Hi. I no longer know how to describe the proud, deliberate ignorance of the the world's newest bully and predator. Let's just work to survive it, him and them, hoping that overreaching and a unifying humankind bring them down. The beginnings are present in these written reports on Iraq, and the audio is up to Pacifica. It is ours and yours, if you engage, and the beginnings of that are available in LA this weekend, starting tonight. I'm happy to say we'll have a great leaflet to pass out at Monday's MLK, Jr. March, and I'll welcome those who will help us pass them out as our local and national boards march. We'll all meet by 11am near the West end of the parade - W. of Crenshaw, on MLK Blvd. The Pacifica National Board meeting is at the Sportman's Lodge, right on the corner of Coldwater Cnyn. and Ventura, just a few blocks from the 101. Everybody's welcome and there are several public speaking slots. the full schedule follows Fisk and Newsday. Ed
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit sent by Steven Robinson (activ-l) (Note that suicide bomber was driving a police car) The Independent via Information Clearing House - Jan 11, 2005 http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7654.htm Iraqi insurgents ahead in war of intelligence By Robert Fisk Baghdad--As usual, it was an inside job. Brig Amer Ali Nayef, deputy head of the Baghdad police, and his policeman son, Lt Khaled Amer, were driving to work in an unmarked civilian car, hoping to move through the streets of Dora without being noticed. But the two carloads of gunmen who approached from behind knew the car, its registration number and its occupants. They blazed away with Kalashnikovs until Nayef, dead at the wheel, drove into a house. Every day now brings its sinister evidence that the Iraqi security forces - supposedly screened by American military officers - have been infiltrated by the insurgents. As Nayef and his son were shot dead, a suicide bomber - and there are perhaps 10 suicide bombers immolating themselves every week now in Iraq - blew himself up several miles away outside the Zafarniyah police station in Baghdad, killing four policemen and wounding 10 others. The police were changing shifts at the time - as the bomber must have known, thereby increasing the casualties - and the killer was driving a real police car. Last week, gunmen assassinated the governor of Baghdad, Ali al-Haidari, who was taking a pre-arranged security route to his office. Six of his bodyguards were also shot dead. The roads on which his convoy was driving were supposedly known only to the police. Al-Haidari - who once famously announced that he planned to pull down many of the security walls in Baghdad because the city was becoming safer - even had a second route ready in case his bodyguards chose to change his journey at the last moment. And all this is because the growing army of insurgents across Iraq intends to prevent the holding of the January 30 elections. In the West, it probably makes sense: men dedicated to the overthrow of any possible democracy in Iraq want to destroy the country's first free election. To the citizens of Baghdad it can seem as if the poll is being held more for the benefit of foreign political agendas - not least those of Tony Blair and George Bush - than for the well-being of innocent Iraqis. To subscribe: http://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr *** Newsday January 12, 2005 The projected winner in Iraq: failure As violence rages and Sunnis and Kurds prepare to boycott the elections, no good outcome is in sight By Edwin Black Iraq's proposed elections later this month are a lose-lose proposition. Most Sunni and Kurdish political parties have either formally withdrawn or are threatening to because the insurgency has now targeted the entire electoral process. That reality has been driven home daily. Last month, a grenade was tossed into a school with a note warning the building to not become a polling place. Weeks ago, an election commissioner on Baghdad's main street was dragged from his car in broad daylight and shot in the head by men who didn't even mask their faces. Osama bin Laden has declared in an audiotape that those who participate in the election - even by voting - will be deemed infidels and targeted. Electoral commissioners have resigned en masse. The Association of Muslim Scholars, Iraq's highest Sunni religious authority, has demanded all Sunnis boycott the election. But the Shias are adamant that elections proceed. Their supreme religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Sistani, has decreed that voting is the highest religious obligation. Sistani rebuffed recent Sunni-Kurd election delay requests, saying the question was "not even up for discussion." Indeed, a delay makes no sense, as the insurgency becomes only more lethal with each day. Hence, Arab Sunnis and Kurds - together some 40 percent of the population - are now on an electoral collision course with the majority Shias, who compose approximately 60 percent. The dynamics of this looming showdown embody the very ethnic torrents that have plagued Iraq for centuries. Since the 1920s, Sunni Ba'athist strongmen have ruled, Saddam Hussein being the latest. The concept of one-man one-vote, in which the results will parallel the religious groups, automatically guarantees that the Shia majority will finally seize control of the nation, settling old scores and disenfranchising everyone else. This only sets the stage for another civil war. Historically, the assumption or seizure of authority in Iraq has never constituted a true representative government accepted by the warring tribal factions, but rather an expression of ethnic supremacy. More and more, the Jan. 30 vote seems not a national election, but a mainly Shia election. So even if the election takes place, even if the Shias deliver a statistical majority for the turnout, the forces of Sunni and insurgent rejection will demonize the results and elected officials, thus further plunging the populace into violence. Adding a volatile dimension is the distinct possibility that majority Shia rule will not propel the nation toward Western-style democracy, but speed it toward an Iranian-style theocracy. Shia Iran and the dominant Shia holy cities such as Najaf have been joined at the hip and the heart for centuries. Citizens on both sides of the border freely pass and function jointly in matters religious, spiritual and social. Should a Shia-controlled Iraq legislate itself into an Iranian-style theocracy, and even consider a pan-Islamic confederacy, the ramifications are towering. Such bi-national unions in the Islamic Middle East have been common since World War II. In 1920, the nations of the Middle East were created where no nations had previously existed by Western oil imperialism and the League of Nations - this to validate under international law the post-World War I oil monopolies France and England had created. Pro-western monarchs and other rulers were installed to sign on the dotted line, legitimizing the oil monopolies. Since then, the Western capitals spurned the Arab national movement When the Arabs hear the term "democracy," they hear a code word for "stable environment for oil." A post-election Iraq will resemble pre-election Iraq, with a savage insurgency determined to sabotage the government. America will then have to decide if it is still willing to hold the invented nation together with political thumbtacks and military muscle, or support the forces of ethnic partition. That will require alternative energy resources to detach us from this place where we are not wanted, where we should not be, and upon which our industrialized world is now dependent. Iraq, the so-called Cradle of Civilization, has a 7,000-year head start on the United States and Britain. If its people wanted a pluralistic democracy, they could have created one without a permission slip from Washington or London. Elections do not make democracies; democracies make elections. Edwin Black is the author of "Banking on Baghdad, Inside Iraq's 7,000-Year History of War, Profit, and Conflict," from which this is adapted. http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-refs54112183jan12,0,7427303.story?col l=ny-viewpoints-headlines *** Pacifica National Board Meeting January 13 - 17, 2005 Sportsman's Lodge 12825 Ventura Boulevard, Studio City, CA 91604 800.821.8511 Studio City (Los Angeles), California FRIDAY, JANUARY 14 6 pm - PNB Convenes, Welcome by Chair (15 minutes) 6:35 pm - Introductions by PNB Members (3 min each) 7:40 pm - PUBLIC PARTICIPATION (60 minutes) 8:40 pm - Adjourn for the evening Evening Activities: Option 1: Salsa Dancing at the Sportsman's Lodge Option 2: Hollywood Sidewalk Walking Tour SATURDAY, JANUARY 15 9 am - PNB Reconvenes, Committee reports (15 minutes each): - Finance, Archives, Governance, Programming, Audit 10:15 am - Election of Officers (chair, vice chair, secretary) (30 minutes) 10:45 - Break (15 minutes) 11 am - Elections of committee members (12 minutes each) - Finance, Archives, Governance, Programming, Audit Noon - PUBLIC PARTICIPATION (60 minutes) 1-2 (LUNCH) 2 pm - ED Report, Dan Coughlin (35 minutes) CFO Report, Lonnie Hicks (35 minutes) Audit Report, Ross Wisdom via speaker phone (20 minutes) 3:30 - Break (15 minutes) 3:45 - Reports (10 minute presentation each, followed by 10 minute questions by PNB) - WBAI GM, Don Rojas - WPFW GM, Ron Pinchback - KPFT GM, Duane Bradley - KPFA GM, Roy Campanella II - KPFK GM, Eva Georgia - Archives Director, Brian DeShazor - Affiliates Director, Ursula Reudenberg 6 pm - Adjourn for the evening SUNDAY, JANUARY 16 9 AM - Executive Session to discuss legal and personnel matters Noon - PUBLIC PARTICIPATION (60 minutes) 1-2 pm - LUNCH 2 pm - Committees of Inclusion, Race & Nationality Presentation (Ambrose Lane, 4 hours) 6 pm - Adjourn Afternoon Activity: Jazz in Leimert Park Hosted by Donna Warren MONDAY, JANUARY 17 Martin Luther King, Jr. Parade Check-in at 10:45am ------------------------ Yahoo! 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