One Iraq veteran
A young friend, about 20 or so, spent time in Iraq during his on-going 4 year enlistment in the Air Force. He's now stationed in the states but will go back to Iraq in February. The conversation with him was depressing. He denounced Kerry because of his association with Jane Fonda -- and repeated the stories of Fonda -- totally bogus as I understand them -- of betraying prisoners in Hanoi. He'd never heard that Bush was AWOL. On another note, listening to the car radio up through the Chico area and into Oregon, I heard Vietnam vets calling in to radio shows, relaying the information that the post-war depression of many was because they had been spit on when they came back. No doubt they believed what they were saying. And of course they denounced Kerry because of his post-Vietnam posture which several interpreted as an attack on all who served in Vietnam. The spin is frightening. Gene Coyle
Re: One Iraq veteran
Title: Re: One Iraq veteran A young friend, about 20 or so, spent time in Iraq during his on-going 4 year enlistment in the Air Force. He's now stationed in the states but will go back to Iraq in February. The conversation with him was depressing. . The spin is frightening. Gene Coyle The following Other Voices column appeared in this morning's Grass Valley CA The Union... The Union, Grass Valley CA http://www.theunion.com Mother sees tough side of Iraq war Susan and William Porter August 12, 2004 Last year I sent my son to war. During the seven months he was in Iraq, he experienced fierce combat, lost friends to death and injury, saw and did things that no human being should ever have to see or do - things he'll have to live with for the rest of his life. He was barely 18 years old. It was the worst seven months of my life. Every morning I woke up grateful that no one had come knocking on my door during the night. The crunch of tires on gravel or headlights shining through the window caused the entire family to hold its breath until the unknown vehicle passed by our drive. Each and every day was a struggle to maintain some sense of order and sanity while knowing my child was in harm's way. Sleep was something to do only when the body gave out and couldn't stay awake any longer. It wasn't until he was back on U.S. soil last September that I was able to get a full night's sleep and not flinch every time I heard a car drive down the lane. My peace was short-lived. He was home less than a month before the battalion was told they'd be going back. For the better part of a year, I've been living with the dread of going through this nightmare again. His deployment draws near. Sometime in the next month or so, I'll be sending my son to war for the second time. Recently I nailed a John Kerry poster and a yellow ribbon to a tree on my property. Nailed it securely. As an American, I have the right of free speech, and as the mother of a Marine, I've more than earned the right to my opinion that the current leadership of this country has got to change. Within a matter of days, the sign was missing, stolen by someone who has no respect for the rights and freedoms my son has sworn to protect. I have a few questions for this person, so quick to show his support of Mr. Bush. How many letters and care packages have you sent to Iraq to show your support for the troops? How many letters of condolence have you written to the over 900 families who've lost a son or daughter, father, brother, mother, sister in this idiotic war? How many mothers have you comforted with your words and actions of support? Your behavior leaves little doubt as to your character. Do you really think violating my rights, trespassing on my property and stealing from me exemplifies the values and moral clarity your party is so quick to claim?
John Forbes Kerry and the war on Iraq
(This is such a great column that I am posting it unclipped.) NY Observer, August 11, 2004|9:42 AM On Trumans Train, Kerry Comes Down On WarHes For It by Robert Sam Anson Its the war, stupid. Pretty much everybody seems to get that. Delegates to the Democratic National Convention sure did: They thought Iraq was the issue. Not the economy. Not health care. Not the environment, civil rights, freedom of choice, separation of church and state, or anything else the Bush administration has turned into pretzelsIraq. Out there in the great red state/blue state beyond, its basically the same story. When pollsters call, Iraqs the word they hear more than any otherthe first time a war has dominated a Presidential election since 1972. Hard to blame folks, really. Something that kills nearly a thousand Americans; wounds, maims and cripples more than five times that many; costs $127 billion, to date; and has no end in sightit does get your attention. Most peoples, anyway. But if some didnt have a different opinion, then this great, big, wonderful country of ours wouldnt be a democracy, would it? And if we werent a democracy, then not only would there be no need for elections, there wouldnt be any terrorists, either, because our being a democracy is why they hate us (at least, thats what George Bush says). And that goes for Saddam Hussein, too. So if youve been wondering why we really and truly had to go to war with Iraq, now you know: Were a democracy. Which brings us, at long last, to John Forbes Kerry, one of those people with a differing opinion on the importance of Iraq. He puts it at No. 7 on the list of reasons why hed be a better President than Dubya. Truth is, Mr. Kerry doesnt like to talk about it much, particularly whether he thought it was such a hot idea in the first place, now that it turns out that Saddam didnt have the W.M.D.s Mr. Kerry thought he did, when he was handing Mr. Bush a blank check to wage war whenever and however he wanted. That, Mr. Kerry wouldnt talk about at all. Until this week. Inspired perhaps by the scenic wonders glimpsed from his campaign train as it chugged its way through the Southwest (or maybe fed up with the nagging of The New York Times editorial board), Mr. Kerry finally fessed up on Monday that he would, indeed, have supported Mr. Bushs war, even if hed known that W.M.D.s were a George Tenet air-ball. Yes, he said, I would have voted for the authority. I believe it was the right authority for a President to have. In coming to his position, Mr. Kerry is following the lead of Hillary Clinton, who two weeks ago told Nightline she was all for the war (a continuation of her husbands policies, shes called it), W.M.D.s or no W.M.Ds. So did 29 other Democratic Senators, including Chuck Schumer, who demanded that Vice President Cheney apologize for continuing to insist that Saddam was the glove to Osamas hand, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Fabled for his love of TV cameras, Mr. Schumer would have gotten more face time had he lumped Hillary with Dick. But apparently Mr. Schumer was tied up with Gabe Pressman on that October day in 2002 when his junior colleague took to the Senate floor to denounce Saddam for providing aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members. In any event, now that Mr. Kerry has gotten the would-he-or-wouldnt-he-have question behind him, he can go back to speechifying about topics he does like. Such as how it would be nice for everyone to have a job, affordable health care, a good education, and kids who dont mainline or stick up bodegas. Sentiments, in short, even Dick Cheney could share. This week in New Mexico, for instance, Mr. Kerry was saying we ought to treat Indians better. Who but descendants of George Armstrong Custer can quarrel with that? Our forefathers and -mothers did, after all, steal the country from them (a fact not mentioned by Mr. Kerry, concerned perhaps that Custer kin might be in the audience), and in the swing-state Land of Enchantment, Native Americans account for 10 percent of the vote. Which is not to say Mr. Kerry never declaims about Iraq. He does frequentlythough only about the mess Dubyas made of it. Evidence was piling up yet again this week: bloody, bitter, hand-to-hand fighting in supposedly secure Najaf; the shooting down of another U.S. helicopter (over Baghdad, yet); more kidnappings and bombings; the announcement of 27 criminal investigations into where the reconstruction money went (since it wasnt to reconstructing); and the issuing of a warrant on charges of counterfeiting for Ahmad Chalabi, the convicted bank-looter and accused Iranian spy Wolfowitz Co. thought would make a swell replacement for Saddam. But that things are untidy in Iraq, as Don Rumsfeld likes to put it, aint a news flash. Nor is Mr. Kerrys oft-recommended fix: having the U.N., NATO, defanged Muslim nations and presumably whoever else wishes
Iraq Veterans Against the War
(A new group of veterans just got organized: Iraq Veterans Against the War. Great! On the other hand, Marine Lance Cpl. Abdul Henderson is in trouble because of his appearance in his service dress Alpha uniform in Fahrenheit 9/11. Let's support him.): http://montages.blogspot.com/2004/08/iraq-veterans-against-war.html Yoshie Furuhashi
Iraq trade union on war
Iraqi trade union on war: http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/222/1/32/ _ FREE pop-up blocking with the new MSN Toolbar get it now! http://toolbar.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200415ave/direct/01/
Fiske on Iraq
August 01, 2004 The War Is a Fraud Robert Fisk, The Independent, August 1, 2004: The war is a fraud. I'm not talking about the weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist. Nor the links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qa'ida which didn't exist. Nor all the other lies upon which we went to war. I'm talking about the new lies. For just as, before the war, our governments warned us of threats that did not exist, now they hide from us the threats that do exist. Much of Iraq has fallen outside the control of America's puppet government in Baghdad but we are not told. Hundreds of attacks are made against US troops every month. But unless an American dies, we are not told. This month's death toll of Iraqis in Baghdad alone has now reached 700 - the worst month since the invasion ended. But we are not told. The stage management of this catastrophe in Iraq was all too evident at Saddam Hussein's trial. Not only did the US military censor the tapes of the event. Not only did they effectively delete all sound of the 11 other defendants. But the Americans led Saddam Hussein to believe - until he reached the courtroom - that he was on his way to his execution. Indeed, when he entered the room he believed that the judge was there to condemn him to death. This, after all, was the way Saddam ran his own state security courts. No wonder he initially looked disorientated - CNN's helpful description - because, of course, he was meant to look that way. We had made sure of that. Which is why Saddam asked Judge Juhi: Are you a lawyer? ... Is this a trial? And swiftly, as he realised that this really was an initial court hearing - not a preliminary to his own hanging - he quickly adopted an attitude of belligerence. But don't think we're going to learn much more about Saddam's future court appearances. Salem Chalabi, the brother of convicted fraudster Ahmad and the man entrusted by the Americans with the tribunal, told the Iraqi press two weeks ago that all media would be excluded from future court hearings. And I can see why. Because if Saddam does a Milosevic, he'll want to talk about the real intelligence and military connections of his regime - which were primarily with the United States. Living in Iraq these past few weeks is a weird as well as dangerous experience. I drive down to Najaf. Highway 8 is one of the worst in Iraq. Westerners are murdered there. It is littered with burnt-out police vehicles and American trucks. Every police post for 70 miles has been abandoned. Yet a few hours later, I am sitting in my room in Baghdad watching Tony Blair, grinning in the House of Commons as if he is the hero of a school debating competition; so much for the Butler report. Indeed, watching any Western television station in Baghdad these days is like tuning in to Planet Mars. Doesn't Blair realise that Iraq is about to implode? Doesn't Bush realise this? The American-appointed government controls only parts of Baghdad - and even there its ministers and civil servants are car-bombed and assassinated. Baquba, Samara, Kut, Mahmoudiya, Hilla, Fallujah, Ramadi, all are outside government authority. Iyad Allawi, the Prime Minister, is little more than mayor of Baghdad. Some journalists, Blair announces, almost want there to be a disaster in Iraq. He doesn't get it. The disaster exists now. When suicide bombers ram their cars into hundreds of recruits outside police stations, how on earth can anyone hold an election next January? Even the National Conference to appoint those who will arrange elections has been twice postponed. And looking back through my notebooks over the past five weeks, I find that not a single Iraqi, not a single American soldier I have spoken to, not a single mercenary - be he American, British or South African - believes that there will be elections in January. All said that Iraq is deteriorating by the day. And most asked why we journalists weren't saying so. But in Baghdad, I turn on my television and watch Bush telling his Republican supporters that Iraq is improving, that Iraqis support the coalition, that they support their new US-manufactured government, that the war on terror is being won, that Americans are safer. Then I go to an internet site and watch two hooded men hacking off the head of an American in Riyadh, tearing at the vertebrae of an American in Iraq with a knife. Each day, the papers here list another construction company pulling out of the country. And I go down to visit the friendly, tragically sad staff of the Baghdad mortuary and there, each day, are dozens of those Iraqis we supposedly came to liberate, screaming and weeping and cursing as they carry their loved ones on their shoulders in cheap coffins. I keep re-reading Tony Blair's statement. I remain convinced it was right to go to war. It was the most difficult decision of my life. And I cannot understand it. It may be a terrible decision to go to war. Even Chamberlain thought that; but he didn't find it a difficult decision - because
Insurgent attacks in Iraq
Here is an article by Fisk that shows the degree to which many attacks go unreported. It also shows the typical targets... http://www.counterpunch.org/fisk07292004.html
The Sarajevo Of Iraq
OutlookIndia.com Web | Jul 23, 2004 OPINION The Sarajevo Of Iraq In the ongoing crisis in Iraq, one factor has remained unchanged: the loyalty of the Kurds to Washington. And the worsening Kurdish-Arab friction. DILIP HIRO http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20040723fname=hirosid=1 Yahoo! India Matrimony: Find your life partner online Go to: http://yahoo.shaadi.com/india-matrimony
Silence shrouds the moral abyss spawned by the war against Iraq
Vancouver Sun July 22, 2004 Silence shrouds the moral abyss spawned by the war against Iraq By Stephen Hume On what appeared to be its website last week, the British newspaper The Independent carried a four-paragraph item dated July 16. I say appeared, because who knows anymore what's real and what's not? How do I know the website wasn't a fake lofted by some dirty trickster in the political spin wars? In our brave new media world, weapons of mass destruction turn out to be, in the words of a new documentary currently doing the indy film festival circuit, Weapons of Mass Deception. Photos of British soldiers abusing prisoners in Iraq turn out to be false -- although I note that an official investigation into the alleged abuses quietly continues. Ditto for explicit digital images that purported to show coalition soldiers serially raping Iraqi women. They were lifted from a pornographic film. However, pictures of U.S. soldiers sexually humiliating prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison proved legit after first being denounced as fakes. Alternately, the story of plucky heroine Jessica Lynch and her rescue by brave fellow soldiers turns out to have been hugely embroidered for a gullible media by the military spin machine. Welcome to the world of Wag the Dog, the movie in which a bogus war is sold on television to the American public to shore up a U.S. president's sagging ratings. Which brings me back to that item that appeared to have appeared in The Independent. It was forwarded to me by a reader, but I learned long ago to go to original sources whenever possible. Checking took me to what I think was The Independent's website. The story cited investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, who chronicled for the New Yorker Magazine the appalling abuse of prisoners under the control of U.S. military authorities at Abu Ghraib. It's worse, Hersh apparently told a meeting of the American Civil Liberties Union in San Francisco, although he didn't go into details, presumably because he hasn't finished reporting on the subject. Hersh said a film depicts young Iraqi boys being sexually assaulted. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling, and the worst part is the soundtrack, of the boys shrieking, Hersh told the silent audience. That your government has. Now here's the interesting thing. When I searched the database of American periodicals that's part of the Canwest electronic library, I didn't find a single hit on this particular story. On the web I did find a reference to a United Press International item, probably based on The Independent. When I Googled it, I found Hersh's speech was a subject of wide discussion on independent media sites, blogs, forums and web-based list servers. But none of the hits led to a report in the mainstream media. Did he say it? I drilled a little deeper. At the ACLU site, I found a streaming video of the Hersh speech. (You can watch it yourself at http://www.aclu.org/2004memberconf/Program/program.htm; starting at 1:07:50 with the relevant comments coming at 1:30:28). Apparently he did say it -- that caveat again. He said more. He said women had sent notes from the prison asking their husbands to kill them because of what they'd experienced. So here we have an issue which seems of crucial importance -- allegations of monstrous treatment of mothers and children in the custody of U.S. occupation forces. It's widely discussed by techno-savvy young people around the world, but goes largely unremarked by the U.S. media. For me, it was a telling moment. It suggests that not only is the moral authority of the U.S. in tatters, so, increasingly, is the credibility of a media that likes to present itself as a model for free expression. Frankly, President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair can twist, weasel, equivocate, obfuscate, deny, dissimulate and strew the political landscape with as many red herrings as they like. It won't change the fact that they beat the drums for a war that has caused the deaths of thousands of soldiers and tens of thousands of innocent civilians based upon information that even a smidgin of prudence would have warned them was unreliable. So where were the vaunted U.S. media when the governments they claim to hold accountable began marching toward the moral abyss? The so-called liberation of Iraq is now a nightmare of civil violence in which senior officials of the new regime are routinely assassinated, a clandestine resistance seems to be growing rather than shrinking and the moral capital accumulated by Britain and the U.S. over many decades has been squandered in a matter of months. Yet few media moguls seem to be asking about the global consequences of the foreign affairs catastrophe visited upon us all by the hubris of these two governments. What Hersh was really pointing to at the ACLU conference was that dreadful, disheartening moment at which citizens discover that the only cop in town has gone bad. Much is now being made by politicians
Iraq: Kurdish Leader Warns Karkuk's Attacks Might Get Situation Out of Control
Iraq: Kurdish Leader Warns Karkuk's Attacks Might Get Situation Out of Control London Al-Sharq al-Awsat in Arabic 10 Jul 04 p2 [Report by Shirzad Shaykhani in Al-Sulaymaniyah: Prominent Kurdish Leader: We Do Not Have a Plan To Fight a Civil War in Karkuk, But What Is Happening Might Get Out of Our Control] A prominent Kurdish leader has expressed his fears that the recent security incidents in Karkuk, which saw the increased assassination of Kurdish officials and the targeting of their motorcades by unidentified elements, could lead to a wave of violence and counter violence that Kurdish leaders do not wish to happen and drag the city's population into bloody confrontations with dire consequences. The Kurdish official, who asked to remain unidentified, made the statement in response to an Al-Sharq al-Awsat question about the series of assassinations targeting the Kurdish officials in the city's governmental departments. He stressed that the Kurdish leaders have no plans to fight a civil war with the other nationalities living in Karkuk but cited the statement of UN Envoy to Iraq Lakhdar Brahimi when he said: The civil war will not be declared from above but might be caused by the lower bases. The Kurdish official added: We do not wish to destroy the country that we had in the past worked to restore its cohesion and strengthen the ties of its unity by conceding many of our rights. But there are actions and moves by elements in the other parties' bases that could drag our bases into retaliating. We are afraid that things might get out of our control as Kurdish leaders and dire consequences to ensue. He went on to say: We sacrificed hundreds of thousands when we confronted the ruling dictatorship as a result of the genocide operations, mass displacement, and chemical bombardment. We have no specific plans to react to these provocations. But think what will happen if the Kurds in the city reacted to these reckless actions and the violent reactions get out of our control? We cannot guarantee that we will be able to control the Kurds in such a case. Another official accused regional parties of encouraging the terrorist operations targeting the Kurds in Karkuk in an attempt to disrupt the situation and create chaos in the city whose sons want to live in peace with each other. He added that some Turkish leaders' statements -- which are seen as a blatant interference in Iraq's national affairs --- are encouraging some people to incite racial sectarianism in the city. He then stressed that the Iraqis in general and the sons of Karkuk in particular are capable of coexisting fraternally and rebuilding their country on the basis of accord and mutual understanding if some foreign parties stop their interference and support for the anarchist elements. He added: There is no difference between this and that person whatever his ethnic or doctrinal affiliation is, especially as we are about to build a new Iraq on the ruins of the obnoxious dictatorship. __ Do you Yahoo!? Vote for the stars of Yahoo!'s next ad campaign! http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/yahoo/votelifeengine/
Iran/Iraq
from MS SLATE: President Bush used a quick Oval Office QA to say that the government was looking into connections between Iran and al-Qaida--connections which the final report of the 9/11 commission is expected to detail when it's released Thursday. The NY [TIMES]'s off-lead cites government officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, who said the report would offer new evidence that Iran has lent al-Qaida logistical support over the years, a stark contrast with Iraq, which the commission has repeatedly said had no collaborative relationship with the group. We will continue to look and see if the Iranians were involved, Bush said. So the war against Iraq was due to a spelling error? jd
Killing the Future of Iraq
Killing the Future of Iraq: http://montages.blogspot.com/2004/07/killing-future-of-iraq.html
Iraq
I also think Michael meant what he wasn't aware he wrote, and I endorse his unconscious wholeheartedly. I believe that the first step in the liberation of Iraq must be our opposition to the deployment of US military forces anywhere in the world, including upon the soil of the United States.
a third force in Iraq?
The Iraqi leader seeking a peaceful path to liberation A new party unites Shias, Sunnis, Kurds and Christians Jonathan Steele in Baghdad Friday July 16, 2004/The Guardian [U.K.] While the latest damning reports on intelligence provoke new argument in Britain and the US on whether the war made their countries and the world safer, here the debate is different. Iraqis are not focused on whether things would be better had the invasion not happened. What they want to know is how and when the manifestly unsafe world they face every day - from kidnappings to assassinations and car bombs - is going to change. They also constantly argue whether the presence of foreign forces makes it better or worse. To seek an answer from a rarely reported Baghdad source, I went this week to the northern suburb of Kadhimiya. Off a lane where market traders push rickety handcarts towards the bazaar, steps lead into the courtyard of a Shia religious school. Remove your shoes, and you are ushered into a mercifully cool room with deep carpets and even deeper armchairs. Sheikh Jawad al-Khalisi and four guests rise in friendly greeting. While many Iraqi clerics exude a sanctimonious, mildly impatient air with foreigners despite their elaborate expressions of welcome, Sheikh Khalisi has a look of genuine attentiveness. He listens and discusses, rather than just declaims. His grandfather was a distinguished ayatollah who led the Shia opposition to Britain's occupation 80 years ago. His father was a learned imam. He himself spent 23 years in exile in Iran and Syria, returning when Saddam was gone. Now he is general secretary of a new movement that calls for an end to the occupation by peaceful means. The media focus on violence, and the generally positive foreign coverage of the efforts of Ayad Allawi's new government to defeat the insurgency, has created a false impression - that the government's opponents use only force, and those who support peace support the government, and so the occupation. Sheikh Khalisi's movement gives the lie to that. Set up a few weeks ago, the National Foundation Congress brought about 450 Iraqis together at a Baghdad hotel. They included Nasserites, leftists and Ba'athists from the era before Saddam turned the party into a personal fiefdom, as well as Kurds, Christians, representatives of the powerful Sunni movement the Islamic Clerics' Association, which has close links with Falluja and other strongly anti-American cities, and Sheikh Khalisi's own Shia friends and colleagues. The movement picked a secretariat of 25, which meets twice a week. It has decided not to take part in the government-supported national conference, which is due to convene this month as part of the US programme to set up a surrogate legislature. We see no benefit in institutions designed to implement American plans, says the sheikh. If the conference were to set a timetable for a US troop pull-out, it would be worth it - but in the context of the occupation, the conference is powerless and we don't want to disappoint our supporters. We will, however, take part in the elections in January. The congress does not reject armed resistance, saying it is any people's national right, but it prefers peaceful politics. It supports the restoration of the Iraqi army, criticises the formation of new militias such as those of the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, and wants the old militias disbanded. It is also worried by Mr Allawi's draconian new powers. Iraqis are looking for security, and can be seduced by hope. Extreme dictatorships are always formed in a context when nations seek stability. It happened when the shah took power in Iran, with Ataturk in Turkey, and Saddam Hussein here, Sheikh Khalisi said. Wamidh Nadhmi, a UK-trained political scientist at Baghdad university and a veteran Arab nationalist, is the congress spokesman. Its importance for him, as a lifelong secularist, is its bridge across Iraq's numerous divides. National unity cannot grow in a country that emphasises sectarian divisions or expects ethnic strife, he told me in the comfortable study of his house across the Tigris from Kadhimiya. There has to be reconciliation between Sunnis and Shias. We're not interested in religion as such, but we feel that by bridging the gaps, the ground will be better prepared for a national struggle. The real division in Iraq, he says, is not between Arab and Kurd, Sunni and Shia, or secular and religious, but between the pro-occupation camp and the anti-occupation camp. In his view, the pro-occupation people are either completely affiliated to the US and Britain, in effect puppets, or they saw no way to overthrow Saddam without occupation. Let's agree not to indulge in slander but discuss the issue openly. Unfortunately, the pro-occupation people tend not to distinguish between resistance and terrorism, or between anti-occupation civil society and those who use violence. They call us all Saddam remnants, reactionaries
Re: a third force in Iraq?
Devine, James wrote: The Iraqi leader seeking a peaceful path to liberation A new party unites Shias, Sunnis, Kurds and Christians Jonathan Steele in Baghdad Friday July 16, 2004/The Guardian [U.K.] Iraqis are looking for security, and can be seduced by hope. Extreme dictatorships are always formed in a context when nations seek stability. It happened when the shah took power in Iran, with Ataturk in Turkey, and Saddam Hussein here, Sheikh Khalisi said. I don't know the the conditions under which Ataturk seized power, but Sheikh Khalisi is clearly fudging here in respect to the shah and Saddam, since the operative factor there was u.s. interference, which in the case of the overthrow of Mossedegh included creating the chaos from which people sought escape. Does anyone know of even _one_ case (WW 2 doesn't count) of u.s. intervention leading to a democratic state? Carrol
Defeat of invasion of Iraq
It is not Stalingrad, in that US troops are not surrounded, and the news is spun heavily to make each retreat sound like a success for the US-UK coalition, but the language of commentary is slipping towards the language of defeat. Yes, the US is mighty enough to use awesome force to destroy any minor regime militarily, as in Afghanistan or Iraq, but it cannot impose a new regime. This week the total of deaths of coalition troops went over 1000. Last night CNN had an item from an Arab or Middle East commentator. I did not catch the name but for the first time I heard the formula: there is no military solution. He was arguing that the insurgency is more than Al-Zarqawi and the remnants of the Baath regime. It is an extensive movement, and it will only be pacified by political negotiations which widen the consensus of forces behing a new regime. Allawi is already talking of amnesties. While the details are open to debate and are subject to misrepresentation and random misreporting that broad picture seems likely. It is confused by smaller groups that may have their own agenda - probably the spate of bombings against alcohol stores are of this nature - jostling for position about how secular and how islamist the balance of forces will be. There are acts of terrorism, and there are well targeted attacks eliminating allied security personal which we may not hear much about. A muslim Pakistani just released claims he was originally detained as being a secret agent, but he was let off. He reports he saw three others beheaded. There are softer targets like Iraqis who help the invaders, perhaps in the role of translators. But broadly this is no longer an insurgency, as the hegemons politely call it: it is a systematic war of resistance that will defeat the invaders. There is no military solution. This defeat of US hegemony could be even more significant than the defeat in Vietnam, because after that the cold war still continued in other forms. This defeat will be a signal that no power can dominate the world without some show of international legitimacy - That is my suggestion, but events are unfolding. Chris Burford Niall Ferguson ended a prophetic article in Newsweek at the turn of the year, based on the Terminator analogy - rather journalistic but basically correct - 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. Such a war might leave South Korea in ruins, but the American Terminator would emerge more or less unscathed. What the Terminator is not programmed to do is to rebuild anyone but himself. If, as seems likely, the United States responds to pressure at home and abroad by withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan before their economic reconstruction has been achieved, the scene will not be wholly unfamiliar. The limits of American power will be laid bare when the global Terminator finally admits: I won't be back.
USAT: Memo on torture of foreign fighters in Iraq
[Interesting memo because it seems to prove more clearly than any other that torture was systematically applied to insurgents in Iraq. Everyone guesses that by now, but this seems like proof.] [It also contains in passing the statistic that acccording to the US military's own figures, less than 2% of all prisoners -- 100 out of 5700 -- are foreigners. But it seems like those are the one we concentrated the torture on. And this is how we produced the evidence that everything was being run by foreign fighters. We seem still to believe.] [As it to make it more absurd, the only examples of the 100 given here are of Syrians, who in many cases aren't foreigners at all to Iraqi clan vendettas -- i.e., the US military kills a guy and his cousins come kill us. Many clans extend across borders.] http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20040706/6342635s.htm July 6, 2004 USA TODAY Page 6A Non-Iraqi captives singled out for harsh treatment, records say Foreign fighters seen as threat By Peter Eisler Late last year, U.S. officers at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison sought approval to use extreme interrogation tactics on a captive said to have information that ''could potentially save countless lives of American soldiers.'' The captive wasn't an Iraqi general or an al-Qaeda leader. He was a Syrian implicated in a bombing attempt against U.S. troops. ''Detainee can provide information related to safe houses, facilitators, financing, recruitment and operations of foreign fighter smuggling into Iraq,'' the top military intelligence officer at Abu Ghraib, Col. Thomas Pappas, wrote in a secret memo that sought to exempt the captive from normal interrogation rules. The memo, obtained by USA TODAY, went to Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top U.S. commander in Iraq. It laid out a plan to ''fear up'' the Syrian by throwing tables and chairs, yelling at him and interrogating him ''continuously'' for 72 hours. During that time, he would be stripped, hooded, bound in ''stress positions'' and permitted only brief intervals of sleep. Sanchez testified to Congress in May that he never saw the request. But that may not have mattered: The Syrian, identified as Juwad Ali Khalif, 31, is among several non-Iraqi nationals who were allegedly beaten and sexually abused by U.S. soldiers at the prison, according to statements to investigators in a report on Abu Ghraib by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba. The Pentagon's investigation of the abuses at the prison documented repeated instances in which suspected foreign fighters were singled out for harsh treatment, according to classified documents from the inquiry. The records show that interrogators and guards at the prison felt extra pressure to get information from the foreigners. Top U.S. officials believed at the time that foreign fighters posed a substantial threat in Iraq and were heavily involved in the deadly insurgency that continues to grip that country. Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda lieutenants were calling publicly for Muslims across the Arab world to come and wage jihad, or holy war, against Americans in Iraq. And captured associates of Saddam Hussein were telling U.S. interrogators that the former Iraqi president's loyalists were recruiting foreign fighters to resist the U.S. occupation. ''There's clearly an indication that foreign terrorists are involved in the kind of violence that we see'' in the insurgency, Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita said in a briefing last August, echoing a view expressed by many Defense officials. ''And we're going to use all the means at our disposal, all of the national means of power, to counter foreign terrorists.'' In recent months, however, it has become clear that the insurgents are overwhelmingly Iraqis. Foreign nationals account for fewer than 100 of the 5,700 prisoners being held by coalition forces in Iraq as security concerns, according to figures supplied by the military. The military's suspicions about non-Iraqi fighters through the latter half of 2003 and early this year had an effect on the way foreign captives were tracked and treated. This was especially true of Syrians, who have accounted for more than half the foreigners detained in Iraq. At Abu Ghraib, suspected foreign fighters typically were deemed to be of ''high intelligence value'' and placed in isolation in the ''hard site'' section of the prison, according to sworn statements given to military investigators by Lt. Col. Steven Jordan, a top military intelligence officer at the prison. That area was where virtually all the prisoner abuses are said to have occurred. A special ''foreign fighter cell'' of interrogators and intelligence analysts was devoted to questioning the non-Iraqis. Khalif was beaten repeatedly and handcuffed in stressful positions for hours by military police guards working nights at the hard site, according to sworn witness statements collected by military investigators. He also was stripped, hosed with cold water on consecutive nights and forced to sleep nude on the wet
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=15ItemID=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-action lawsuit
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 dark than it is to run
Beheadings vowed: Iraq terrorists kidnap Turks
Sun, June 27, 2004 Beheadings vowed Iraq terrorists kidnap Turks By AP BAGHDAD -- Militants loyal to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi said yesterday they have kidnapped three Turkish workers and threatened to behead them in 72 hours, heightening tension as President George W. Bush visited Turkey. In new violence, an explosion -- possibly from a car bomb -- ripped through downtown Hillah, a largely Shiite Muslim city south of Baghdad, killing 17 people and wounding about 40, the U.S. military said The bloodshed and the latest in a series of abductions claimed by al-Zarqawi's movement -- which has beheaded two previous hostages, an American and a South Korean -- threatened to cast a shadow over a NATO summit opening tomorrow in Istanbul where Bush is seeking help in stabilizing Iraq. The kidnappers demanded the Turks hold demonstrations protesting the visit by the criminal Bush and that Turkish companies stop working in Iraq, or else the hostages would be killed. In central Baghdad, insurgents killed a U.S. soldier in an attack on a patrol yesterday, the military said. Gunmen launched new attacks in the city Baqouba, northeast of the capital, sparking battles that killed six insurgents and three civilians.
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 diverge from
Viagra, Valium, and Prostitution in Occupied Iraq
Viagra, Valium, and Prostitution in Occupied Iraq: http://montages.blogspot.com/2004/06/viagra-valium-and-prostitution-in.html. -- Yoshie * Critical Montages: http://montages.blogspot.com/ * Bring Them Home Now! http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/ * Calendars of Events in Columbus: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html, http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php, http://www.cpanews.org/ * Student International Forum: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osudivest.org/ * Al-Awda-Ohio: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio * Solidarity: http://www.solidarity-us.org/
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 strike targeted
Re: Sovereignty lite in Iraq
shouldn't it be sovereignty NOT! in Iraq? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Speaking of Chechnya and Iraq...
Forwarded to me by Chechnya pro Robert Ware, with his comments. The Italian media is full of these reports, crediting British intelligence. Last week the Washington Times reported that Chechens had attacked Americans in Iraq. For many years, Chechens have received more credit and more blame than they deserve. Since they have the reputation, any Russian speakers (Uzbeks, Tartars, Kalmyks, Cherkess, etc.) fighting with the Islamists are typically identified as Chechens. On the other hand, al Qaeda and its affiliates have played a substantial role in Chechnya for a decade, and I've been anticipating that, as the jihad dries up in Chechnya, they'll look for greener pastures. Another possibility is that these are not ethnic Chechens, but an international mix of fighters who have had experience in Chechnya. We'll have to see if anything develops. June 20, 2004 Report: Chechen Militants Are in Iraq The Associated Press ROME -- The Italian military based in southern Iraq is looking into an intelligence report that 300 Islamic militants, possibly from Chechnya, may have arrived in the area, the army chief of staff said Sunday. The Corriere della Sera newspaper said that in recent days British intelligence reported that 300 Chechen militants who had trained in Afghanistan were heading toward Nasiriyah after having broken into smaller groups. It's a report that everyone has had. Now we will want to verify whether this report is followed up by a real explanation on the ground, Italian army chief of staff General Giulio Fraticelli told the Italian state television network RAI in Nasiriyah. About 3,000 Italian troops are based in Nasiriyah, working on reconstruction. The report led to concern here that further attacks could be launched against Italian troops. A truck bombing in November killed 19 Italians in Nasiriyah. --- Below: Russians are speculating it was done for propaganda purposes or a quid pro quo, but not ruling out that it may also have been true. But first, here's a remark by the head of the Chechen OMON (special police) about Arabs departing Chechnya for Iraq: There's some information, that in the Shatoy direction acts some bloody Marrocan. In Itum-Kale, they recently noted two Turks and an Arab... But Arabs gradually have been leaving the borders of Russia - they depart for Georgia, they depart, by the way, to Iraq. Anonymous Source in Russian Intelligence Claims Russia Warned U.S. About Iraq's Terrorism Plans Moscow Vedomosti in Russian 18 Jun 04 [Report by Aleksey Nikolskiy and Yekaterina Kudashkina: In Support of Bush--taken from html version of source provided by ISP.] Russian intelligence speaks out in support of Bush An anonymous source in the Russian special services called the conclusions of the American commission on absence of ties between Al-Qa'ida and former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein incomplete. According to his statement, Hussein himself had planned terrorist acts in the USA, and Russian intelligence had even warned American intelligence about this. Experts are guessing about what the Russian side hopes to gain in deciding to organize such PR-support of the CIA. On Wednesday, the independent commission investigating the terrorist act in the USA on 11 September 2001 published its preliminary report on the results of its work. Specifically, it states that no ties were established between the Hussein regime and the Al-Qa'ida organization. Meanwhile, before the start of the war in Iraq last year, the U.S. Presidential Administration of George Bush, on the contrary, had insisted that Hussein had ties with Al-Qa'ida terrorists. This became one of the reasons for attacking Iraq. And yesterday, a trustworthy source in a Russian special department told the Interfax agency that the commission's conclusion does not reflect the full picture of events surrounding the start of the war in Iraq. According to the source, Russian special services also have no information at their disposal about ties of the overthrown Iraqi president with Al-Qa'ida. However, according to information received by Russian intelligence as early as the beginning of 2002, the Iraqi special services themselves were preparing terrorist acts on the territory of the USA, as well as in regard to American embassies and military bases. In the Fall of 2002, this information, in verbal and written form, was repeatedly conveyed to our American partners, the agency cites the words of its interviewee. In investigating the reasons for emergence of the Iraqi crisis, we must consider all aspects, including the direct threat to the USA on the part of the regime of Saddam Hussein. The FSB [Federal Security Service] Center for Public Relations told Vedomosti that it had not disseminated such a statement, while the press bureau of the Foreign Intelligence Service refused to comment. We were also unable to obtain comment in the Russian MFA
Israeli Agents and the Kurds in Iraq, Iran, and Syria
Israeli Agents and the Kurds in Iraq, Iran, and Syria: http://montages.blogspot.com/2004/06/israeli-agents-and-kurds-in-iraq-iran.html -- Yoshie * Critical Montages: http://montages.blogspot.com/ * Bring Them Home Now! http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/ * Calendars of Events in Columbus: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html, http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php, http://www.cpanews.org/ * Student International Forum: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osudivest.org/ * Al-Awda-Ohio: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio * Solidarity: http://www.solidarity-us.org/
Re: Yugoslavia set the stage for Iraq
We probably agree on some broad principles, not necessarily all. I would not contest your knowledge of the local conditions, Chris, not only because you are very well informed but because even the most progressive of movements may often have some unappealing or reactionary feature, as Michael suggests. There will some Chechens who are better than others and some worse. It sounds as if Chechen clan law may have features reactionary even by the standards of mainstream islam which is adapted to cultures favouring merchant activity. But also unless the local negative features are very reactionary, I think the overall policy of what is progressive or not should be influenced by the global features rather than the local features. It is globally that I think we have what? 1000 m people of islamic culture and 2000m people of judaeo christian culture. Bitter divisions between them will help the cause of reaction, oppression and exploitation. I would prefer to ban all the monotheistic religions, but that would be idealist, and they seem to fulfil a psychological and material need. In working for the possibility of greater unity, even in small trivial ways, a good principle is to err on the size of internationalism towards the community other than your own. I do not know whether it is clear from my posts, but I feel undeniably prejudiced *against* muslim people. That is why in any situation involving people of the monotheistic cultures, I feel I should err on the side of internationalism towards muslim people. Ultimately that is not a moral gesture to purify my soul, but based on a stance that I believe is necessary for promoting unity in the world of the oppressed and exploited. But maybe I am one-sided in applying it. Regards Chris Burford - Original Message - From: Chris Doss [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, June 18, 2004 11:28 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Yugoslavia set the stage for Iraq Oh, in principle I agree with you, except that there were no democratic bourgeouis rights in Chechnya in 1999 to defend. Chechnya was under Shariah law as mediated through traditional Chechen adat' clan law. (Anecdotally, the retention of adat' was a real minus in the eyes of the foreign mujaheed, who thought the Chechens should junk it and just follow their imported interpretation of the Qu'ran. That seems to have been as successful as when Imam Shamil tried to root out adat' during the Caucasus Wars.) There are also almost no Chechen working people, and haven't been since aroubd 1993. (Not in Chechnya, anyway -- most Chechens do not live in Chechnya. The entire Chechen elite lives in Moscow, along with around 200,000 other Chechens, who get harrassed regularly by the cops. The lead singer of up-and-coming rock band Dead Dolphins is a Chechen, as is one of the newscasters on NTV -- I could go on.) About the only real sources of income for Chechen men involve carrying guns. In the interwar years, the economy of the republic was based on the kidnap industry, oil smuggling and counterfeiting. (Not that many people in the West know this, since Western journalists and human rights workers fled the area en masse to flee the hostage industry after the massacre of the Red Cross employees in 1996. The only reason they are able to function in Chechnya today is because they are under the protection of the federals and the Chechen police, which is why you hear about human-rights violat ions today and did not in 1997.) Theoretically, I could visit Chechnya, as the Moscow-Grozny rail line just reopened to load fanfare. However, having a sense of self-preservation, I do not intend to do so. :) About 8,000 people took teh train from Grozny to Moscow a couple of weeks ago to watch the Russian Cup football championship match, which the Chechen team Terek won.
Re: Yugoslavia set the stage for Iraq
I don't now the answer to this specific question. I just wanted to respond to the difficult issue that there are massive historical forces for global intervention and that the liberal intelligentsia of the world, from which I am not separable, tend to be cautiously sympathetic to intervention. I think the battle has to be against imperialist ways of doing this, but it is not always possible to stop it. And, here of course I differ from others on this list, I think there are times when intervention preferably done the right way, is better for the long term unity of the working people of the world. So I am very aware of the massive amount of imperialist internvention in Turkey at the moment. and I am in favour of its bourgeois liberal features. I was not in favour of the US organised kidnapping of Ocalan and think we should be campaigning for his release. About Russia I think there is a potential progressive agenda of uniting against any oppression of the bourgeois democratic rights of a minority, with the strategic aim of minimising the splits between working people of christian and of islamic cultural background. From the point of view of unity of the working people of the world, and not just for humanitarian reasons, I would like the oppression of the christian people of Sudan lifted without oppressing the rights of the islamic people of Sudan. I think it is most unlikely that this will be achieved without illustrating the imperialist features of present global power relations against which we shold protest. That's as best as I can put it this morning. Regards Chris Burford - Original Message - From: Chris Doss [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 17, 2004 1:06 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Yugoslavia set the stage for Iraq I regret as the inhabitant of a country with a historical Christian tradition, that there was not more pressure to intervene in the politics of the Russian Federation on behalf of the people of muslim culture in Chechnya. Putin has good reason to try to control the interventionist agenda in his own sectional interests. Chris Burford London --- Should Putin have been pressured into not responding when Dagestan got attacked or something? Write Khattab a nice letter to please cut it out?
Re: Yugoslavia set the stage for Iraq
Oh, in principle I agree with you, except that there were no democratic bourgeouis rights in Chechnya in 1999 to defend. Chechnya was under Shariah law as mediated through traditional Chechen adat' clan law. (Anecdotally, the retention of adat' was a real minus in the eyes of the foreign mujaheed, who thought the Chechens should junk it and just follow their imported interpretation of the Qu'ran. That seems to have been as successful as when Imam Shamil tried to root out adat' during the Caucasus Wars.) There are also almost no Chechen working people, and haven't been since aroubd 1993. (Not in Chechnya, anyway -- most Chechens do not live in Chechnya. The entire Chechen elite lives in Moscow, along with around 200,000 other Chechens, who get harrassed regularly by the cops. The lead singer of up-and-coming rock band Dead Dolphins is a Chechen, as is one of the newscasters on NTV -- I could go on.) About the only real sources of income for Chechen men involve carrying guns. In the interwar years, the economy of the republic was based on the kidnap industry, oil smuggling and counterfeiting. (Not that many people in the West know this, since Western journalists and human rights workers fled the area en masse to flee the hostage industry after the massacre of the Red Cross employees in 1996. The only reason they are able to function in Chechnya today is because they are under the protection of the federals and the Chechen police, which is why you hear about human-rights violations today and did not in 1997.) Theoretically, I could visit Chechnya, as the Moscow-Grozny rail line just reopened to load fanfare. However, having a sense of self-preservation, I do not intend to do so. :) About 8,000 people took teh train from Grozny to Moscow a couple of weeks ago to watch the Russian Cup football championship match, which the Chechen team Terek won. -Original Message- From: Chris Burford [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Fri, 18 Jun 2004 07:35:24 +0100 Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Yugoslavia set the stage for Iraq I don't now the answer to this specific question. I just wanted to respond to the difficult issue that there are massive historical forces for global intervention and that the liberal intelligentsia of the world, from which I am not separable, tend to be cautiously sympathetic to intervention. I think the battle has to be against imperialist ways of doing this, but it is not always possible to stop it. And, here of course I differ from others on this list, I think there are times when intervention preferably done the right way, is better for the long term unity of the working people of the world. So I am very aware of the massive amount of imperialist internvention in Turkey at the moment. and I am in favour of its bourgeois liberal features. I was not in favour of the US organised kidnapping of Ocalan and think we should be campaigning for his release.
Re: Yugoslavia set the stage for Iraq
I wrote: Chechnya was under Shariah law as mediated through traditional Chechen adat' clan law. I add: (The translation is rather spastic. And to think that in the Soviet era Chechnya was making high-tech goods. I don't think a region has ever degenerated so fast and so far. Indicentally this puts the lie to the idea that the radicals were ever part of a mass movement -- if you think that educated secular Soviet citizens had any desire to live under such a system, you need your head examined.) EXCERPTS FROM THE CRIMINAL CODE OF CHECHNYA Nezavisimaya Gazeta, 2000 CAPITAL PUNISHMENTS Capital punishment shall be executed by beheading, or by beating with stones, on in the way in which the criminal killed his victim. PUNISHMENT IN KIND Punishment in kind is the punishment of the criminal, who deliberately committed this or other crime, in the same manner as he committed his crime. The right to execute punishment in kind can be claimed first and foremost by the victim of the crime or his/her close relatives. MULTIPLE PUNISHMENT IN KIND Punishment in kind in case of wounding shall be executed in accordance with the number of wounds inflicted to different organs of the victim, and in accordance with the principle of bigger crime encompassing the smaller crime, with the exception of cases when the wounds and injuries were inflicted by the criminal to the victim with the purpose of punishment. In such cases the criminal shall be punished with double amputation, when first the smaller, and then the bigger parts are amputated. If the criminal cut off the same organs from several victims simultaneously, and if punishment in kind is afforded for this crime, he shall undergo such punishment if at least one of the victims so demands, which does not deprive other victims of the right to demand full or partial compensation depending on the situation. CLOSE OF RELATIVES THE VICTIM WHO HAVE THE RIGHT TO EXECUTE PUNISHMENT IN KIND The close relatives of the victim, who have the right to execute punishment in kind, are the persons who are his/her inheritors as of the victim s death. The state shall assume the function of close relatives if the victim has no such relatives, or if their whereabouts is unknown, or if their return is improbable. FLAGELLATION If the crime under consideration does not provide for punishment in accordance with the provisions of the Shariah, the verdicts involving corporal punishment shall not be passed on persons above 60, as well as the ill, because such punishment could endanger their life or health. If punishment by flagellation cannon be applied owing to the advanced age or bad health of the criminal, this punishment shall be replaced with some other punishment. COMPENSATION FOR MURDER, INJURY OR WOUND (DIY A) The full size of diy a equals 100 cows or a sum of money equivalent to their cost, periodically determined by the Supreme Justice after consultations with competent agencies. PUNISHMENT OF MINORS Adolescents who have reached the age of 10 shall be flagellated for educational purposes (the number of leashes shall not exceed 20). DRINKING AND DISTURBANCES Any person who drinks alcohol, stores or produces it shall be punished by flagellation, with 40 leashes if the guilty party professes Islam. APOSTASY A person guilty of a crime qualified as apostasy shall be offered to repent, and the court shall establish a certain deadline for this. If the guilty party, who is not a neophyte of Islam, persists in the crime, he/she shall by punished by execution. PREMEDITATED MURDER Any person who committed a crime qualified as premeditated murder shall be punished by execution as punishment in kind. If punishment in kind cannot be applied, the guilty party shall be punished by imprisonment for up to ten years, and shall pay an established compensation. ABORTION Any person that deliberately takes action which result in the abortion of the unborn child of any woman, shall be judged guilty of a crime that is qualified as an abortion, unless the abortion was carried out in one of the following cases: if the abortion was performed to save the life of the mother; or if the pregnancy occurred as a result of a rape, and the fetus was at least ninety days old, and the woman wanted to have an abortion in such circumstances. ADULTERY Guilty of a crime qualified as adultery shall be: any man who had sexual relations with any woman to whom he is not legally bound; any woman who allowed any man, with whom she is not legally bound, to have sexual relations with her. Sexual relations shall be regarded as complete if the head of the male organ, or whatever corresponds to it, entered the sexual organs of the woman. A marriage that is regarded by the general consent of law experts as invalid shall not be judged as a legal bond. PUNISHMENT FOR ADULTERY Those guilty of adultery shall be punished by: execution through
Re: Yugoslavia set the stage for Iraq
I regret as the inhabitant of a country with a historical Christian tradition, that there was not more pressure to intervene in the politics of the Russian Federation on behalf of the people of muslim culture in Chechnya. Putin has good reason to try to control the interventionist agenda in his own sectional interests. Chris Burford London --- Should Putin have been pressured into not responding when Dagestan got attacked or something? Write Khattab a nice letter to please cut it out?
RUSSIA BACKS U.S. ON IRAQ RESOLUTION -- BUT LITTLE ELSE
Subject: Eurasia Daily Monitor - Volume I, Issue 30 From: Jamestown Foundation [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2004 Putin's support for Bush: little substance RUSSIA BACKS U.S. ON IRAQ RESOLUTION -- BUT LITTLE ELSE By Charles Gurin When the G8 summit at Sea Island, Georgia ended on June 11, Russian President Vladimir Putin praised host country America for both the content of the discussion and the atmosphere, which he described as relaxed and very open. Putin even waded into U.S. domestic politics to defend President George W. Bush from verbal attacks by his Democratic rivals concerning Iraq. In the election campaign, we have recently and often heard Bush's political rivals attacking him over Iraq, Putin said. In my view -- and I say this with absolute confidence -- they have no moral right to do so. They were pursuing a similar policy when they were in power -- suffice to recall the events in Yugoslavia (Itar-Tass, Channel One TV, June 11). The two leaders held a one-on-one meeting on June 8, after which Bush hailed my friend Vladimir Putin as a strong leader who cares deeply about the people of his country and understands the issues that we face (Whitehouse.gov, June 8). But while the two leaders used the summit to restate their mutual regard, the concrete results of the meeting and related events were more mixed in terms of U.S.-Russian relations. On the positive side -- from Washington's point of view -- Russia, along with the other 14 members of the United Nations Security Council, voted on June 9 in favor of the resolution, sponsored by the U.S. and Great Britain, giving an international imprimatur to the U.S.-led coalition's June 30 handover of sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government. At the end of the summit, Putin called the resolution balanced and good, adding that he hoped it would help strengthen Iraq's new leadership and create conditions for the holding of democratic elections soon (Interfax, June 11). However, on the day that the resolution passed, Putin added a cautionary note, calling it a big step forward but warning that much time will pass between the adoption of the document and a change in the situation in Iraq (Itar-Tass, June 9). In addition, Russia offered little more than rhetorical support for U.S. efforts to internationalize the Iraq problem. Deputy Foreign Minister Yuri Fedotov said the idea of Russia's contributing troops to the multinational forces in Iraq was not under consideration (Interfax, June 9). And Putin said Russia would do nothing unilaterally to write off Iraq's debts -- something Bush began actively lobbying for late last year when he named former Secretary of State James Baker as his special envoy for Iraqi debt, dispatching him to negotiate with Iraq's main creditors. Putin noted that the summit's final document said nothing about the amount to be written off, which Russia would decide in the course of the negotiating process, and reiterated that the issue should addressed within the framework of the Paris Club of creditor nations (Itar-Tass, June 11). Just four days after meeting with Baker last December, Putin said that Russia was ready to write off 65 percent of Iraq's U.S. $8 billion debt. Putin also gave less than a ringing endorsement to the Greater Middle East Initiative, the Bush administration's plan for building democracy in the Middle East and the Islamic world that the G8 summit adopted in diluted form. Unlike French President Jacques Chirac, who warned against attempts to impose democracy that could feed extremism and lead to a clash of civilizations, Putin said the idea was timely and that he supported it. But he added, There is the question of how the idea is to be implemented and what final tasks we must set ourselves in this work. The most important thing is that the idea itself, and the instruments that may be created for its implementation, must not be used to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. In addition, Putin said Russia would not contribute financially to the effort until it understands how the money is being spent and would do so only if it is able to influence the processes taking place (Itar-Tass, June 11). Another G8 initiative for which Russian support seemed less than unequivocal concerned Iran's nuclear program. The G8 leaders, including Putin, issued a statement on June 9 accusing Iran of failure to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in which they deplored delays, deficiencies in cooperation and inadequate disclosures. However, two days later Putin reiterated that Russia would continue to build the nuclear reactor at Iran's Bushehr power plant. There is a circumstance in which Russia will give up its work at Bushehr: it will happen if Iran violates the IAEA condition that its nuclear program must be transparent, Putin said. But he added that so far Iran is meeting these requirements, and we see no grounds for terminating construction (Itar-Tass, June 11). Iran issued
Re: RUSSIA BACKS U.S. ON IRAQ RESOLUTION -- BUT LITTLE ELSE
I forwarded: In addition, Russia offered little more than rhetorical support for U.S. efforts to internationalize the Iraq problem. Deputy Foreign Minister Yuri Fedotov said the idea of Russia's contributing troops to the multinational forces in Iraq was not under consideration (Interfax, June 9). And Putin said Russia would do nothing unilaterally -- BTW when Putin was asked in a press conference about sending troops to Iraq, he responded, What, do we look that stupid? :) (My loose translation of nashli durakov?)
Re: Yugoslavia set the stage for Iraq
I think the title of this thread is correct. The liberal intelligentsia of this world are interventionist, like the dominant forces of global finance capitalism. They just want the interventions to be done more carefully and with multi-lateral coordination than the neo-Cons want. The stage is being set to justify intervention over the muslim government of the Sudan. And ten days ago, the generally progressive UK Guardian led its front page (Sat 5th) with the banner title 90 days to stop another disaster in Africa. No surprise that the G8, huddled in their island retreat, were quick to claim the moral authority also to pronounce on this issue. This is part of a coordinated global trend in world politics, which I suggest has historical materialist foundations in the tendencies towards the global centralization of capital. I regret as the inhabitant of a country with a historical Christian tradition, that there was not more pressure to intervene in the politics of the Russian Federation on behalf of the people of muslim culture in Chechnya. Putin has good reason to try to control the interventionist agenda in his own sectional interests. Chris Burford London - Original Message - From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, June 14, 2004 12:26 AM Subject: [PEN-L] Yugoslavia set the stage for Iraq Saturday, June 12, 2004 The Bush-Kerry Conundrum: Our Only Choice is the War Party By Kurt Nimmo Russian President Vladimir Putin has a point. Democrats have no moral right to criticize Bush for invading Iraq. Why? Because they were gung-ho about invading Yugoslavia. Putin made the comment at the G8 neolib feast on Sea Island, Georgia. Democrats, of course, are attacking Bush because they want John Kerry in the White House next year. Kerry says he will continue Bushs failed policy in Iraq with the notable exception that he would internationalize the mess and ask Europeans to help out in the murder of Iraqi freedom fighters and innocent civilians. Turn Democrats upside down and they look like Republicans. Most of them voted for Bushs invasion. Most of them believe killing Iraqis will return the sort of results the neocons had in mind when they lied their way into the invasion. Most of them are responsible for war crimes. Most of them should be standing alongside Bush and his neocons rabble in the docket at the Hague. How soon we forget. Clinton attacked Yugoslavia. He ordered the bombing of civilian targetshomes, roads, farms, factories, hospitals, bridges, churches, monasteries, columns of refugees, TV stations, office buildingsand killed a few thousand random civilians for good measure, and thus weakening the will of the population to resist, so that they would submit to NATO occupation, as David Ramsay Steele summarizes. By attacking Yugoslavia Clinton and the Democrats basically laid the groundwork for Bush and the neocons: For Clinton and the Democrats, it is perfectly acceptable to attack other nationsthis is not a Republican proclivityeven if they pose no threat to the United States or anybody else. The United Nations does not need to be consulted. Neolibs believe they possess the moral authoritythe neocon faction like to call it moral clarityto murder anybody and everybody who stands between them and oil, minerals, rainforests chock full of lumber, and natural monopolies, that is publicly owned power grids, railroads, telecoms, schools, hospitals, and even aquifers of fresh water. On this Democrats and Republicans are in agreement. The American people only need be lulled to sleep. Or exposed to a pantheon of spine-chilling demons. Its easy to frighten children with scary stories. Halloween can be easily rescheduled to June or December or March. Freddy Kruger Hussein or Chuckie Slobodan Milosevic are trotted out on cue. Booga booga. Arab cave dwellers with satellite phones want to kill your first born. full: http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/nimmo06122004/ -- Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Yugoslavia set the stage for Iraq
Saturday, June 12, 2004 The Bush-Kerry Conundrum: Our Only Choice is the War Party By Kurt Nimmo Russian President Vladimir Putin has a point. Democrats have no moral right to criticize Bush for invading Iraq. Why? Because they were gung-ho about invading Yugoslavia. Putin made the comment at the G8 neolib feast on Sea Island, Georgia. Democrats, of course, are attacking Bush because they want John Kerry in the White House next year. Kerry says he will continue Bushs failed policy in Iraq with the notable exception that he would internationalize the mess and ask Europeans to help out in the murder of Iraqi freedom fighters and innocent civilians. Turn Democrats upside down and they look like Republicans. Most of them voted for Bushs invasion. Most of them believe killing Iraqis will return the sort of results the neocons had in mind when they lied their way into the invasion. Most of them are responsible for war crimes. Most of them should be standing alongside Bush and his neocons rabble in the docket at the Hague. How soon we forget. Clinton attacked Yugoslavia. He ordered the bombing of civilian targetshomes, roads, farms, factories, hospitals, bridges, churches, monasteries, columns of refugees, TV stations, office buildingsand killed a few thousand random civilians for good measure, and thus weakening the will of the population to resist, so that they would submit to NATO occupation, as David Ramsay Steele summarizes. By attacking Yugoslavia Clinton and the Democrats basically laid the groundwork for Bush and the neocons: For Clinton and the Democrats, it is perfectly acceptable to attack other nationsthis is not a Republican proclivityeven if they pose no threat to the United States or anybody else. The United Nations does not need to be consulted. Neolibs believe they possess the moral authoritythe neocon faction like to call it moral clarityto murder anybody and everybody who stands between them and oil, minerals, rainforests chock full of lumber, and natural monopolies, that is publicly owned power grids, railroads, telecoms, schools, hospitals, and even aquifers of fresh water. On this Democrats and Republicans are in agreement. The American people only need be lulled to sleep. Or exposed to a pantheon of spine-chilling demons. Its easy to frighten children with scary stories. Halloween can be easily rescheduled to June or December or March. Freddy Kruger Hussein or Chuckie Slobodan Milosevic are trotted out on cue. Booga booga. Arab cave dwellers with satellite phones want to kill your first born. full: http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/nimmo06122004/ -- Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
maybe he should be put in the new Potemkin Prison in Iraq
the US harkens back to the bad old days of the USSR -- According to the LA [TIMES], a California National Guard sergeant claims he knew soldiers were regularly beating Iraqi prisoners last summer in Samarra. When he reported the alleged abuse, he says he was rushed out of the country to military hospitals for mental evaluations, which he calls a cover-up. His commander claims he was suffering from combat stress. [from MS SLATE's news summary] JD
another charity idea for Iraq
Steve's idea for a new victims compensation fund/charity, this one would be for families that lost property to US soldiers during raids? I have no idea what sexy name to call it though. http://makeashorterlink.com/?C2BB12578
Bringing Maximum Security to Iraq
One of the most astonishing remarks that George W. Bush made in his Army War College speech laying out a five-step plan to re-engineer the occupation is his declaration that America will fund the construction of a modern maximum security prison. When that prison is completed detainees at Abu Ghraib will be relocated. Then with the approval of the Iraqi government we will demolish the Abu Ghraib prison as a fitting symbol of Iraq's new beginning (Transcript of Bush Speech on US Strategy in Iraq, Financial Times, May 25 2004). Then again, it is quite fitting that an empire built by a prison state -- a nation that incarcerates 2.2 million people -- one-quarter of all the world's prisoners (Alan Elsner, If US Plays Global Prison Ratings Game, It Ought to Play by Its Own Rules, Christian Science Monitor, March 4, 2004) -- will be a prison empire . . . . . .As Washington globalizes its prison-industrial complex, privatizing as many prisons as it can, what corporation might it employ to manage a modern maximum security prison in Iraq? A likely candidate, I think, is Wackenhut -- renamed the GEO Group in December 2003 . . . The full posting at http://montages.blogspot.com/2004/05/bringing-maximum-security-to-iraq.html. -- Yoshie * Critical Montages: http://montages.blogspot.com/ * Bring Them Home Now! http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/ * Calendars of Events in Columbus: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html, http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php, http://www.cpanews.org/ * Student International Forum: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osudivest.org/ * Al-Awda-Ohio: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio * Solidarity: http://www.solidarity-us.org/
Re: Bringing Maximum Security to Iraq
Yoshie writes: One of the most astonishing remarks that George W. Bush made in his Army War College speech laying out a five-step plan to re-engineer the occupation is ... it would be more appropriate, given W's background, if it were a 12-step program. He would be the higher power, of course. Jim D.
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 hired
Perfect Neocon Iraq Cartoon
http://www.cartoonbank.com/product_details.asp?mscssid=AT1VQC89CE608MUND8P0LBU63RKK1R88sitetype=1sid=70643did=4
the ruler of Iraq at the moment is Mr Bremer
that makes bremer 1053 monarch of mesopotemia since milkart the assyrian Mr. Lakhdar Brahimi, Special Advisor to the Secretary-General Interview with Al-Arabeya, taped with Lakhdar Brahimi in Baghdad and programme host in Dubai, via satellite, Sunday 23 May 2004 21:30 p.m. to be broadcast Monday 24 May 2004 19:00 GMT on From Iraq with Eli Nakouri Q2: who will have the authority to accept this government? LB: I think there should be consensus (tawafuk) between the GC, and the Administration of Mr. Bremer, because we must not forget my dear Sir, that Iraq is an occupied country, the ruler of Iraq at the moment is Mr Bremer, and their opinion is essential in this matter. However, as they have always re-iterated, they have confidence in the UN and they know the UN is an impartial body, with no interest other than the Iraqi people and assisting the Iraqi people to end this occupation, the legal aspects of this occupation, and then, eventually, to end it at the other level. Do you Yahoo!?Friends. Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger
A rightwing brat pack in Iraq
In Iraq, the Job Opportunity of a Lifetime Managing a $13 Billion Budget With No Experience By Ariana Eunjung Cha Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, May 23, 2004; Page A01 BAGHDAD -- It was after nightfall when they finally found their offices at Saddam Hussein's Republican Palace -- 11 jet-lagged, sweaty, idealistic volunteers who had come to help Iraq along the road to democracy. When the U.S. government went looking for people to help rebuild Iraq, they had responded to the call. They supported the war effort and President Bush. Many had strong Republican credentials. They were in their twenties or early thirties and had no foreign service experience. On that first day, Oct. 1, they knew so little about how things worked that they waited hours at the airport for a ride that was never coming. They finally discovered the shuttle bus out of the airport but got off at the wrong stop. Occupied Iraq was just as Simone Ledeen had imagined -- ornate mosques, soldiers in formation, sand blowing everywhere, just like on TV. The 28-year-old daughter of neoconservative pundit Michael Ledeen and a recently minted MBA, she had arrived on a military transport plane with the others and was eager to get to work. They had been hired to perform a low-level task: collecting and organizing statistics, surveys and wish lists from the Iraqi ministries for a report that would be presented to potential donors at the end of the month. But as suicide bombs and rocket attacks became almost daily occurrences, more and more senior staffers defected. In short order, six of the new young hires found themselves managing the country's $13 billion budget, making decisions affecting millions of Iraqis. Viewed from the outside, their experience illustrates many of the problems that have beset the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), a paucity of experienced applicants, a high turnover rate, bureaucracy, partisanship and turf wars. But within their group, inside the Green Zone, the four-mile strip surrounded by cement blast walls where Iraq's temporary rulers are based, their seven months at the CPA was the experience of a lifetime. It was defined by long hours, patriotism, friendship, sacrifice and loss. The CPA was designed to be a grand experiment in nation-building, a body of experts who would be Iraq's guide for transforming itself into a model for democracy in the Middle East. Unlike previous reconstruction efforts, it was to be manned by civilians -- advisers on politics, law, medicine, transportation, agronomy and other key areas. They were supposed to be experts, but many of the younger hires who filled the CPA's hallways were longer on enthusiasm than on expertise. L. Paul Bremer, Iraq's top civil administrator, may have been the public face of the CPA, but it is these rank-and-file workers who defined the occupation at the ground level. This account of the budget team's time in Baghdad is drawn from direct observation and interviews with more than three dozen civilian and military members of the occupation government. full: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48543-2004May22.html -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: Iraq
something in line with this: Responding to a recommendation that progressive tax reforms should represent a first measure to expand fiscal public spendingin a very poor and underdeveloped third world country, a government offical sitting behind his desk said that is socialist and as you know socialism failed. Although the person he was addressing would have to keep cool in situations like this, he answered and said do you the state you are in a success. that really pissed him off."Devine, James" [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: the pundits on US NPR and Public TV blather about the possibility of Iraq being a "failed state" if the US pulls out. But what is the "Coalition" Provisional Authority but a failed state?Jim Devine Do you Yahoo!?SBC Yahoo! - Internet access at a great low price.
Re: Iraq
last sentence corrected: do you consider the staete you are in as a sucesssoula avramidis [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: something in line with this: Responding to a recommendation that progressive tax reforms should represent a first measure to expand fiscal public spendingin a very poor and underdeveloped third world country, a government offical sitting behind his desk said that is socialist and as you know socialism failed. Although the person he was addressing would have to keep cool in situations like this, he answered and said do you the state you are in a success. that really pissed him off."Devine, James" [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: the pundits on US NPR and Public TV blather about the possibility of Iraq being a "failed state" if the US pulls out. But what is the "Coalition" Provisional Authority but a failed state?Jim Devine Do you Yahoo!?SBC Yahoo! - Internet access at a great low price. Do you Yahoo!?SBC Yahoo! - Internet access at a great low price.
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 company
(opportunity) cost of the war in Iraq for the US so far...
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. President Dwight D. Eisenhower April 16, 1953 For an update on the cost (and opportunity cost) of the war in Iraq for the US only, see the following: http://www.costofwar.com/
Re: (opportunity) cost of the war in Iraq for the US so far...
Does anybody know who wrote that speech? On Tue, May 18, 2004 at 01:21:59PM -0400, Diane Monaco wrote: Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. President Dwight D. Eisenhower April 16, 1953 For an update on the cost (and opportunity cost) of the war in Iraq for the US only, see the following: http://www.costofwar.com/ -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Iraq
the pundits on US NPR and Public TV blather about the possibility of Iraq being a failed state if the US pulls out. But what is the Coalition Provisional Authority but a failed state? Jim Devine
Uncovering Rationales for War on Iraq
from University of Illinois student newspaper... The study, Uncovering the Rationales for the War on Iraq: The Words of the Bush Administration, Congress and the Media from September 12, 2001, to October 11, 2002, is the senior honors thesis of Devon Largio. She and her professor, Scott Althaus, believe the study is the first of its kind. -- Andrea Lynn, Humanities Editor 5/10/04 CHAMPAIGN, Ill. If it seems that there have been quite a few rationales for going to war in Iraq, that's because there have been quite a few, 27, in fact, all floated between Sept. 12, 2001, and Oct. 11, 2002, according to a new study from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. All but four of the rationales originated with the administration of President George W. Bush. The study also finds that the Bush administration switched its focus from Osama bin Laden to Saddam Hussein early on, only five months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States. In addition to what it says about the shifting sands of rationales and the unsteady path to war in Iraq, what is remarkable about the 212-page study is that its author is a student. The study, Uncovering the Rationales for the War on Iraq: The Words of the Bush Administration, Congress and the Media from September 12, 2001, to October 11, 2002, is the senior honors thesis of Devon Largio. She and her professor, Scott Althaus, believe the study is the first of its kind. For her analysis of all available public statements the Bush administration and selected members of Congress made pertaining to war with Iraq, Largio not only identified the rationales offered for going to war, but also established when they emerged and who promoted them. She also charted the appearance of critical keywords such as Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and Iraq to trace the administration's shift in interest from the al Qaeda leader to the Iraqi despot, and the news media's response to that shift. The rationales that were used to justify the war with Iraq have been a major issue in the news since last year, and Devon's study provides an especially thorough and wide-ranging analysis of it, Althaus, a professor of political science, said. It is not the last word on the subject, but I believe it is the first to document systematically the case that the administration made for going to war during critical periods of the public debate. It is first-rate research, Althaus said, the best senior thesis I have ever seen, thoroughly documented and elaborately detailed. Her methodology is first-rate. Largio mapped the road to war over three phases: Sept. 12, 2001, to December 2001; January 2002, from Bush's State of the Union address, to April 2002; and Sept. 12, 2002, to Oct. 11, 2002, the period from Bush's address to the United Nations to Congress's approval of the resolution to use force in Iraq. She drew from statements by President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Policy Board member and long-time adviser Richard Perle; by U.S. senators Tom Daschle, Joe Lieberman, Trent Lott and John McCain; and from stories in the Congressional Record, the New York Times and The Associated Press. She logged 1,500 statements and stories. The rationales Largio identified include everything from the five front-runners: war on terror, prevention of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, lack of weapons inspections, removal of Saddam Hussein's regime, Saddam Hussein is evil, to the also-rans; Sen. Joe Lieberman's because Saddam Hussein hates us, Colin Powell's because it's a violation of international law, and Richard Perle's because we can make Iraq an example and gain favor within the Middle East. With regard to the administration's shift from bin Laden to Saddam, Largio found that Iraq was part of the plan for the war on terror early in the game. For example, in his State of the Union speech on Jan. 29, 2002, President Bush declared that Iraq was part of the war against terrorism because it supported terrorists and continued to flaunt its hostility toward America. He also claimed that Iraq allowed weapons inspectors into the country and then threw them out, fueling the belief that the nation did in fact plan to develop weapons of mass destruction, Largio wrote. In the same speech, the president called Iraq, Iran and North Korea an axis of evil, a phrase that would ignite much criticism and add to the sense that the U.S. would embark on a war with the Hussein state, Largio wrote. So, from February of 2002 on, Largio said, Iraq gets more hits than Osama bin Laden. For President Bush the switch occurs there and the gap grows over time. Largio also discovered that it was the media that initiated discussions about Iraq, introducing ideas before the administration and congressional leaders did about the intentions
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
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 from
FW: After the World Tribunal on Iraq, New York Session (fwd)
WTI New York session has successfully commenced last Saturday. You can read the final statement of the jury of conscience, the press release, and the presentations in the first two parts of the session from the following link: http://www.worldtribunal-nyc.org/Document/index.htm The third part, presented by Roger Normand, dealing with the crimes committed during the occupation, will be up in the following days.
Re: Grounds of Misunderstanding? was Re: Iraq Communist Party ...
Carrol Cox wrote: I mention this as a possibility, that would explain a good deal of the clashes between me and some others over the last several years. I have never _once_ written about what I think the u.s. should do. I don't think what I think about that is going to butter any parsnips. My focus has _always_ been on what an organized _movement_ should do to organize itself and grow. I don't know whether this clarifies anything or not. It is a harmless academic pastime to muse over what it would be nice for the u.s. to do, but it doesn't get us anywhere. What's the point of this movement if not to change U.S. policy? Doug
SATURDAY: World Tribunal on Iraq, NYC Session @ Cooper Union
New York Session of the World Tribunal on Iraq Saturday, May 8, 2004 Cooper Union, Great Hall [7 East 7th Street at 3rd Av, NYC] ALL DAY - Starts 10:00 a.m. [doors open 9:30 a.m.] www.worldtribunal-nyc.org [EMAIL PROTECTED] FREE - donations welcome Bombs have been dropped and lives shattered. Much of Iraq lies in ruins, smashed, looted and then occupied by a hostile and unwanted invasion force. In the face of the human suffering caused by the war on Iraq we must act now against the crime of silence and impunity to write a counter-history. * Could the doctrine of preventive war ever be legal under international law? * Can we record the crimes committed in launching this war of aggression, during the military campaign and ongoing occupation? * Can the initiation of any war be legitimate when overwhelmingly opposed by a global anti-war movement that includes the citizens of every state involved? * Can there be a grassroots space where we can initiate the process of providing justice and accountability? PRESENTATIONS, TESTIMONY AND VISUALS WILL INVESTIGATE: - The U.S.-led war of aggression against Iraq - Crimes committed during the declared military campaign - Crimes committed during the ongoing occupation JURY OF CONSCIENCE: Rabab Abdulhadi, Sinan Antoon, Dennis Brutus, Hamid Dabashi, Bhairavi Desai, Eve Ensler, Jenny Green, Lisa Hajjar, Elias Khoury, Robert van Lierop, Motarilavoa Hilda Lini, Kiyoko McCrae, Ibrahim Ramey. + + New York PREMIERE of ABOUT BAGHDAD http://www.aboutbaghdad.com/, an independent film by InCounter Productions, to be screened at the end of session + + World Tribunal on Iraq is a project of the global anti war movement with sessions and events held in London, Mumbai, Copenhagen, Brussels, Hiroshima, Paris, Monterrey, Munich, Seul, Barcelona, Istanbul, Rome,Berlin, San Jose, Stockholm, Lisbon, New York... www.worldtribunal.org U.S.-Based Endorsers of WTI Al-Awda NY/NJ http://al-awda.org/newyork/ Al-Qalam Institute, Berkeley AlternaTees http://www.alternatees.com/ American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee - New York Chapter http://www.adc.org/ Bergen County Green Party http://www.gpnj.org/Counties/Bergen/ Barnard-Boecker Centre Foundation http://www.islandnet.com/%7Ebbcf Black Radical Congress http://www.blackradicalcongress.net/ Brecht Forum http://www.brechtforum.org/ Brooklyn Greens http://www.geocities.com/brooklyngreens/ BushMustGo! http://bushmustgo.net/, Ithaca Campus Antiwar Network http://www.campusantiwar.net/ Capitalism Nature Socialism http://members.cruzio.com/%7Ecns/ Center for Constitutional Rights http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2? Center for Economic and Social Rights http://www.cesr.org/ Coney Island Avenue Project Conscience International http://www.conscienceinternational.org/ Council on International and Public Affairs http://www.cipa-apex.org/ Direct Action Palestine http://directactionpalestine.com/ Fellowship of Reconciliation http://www.forusa.org/ The Greens/Green Party USA http://www.greenparty.org/ Green Party of New Jersey http://www.gpnj.org/ Green Party of New York State http://www.gpnys.org/ Global Action to Prevent War http://www.globalactionpw.org/ International Action Center http://www.iacenter.org/ International A.N.S.W.E.R http://www.internationalanswer.org/ The International Critical Geography Group http://econgeog.misc.hit-u.ac.jp/icgg/ Jews Against the Occupation http://www.jatonyc.org/ Korea Truth Commission Labor Committee for Peace and Justice / Bay Area Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy http://www.lcnp.org/ Middle East Children's Alliance - California http://www.mecaforpeace.org/ Mouths Wide Open http://www.mouthswideopen.org/National Lawyers Guild - NYC chapter http://www.nlgnyc.org/ New Jersey Solidarity http://www.njsolidarity.org/ New York City Labor Against the War http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LaborAgainstWar/ New York Committee to Defend Palestine Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York http://home.earthlink.net/%7Enicadlw/nsnhome.html Not in Our Name Project http://www.notinourname.net/index.html Nuclear Age Peace Foundation http://www.wagingpeace.org/ NYU Students for Justice in Palestine http://www.nyudivest.org/ Orange County Peace and Justice Coalition http://www.orangepeace.org/ Peace Initiative Turkey http://www.peace-initiative-turkey.net/ Project Censored http://www.projectcensored.org/ Protect All Children's Environment http://www.main.nc.us/pace Sacred Roots SALAAM Theatre http://www.salaamtheatre.org/ Solidarity / U.S. http://www.solidarity-us.org/ Solutions for Humanity, Inc. http://www.ihumanity.org/ Support Network for an Armed Forces Union http://www.join-snafu.org/ Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory http://www.toplab.org/ Traprock Peace Center http://traprockpeace.org/ United for Peace and Justice http://www.unitedforpeace.org/ US Peace Council http://www.uspeacecouncil.org/ Veterans for Peace - NYC Chapter http://www.veteransforpeace.org/ Western States Legal Foundation http
Spain Won't Send Troops Back to Iraq (Iraq Communist Party statement. . .)
At 1:33 PM -0400 5/6/04, Doug Henwood wrote: the U.S. occupation but think some sort of international presence excluding the U.S. might be warranted Even if it were warranted, it would not be likely, because no one wants to do it: * Spain Won't Send Troops Back to Iraq Friday May 7, 2004 12:16 PM By DANIEL WOOLLS Associated Press Writer Spain will not send troops back to Iraq even if the international force there is given a United Nations mandate, a senior aide to Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said Friday. Spain, which withdrew its 1,300 troops this month, still wants the United Nations to have complete military and political control of the situation in Iraq, the aide said. ``We know this is impossible - very difficult, if not impossible,'' the aide told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. ``As the prime minister said, even in a best-case scenario Spain would never send troops back to Iraq, even with a United Nations resolution,'' the aide said. He was referring to comments Zapatero made in an interivew with The New York Times published Friday. ``The mission (of the Spanish contingent) has been completed and it would not make political sense to bring the troops home and then send them back there again. It would be odd, wouldn't it?'' the aide said. http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4063513,00.html * -- Yoshie * Critical Montages: http://montages.blogspot.com/ * Bring Them Home Now! http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/ * Calendars of Events in Columbus: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html, http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php, http://www.cpanews.org/ * Student International Forum: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osudivest.org/ * Al-Awda-Ohio: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio * Solidarity: http://www.solidarity-us.org/
Re: Iraq Communist Party statement on Atrocities at Abu Ghraib
Michael said: I don't disagree with you, but I cannot see why we should take this group more seriously than Chalabi or other collaborators. We should take them more seriously because --- unlike Chalabi --- they are people who have lived in Iraq under Saddam, (something which no doubt has informed their attitudes to the ex-Ba'ath elements of the resistance) and they therefore have a better understanding of the dynamics of Iraqi society, not to mention a much greater ability to generate popular support. Grant.
Re: Iraq Communist Party statement on Atrocities at Abu Ghraib
how do the communist live under the baathist? consider fir ins this syrian joke: when the syrian communist party was allowed an office, the sign on the door said 'the syrian CP, owned by the baath party" but on a more serious note the biggest impedement to any arab cp truly becoming a mass party is its inability to relate culturally to the marginalised and disposessed. Grant Lee [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Michael said: I don't disagree with you, but I cannot see why we should take this group more seriously than Chalabi or other collaborators.We should take them more seriously because --- unlike Chalabi --- they arepeople who have lived in Iraq under Saddam, (something which no doubt hasinformed their attitudes to the ex-Ba'ath elements of the resistance) andthey therefore have a better understanding of the dynamics of Iraqi society,not to mention a much greater ability to generate popular support.Grant. Do you Yahoo!?Win a $20,000 Career Makeover at Yahoo! HotJobs
Re: Iraq Communist Party statement on Atrocities at Abu Ghraib
Grant: not to mention a much greater ability to generate popular support Greater than that of Chalabi maybe but a negligibly small (or infinitesimal) ability nevertheless. Anyone who knows anything about the left in my part of the world knows this. The left back there is not to be taken seriously and this includes yours truly. Best, Sabri
Re: Iraq Communist Party statement on Atrocities at Abu Ghraib
Soula: In answer to your question, no, I don't read Arabic. I wish I had the aptitude for languages of someone like Marx (a belated happy 186th to him) who -- not content with German, Greek, Latin, French, English and Italian --- was learning Turkish when he died. I do not think the occupation forces nor their cronies enjoy a lot of support in Iraq. in old societies my friend anonymity is out of the question.. collaboration with the Americans here will not go away for centuries.. We will see. the place is older than modern imperialism. On the contrary, Iraq is a creation of modern imperialism. You said: the class formation in 'peripheral capitalism developing in severe crisis' is a case of disarticulation wherein economic interests are never so well formed within a class to break the old social bonds. I asked: What is a class without well formed economic interests? You answered: that is easy enough: there is so much economic instability in this developing market that taking refuge in precapitalist social organisational forms e.g. tribes etc is essential. Which forgets the fact that pre-capitalist classes often survive a transition to capitalism, utilising tribal links in support of their own accumulation. And that a modern proletariat -- compared to other Arab countries --- is relatively well-developed in Iraq, thanks largely to the nationalist development schemes of the 1960s and 70s. Agreed, the ICP would not be my chosen model for a communist party in the developing word; it was as prone to theoretical blindness and tactical errors as any communist parties during the mid-20th Century. But there is no doubt that they are well-organised and are probably capable of getting at least 10% of the popular vote. If I understand you correctly, the communists are a joke, the Iraqi islamists are incapable of wide support, and you admit that pan-arabism is virtually dead. And I wouldn't bet my life savings on the Ba'ath!!! So what do you see as the dominant ideology in Iraq? the biggest impedement to any arab cp truly becoming a mass party is its inability to relate culturally to the marginalised and disposessed. Hmmm. In the first place, Arab CPs have enjoyed significant followings in the past; second, they don't need to become a mass party in order to wield the balance of power; third, perhaps the marginalised and disposessed in Iraq will look at the many failures of Islamism and nationalism, and will draw their own conclusions. regards, Grant.
Re: Iraq Communist Party statement on Atrocities at Abu Ghraib
Grant Lee [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Soula:In answer to your question, no, I don't read Arabic. I wish I had theaptitude for languages of someone like Marx (a belated happy 186th to him)who -- not content with German, Greek, Latin, French, English andItalian --- was learning Turkish when he died."I do not think the occupation forces nor their cronies enjoy a lot ofsupport in Iraq. in old societies my friend anonymity is out of thequestion.. collaboration with the Americans here will not go away forcenturies.."We will see.We are seeing it now... we saw it south Lebanon.. we see it in Palestine, and we will see it elsewhere."the place is older than modern imperialism."On the contrary, "Iraq" is a creation of modern imperialism.it is indeed, but that there was 'bilad ma bain al nahrain' and that the daily conflicts in Saudi Arabia, Syria and Lebanon and the potential volcano of Jordan all attest to the failure of this creation calledIraq on daily basis and what matters is to prove the neocons and the Zionists wrong in the sense that you cannot beat the Arabs on the head without getting hit back because they are a 'lower race.'You said: "the class formation in 'peripheral capitalism developing insevere crisis'is a case of disarticulation wherein economic interests are never so wellformed within a class to break the old social bonds."I asked: What is a "class" without "well formed" economic interests?You answered: "that is easy enough: there is so much economic instability inthisdeveloping market that taking refuge in precapitalist social organisationalforms e.g. tribes etc is essential."Which forgets the fact that pre-capitalist classes often survive atransition to capitalism, utilising tribal links in support of their ownaccumulation. And that a modern proletariat -- compared to other Arabcountries --- is relatively well-developed in Iraq, thanks largely to thenationalist development schemes of the 1960s and 70s.After 25 years of sanctions and wars in which an estimated more than one million Iraqi died, more than 5% of the population, income was at 30$ a month for 12 years, can we say that there will be a cohesive working class that transcends the boundaries of old social bonds? well again now we have tribes and it seems the tribes have not been bought out yet.Agreed, the ICP would not be my chosen model for a communist party in thedeveloping word; it was as prone to theoretical blindness and tacticalerrors as any communist parties during the mid-20th Century. But there is nodoubt that they are well-organized and are probably capable of getting atleast 10% of the popular vote. I presume now the CIA will buy the votes for themIf I understand you correctly, the communists are a joke, the Iraqiislamists are incapable of wide support, and you admit that pan-arabism isvirtually dead. And I wouldn't bet my life savings on the Ba'ath!!! So whatdo you see as the dominant ideology in Iraq?I asked a similarquestion to a prominent Iraqi human rights activist, I said do you think that the present resistance could organize itself around a progressive social program? he said not soon.. let us wait for the phoenix out of the ashes."the biggest impedement to any arab cp truly becoming a mass party is itsinability to relate culturally to the marginalised and disposessed."Hmmm. In the first place, Arab CPs have enjoyed significant followings inthe past; second, they don't need to become a mass party in order to wieldthe balance of power; third, perhaps the marginalized and dispossessed inIraq will look at the many failures of Islamism and nationalism, and willdraw their own conclusions. we do not have to call it communism we need a secular anti imperialist democratic and socially progressive movement that allies all sections of the populations under national symbols that relate culturally to each and everyone call it whatever. you go into an Arab communist party office during the cold war and you see posters from the soviet union etc..you see a clique of half-educated that consume pig and alcohol in a society where still the physical and the metaphysical go hand in hand..regards,Grant. Do you Yahoo!?Win a $20,000 Career Makeover at Yahoo! HotJobs
Re: Iraq Communist Party statement on Atrocities at Abu Ghraib
Sabri Oncu: It is neither up to the U.S. nor to the rest of the west to bring peace to our region My response: I wholeheartedly agree. and I don't give a shit to that so-called reconstruction, either. I disagree. The left anywhere can't afford to express such a deep lack of concern for a people who have been through it for so long. We might have discussions and disagreements about process undertaken to end US occupation and to strike a blow against US imeprialism. But I don't agree that it is ever a good idea, or maybe anything other than cynical, to say we don't care about what the outcome of the situation will be, no matter how far out of our control or from our ideal it ends up being. I just refuse to accept the the worse a situation is, the better it is argument that too many people on the left hold. Especially when, and I hate to keep hiting on this, many of the people I know who push that line, never have to experience the worse part. All my best, Joel Wendland _ FREE pop-up blocking with the new MSN Toolbar get it now! http://toolbar.msn.com/go/onm00200415ave/direct/01/
Re: Iraq Communist Party statement on Atrocities at Abu Ghraib
In response to James Devine: The irony of careerism is not that some people on this list have careers, are sacrificing their principles, or are trying to rise etc., but that the term careerist was applied to Communists (by this term, I mean people who are known to be or publicly associate with the Communist movement, not the small c). Outside of countries like Cuba or China where Communist Parties are the ruling parties, being a Communist doesn't help one's career unless I'm missing something. I wish people would stop using this rhetorical trick of dismissing others' views as fashionable or in fashion. You have a good point here, but I don't see a strong necessity of pointing out obvious differences between Vietnam and Iraq (the fashion of saying Iraq is like Vietnam was the point I made--presumablyt I don't have to quote any of the articles that appear daily on this?). And the comaprison has been prevalent in the peace movement and on the left. There's also the trick of not naming the people I'm arguing with (those who are only interested [in] seeing the U.S. suffer military defeats), an amorphous and undefined that western left. Thus their position doesn't have to be defined, quoted, or even argued against. I assumed that we are reading the same posts to this list and that quotations aren't necessary. Obviously we all (and I include myself) don't read the 40 or 50 e-mails that appear each day in our in-folder. I will try to be more specific in my future posts. In response, however, I find it interesting that you chose my post to make your points about rhetorical tricks as vague, combative, overgeneralizing, tricky rhetoric seems to be the rule rather than the exception on this list. I agree that I haven't been an ideal participant, but ever since my first post, I/my posts have been subjected to the very sort thing you have cited my post as being an example of--which is fine. Who am I afterall, right? Thanks for your insights, Joel Wendland _ Getting married? Find tips, tools and the latest trends at MSN Life Events. http://lifeevents.msn.com/category.aspx?cid=married
Re: Iraq Communist Party statement on Atrocities at Abu Ghraib
Joel: But I don't agree that it is ever a good idea, or maybe anything other than cynical, to say we don't care about what the outcome of the situation will be, no matter how far out of our control or from our ideal it ends up being. This is not what I said, or at least not what I had in mind when I said what I said. If you agree with this: It is neither up to the U.S. nor to the rest of the west to bring peace to our region You should also agree with this: We, that is, those of us who are from there, will reconstruct our part of the world, not the U.S. neither the rest of the west. If we screw up along the way, so be it. I just refuse to accept the the worse a situation is, the better it is argument that too many people on the left hold. It is because you are a western leftist. The situation cannot get any worse than this. Whatever we do to fight the invaders, and it is my sorrow that at this time that I am not among those who are fighting, it can only get better. Whether the outcome will be good or not is another issue. But whatever the outcome, it will be better than what is there now. Best, Sabri
Re: Iraq Communist Party statement on Atrocities at Abu Ghraib
James Devine wrote: I wish people would stop using this rhetorical trick of dismissing others' views as fashionable or in fashion. Sometimes fashions are right, as with the late-1960s fashion of opposing the US war against Vietnam. BTW, a relative of mine uses the same trick, dismissing those who favor abortion rights, affirmative action, etc. as fashionable. It's standard among academics (and I should know, since I swim amongst them). My response: I don't want to harp on this too much, as I agree with the general thrust of your post: I need to alter the style and method of my argumentation in order to make a better contribution to the discussion. I accept that. But doesn't the comparison you make bewteen my style of argumentation here and this relative of yours fall under the same category of rhetorical trick? When it comes down to it, there is no relation between the views I posted and the manner in which I chose to post them, to which you refer, and the views of this relative of yours. But by trying to draw a relation between me and your relative, you are suggesting that I can likewise be dismissed. Isn't that the purpose of the comaprison? Anyway, this repsonse isn't meant to suggest that your criticism of style isn't correct. Thanks again for your post, I'll have to keep working on it. Best, Joel Wendland _ Express yourself with the new version of MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/
Re: Iraq Communist Party statement on Atrocities at Abu Ghraib
Sabri Oncu wrote: Joel: I just refuse to accept the the worse a situation is, the better it is argument that too many people on the left hold. I find it notable that those who spin this ridiculous canard _never_ quote particular leftists -- it is an urban legend, and passing it on without documentation is pure obscurantism. The point is an empirical one: The situation is in fact going to get worse the longer the u.s. invaders stay there. This is simply a fact, left planning that does not recognize it belongs in the pages of _Alice in Wonderland_. Recognizing the fact has no relationship to the urban legend of leftists saying the worse the better. Joel is confusing the message with the messenger, and whining that the messenger is not bringing better news, when there is no better news to bring. Carrol
Re: Iraq Communist Party statement on Atrocities at Abu Ghraib
Ken: Thanks for your reasoned remarks, which illustrate a willingness to engage with the present situation. As I've already said, my recent usage of imperialism was not supposed to be definitive, and I agree with your comments on this. THe issue is the status of those who side with imperialist occupiers when there are obvious resistant forces at work. Another issue is the extent to which the resistance is supported by the Iraqi people. As I've said before, it doesn't take many insurgents to make an insurgency, and in the absence of elections and reliable opinion polls, no-one knows what they think of (e.g.) Hakim as opposed to Sadr. 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. Agreed. But once that idiotic invasion opened Pandora's Box, Iraq became a no-win situation for most of the major players. A lot of people on the left seem to start from the assumption that there is never anything worse, more reactionary, or more opposable than imperialism, ignoring the specifics and never looking back; in some cases turning a blind eye to the deeply reactionary character of the anti-imperialists. Or asking what is the likely alternative to the colonial regime in question. If anti-imperialists had an inkling of the horror that would follow hard on the heels of the decolonisation of India in 1947, they may well have begged British forces to stay there a little longer. (And maybe some did, I haven't checked this out.) I don't think there's much doubt that a sudden withdrawal of US forces would cause the various resistance factions to focus their attacks not only on the quislings, but also each other. Civil war, in other words. Therefore US forces serve as a unifier of the Iraqi people: (1) in the perverse form of an increasingly-hated imperial army, (2) as a source of massive aid/investment, and (3) as an obstacle to a debilitating civil war. regards, Grant.
Re: Iraq Communist Party statement on Atrocities at Abu Ghraib
Grant Lee wrote: If anti-imperialists had an inkling of the horror that would follow hard on the heels of the decolonisation of India in 1947, they may well have begged British forces to stay there a little longer. (And maybe some did, I haven't checked this out.) I guess you aren't aware that the British were responsible originally for dividing people by religion in the colonies. You might as well ask the tobacco industry to spearhead an anti-smoking campaign. -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: Iraq Communist Party statement on Atrocities at Abu Ghraib
Louis said: I guess you aren't aware that the British were responsible originally for dividing people by religion in the colonies. You might as well ask the tobacco industry to spearhead an anti-smoking campaign. Of course I'm aware of that. And what use would it have been to point that out in a discussion immediately prior to partition? The tobacco thing suggests that you don't seem to have taken on board the dialectics _within_ the capital class as a whole. In this neck of the woods, tobacco companies _do_ spearhead the anti-smoking campaign --- for some years now they have been required by law to carry anti-smoking messages on every cigarette pack, occupying at least 25% of the surface area. More radical suggestions are circulating: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,9483627%255E1702,00.html. By the same measure, the global capitalist class should not be allowed to shirk their responsibilities to the Iraqi people. Grant.
Re: Iraq Communist Party statement on Atrocities at Abu Ghraib
Grant Lee wrote: The tobacco thing suggests that you don't seem to have taken on board the dialectics _within_ the capital class as a whole. In this neck of the woods, tobacco companies _do_ spearhead the anti-smoking campaign --- for some years now they have been required by law to carry anti-smoking messages on every cigarette pack, occupying at least 25% of the surface area. More radical suggestions are circulating: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,9483627%255E1702,00.html. This is spearheading? I would put this in the same category as McDonald offering salad on their menu after years of protest from consumers' groups about the toxicity of Big Macs, etc. In any case, I am for withdrawal of US troops everywhere in the world, even if the restless natives decide to kill each other afterwards. For every Rwanda, there are a hundredfold slaughters that go unnoticed. Throughout Latin America for over 100 years children died of malnutrition, etc. because of poverty enforced by brutal dictatorships backed by the USA. Even when such nations as Paraguay were devoid of ethnic strife, there was a silent unannounced war between the rich and the poor. If dictators like Stroessner could not rely on US military muscle and economic backing, they would have toppled easily. That would have saved tens of millions of lives. Radical non-intervention is the best way to save lives. Everytime we rubberstamp some humanitarian intervention (scare quotes intended), the USA gets the authority it needs to remain elsewhere in the world. As Charles Brown likes to say, US out of Everywhere. -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: Iraq Communist Party statement on Atrocities at Abu Ghraib
Don't forget Russian or Engels's even greater knowledge of language. Linguistic expertise seems more relevant to the list than the stand of a minor party with a rather strange political perspective. Could we kill this thread? On Thu, May 06, 2004 at 03:31:23PM +0800, Grant Lee wrote: In answer to your question, no, I don't read Arabic. I wish I had the aptitude for languages of someone like Marx (a belated happy 186th to him) who -- not content with German, Greek, Latin, French, English and Italian --- was learning Turkish when he died. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: Iraq Communist Party statement on Atrocities at Abu Ghraib
Carrol said: The situation is in fact going to get worse the longer the u.s. invaders stay there. Have I disagreed with this statement? Somewhere along the way, Carrol has come to think that I support the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq. You'll have to check the archives and find a quote. As to quoting people, isn't it possible to interpret or argue that a particular argument boils down to something, or do we always have to have an exact quote? This seems to be what Carrol has done to me in attributing a position to me and then repeatedly arguing with it. Rather my position is to support democratic forces in Iraq struggling for an alternative to the spiral of U.S. occupation and armed violence. Denying, that these two things feed on each other, in my opinion, doesn't help. And I think that saying one supports the uprising unconditionally does deny the consequences. That is, if you check the post to which I responded, the upshot of what was said, notwithstanding an exact quote. Apparently I'm held to a higher standard of discussion and argumentation. I have supported holding the U.S. to its obligation as a de facto occupying force (I just can't see letting the U.S. get away with demolishing a country for over 20 years and then going home without obligation), I've supported removal of the oversight of political, economic, and security issues from the U.S. to the UN, I've supported an end to the occupation of Iraq, I've supported the speediest possible return of sovereignty to a democratic government in Iraq. I know it is not the same as Bring them home now, no conditions but I have raised my suspicions about that position before. In my view, the situation isn't as simple as that. _ Watch LIVE baseball games on your computer with MLB.TV, included with MSN Premium! http://join.msn.com/?page=features/mlbpgmarket=en-us/go/onm00200439ave/direct/01/
Re: Iraq Communist Party statement on Atrocities at Abu Ghraib
It is probably silly plotting the future of Iraq from a keyboard, but I think that talk of supporting a democratic force at this time is pretty far-fetched. The US has created such turmoil that democracy at this time is probably impossible. From what I understand -- and my understanding is limited -- a democratic outcome at this time might be a Shi'ite theocracy. Another strongman might be able to institute some stability, but a bloodless exit seems impossible at this time. Of course, an exit is inevitable and the longer it is delayed the more blood will be shed. No simplistic easy answers exist. Getting out is urgent. If Kerry somehow stumbles into the White House and has to take responsibility for cleaning up Bush's mess, it will be easy to paint him in very ugly colors, probably ensuring a one term presidency. Or maybe, he will do what he says getting us in deeper in a further attempt to make himself into JFK II. I probably should have resisted the temptation to join into this speculation, which does not lead anywhere. We could also speculate on the presidency of Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush or Arnold Schwarzenegger. Can't we just drop this thread? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
Re: Iraq Communist Party statement on Atrocities at Abu Ghraib
Joel Wendland wrote: Carrol said: The situation is in fact going to get worse the longer the u.s. invaders stay there. Have I disagreed with this statement? Somewhere along the way, Carrol has come to think that I support the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq. You'll have to check the archives and find a quote. It's hopeless; forget it. No matter how many times you say you're against the U.S. occupation but think some sort of international presence excluding the U.S. might be warranted, he'll quote Kipling's White Man's Burden at you. Even if you quote Iraqis, like the two Communist parties, making that argument, or cite serious polls of Iraqis to that effect. Best to move on. Doug
Re: Iraq Communist Party statement on Atrocities at Abu Ghraib
Joel W writesIn response to James Devine: The irony of careerism is not that some people on this list have careers, are sacrificing their principles, or are trying to rise etc., but that the term careerist was applied to Communists (by this term, I mean people who are known to be or publicly associate with the Communist movement, not the small c). Outside of countries like Cuba or China where Communist Parties are the ruling parties, being a Communist doesn't help one's career unless I'm missing something. and it probably helps one's career to be a CP member in N. Korea. miniature Leninist parties often provide miniature careers for their leaders. That's one reason why they cling to the party line or correct program so vehemently. I had written: I wish people would stop using this rhetorical trick of dismissing others' views as fashionable or in fashion. You have a good point here, but I don't see a strong necessity of pointing out obvious differences between Vietnam and Iraq (the fashion of saying Iraq is like Vietnam was the point I made--presumablyt I don't have to quote any of the articles that appear daily on this?). And the comaprison has been prevalent in the peace movement and on the left. my feeling is that all analogies are wrong, though some are right enough to be useful. Iraq seems to be a quagmire, though there are a lot of differences from the Vietnam quagmire. There's also the trick of not naming the people I'm arguing with (those who are only interested [in] seeing the U.S. suffer military defeats), an amorphous and undefined that western left. Thus their position doesn't have to be defined, quoted, or even argued against. I assumed that we are reading the same posts to this list and that quotations aren't necessary. Obviously we all (and I include myself) don't read the 40 or 50 e-mails that appear each day in our in-folder. I will try to be more specific in my future posts. It's possible that some of the people you are responding to are on my auto-trash list, so I don't read them. Jim D. In response, however, I find it interesting that you chose my post to make your points about rhetorical tricks as vague, combative, overgeneralizing, tricky rhetoric seems to be the rule rather than the exception on this list. I agree that I haven't been an ideal participant, but ever since my first post, I/my posts have been subjected to the very sort thing you have cited my post as being an example of--which is fine. Who am I afterall, right? Thanks for your insights, Joel Wendland _ Getting married? Find tips, tools and the latest trends at MSN Life Events. http://lifeevents.msn.com/category.aspx?cid=married
Re: Iraq Communist Party statement on Atrocities at Abu Ghraib
I wrote: I wish people would stop using this rhetorical trick of dismissing others' views as fashionable or in fashion. Sometimes fashions are right, as with the late-1960s fashion of opposing the US war against Vietnam. BTW, a relative of mine uses the same trick, dismissing those who favor abortion rights, affirmative action, etc. as fashionable. It's standard among academics (and I should know, since I swim amongst them). Joel W: My response: I don't want to harp on this too much, as I agree with the general thrust of your post: I need to alter the style and method of my argumentation in order to make a better contribution to the discussion. I accept that. But doesn't the comparison you make bewteen my style of argumentation here and this relative of yours fall under the same category of rhetorical trick? When it comes down to it, there is no relation between the views I posted and the manner in which I chose to post them, to which you refer, and the views of this relative of yours. the trouble is rhetorical tricks cut both ways. Anyone can use them to obfuscate. But by trying to draw a relation between me and your relative, you are suggesting that I can likewise be dismissed. Isn't that the purpose of the comaprison? no. Anyway, this repsonse isn't meant to suggest that your criticism of style isn't correct. Thanks again for your post, I'll have to keep working on it. thanks. Jim D. Best, Joel Wendland _ Express yourself with the new version of MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/
Re: Iraq Communist Party statement on Atrocities at Abu Ghraib
Michael Perelman wrote: It is probably silly plotting the future of Iraq from a keyboard, but I think that talk of supporting a democratic force at this time is pretty far-fetched. it's more than far-fetched. Any democratic force supported by the US -- or by westerners -- would be discredited immediately. Jim D.
Re: Iraq Communist Party statement on Atrocities at Abu Ghraib
michael perelman wrote: It is probably silly plotting the future of Iraq from a keyboard, but I think that talk of supporting a democratic force at this time is pretty far-fetched. The US has created such turmoil that democracy at this time is probably impossible. From what I understand -- and my understanding is limited -- a democratic outcome at this time might be a Shi'ite theocracy. Another strongman might be able to institute some stability, but a bloodless exit seems impossible at this time. Of course, an exit is inevitable and the longer it is delayed the more blood will be shed. No simplistic easy answers exist. Getting out is urgent. Look. The only questions we can legitimately ask and attempt to answer are questions as to the policy of the (still very small) anti-war movement. Any attempt by anyone on this list (or in any other left forum) to detail what the U.S. government should do (either now or next January 20) is, I think, in bad faith, though probably not consciously so. It is in bad faith because it implies that _our_ (leftists) opinion will have an immediate (i.e. in the next 12 months) effect on u.s. action. It won't. In that context, the question of what should be done can only refer to what the movement should do. And the answer to that question is simple: any claim that it is complex is avoiding the real issues. The answer is: U.S. Out of Iraq. Now. No Conditions. Any other demand is academic in the sense of _merely_ academic, having no linkage to human activity, and belongs in the pages of Alice in Wonderland. Carrol
Re: Iraq Communist Party statement on Atrocities at Abu Ghraib
Doug Henwood wrote: Joel Wendland wrote: Carrol said: The situation is in fact going to get worse the longer the u.s. invaders stay there. Have I disagreed with this statement? Somewhere along the way, Carrol has come to think that I support the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq. You'll have to check the archives and find a quote. It's hopeless; forget it. No matter how many times you say you're against the U.S. occupation but think some sort of international presence excluding the U.S. might be warranted, he'll quote Kipling's What I'm claiming is (a) that all those nuances you and Joel talk about won't affect the world, because the only way we can affect the world is through mass action, and the only slogan for that mass action is U.S. Out Now. No Conditions. (b) that the U.S. government will _never_, in fact, carry out the kind of program you and Joel support. Hence you might as well be opposing troop withdrawal. And finally, emulating your habit of looking for the unconscious motives of anyone you disagree with, if I were to do that I would arrive at the conclusion that, without realizing it, you and Joel _are_ being affected by the ideology of the white man's burden. You really, again without quite realizing it, believe that Arabs can't work out their own fate without guidance from the u.s. Carrol
Grounds of Misunderstanding? was Re: Iraq Communist Party ...
I mention this as a possibility, that would explain a good deal of the clashes between me and some others over the last several years. I have never _once_ written about what I think the u.s. should do. I don't think what I think about that is going to butter any parsnips. My focus has _always_ been on what an organized _movement_ should do to organize itself and grow. I don't know whether this clarifies anything or not. It is a harmless academic pastime to muse over what it would be nice for the u.s. to do, but it doesn't get us anywhere. Carrol
International Criminal Court and Iraq
One of the differences between the UK and the USA as invaders and occupiers of Iraq is that the UK has signed up to the convention on the International Criminal Court at Rome and the USA has not. The reason is that the USA does not want its soldiers vulnerable to accusations of criminal activity for the sort of scandals that have come to light in Iraq. http://www.un.org/law/icc/ This latest scandal as we get it into perspective, is really about what is apparently widespread routine softening up torture by the regular military prior to serious interrogation by military intelligence - of a sort tantamount to psychological rape, and particularly offensive to muslims. This has backfired in a big way. It demonstrates the folly of trying to impose world governance on a dangerous world by arbitrary acts of violence by a hegemonic coalition of the willing. My prediction is that these sharp contradictions will intensify the momentum by international capitalism for global governance based on some sort of international rule of law. If Congress is going to have to investigate soldiers pornographic photographs of violence and humiliation from every theatre of war, it will be cheaper in time and worry to have its armed forces knowing that they are potentially answerable to an international criminal court from the start. With the ubiquity and compact size of digital cameras is any other system safe? Once again we can see the superstructure is highly influenced by the economic base. There is a momentum under way in human history independent of the will of individual men and women. It leads, through contradictory paths, to a communist world. Chris Burford London
Re: Iraq Communist Party statement on Atrocities at Abu Ghraib
Soula said: There is now an effort from many communist parties to denounce the Iraqi communist party for collaborating in the invasion. It seems that their collaboration purposely or not with the US and the CIA goes back to their vehement fight against the pan Arab project because the minorities represented inside the communist party feared losing class privileges inside their post colonial countires if and when diluted in the Arab whole. This seems tenuous, to say the least; what exactly were these supposed class privileges? How were they reconciled with the basic character of a communist party? Or were they in fact _civil_rights_, which would undoubtedly have been diluted in a pan-Arab state, if -- for example -- one was a Kurd, a Jew, an Turkoman, Coptic, etc? It's interesting that _both_ of the Iraqi communist parties and the main Shia party still oppose the insurgency. In fact, the Shia party is now backing away from earlier calls for an immediate US withdrawal (see below). regards, Grant. Interview with Abdul Aziz al Hakim Broadcast: 04/05/2004 Reporter: Peter Cave Transcript CAVE: [...] As the leader of the majority Shiite party - the Shiites make up 60% of the population here - would you expect to be elected president under a full democratic election? HAKIM: In the name of God the most merciful - thank you for your question. But the main priority for us is the re-establishment of stability in Iraq, putting the country back on the right path, returning the country to its people and looking to the next elections. CAVE: You voted for the interim constitution which gives the right of veto to some groups like the Kurds. You don't like that constitution neither does the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani . why did you vote for it? HAKIM: Our disagreement is based on the restriction the veto will impose on the free will of the entire Iraqi people Giving such rights to individual communities will limit the freedom of choice of the Iraqi people - and this is the basis of our opposition. MUJAHIDEEN SPOKESMAN IN STREET: This victory is a gift to the people of Fallujah and all Iraqis. We, the Mujahideen of Fallujah, promise the honest Iraqi people - NOT the governing council - that we will liberate Iraq starting from the city of Fallujah. CAVE, VOICE-OVER: Even within the Shiite religious leadership there are power struggles as various clerics manoeuvre for a role in post war Iraq. The most important, the Grand Ayatollah Sistani- a close ally of al Hakim, has been treading a fine diplomatic line with the coalition. So far, he's refused to endorse any of the plans for a new Iraqi government. Their main rival is the outspoken young cleric Moqtada al Sadr. His private army has been attacking US forces, and the moderates are under pressure to take a similar anti-American stance. SADR SUPPORTERS SHOUTING IN STREET: Yes! yes! al Sadr! CAVE: There are a lots of private militia in this country - It's said you have a private militia, Moqtada al Sadr has private militias, the Kurds have private militia,- is there a danger of a civil war? HAKIM: From the beginning, even before the war started we agreed to amalgamate all the militia into security organisations like the police and the army. We are still trying to do that, and in our opinion this is a very important task. We don't agree with the militia nor support their existence. Therefore we ask for a change in the policies of the occupying forces in handling the security situation in Iraq. CAVE: Clearly there is a security crisis in this country. When we spoke last year you said the Americans should leave immediately - is that still your view? HAKIM: My opinion is that the occupying forces have taken the wrong political path in trying to fix this situation, and this is a dangerous issue. We have already expressed out viewpoint as the high Islamic council and as a ruling committee of Iraq - but unfortunately until now we haven't seen any serious changes to these policies. CAVE: How long should the coalition stay - how long should they stay here and keep the peace? HAKIM: I think the occupying forces should follow a correct security policy which will justify their stay here. I think when these policies are corrected peace will prevail very soon in Iraq. CAVE: How do you feel about Moqtadr al Sadr and what he's been doing over the past few weeks? HAKIM: We think that everybody should work towards the stability of Iraq and any actions to the contrary only help the enemies of the country, such as the followers of Saddam. And for all these reasons our principle is to create order in Iraq, hoping to create stability, because the chaotic situation is not to our advantage. CAVE: Just one final question - What is your view of George Bush's War on Terror. Do you think it is a war against Islam? HAKIM: For the moment we just think about Iraq and its stability - to salvage the country from this situation, to liberate it from occupation, and to return its
Re: Iraq Communist Party statement on Atrocities at Abu Ghraib
That is one Hakim down and probably another to go. that is no Shiite opposition, You have got to also realise that there is a stronger Persia-Arab divide than what shiism can pull together because the Iranians in Iraq represented the aristocracy and if one were to read behind religious symbolism or the class differences then the dispute within the shia clergy over 'wilayat al fakih' is indeed an Arab-Iranian divide.. that is why sadr went it alone and that is why sadr's father also steered clear from iran. the post colonial structures in the near east especially iraq were tailor made to preserve minority interests so that it would be impossible to develop a broad anti imperialist alliance. the class formation in 'peripheral capitalism developing in severe crisis' is a case of disarticulation wherein economic interests are never so well formed within a class to break the old social bonds.so it is no wonder that the Iraqi communist party was first to approve the partition of Palestine in stark contrast to broad Arab opinion. it immediately fell out favour. if you want to know how irrelevant are communist parties in the near east just read the proceedings of one their congresses to see how they paid more attention to the SALT one and two than to the every day problems and culture of the working class. disarticulation is social class formation in severe, very severe, crisis. and yes Kurds Assyrians Christians Jews did enjoya higher standard of living in Iraqbecause of ghettoism. something they do not want to lose pan Arabism the latter beingthe real enemy of imperialism because of itscloseness to the grassroots and because a bigger arab state is in itself the real danger.read to that effect the now disclosed state department notes on the unity between Syria and Egypt. Do you Yahoo!?Win a $20,000 Career Makeover at Yahoo! HotJobs
Re: Iraq Communist Party statement on Atrocities at Abu Ghraib
Soula said: That is one Hakim down and probably another to go. that is no Shiite opposition, You have got to also realise that there is a stronger Persia-Arab divide than what shiism can pull together because the Iranians in Iraq represented the aristocracy and if one were to read behind religious symbolism or the class differences then the dispute within the shia clergy over 'wilayat al fakih' is indeed an Arab-Iranian divide.. that is why sadr went it alone and that is why sadr's father also steered clear from iran. Don't worry, I'm somewhat familiar with Arab and Islamic politics. History shows that it doesn't take many insurgents to make an insurgency. So why are we supposed to assume that Sadr represents anyone other than himself and his vanguard? Or that he is more significant than those explicity opposed to the resistance? Why is it that western liberals and leftists think they know better than the opposition parties in Iraq? the post colonial structures in the near east especially iraq were tailor made to preserve minority interests Do you mean political structures? A lot of us would say the same goes for all capitalist states. the class formation in 'peripheral capitalism developing in severe crisis' is a case of disarticulation wherein economic interests are never so well formed within a class to break the old social bonds. What is a class without well formed economic interests? if you want to know how irrelevant are communist parties in the near east just read the proceedings of one their congresses to see how they paid more attention to the SALT one and two than to the every day problems and culture of the working class. How relevant did the Russian Bolsheviks seem in 1913? This irrelevance sits uneasily with the Ba'ath slaughtering and imprisoning communists wherever possible. and yes Kurds Assyrians Christians Jews did enjoy a higher standard of living in Iraq because of ghettoism. I think this is a putting the cart before the horse: i.e. ghettoes, in my opinion, are designed to reduce the standard of a living of a cultural group seen by ethnocentrists as parasites (or whatever) because all of them supposedly have a higher standard of living (not the reverse). ...something they do not want to lose pan Arabism the latter being the real enemy of imperialism because of its closeness to the grassroots Maybe. But which pan-Arabism? There have been many failed Arab nationalisms and my observation -- from talking to Arabs, from my formal studying of Arab history and from years of reading news stories --- is that nationalisms are now far less tangible at the grassroots than the various Islamist ideologies. For better or worse. regards, Grant.
Re: Iraq Communist Party statement on Atrocities at Abu Ghraib
if one were to read behind religious symbolism or the class differences then the dispute within the shia clergy over 'wilayat al fakih' is indeed an Arab-Iranian divide.. that is why sadr went it alone and that is why sadr's father also steered clear from iran. That is interesting. Any books and article that you can recommend on this topic? -- Yoshie * Critical Montages: http://montages.blogspot.com/ * Bring Them Home Now! http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/ * Calendars of Events in Columbus: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html, http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php, http://www.cpanews.org/ * Student International Forum: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osudivest.org/ * Al-Awda-Ohio: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio * Solidarity: http://www.solidarity-us.org/
Re: Iraq Communist Party statement on Atrocities at Abu Ghraib
I usually do not respond to long discussions although I often want to because I am always pressed for time. it struck you said that you know something about the middle East I presume you probably read Arabic. Grant Lee [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Soula said:"That is one Hakim down and probably another to go. that is no Shiiteopposition, You have got to also realize that there is a strongerPersia-Arab divide than what schism can pull together because the Iraniansin Iraq represented the aristocracy and if one were to read behind religioussymbolism or the class differences then the dispute within the shia clergyover 'wilayat al fakih' is indeed an Arab-Iranian divide.. that is why sadrwent it alone and that is why sadr's father also steered clear from iran."Don't worry, I'm somewhat familiar with Arab and Islamic politics. Historyshows that it doesn't take many insurgents to make an insurgency. So why arewe supposed to assume that Sadr represents anyone other than himself and his"vanguard"? Or that he is more significant than those explicitly opposed tothe "resistance"? Why is it that western liberals and leftists think theyknow better than the opposition parties in Iraq? That is rather a numerical question that leaps into a qualitative judgment. I do not think the occupation forces nor their cronies enjoy a lot of support in Iraq. in old societies my friend anonymity is out of the question.. collaboration with the Americans here will not go away for centuries.. the place is older than modern imperialism. let us not take sides, simply loving the Americans will not fly. and occupation is rather to gruesome not to push everyone to the brink quickly."the post colonial structures in the near east especially Iraq were tailormade to preserve minority interests"Do you mean political structures? A lot of us would say the same goes forall capitalist states. let us use social in the broad sense so as to encompass the political within that. but if so let us give the particular in nation or class formation some weight so as not to make an absolute out of a single historical project, european state building.I am sure the similarities are many but one straw will break the camel's back. would it not be too easy to put everything under the single roof of capitalism. just for adequacy in thought let us say that the way states were engineered in the southern ottoman provinces took note of these minorities."the class formation in 'peripheral capitalism developing in severe crisis'is a case of disarticulation wherein economic interests are never so wellformed within a class to break the old social bonds."What is a "class" without "well formed" economic interests? that is easy enough: there is so much economic instability in this developing market that taking refuge in precapitalist social organisational forms e.g. tribes etc is essential."if you want to know how irrelevant are communist parties in the near eastjust read the proceedings of one their congresses to see how they paid moreattention to the SALT one and two than to the every day problems and cultureof the working class.How relevant did the Russian Bolsheviks seem in 1913? This "irrelevance"sits uneasily with the Ba'ath slaughtering and imprisoning communistswherever possible. here we are back to who is to blame.. you forget that communist allied themselves with Kassem first and did a nasty job on pan arabist there was a lot of tit for tat. "and yes Kurds Assyrians Christians Jews did enjoy a higher standard ofliving in Iraq because of ghettoism."I think this is a putting the cart before the horse: i.e. ghettoes, in myopinion, are designed to reduce the standard of a living of a cultural groupseen by ethnocentrists as "parasites" (or whatever) because "all of them"supposedly have a higher standard of living (not the reverse). let us not get stuck on the language, all that meant is that these groups formed a cohesive whole on the basis of ethnicity."...something they do not want to lose pan Arabism the latter being the realenemy of imperialism because of its closeness to the grassroots"Maybe. But which pan-Arabism? There have been many failed Arab nationalismsand my observation -- from talking to Arabs, from my formal studying of Arabhistory and from years of reading news stories --- is that nationalisms arenow far less tangible at the grassroots than the various Islamistideologies. For better or worse. Indeed that ended with the Nasser period in 1979.. and since then there was the Saudi period and decline. real gdp percapita growth of about negative two percent, negative productivity growth, lower wages, lower investment rates -now five percent below global average of 22 percent.worse conditions for women, and worse of all, communist allying themselves US marines.. but let me say that the fundamentalist project cannot fly in the Arab world
Re: Iraq Communist Party statement on Atrocities at Abu Ghraib
Grant Lee wrote: It's interesting that _both_ of the Iraqi communist parties and the main Shia party still oppose the insurgency. In fact, the Shia party is now backing away from earlier calls for an immediate US withdrawal (see below). regards, Grant. Interview with Abdul Aziz al Hakim Of course Abdul Aziz al Hakim is opposed to an immediate US withdrawal. He is a member of the quisling Iraqi governing council. Harper's Magazine, July, 2003 by Charles Glass SATURDAY, DECEMBER 14, 2002, LONDON A headline on a newspaper outside the Metropole Hotel, where factions of the Iraqi opposition are convening this week, declares: Troops Start Countdown to War. One can feel the expectation among the exiles, hundreds strong, in the hotel's lobbies and cafes. War is coming, and on its winds they will be carried back to Iraq, where they imagine they'll govern. But among the turbaned mullahs and dark-suited Arabs and Kurds are the men from Washington: State Department, Defense, White House, and CIA are all here, conspiring in corridors. On the fourteenth floor, George W. Bush's special envoy to the Iraqi opposition, Zalmay Khalilzad--fresh from his king-making exercise in Afghanistan--pulls the strings of the Iraqi marionettes below. This, a sign says, is The Iraqi Opposition Conference, London, 14-16 December 2002. For Democracy and Salvation of Iraq. It's a bit of the Middle East in England, so the conference begins late and with a recitation from the Koran. On a dais before the 320 delegates are the principal figures of the Iraqi opposition: Jalal Talabani, Massoud Barzani, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, and Ahmad Chalabi. full: http://articles.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m/is_1838_307/ai_105367408 -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: Iraq Communist Party statement on Atrocities at Abu Ghraib
Louis said: Of course Abdul Aziz al Hakim is opposed to an immediate US withdrawal. He is a member of the quisling Iraqi governing council. Oh, I see, they're _quislings_. Well that settles that. No doubt you've conducted a thorough, professional survey of Iraqis to ascertain their views of the council?
Re: Iraq Communist Party statement on Atrocities at Abu Ghraib
Grant Lee wrote: Louis said: Of course Abdul Aziz al Hakim is opposed to an immediate US withdrawal. He is a member of the quisling Iraqi governing council. Oh, I see, they're _quislings_. Well that settles that. No doubt you've conducted a thorough, professional survey of Iraqis to ascertain their views of the council? I don't need to poll Iraqis. It is a fact that the 25 members of the IGC were handpicked by the USA. If this does not constitute a quisling government, then nothing does. Furthermore, on the question of ascertaining views. It doesn't matter to me if Iraqis acquiesced in a government that was imposed by force. So did the people of Grenada. The left should not be in the business of doing free PR for imperialism. They have FOX TV, Thomas Friedman et al for that. -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: Iraq Communist Party statement on Atrocities at Abu Ghraib
I cannot understand what kind of communist party would join with the US, or why we should take such a party seriously. Maybe I am missing something in my ignorance. On Wed, May 05, 2004 at 10:14:16AM -0400, Louis Proyect wrote: Grant Lee wrote: Louis said: Of course Abdul Aziz al Hakim is opposed to an immediate US withdrawal. He is a member of the quisling Iraqi governing council. Oh, I see, they're _quislings_. Well that settles that. No doubt you've conducted a thorough, professional survey of Iraqis to ascertain their views of the council? I don't need to poll Iraqis. It is a fact that the 25 members of the IGC were handpicked by the USA. If this does not constitute a quisling government, then nothing does. Furthermore, on the question of ascertaining views. It doesn't matter to me if Iraqis acquiesced in a government that was imposed by force. So did the people of Grenada. The left should not be in the business of doing free PR for imperialism. They have FOX TV, Thomas Friedman et al for that. -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
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.
Re: Iraq Communist Party statement on Atrocities at Abu Ghraib
Grant Lee wrote: 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? If imperialism is about anything, it is about conquering weaker nations through military force and economic coercion; then imposing occupation regimes. It is astonishing that you can't see your way clear to this, but then again a lot of decent people from William Shawcross to some not so decent like Christopher Hitchens haven't either. -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: Iraq Communist Party statement on Atrocities at Abu Ghraib
Michael Perelman wrote: I cannot understand what kind of communist party would join with the US, or why we should take such a party seriously. Maybe I am missing something in my ignorance. No, you are not missing anything. The kind of communist party that would join with the u.s. is a party of careerists and (as Lou says) Quislings whose only relationship to the communist tradition is to spit on it. One of the things many of us in the movement against the first Gulf War argued even at that time was that the U.S. aggression against Iraq meant that there were only two futures for Iraq: A government opposed to u.s. interests or a government supported by permnanent u.s. occupation. We were only partly right. We underestimated the heroism and determination of the Iraqi people. There is only one possible future for Iraq. Carrol
Re: Iraq Communist Party statement on Atrocities at Abu Ghraib
I don't disagree with you, but I cannot see why we should take this group more seriously than Chalabi or other collaborators. On Wed, May 05, 2004 at 11:10:00PM +0800, Grant Lee wrote: 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. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: Iraq Communist Party statement on Atrocities at Abu Ghraib
Grant Lee [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: And what is imperialism, if not the presumption that one knows better than people on the ground? surely there is a qualitative difference between _real_ imperialist policy (i.e., the presumption that one knows better than the people on the ground and thus imposes one's view with bayonets, bombs, and blockades) and verbal snobbery (the presumption that one knows better than people on the ground, which is stated in words). Equating these two types of imperialism is nothing but obfuscation, either an effort to cover up the real imperialist policy or to use fallacious reasoning to win an argument or both. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Iraq Communist Party statement on Atrocities at Abu Ghraib
Last post for me today. My usage of imperialism a few posts back --- the presumption that one knows better than people on the ground --- was not supposed to be definitive or exclusive of all other usages. Nor did I say it was. Just for the record, I was opposed to the invasion, and I took part in demonstrations against it. I didn't expect it to make any difference at the time and that horse has long since bolted. And perhaps --- just perhaps -- Iraqis have reasons to feel that the effects of a sudden US withdrawal would be as bad, or worse, than the occupation itself regards, Grant
Re: Iraq Communist Party statement on Atrocities at Abu Ghraib
Devine, James wrote: and verbal snobbery (the presumption that one knows better than people on the ground, which is stated in words). Equating these two types of imperialism is nothing but obfuscation, either an effort to cover up the real imperialist policy or to use fallacious reasoning to win an argument or both. In any case, just as the people of Iraq have to act (will act and are acting)for themselves, so we in the imperialist homeland must act for ourselves in response to the actions of our government. And that action has to be organized around the slogan of U.S. Out Now, No Conditions. I don't see how this constitutes even verbal snobbery: we aren't telling the Iraqis what they must do; we are doing what we must do. Carrol
Newsweek columnist: The American objective in Iraq should be to get out
Exit Strategy The American objective in Iraq should be to get out WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY By Christopher Dickey Newsweek Updated: 12:13 p.m. ET May 05, 2004 May 4 - John Kerry himself asked the question hell have to answer if he ever becomes president, and I, for one, would like to hear him answer it now. Way back in April 1971, when his memories of combat were still fresh, he sat in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and famously demanded, How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? He was talking, then, about Vietnam. But he should give us the answer, now, about Iraq. Because however much you parse the differences between the wars, they share a central, inescapable problem: no exit. Or, more precisely, no exit that politicians talk about honestly. Right now, Kerrys taking the position that Richard Nixon took in the campaign of 1968, which was to offer the same basic approach as the sitting president, but say hed do it better. Candidate Kerry cant get away with claims to have a secret plan, as candidate Nixon did. But the plan Kerry does offer presumes he can persuade leaders of other countries to send lots of troops to Iraqmaybe some of those same leaders who supposedly told Kerry, secretly, they want Bush voted out of office. Mistakes have been made, Kerry said in his big Iraq policy speech last week (note the weirdly passive tone). But we do not have the choice just to pick up and leave, and leave behind a failed state, a new haven for terrorists, a creator of instability in the region. OK. But how do we know when that jobs done? What makes Iraq a successful state? And how can we be sure that the spectacle of a continued American presence wont inspire more terrorism around the world? As we struggle to solve the insoluble problems of Iraq, what do we do about the moral rot that occupation brings to the occupiers? How do you repair the kind of damage done to our image by those pictures from Abu Ghurayb prison? Theyre disgusting, to use President Bushs word, not just because they suggest prisoners have been tortured, but because they are racist pornography: a perky young white woman, who could be the girl next door, points out the sexual equipment of naked, humiliated Arab prisoners. Whats next? Girls Gone Wild goes to Abu Ghurayb? They are peculiarly and profoundly American, those cheery snapshots, especially in the eyes of those Arabs to whom we said wed bring dignity and democracy. Friends of mine at senior levels in the American government (professionals, not political appointees), are simply stunned. We have become a zealous, arrogant and deeply racist country, one told me. Not the traditional black-white racism of our respective youth but one that has elevated American to a race that is above all others. Mistakes have been made? Indeed: no weapons of mass destruction. No operational links to Al Qaeda. Now this. You have destroyed this country under false pretenses, a senior United Nations official says he warned the White House when it started trying to drag international organizations back into the line of fire. The only justification for whats been done is to occupy the high moral ground. Well, thats a whole lot harder to do today than it was even a week ago, and a few reprimands and investigations arent going to change that fact. What the American people want to hear from Bush or Kerry or anyone who can tell them is not that well stay the course, but that we can see the finish line. Maybe Im wrong about this, you tell me at [EMAIL PROTECTED], but I think what folks really want is a plan for getting out of Iraq, putting it behind us, and making the world safer for Americans in the process. Well, one way to start is to say getting out really is the objective; say it clearly, honestly, unequivocally and absolutely. full: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4900136/ -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: Iraq Communist Party statement on Atrocities at Abu Ghraib
Carrol Cox said: No, you are not missing anything. The kind of communist party that would join with the u.s. is a party of careerists and (as Lou says) Quislings whose only relationship to the communist tradition is to spit on it. This observation about careerist is a bit ironic, given the demgoraphic of the people who post to this list, don't you think? Now I've promised myself to avoid being simply insulting in my posts from now on. I think we have to take the ICP seriously for a number of important reasons. First, the alternative to a peaceful transition (regardless of its framework) to a secular (or at least mostly) democratic state is what? I know there are a lot of fans of more violence and uprisings on this list and what not (still a problematic postion in my view for people living in the west ), but this war is not really like Vietnam nor is it really like Palestine, or whatever comparison is in fashion these days. Who is supporting the uprising? What is its ideological orientation? Part of it is religious fundamentalists; part of it is former Ba'ath Party miltiary elements. The choices for social organization seem to be a return to Saddam-style rule (fascist, notwithstanding some on the left even on this list who think he was ok) or a system closer to that of Iran -- both imposed on an economic infrastructure completely demolished by three wars and 10 years of sanctions in just over 2 decades. Now who can take seriously a detached left located in the west that objectively supports one of these options (and it really doesn't matter which because that western left is only interested seeing the U.S. suffer military defeats not peace and reconstruction). Best, Joel Wendland http://www.politicalaffairs.net http://classwarnotes.blogspot.com _ Stop worrying about overloading your inbox - get MSN Hotmail Extra Storage! http://join.msn.com/?pgmarket=en-uspage=hotmail/es2ST=1/go/onm00200362ave/direct/01/
Re: Iraq Communist Party statement on Atrocities at Abu Ghraib
Joel Wendland wrote: west ), but this war is not really like Vietnam nor is it really like Palestine, or whatever comparison is in fashion these days. Really? Almost the entire Arab and Moslem world sees the US as having the same relationship to the Iraqis as the Zionist entity has toward the Palestinians. Who is supporting the uprising? What is its ideological orientation? Part of it is religious fundamentalists; part of it is former Ba'ath Party miltiary elements. Real politics involves real choices. Your comrades in Iraq have aligned themselves with the most reactionary imperialist power in history. They sit side-by-side with Chalabi, the crook and CIA asset, the rotten Kurdish leadership which sold out the PKK to the Turkish military, and Shi'ite clerics who are every bit as backward as those you disparage. At least Sadr has stood up to imperialism rather than crawl at its feet for some crumbs. Now who can take seriously a detached left located in the west that objectively supports one of these options (and it really doesn't matter which because that western left is only interested seeing the U.S. suffer military defeats not peace and reconstruction). I was always under the impression that peace comes only when the US is dealt a military defeat. -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
