rolling dive across the street, a move that had the sniper and his buddies laughing. "I think I got him later. The same guy came back and tried to do a low crawl," said Lance Cpl. Khristopher Williams, 20, from Fort Myers, Fla. Others have run across the street, hiding behind children on bicycles, said the sniper. In his position - reachable only by scaling the outside ledge of a building - he sits for hours with his finger poised on the trigger of a rifle that fires
Re: Bush Rips up the Road Map
Doesn't Bush's agreement to allow Israeli settlements to remain contradict UN resolutions? Nowhere in any articles have I seen a single reference to how UN resolutions fit into the picture. Has the UN made any statement on the matter. Perhaps they are too busy on some new scheme too legitimise a transition government in Iraq that will be acceptable to the US. Interesting that the Palestinians are scolded about meeting their road map responsibilities at the same time Bush threw the map out the window.. Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: Diane Monaco To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2004 10:41 AM Subject: Bush Rips up the Road Map Bush Rips up the Road MapFor the Record: 15 April 2004, Thursday.The Guardian By Suzanne GoldenbergPresident George Bush swept aside decades of diplomatic tradition in the Middle East yesterday, saying it was "unrealistic" to expect a full Israeli withdrawal from lands occupied during the 1967 war or the right of return for Palestinian refugees. In a significant policy shift, Mr Bush relaxed Washington's objections to Jewish settlements in the West Bank, and attempts by Israel to dictate the terms of a final settlement with the Palestinians. He told a joint press conference with the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, that he was prepared to bless a plan to dismantle Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, while retaining Israeli control over substantial sections of the West Bank. "These are historic and courageous actions," Mr Bush said about the Gaza withdrawal plan. "If all parties choose to embrace this moment, they can open the door to progress and put an end to one of the world's longest-running conflicts." The concessions offered yesterday by the White House - extracted at a time when Mr Bush is desperate to counter the chaos in Iraq with a foreign policy success - appeared to go further even than Mr Sharon had dared hope. Israeli embassy officials said the US had backed a plan requiring Israel to withdrawal from only four token settlements in the north-west sector of the West Bank with a total of 500 settlers. They said diplomats had prepared four versions of withdrawal proposals, only for Washington to accept the initial one, which was least generous to the Palestinians. The agreement is bound to ignite anger in the Arab world, especially Mr Bush's rejection of a Palestinian right of return, which will have a direct impact on countries such as Jordan, Syria and Lebanon which have substantial populations of refugees. For many, the right of refugees, and the descendants of refugees from the 1948 war, to return to what is now Israel is a sacred tenet. But Mr Bush appeared to rule out the prospect of even a limited number of refugees settling in the Jewish state. "It seems clear that an agreed, just, fair and realistic framework for a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there rather than Israel," he said. Mr Bush appears to have distanced his administration from other principles that have guided Middle East diplomacy. These are the idea that the Palestinians and Israelis should arrive at a negotiated settlement - first promoted by his father, the first President Bush, in the Madrid accords of 1991 - and that when a final settlement emerged Israel would broadly adhere to UN resolutions and withdraw to its pre-1967 borders. The president said the wall being built by Mr Sharon across the West Bank should not be viewed as a political boundary, and that the eventual delineation of the borders of an Israeli and a Palestinian state would await final status negotiations. But he made it evident that the ground rules had changed, giving effective sanction to the Jewish settlement blocks that have been built throughout the West Bank since the 1967 war, and which traditionally were described by the state department as "obstacles to peace". "In light of new realities on the ground ... it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949," Mr Bush said. The twin moves are likely to cause widespread outrage in the Arab world, which accuses Mr Bush of neglecting America's role as an honest broker. They could also reverberate on the Pentagon's attempts to put down the insurrection in Iraq. But they were welcomed by Tony Blair last night. A Downing Street statement said the international community, led by the "quartet" mediators - the US, EU, UN and Russia - must seize the opportunity to inject new life into the road map peace process. "Israel should now coordinate with the Palestinians on the detailed arrangements,"
Tariq Ali on Iraq
Actually Tariq is not correct about privatisation. Although a privatisation law was passed it has not been implemented. The CPA apparently decided that privatisation should await the transition govt. in the hopes this would give it legitimacy. Also, oil was excluded. Many of the state companies may have no bidders. They are not attractive investments especially in the present situation. Cheers, Ken Hanly April 9, 2004 Tariq Ali: What's next in Iraq? TARIQ ALI is a veteran political activist since the 1960s, and a filmmaker, novelist and author. His most recent books include The Clash of Fundamentalisms and Bush in Babylon: The Recolonization of Iraq. Tariq spoke to ERIC RUDER about the aims of the U.S. occupation and the growing Iraqi resistance. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Q: WHAT ARE the motives for the U.S. occupation? The Bush administration, of course, claims that it has removed an evil dictator and is promoting democracy and freedom. Tariq Ali: I don't think that very many people outside the U.S. believe this. Even in countries that have troops there, the population is against the war and occupation. With every passing day, it becomes clearer that the principal aim of the U.S. in invading and occupying Iraq had very little to do with democracy or even toppling a dictator, and a great deal to do with exercising imperial power, showing both the region and the rest of the world that this is how modern imperialism works--that the U.S. cannot be defied, and if it is defied, it reserves the right to punish defiance. Iraq was meant to be the country where this would be demonstrated. Another principal reason was to grab the Iraqi market--to grab Iraqi oil and divide it among the West, as used to be the case long years ago when Iraq was ruled by the British. This occupation takes place now in a very changed international context. This is a 21st century occupation. It takes place in the context of neoliberal economics and a global offensive by corporate capitalism. And another feature of this global offensive is a continuing effort on the part of the U.S. not to allow countries in different parts of the world to develop regional alliances, but to deal bilaterally with the U.S. That's what they've done in the Far East, that's what they've done in South Asia, that's what they've done in the Middle East, that's what they impose on Latin America. Any attempt to create a strong regional alliance that could challenge neoliberal hegemony, they will crush. Iraq was a country outside their control economically and politically, and they wanted to "set it right." There is a subsidiary reason, though I don't think that it's a main reason. The Israeli regime wanted Iraq out of the way because it felt that this was the only country that had the potential to stop Israeli atrocities against Palestine. Not that Iraq would have done this, but it could have done this, and why not remove the risk altogether? These were the principal reasons for the U.S. entry into Iraq. If you look on the economic level, what's going on is very straightforward. The entire Iraqi economy has been privatized. The American corporations are in. The South Koreans and the Japanese have been promised concessions and contracts if they commit troops. The South Korean president more or less said that. After Korea won 100 odd contracts, he said, "You see, if we did not send troops, we would not have gotten this contract." He's honest. But that is the reason that a number of these countries sent troops--apart from the East Europeans who had just wanted to be U.S. satellites. But the Polish president is getting cross now--pretending to be irritated, and saying that he didn't know there were no weapons of mass destruction--because Poland got very tiny contracts. Even the British, who backed Bush to the hilt, haven't gotten many contracts. It's interesting that the British got the contract to redo the sewage system, which is quite appropriate because that's the role that Blair plays--as the sewage cleaner of the American Empire. It's quite funny--whoever decided that in the Pentagon must have had a sense of humor. This is the process that's now underway. Iraq's health system, Iraq's housing, Iraq's educational system are all being privatized. They are waiting to implant a puppet government, which they hope to do after the"handover" on June 30. Then they'll start dealing with the oil as well. There's no doubt that one of the big demands on Ahmed Chalabi and the puppets will be to make the oil accessible to foreign companies. And the argument that the puppets and the U.S. will use is that the amount of investment needed to clear up the backlog in Iraqi oil and the mess in the Iraqi oilfields can't come from an Iraqi state devastated by war, but can only come from foreign companies. This is the plan. But the question is: Is the plan being implemented in an effective way? And you can read every day on the front page of the Los Angeles Times
UN can look at Iran but not Iraq
The IAEA has been unable to investigate, monitor or protect Iraqi nuclear materials since the U.S. invaded the country in March 2003. The United States has refused to allow the IAEA or other U.N. weapons inspectors into the country, claiming that the coalition has taken over responsibility for illict weapons searches. http://www.dailycomet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040415/API/404150905 If Saddam had interfered with UN inspections of nuclear facilities in Iraq the UN would complain loudly and everyone would scold..but the US can kick inspectors out and tell them to get lost after the occupation and there is not a peep from anyone it seems and the press never says boo..Did the UN resolution sanctifying the occupation also give the US sole responsibility for searching for illicit weapons? Cheers, Ken Hanly
Re: Paul Berman on the War Democrats
This is such atrocious trash it is hard to believe that the NY Times is supposed to be a significant paper. The comfortable pablum about totalitarianism and democracy is made up of abstract platititudes worthy of a Bush speach. Where is the desire to intervene against totalitarianism in Uzbekistan or umpteen other places? Where is the desire for democracy in Iraq when the US nixed a census way back at the end of 2003 and then complains that there is not enough time to prepare for elections..etc.etc. Or where is the democracy in a transition government bound by the laws passed by the CPA and whose armed forces will continue to be controlled by the US occupiers. Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: "Louis Proyect" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2004 8:43 AM Subject: Paul Berman on the War Democrats (Paul Berman is the author of "Terror and Liberalism." As a supporter of the Nicaraguan contras in the pages of the Village Voice in the 1980s and a major booster of NATO intervention in the Balkans, it should come as no surprise that he has the same position on Iraq as Christopher Hitchens. He parts company with Hitchens, however, in believing that John Kerry can be a far more effective war president.) NY Times Op-Ed, April 15, 2004 Will the Opposition Lead? By PAUL BERMAN (clip) Now we need allies — people who will actually do things, and not just offer benedictions from afar. Unfortunately — how many misfortunes can fall upon our heads at once? — finding allies may not be easy. Entire populations around the world feel a personal dislike for America's president, which makes it difficult for even the friendliest of political leaders in some countries to take pro-American positions. But the bigger problem has to do with public understandings of the war. People around the world may not want to lift a finger in aid so long as the anti-totalitarian logic of the war remains invisible to them. President Bush ought to have cleared up this matter. He has, in fact, spoken about conspiracy theories and hatred (including at Tuesday's press conference). He has spoken about a new totalitarianism, and has even raised the notion of a war of ideas.
Re: Revolt fizzling?
A report I read claimed that he would be willing to submit to trial but only in an Iraqi court that was in a legitimate and sovereign Iraq, not any present court or even one in the transitional government. Even the moderate clerics are holding out against allowing US forces back into Najaf and they are also against the arrest of Sadr. Unlike BUsh the alleged thug Sadr is willing to give many concessions to avoid bloodshed, a compromise that may not sit well with some of his followers. Perhaps the attempt to use Iran to mediate is meant by the US to sow divisions between Shia and Sunni again. Not surprisingly today an Iranian diplomat was assasinated in Baghdad. Cheers, Ken Hanly Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: "Marvin Gandall" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2004 7:45 AM Subject: Revolt fizzling? > Today’s Daily Telegraph is reporting that Moqtada al-Sadr has indicated his > willingness to surrender and disband the Mahdi Army, which would likely halt > the 10-day old Shia rising. > > According to the Telegraph, Sadr is said to be “buckling under the twin > pressures of a massive build-up of American forces near his base and demands > for moderation from the country's ayatollahs.” > > Sadr and his militia control Najaf, but his emissaries have reportedly told > US authorities and the Iraqi Governing Council (ICG) that, if his personal > safety is guaranteed, he would agree to submit to trial in an Iraqi court on > charges of having last year ordered the assassination of a rival cleric. > > Unless the leak is calculated disinformation, Sadr’s sudden capitulation is > surprising, because he had vowed a fight to the death, his mass support was > growing, and it was widely felt the Americans would not assault Najaf, a > Shia holy site. > > But the Telegraph says Sadr has been subject to intense pressure from the > senior Shia clergy and the Iranian government, which favours the SCIRI, a > rival Shia faction. > > Article on > http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;$sessionid$CRGUYNIF1XGP3QFIQMGCFF > 4AVCBQUIV0?xml=/news/2004/04/15/wirq15.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/04/15/ixnewstop > .html > > Also: www.supportingfacts.com > > Sorry for any cross posting. >
Mediation by the Axis of Evil
What is the tradeoff? Seems the Evil are Evil except when they are useful to the US then you get the negation of the negation and they become good..;). Cheers, Ken Hanly The Bush administration has made a formal request to Iran to help ease growing violence in Iraq and Tehran is now making an attempt to mediate in the conflict, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi said Wednesday. "There has been a lot of correspondence. Regarding Iraq, there has also been a lot of exchanges of correspondence," Kharazi told reporters when asked about the current state of relations with the United States. "Naturally, there was a request for our help in improving the situation in Iraq and solving the crisis, and we are making efforts in this regard," the minister said after a cabinet meeting. http://www.albawaba.com/news/index.php3?sid=274801&lang=e&dir=news
More eyewitness accounts from Fallujah
It is clear why the US does not want Al Jazeerah or any other reporters in Fallujah. Media coverage would expose the lies about civilian casualties and bring home the carnage that the US is creating. This is long, but there was no direct URL. Cheers, Ken Hanly Subject:- Fw:- Fallujah From: "Kevin & Helen Williams" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 08:24:18 + Bagdad 12 April 2004 On Friday night Lee and Ghareeb called to see us asking if any of us wanted to go to Fallujah to try to take aid in and get people out. They told us how they hgad been back and fro the past 3 days, how so nmany people were dying there and about human rights abuses being perpetrated by the soldiers. they said that there were long queues of families trying to leave, the soldiers were making their life hard, making them wait hours to cross checkpoints. They were not letting men of 'military age' cross. These men were taking their wives and children out and then returning to the city , in many cases, to fight. We heard how the hspitals were unable to cope with the huge numbers of casualties and how one had been bombed. Ghareeb would be able to sort out a safe passage through for us if we managed to get through the American checkpoints. Julia, Jo, Wejdy and myself agreed to go the next morning. We were due to leave early the next morning but we were waiting for $1000 of blood equipment to arrive. The delivery was late because it was coming from the other side of Bagdad and there was a battle going on in Adhimaya, not far from our friend Issam's house. We had to decide whether to wait for it to arrive or go straightaway. If we waited, it would mean staying in Gurma (nearby resistance village to Fallujah - attacked last night), but if we went without it we were risking our lives to go with less aid. In the end we opted to leave at 2 pm, with or without the blood equipment to give ourselves a chance of being able to return to bagdad that night. We went in a long bus, about the size of the coaches we use at home in order to be able to fill it with refugees/injured people in Fallujah. If we could not get into Fallujah, our intention was to go to the maerican checkpoints to help refugees get through them - the soldiers were making life hard on the checkpoints, keeping progress slow and not allowing everyone to pass, especially any men of 'military age'. Ghareeb, Lee and Aziz (the sheik's nephew from Gurma village) went in a car in front of the bus to sort out the checkpoints ahead of us. We made our way out of Bagdad and onto the highway to Fallujah. The highway was littered with burnt out vehicles - most were petrol tankers, but there were also many destroyed American military vehicles too. We passed a huge convoy of American military lorries carrying containers with DHFM (Detention Holding Facility Material) inside and long lorries carrying wood with the same initials stamped on it - there must have been enough to build several detention holding facilities. Then we passed a lorry which was being looted by people from a local village. We drove by quickly. Then we came to the American checkpoints - there were long queues of traffic waiting to go through. We were lucky at both - they did not really bother to search our bags of the bus that much and they only body searchewd the males. They said they were pleased to see friendly faces, speaking English! Indeed we had been friendly, teasing them about their suntans andtelling them to put plenty of lotion on - after all we wanted to get through! We left the highway at Abu Gharib, passing the huge tented prison there and then crossed country towards Fallujah. The countryside here is stunning, a lush 'cartoon' green - peaceful and beautiful. We passed through Mujahadeen checkpoints with ease - please note Mujahadeen means 'freedom fighter', nothing more, nothing less. People were shouting goodluck to us and blessing/thanking us for going to Fallujah. At one junction some boys threw bread and cake into the bus for us. As we approached Fallujah on these back roads they deteriorated becoming no more than a bumpy dirt track, barely 2 cars wide. Coming the other way were cars full of families and their possessions and vehicles with signs on them reading 'Aid to Fallujah - from the people of Hilla/Nagaf/Ramadi' for example. It seemed that all the people of Iraq, whether Shia, Sunni or Christian wanted to help Fallujah with whatever they could - water (there is no clean drinking water in Fallujah), blankets, food or medical aid - it was wonderful to see. As we approached Fallujah, we could see a mosque through the dust in the distance. More Mujahadeen lined the road. At one point they stopped us and greeted us, smiling, waving and posing for photos with their weapons - mainly RPGs, AK47's and RPK's (machine guns). Then they started shooting into the air above the bus - the sound was deafening. We drove through fallujah's deserted streets (apart from fighters and the odd group of children
Re: Equality of Wages etc.
As I recall the basis of distribution was supposed to be to each according to their social contribution during the socialist phase. This would not imply equality of wages. The slogan was: From each according to their abilities and to each according to their social contribution, as I recall. This contrasted with the communist stage where it was: From each according to ability and to each according to need. Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: "Devine, James" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, April 13, 2004 6:22 PM Subject: Re: Equality of Wages etc. MB wrote: >BTW, the equality of wages was something being planned and implemented in the old USSR. For example, wages on collective farms were being raised by greater percentages than wages in the more urbanized, more intellectual sectors in the sixties and seventies.< I'm not an expert on the old USSR, but I understand that this was an effort to stop rural/urban migration. Earlier, under Stalin, the wage structure was made much more unequal. Jim D.
Academic freedom at a Baghdad University
On Monday night, two Humvees arrived at Mustansariyah university. The soldiers distributed a propaganda sheet in Arabic called Baghdad Now , lauding the achievements of the occupation. Students collected the newspapers and ceremonially burnt them. They also put a poster of Muktada Sadr, the radical Shia cleric, up near the university clock. An hour later, more US soldiers were back, and angry. Abu Khalid, university guard, said: "They told me to lie down and they took away my rifle and tied my hands behind my back." Guards say the soldiers went through the university asking: "Where are the terrorists? We are going to arrest them." Offices were smashed and windows broken with rifle butts. After three hours, the US troops withdrew after failing to tear down the poster. A university administrator said: "I feel very angry. Our college looks worse than after the invasion." She said they were not complaining to the US army or the CPA, because nobody knows who to complain to, but Arab satellite channels have been asked to film the damage. 14 April 2004 11:42 http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=511265
Mercenary casualties not reported...
Deaths of scores of mercenaries not reported April 13 2004 at 01:21PM By Robert Fisk and Patrick Cockburn Baghdad - At least 80 foreign mercenaries - security guards recruited from the United States, Europe and South Africa and working for American companies - have been killed in the past eight days in Iraq. Lieutenant-General Mark Kimmitt admitted on Tuesday that "about 70" American and other Western troops had died during the Iraqi insurgency since April 1 but he made no mention of the mercenaries, apparently fearful that the full total of Western dead would have serious political fallout. He did not give a figure for Iraqi dead, which, across the country may be as high as 900. Full total of Western dead would have serious political fallout At least 18 000 mercenaries, many of them tasked to protect US troops and personnel, are now believed to be in Iraq, some of them earning $1 000 (about R6 300) a day. But their companies rarely acknowledge their losses unless - like the four American murdered and mutilated in Fallujah three weeks ago - their deaths are already public knowledge. The presence of such large numbers of mercenaries, first publicised in The Independent two weeks ago, was bound to lead to further casualties. But although many of the heavily armed Western security men are working for the US Department of Defence - and most of them are former Special Forces soldiers - they are not listed as serving military personnel. Their losses can therefore be hidden from public view. The US authorities in Iraq, however, are aware that more Western mercenaries lost their lives in the past week than occupation soldiers over the past 14 days. The coalition has sought to rely on foreign contract workers to reduce the number of soldiers it uses as drivers, guards and in other jobs normally carried out by uniformed soldiers. Often the foreign contract workers are highly paid former soldiers who are armed with automatic weapons, leading to Iraqis viewing all foreign workers as possible mercenaries or spies. This article was originally published on page 4 of The Star on April 13, 2004
UK activist eyewitness in Fallujah
http://www.wildfirejo.blogspot.com/
Equality of Wages etc.
Sorry if this is a duplication my mail server went down and I am not sure if it went through. The passage I was thinking of talks of equality of wages not of wealth. Here are the relevant passages from the Manuscripts.. It, therefore, follows for us that wages and private property are identical: for there the product,the object of labor, pays for the labor itself, wages are only a necessary consequence of the estrangement of labor; similarly, where wages are concerned, labor appears not as an end in itself but as the servant of wages. We intend to deal with this point in more detail later on: for the present we shall merely draw a few conclusions. An enforced rise in wages (disregarding all other difficulties, including the fact that such an anomalous situation could only be prolonged by force) would therefore be nothing more than better pay for slaves and would not mean an increase in human significance or dignity for either the worker or the labor. Even the equality of wages,which Proudhon demands, would merely transform the relation of the present-day worker to his work into the relation of all men to work. Society would then be conceived as an abstract capitalist. Wages are an immediate consequence of estranged labor, and estranged labor is the immediate cause of private property. If the one falls, then the other must fall too. http://csf.colorado.edu/psn/marx/Archive/1844-EPM/1st.htm#s1 The passages are some of the conclusions of a section that deals with Estranged Labor. It has nothing to do with commercialism but with the relationship of labor to capitalist and the products of labor in the capitalist mode of production.. Here are some relevant passages: The worker becomes poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and extent. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he produces. The devaluation of the human world grows in direct proportion to the increase in value of the world of things. Labor not only produces commodities; it also produces itself and the workers as a commodity and it does so in the same proportion in which it produces commodities in general. This fact simply means that the object that labor produces, it product, stands opposed to it as something alien, as a power independent of the producer. The product of labor is labor embodied and made material in an object, it is the objectification of labor. The realization of labor is its objectification. In the sphere of political economy, this realization of labor appears as a loss of reality for the worker, objectification as loss of and bondage to the object, and appropriation as estrangement, as alienation [Entausserung]. So much does the realization of labor appear as loss of reality that the worker loses his reality to the point of dying of starvation. So much does objectification appear as loss of the object that the worker is robbed of the objects he needs most not only for life but also for work. Work itself becomes an object which he can only obtain through an enormous effort and with spasmodic interruptions. So much does the appropriation of the object appear as estrangement that the more objects the worker produces the fewer can he possess and the more he falls under the domination of his product, of capital. All these consequences are contained in this characteristic, that the workers is related to the product of labor as to an alien object. For it is clear that, according to this premise, the more the worker exerts himself in his work, the more powerful the alien, objective world becomes which he brings into being over against himself, the poorer he and his inner world become, and the less they belong to him. It is the same in religion. The more man puts into God, the less he retains within himself. The worker places his life in the object; but now it no longer belongs to him, but to the object. The greater his activity, therefore, the fewer objects the worker possesses. What the product of his labor is, he is not. Therefore, the greater this product, the less is he himself. The externalization [Entausserung] of the worker in his product means not only that his labor becomes an object, an external existence, but that it exists outside him, independently of him and alien to him, and beings to confront him as an autonomous power; that the life which he has bestowed on the object confronts him as hostile and alien Comment: So the critique is not of commercialism or of markets but of capitalist relations of production. No form of capitalism even one with equality of wages overcomes the basic forms of alienation of the system of wage slavery. Some commentators think that Marx abandoned this concept of alienation in later works because it is not particularly mentioned as such but this is not true. Similar passages and concepts occur in the Grundrisse. The usual criticisim of the Manuscripts is that it involves idealist concepts that he later jettisoned in his "m
Re: Profit making under capitalism
Here are the relevant passages from the Manuscripts.. It, therefore, follows for us that wages and private property are identical: for there the product,the object of labor, pays for the labor itself, wages are only a necessary consequence of the estrangement of labor; similarly, where wages are concerned, labor appears not as an end in itself but as the servant of wages. We intend to deal with this point in more detail later on: for the present we shall merely draw a few conclusions. An enforced rise in wages (disregarding all other difficulties, including the fact that such an anomalous situation could only be prolonged by force) would therefore be nothing more than better pay for slaves and would not mean an increase in human significance or dignity for either the worker or the labor. Even the equality of wages,which Proudhon demands, would merely transform the relation of the present-day worker to his work into the relation of all men to work. Society would then be conceived as an abstract capitalist. Wages are an immediate consequence of estranged labor, and estranged labor is the immediate cause of private property. If the one falls, then the other must fall too. http://csf.colorado.edu/psn/marx/Archive/1844-EPM/1st.htm#s1 The passages are some of the conclusions of a section that deals with Estranged Labor. It has nothing to do with commercialism but with the relationship of labor to capitalist and the products of labor in the capitalist mode of production.. Here are some relevant passages: The worker becomes poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and extent. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he produces. The devaluation of the human world grows in direct proportion to the increase in value of the world of things. Labor not only produces commodities; it also produces itself and the workers as a commodity and it does so in the same proportion in which it produces commodities in general. This fact simply means that the object that labor produces, it product, stands opposed to it as something alien, as a power independent of the producer. The product of labor is labor embodied and made material in an object, it is the objectification of labor. The realization of labor is its objectification. In the sphere of political economy, this realization of labor appears as a loss of reality for the worker, objectification as loss of and bondage to the object, and appropriation as estrangement, as alienation [Entausserung]. So much does the realization of labor appear as loss of reality that the worker loses his reality to the point of dying of starvation. So much does objectification appear as loss of the object that the worker is robbed of the objects he needs most not only for life but also for work. Work itself becomes an object which he can only obtain through an enormous effort and with spasmodic interruptions. So much does the appropriation of the object appear as estrangement that the more objects the worker produces the fewer can he possess and the more he falls under the domination of his product, of capital. All these consequences are contained in this characteristic, that the workers is related to the product of labor as to an alien object. For it is clear that, according to this premise, the more the worker exerts himself in his work, the more powerful the alien, objective world becomes which he brings into being over against himself, the poorer he and his inner world become, and the less they belong to him. It is the same in religion. The more man puts into God, the less he retains within himself. The worker places his life in the object; but now it no longer belongs to him, but to the object. The greater his activity, therefore, the fewer objects the worker possesses. What the product of his labor is, he is not. Therefore, the greater this product, the less is he himself. The externalization [Entausserung] of the worker in his product means not only that his labor becomes an object, an external existence, but that it exists outside him, independently of him and alien to him, and beings to confront him as an autonomous power; that the life which he has bestowed on the object confronts him as hostile and alien Comment: So the critique is not of commercialism or of markets but of capitalist relations of production. No form of capitalism even one with equality of wages overcomes the basic forms of alienation of the system of wage slavery. Some commentators think that Marx abandoned this concept of alienation in later works because it is not particularly mentioned as such but this is not true. Similar passages and concepts occur in the Grundrisse. The usual criticisim of the Manuscripts is that it involves idealist concepts that he later jettisoned in his "mature" works But the Grundrisse shows that is incorrect. Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: "Devine, James" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTE
Profit making under capitalism
Julio Huato said Marx's hypothesis is that profit making under capitalism is essentially the appropriation of someone else's unpaid labor by means of a kosher, voluntary market transaction. Comment: Marx's hypothesis is surely not that it is a voluntary market transaction but a forced transaction because the capitalists own the means of production and the workers do not and have no means of access except through wage slavery. They cannot themselves produce and support themselves.Workers are forced into the transaction to keep themselves alive. The theory that it is a voluntary transaction is part of the capitalist ideology. It is not assymmetry of wealth that makes the voluntary part a sham it is that the workers havent access to the means of production themselves. Of course if there were a more equitable distribution of wealth some potential workers might opt out but if too many do or if the cost of labor becomes too great capital will flow to lower cost areas ceteris paribus and/or technological innovation will be encouraged to lower hours of labor input in production. Assymetry of wealth is certainly a factor that explains why workers choose to become employed but it is not the basic mechanism of the system which is the division of people into owners of the means of production and those who must sell their labor power. It is not the market that explains the form of abusing it is the mode of production. The mode of production involves the capitalist class owning the means of production and producing for profit not on the basis of need--except of course need backed by consumers willing to part with bucks. It is because of the ownership of the means of production that the capitalist can appropriate surplus value. It is a function of ownership not of the market. In fact later you yourself admit this sort of... " Profit making and accumulation entail a functional market setting, which in turn entails private ownership and its enforcement. " But markets require only private ownership of goods to be traded. Capitalism requires private ownership of the menas of production. And functional capitalist markets do not require voluntary trades and competition. Halliburton can save itself from bankruptcy through crony contacts and no competitive bidding in Iraq. I recall somewhere in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts that Marx claimed that equality of wealth under capitalism although not possible would not change the essential nature of the system even if it could occur. In fact Marxian socialism is not about equal distribution of wealth or removing wealth asymmetry. It is for abolishing the capitalist system of production and for a system where the means of production are socially owned and production is based upon need not profit and democratically planned and run. Cheers, Ken Hanly
Re: Mark Jones Was Right
- - > >. But as the PNA and other neo-con sites make clear control of > >energy resources is crucial to the continued hegemony of the US. > > They say that, but does that make it true? They're more of an > extremist group of think-tankers than the organic intellectuals of > the capitalist class. They've said many things that have turned out > to be seriously false. Well the "radicals" at the PNA and other right wing think tanks surely have power within the US administration. Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle, Rumsfeld, FeithWhat on earth are the organic intellectuals of the capitalist class? Capitalists intellectuals in favor or organic farming? > > > Why do you > >think that countries such as Japan are kissing US ass in Iraq in spite of > >the fact that most Japanese are opposed to Japanese involvement. The > >Japanese know that access to energy resources is essential for their > >capitalists and the US knows the same. Surely it should be evident to a left > >business observer and this aim is documented in lots of places.. > > I've heard this a hundred times before, and I'm not convinced. If the > U.S. wanted to block oil supplies to Japan, then it could blockade > Japan or bomb tankers heading there. Why is necessary to take the > expensive and risky option of trying to "control" the producing > regions? It may be that our rulers think this way, but is it rational > calculation, or just some fantasy of imperial glory with no real > payoff? > > Doug The point is not whether there is some real payoff or not..The point is that this is one of the important reasons for the invasion and it means that Japan will tend to co-operate with the US because it wants it share in the spoils. Your response shows nothing to disrpove this. I did not mean to suggest the the US wants to cut off Japan from sources of oil supplies. Japan simply wants to make sure they get oil on reasonable terms.. The only reason that the imperial dreamers might turn out to be false in their dreams is that the Iraqi people through their resistance turn it into a nightmare... Of course to secure energy supplies was not the sole reason for the Iraq invasion but those who deny it was significant seem to be the dreamers. The protection of Israel was also a factor and the projection of US power through the region. CHeers, Ken Hanly
Re: Mark Jones Was Right
Of course a certain fraction of US capital would benefit most from control of Iraqi oil. But as the PNA and other neo-con sites make clear control of energy resources is crucial to the continued hegemony of the US. Why do you think that countries such as Japan are kissing US ass in Iraq in spite of the fact that most Japanese are opposed to Japanese involvement. The Japanese know that access to energy resources is essential for their capitalists and the US knows the same. Surely it should be evident to a left business observer and this aim is documented in lots of places.. Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: "Doug Henwood" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, April 11, 2004 10:59 AM Subject: Re: Mark Jones Was Right > Julio Huato wrote: > > >If the Arabs control the oil in their soil, they still need to sell it at a > >price the buyers can accept. > > I don't really get the argument that the U.S. would enjoy a great > windfall from the "control" of Iraqi oil. Say the occupation manages > to pacify the country and U.S.-based (and only U.S. - what about > non-U.S. firms?) oil companies end up owning Iraq's oil, like in the > old days. So they capture some rents that would otherwise go to the > Iraqi national oil company. Good for the oil companies involved, but > how much would that help other sectors of U.S. capital? Oil companies > have an interest in high oil prices, but that harms autos, airlines, > chemicals, and finance. If you want to say that the Bush admin > narrowly represents oil interests in the U.S., ok (but there's no > evidence that big oil actively encouraged the invasion of Iraq). But > the broader arguments about some great material interests behind the > war - I just don't get them. This isn't the 19th century anymore. > > Doug
The resolute criticism of IFTU of the occupation
The IFTU streed(sic) that the ILO should be fully involved in writing a new labour law in Iraq, in consultation with the IFTU. The delegation also visited the IFTU headquarters, which was raided by the US military in December 2003 and which is still closed. The delegation concluded: " The international trade union movement will continue to work to assist Iraqi workers and their unions at the sectoral, regional and national levels. A strong a viobrant trade union movement will be a key foundation for the development of democracy in the country, and in ensuring social justice and equitable and sustainable economic development." posted by Abdullah 5 March at 15:30PM http://www.iraqitradeunions.org/archives/21.html Not a word of criticism. I guess the IFTU thinks that it is taking a great leap forward just by presenting the fact that the US raided the headquarters. The sense of righteous indignation seems to be lacking! Cheers, Ken Hanly
The IFTU on the interim constittuion etc.
The meeting was chaired by Harry Barnes MP and attended by Rob Marris MP and Kelvin Hopkins MP as well as Robert G. Smith for Ann Clwyd, the Prime Minister's human rights envoy to Iraq and Alan Lloyd, for Liberal Democrat MP Mike Hancock, John Crowley of the Daily Telegraph, Eric Lee of LabourStart, and Gary Kent. Apologies and support were received from several Labour and Conservative MPs, who were away on parliamentary business. Contact was later made with the BBC. The meeting heard about the positive position of the IFTU with regard to the Iraqi Transitional Administrative Law. "This document, despite its drawbacks, offers a balanced system of governance, giving clear separation between the three state institutions, and it guarantees (in Article 13) the right to form and join a union and the right to strike. It also guarantees the role of women with the leadership of the state and its institutions." And it also recognized Iraq as a federal state. The drawbacks include no mention of social welfare provision, nor the role of the U.N., nor the role of the occupation forces during the two-year transition. Nevertheless, it is a truly radical document, Muhsin concluded http://www.iraqitradeunions.org/archives/26.html Comment: Surely the IFTU must know that the US is to retain command of the Iraqi forces during the interim as well as of general security etc. Isnt there also a clause about the laws passed by IGC and Bremer before transition are to remain during the period? This would include reactionay laws banning strikes etc. How does this fit in with transition law? Here is quote another quote from the site: The labour laws inherited from the previous regime, which among other things banned trade unionism in the public sector (most of Iraq's economy at the time), present many obstacles for trade unions. The mission stressed the need for the administration to involve workers through their trade unions, in the development of new labour laws. Tripartite involvement in drafting these laws should help lay strong foundations for social dialogue in the future. A primary role for the UN?s International Labour Organisation in drafting the legislation, and in other relevant aspects of reconstruction, is particularly important. This will help ensure that the legal framework, and the application of these laws, conforms to international standards, and in particular the core Conventions of the ILO. Comment. They provide obstacles for the trade unions because the occupation authorities have retained the ban against public sector unions! However, they have not kept the laws against selling public assets to foreigners! Cheers, Ken Hanly
The Iraq Communist Party and Worker Communist Party of Iraq
This is long...cheers , Ken Hanly Here is an article spelling out the differences between the Iraqi Communist Party, which is part of the recently established governing council, and the Worker-Communist party of Iraq. I hope that you find it of interest. OUR DIFFERENCES * Which are the differences between the Working Communist Party of Iraq and the Communist Party Iraki '? By Ahmad Rebwar, leader of the Working Communist Party of Iraq. With the expansion of the activity of the Working Communist Party of Iraq in the center and the south of Iraq, the emergency of the party as an influential and radical Marxist force in the Iraqian political life, and our capacity to attract the Arab attention of ample sectors of the iraqi masses and other countries and Arab mass media towards our policies and points of view, a question arises: Which are the differences between the Working Communist Party of Iraq and the Communist Party Iraqi '? Here, I will be centered in the central differences. In order to respond this question, I must say in advance that these two parties are different in everything. Nevertheless, in this article, I will only mention the main aspects of the differences, some political, historical and practical examples of the roll and the activity of both. In spite of everything, the differences are much more extensive and all in this article cannot be mentioned. Two different movements the most substantial difference between these two parties is that they belong to two different movements. The Iraqian Communist Party (PCI) is the party of the movement reformist-nationalist (here, nationalism is used like an ample term or in the way in which nationalism is used in English and not in the way in which it is used in Arab political Literature). The PCI, like any other nationalistic party, as its main motto (Free Nation and Happy Town) is centered in releasing to the nation. The Iraqian Communist Party in its program and Literature clarify that by?felicidad of the town? they mean to develop to the industry and national economy and to prescribe the Capitalism of state like economic alternative. In agreement with the point of view of the PCI, the town, constituted by pressed the opresora capitalist class and the working class and town deprived of everything, will live happily in a nation released with a developed capitalist economy. The PCI was founded at the beginning of years 30 of the last century to reach this objective following the bourgeois model, that prevailed in the Soviet Union after the failure of the Revolution of October at the end of years 20 of the last century. In other words, the Iraqian Communist Party is one of the parties of the bourgeois communist currents, and was founded to obtain a bourgeois objective in a certain period of time, using the prestige of the marxism. On the other hand, the Working Communist Party of Iraq is part of the socialist movement of the working class against the capitalist system. This movement fights by a free world of oppression, division of classes, deprivations and penalties, that accompany the capitalist system. This objective is one of the principles of the Working Communist Party of Iraq. This party was founded the 21 of 1993 July, based on the lessons of Marx. It is a Marxist current whose theoretical and political principles were outlined by Hekmat Mansur. It is the continuation of the traditions of the Commune of Paris and the Revolution of October. Before the foundation of the PCOI, the Communist Labor movement it appeared for the first time like a movement socially different in the Iraqian Kurdist=B7n in the context from the movement of the advice of March of 1991. Since then until the foundation of the party, the Working Comunism was represented by few organizations and political groups, who directed to the fight of the workers and another people destitute in the society. Hekmat Mansur, the leader of the Working Communist movement, that analyzed the today world from the Marxist point of view and wrote the program it working revolution and to organize the socialist society, emphasized that he used the word working Comunism in the same way that Marx used the word Comunism, to differentiate his movement from the prevalecientes bourgeois Comunisms. The objective by which the PCOI only fights will do reality through a socialist revolution by the working-class, overthrowing to the capitalist system, abolishing the private property and the wage-earning work, and constructing a society based on the base of the common property. Reality through constructing a society will become where there will be no social classes and where people will work does not stop to gain the life but for the prosperity of the society in the measurement that all the necessities of the town will be assured by the society. Two visions different from the freedom and the socialism the Iraqian Communist Party, like any other nationalistic party, thinks that freedom m
US doesnt inform Minister of Information
In an interview on Monday, Iraq=92s Minister of Communication, Haider Al-Abadi blasted the act that started the current wave of violence: the closing of al-Sadr=92s newspaper, Al-Hawzah. =93It was completely wrong,=94 he told me. =93Is this how we are going to run the country in the future sending soldiers to shut down newspapers?=94 Al-Ababi, who is supposedly in charge of media in Iraq, says he was not even informed of the plan to close Al-Hawza until the locks were on the door, adding that Sadr=92s newspaper did nothing more than speculate that the U.S. is behind some of the terrorist attacks here. =93But these are rumours in the whole country, I=92m hearing them everywhere.=94 http://www.nologo.org/
Morning smile
"This is a quote from Dan Senor Sr. Adviser CPA at a press briefing April 7 In the interim, however, it would be irresponsible to thrust upon this country direct elections before the country has the requisite electoral infrastructure in place, because without the requisite electoral infrastructure, you have potential for individuals and groups to manipulate elections, to sort of wreak havoc and create chaos in the election process. And those elections would ultimately result -- would produce illegitimate results, result in a government that may appear or may be perceived in the eyes of the Iraqi people as lacking credibility. And so it would be irresponsible to force direct elections right now. Therefore, in the interim we have to find a way to hand over sovereignty to the Iraqi people, give the Iraqis as much political authority as possible, and do it in a way that is as representative as possible until the country is ready for direct elections. One step in that direction was the formation of the Iraqi Governing Council, which is by far the most representative government in the history of this country. It is arguably the most representative government in this entire region. It is a political body that has been recognized by the U.N. Security Council as the embodiment of Iraqi sovereignty. It is a body that has been recognized by international organizations from the Arab League, to OPEC, to the World Trade Organization, to the United Nations, as I said. And so that's one step in the direction of handing over sovereignty and giving political authority to the Iraqis. http://www.cpa-iraq.org/transcripts/20040407_Apr7_KimmittSenor.html
Bremer the Comedian
Bremer described al-Sadr on Tuesday as "a guy who has a fundamentally inappropriate view of the new Iraq." "He believes that in the new Iraq, like in the old Iraq, power should be to the guy with guns," Bremer said. "That is an unacceptable vision for Iraq." Cheers, Ken Hanly
Re: Decisive showdown
Kerry opposes the NMD system and that at least is a big plus compared to Bush. Of course he might change his view on this were he elected. Is there much debate on NMD in the US. In Canada Martin has sanctioned talks with the US and it seems very much as if he will support Canada joining in the system. Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: "Carrol Cox" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, April 05, 2004 5:41 PM Subject: Re: Decisive showdown > Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: > > > > >Currently, the best analogy perhaps to the U.S. occupation is the > > >Japanese invasion of China. > > > > > >Carrol > > > > What's missing, alas, is a strong force of secular leftists against the Empire: > > > > Indeed. > > In any case, all friends of the Iraqi people elsewhere can do is exert > as much pressure as possible for the unconditional withdrawal of u.s. > forces, since the longer the forces are there, the greater will be the > chaos and bloodshed after their withdrawal. > > And incidentally, I still think that it is really not possible to _both_ > support Kerry _and_ continue to build the anti-war movement. It is > essential that we keep front and center that Kerry will be a more > dangerous imperial warrior than Bush. We will have our work cut out for > us next January regardless of who wins in the election, and I think that > work should absorb _all_ of our energy, none left over for 'supporting' > (however critically) the likes of Kerry. > > Carrol