Iraq Moratorium, Friday March 21st

Posted on March 19, 2008 by RagBlog

Iraq Moratorium, Good Friday coincide

The convergence of the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war on March 19 and the monthly Iraq Moratorium observance on March 21 has sparked hundreds of antiwar actions across the country this week.

The Iraq Moratorium, which encourages local grassroots action on the third Friday of every month, coincides with the Christian observance of Good Friday, March 21, so some actions will include a religious theme.

The Pike’s Peak Justice Coalition will take part in Pax Christi’s Way of the Cross/Way of Justice procession in downtown Colorado Springs.

A Hartford, CT “Lamentation and Protest” will begin with an interfaith prayer service, followed by a silent procession to the federal building, where marchers will pile stones bearing the names of victims of the Iraq war. Church bells will ring in a number of communities in Massachusetts to mark Moratorium observances.

In Cincinnati, candlelight vigils will be held in eight neighborhoods, and dozens of street corner vigils are planned across the country. Most vigils take place every month, and some have been going since the war began.

In a session called “Write Some Wrongs,” people in Cornwall, CT will meet at the public library to write their Congressman about “what is in your heart about the Iraq war and what you want him to do about it.”

The Iraq Moratorium encourage local organizers to “do their own thing” on the third Friday of the month – but to do something, whatever it is, to end the war. It is all a loosely-knit national grassroots effort operating under the Iraq Moratorium umbrella.

Friday is the seventh monthly Moratorium, and more than 800 events have been listed on the group’s website, http://www.IraqMoratorium.org/, with reports, photos and videos.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: BILL CHRISTOFFERSON 414/486-9651

NOTE: For events in your community, check the website, http://www.IraqMoratorium.org/.

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Arthur C. Clarke 1917-2008 : The Ultimate Odyssey

Posted on March 18, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Arthur C. Clarke, Premier Science Fiction Writer, Dies at 90
By Gerald Jonas / New York Times / March 18, 2008

Arthur C. Clarke, a writer whose seamless blend of scientific expertise and poetic imagination helped usher in the space age, died early Wednesday in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where he had lived since 1956. He was 90.

Rohan de Silva, an aide to Mr. Clarke, said the author died after experiencing breathing problems, The Associated Press reported. Mr. Clarke had post-polio syndrome for the last two decades and used a wheelchair.

From his detailed forecast of telecommunications satellites in 1945, more than a decade before the first orbital rocket flight, to his co-creation, with the director Stanley Kubrick, of the classic science fiction film “2001: A Space Odyssey,” Mr. Clarke was both prophet and promoter of the idea that humanity’s destiny lay beyond the confines of Earth.

Other early advocates of a space program argued that it would pay for itself by jump-starting new technology. Mr. Clarke set his sights higher. Paraphrasing William James, he suggested that exploring the solar system could serve as the “moral equivalent” of war, giving an outlet to energies that might otherwise lead to nuclear holocaust.

Mr. Clarke’s influence on public attitudes toward space was acknowledged by American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts, by scientists like the astronomer Carl Sagan and by movie and television producers. Gene Roddenberry credited Mr. Clarke’s writings with giving him courage to pursue his “Star Trek” project in the face of indifference, even ridicule, from television executives.

In his later years, after settling in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Mr. Clarke continued to bask in worldwide acclaim as both a scientific sage and the pre-eminent science fiction writer of the 20th century. In 1998, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.

He played down his success in foretelling a globe-spanning network of communication satellites. “No one can predict the future,” he always maintained.

But as a science fiction writer, he couldn’t resist drawing up timelines for what he called “possible futures.” Far from displaying uncanny prescience, these conjectures mainly demonstrated his lifelong, and often disappointed, optimism about the peaceful uses of technology — from his calculation in 1945 that atomic-fueled rockets could be no more than 20 years away to his conviction in 1999 that “clean, safe power” from “cold fusion” would be commercially available in the first years of the new millennium.

Mr. Clarke was well aware of the importance of his role as science spokesman to the general population: “Most technological achievements were preceded by people writing and imagining them,” he noted. “I’m sure we would not have had men on the Moon,” he added, if it had not been for H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. “I’m rather proud of the fact that I know several astronauts who became astronauts through reading my books.”

Arthur Charles Clarke was born on Dec. 16, 1917, in the seaside town of Minehead, Somerset, England. His father was a farmer; his mother a post office telegrapher. The eldest of four children, he was educated as a scholarship student at a secondary school in the nearby town of Taunton. He remembered a number of incidents in early childhood that awakened his scientific imagination: exploratory rambles along the Somerset shoreline, with its “wonderland of rock pools;” a card from a pack of cigarettes that his father showed him, with a picture of a dinosaur; the gift of a Meccano set, a British construction toy similar to the Erector sets sold in the United States.

He also spent time “mapping the Moon” through a telescope he constructed himself out of “a cardboard tube and a couple of lenses.” But the formative event of his childhood was his discovery, at age 13 — the year his father died — of a copy of “Astounding Stories of Super-Science,” then the leading American science fiction magazine. He found its mix of boyish adventure and far-out (sometimes bogus) science intoxicating.

While still in school, Mr. Clarke joined the newly formed British Interplanetary Society, a small band of sci-fi enthusiasts who held the controversial view that space travel was not only possible but could be achieved in the not-so-distant future. In 1937, a year after he moved to London to take a civil service job, he began writing his first science fiction novel, a story of the far, far future that was later published as “Against the Fall of Night” (1953).

Mr. Clarke spent World War II as an officer in the Royal Air Force. In 1943 he was assigned to work with a team of American scientist-engineers who had developed the first radar-controlled system for landing airplanes in bad weather. That experience led to Mr. Clarke’s only non-science fiction novel, “Glide Path” (1963). More important, it led in 1945 to a technical paper, published in the British journal “Wireless World,” establishing the feasibility of artificial satellites as relay stations for Earth-based communications.

The meat of the paper was a series of diagrams and equations showing that “space stations” parked in a circular orbit roughly 22,240 miles above the equator would exactly match the Earth’s rotation period of 24 hours. In such an orbit, a satellite would remain above the same spot on the ground, providing a “stationary” target for transmitted signals, which could then be retransmitted to wide swaths of territory below. This so-called geostationary orbit has been officially designated the Clarke Orbit by the International Astronomical Union.

Decades later, Mr. Clarke called his “Wireless World” paper “the most important thing I ever wrote.” In a wry piece entitled, “A Short Pre-History of Comsats, Or: How I Lost a Billion Dollars in My Spare Time,” he claimed that a lawyer had dissuaded him from applying for a patent. The lawyer, he said, thought the notion of relaying signals from space was too far-fetched to be taken seriously.

But Mr. Clarke also acknowledged that nothing in his paper — from the notion of artificial satellites to the mathematics of the geostationary orbit — was new. His chief contribution was to clarify and publicize an idea whose time had almost come — a feat of consciousness-raising that he would continue to excel at throughout his career.

The year 1945 also saw the launch of Mr. Clarke’s career as a fiction writer. He sold a short story called “Rescue Party” to the same magazine — now re-titled Astounding Science Fiction — that had captured his imagination 15 years earlier.

For the next two years, Mr. Clarke attended Kings College, London, on the British equivalent of a G.I. Bill scholarship, graduating in 1948 with first-class honors in physics and mathematics. But he continued to write and sell stories, and after a stint as assistant editor at the scientific journal Physics Abstracts, he decided he could support himself as a freelance writer. Success came quickly. His primer on space flight, “The Exploration of Space,” was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection in 1951

Over the next two decades, he wrote a series of nonfiction bestsellers as well as his best-known novels, including “Childhood’s End” (1953) and “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968). For a scientifically trained writer whose optimism about technology seemed boundless, Mr. Clarke delighted in confronting his characters with obstacles they could not overcome without help from forces beyond their comprehension.

In “Childhood’s End,” a race of aliens who happen to look like devils imposes peace on an Earth torn by cold war tensions. But the aliens’ real mission is to prepare humanity for the next stage of evolution. In an ending that is both heartbreakingly poignant and literally earth-shattering, Mr. Clarke suggests that mankind can escape its suicidal tendencies only by ceasing to be human.

“There was nothing left of Earth,” he wrote. “It had nourished them, through the fierce moments of their inconceivable metamorphosis, as the food stored in a grain of wheat feeds the infant plant while it climbs toward the Sun.”

The cold war also forms the backdrop for “2001.” Its genesis was a short story called “The Sentinel,” first published in a science fiction magazine in 1951. It tells of an alien artifact found on the Moon, a little crystalline pyramid that explorers from Earth destroy while trying to open. One explorer realizes that the artifact was a kind of fail-safe beacon; in silencing it, human beings have signaled their existence to its far-off creators.

Read the rest of it here.

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Healing the Wounds of Race

Posted on March 18, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Rev. Jeremiah Wright at Trinity United Church of Christ.

Prophetic truth-telling from the black pulpit.
By Jim Wallis / Huffington Post / March 18, 2008

It has simmered throughout this campaign, and now race has exploded into the center of the media debate about the presidential race. Just when a black political leader is calling us all to a new level of responsibility, hope, and unity; the old and divisive rhetoric of race from both blacks and whites is rearing its ugly head to bring down the best chance we have had for years of finally moving forward.

And that is indeed the real issue here. A black man is closer to possibly becoming president than ever before in American history. And this black man is not even running as “a black man” but as a new kind of political leader who believes the country is ready for a new kind of politics. But a new kind of politics and a new face for political leadership is deeply threatening to all the forces that represent the old kind of politics in America. And all the rising focus on race in this election campaign has one purpose and one purpose alone — to stop Barack Obama from becoming President of the United States.

Barack Obama should win or lose his Party’s nomination or the presidency based on the positions he takes regarding the great issues of our time and his capacity to lead the country and America’s role in the world. He must not win or lose because of the old politics of race in America. That would be a tragedy for all of us.

The cable news stations and talk radio are playing carefully selected excerpts of the most potentially incendiary statements from Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s fiery sermons, the retiring pastor of Barack Obama and his family’s home Trinity Church in Chicago. Obama, while affirming the tremendous work his church has done in his city and around the nation, has condemned the most controversial remarks of his pastor. But the whole controversy points to the enormous gap in understanding between the mainstream black community in America and the experience of many white Americans. And that is what we are going to have to heal if we are ever to move forward.

Here is what I mean.

There is a deep well of both frustration and anger in the African American community in these United States of America. And those feelings are borne of the concrete experience of real oppression, discrimination, and blocked opportunities that most of America’s white citizens take for granted. African Americans across the spectrum of income and success will speak personally to those feelings of frustration and anger, when white people are willing to listen. But usually we are not. In 2008, to still not comprehend or seek to understand the reality of black frustration and anger, is to be in a state of white denial which, very sadly, is where many white Americans are.

The black church pulpit has historically been a place of prophetic truth-telling about the realities that black people experience in their own country. Indeed, the black church has often been the only place where such truths are ever told. And, black preachers have had the pastoral task of nurturing the spirits of people who feel beaten down week after week. Strong and prophetic words from black church pulpits are often a source of comfort and affirmation for black congregations. The truth is that many white Americans would indeed feel uncomfortable with the rhetoric of many black preachers from many black churches all across the country.

But if you look beyond the grainy black and white clips of the dashiki clad Rev. Wright and the angry black male voice (all designed to provoke stereotypes and fear) to actually listen to what the words are saying about America being run by “rich white people” while blacks have cabs speeding by them, and about American misdeeds around the world, it’s hard to disagree with many of the facts presented. It’s rather the angry tone of Wright’s comments that provides the offense and the controversy.

Ironically, a new generation of black Americans is now eager and ready to move beyond the frustration and anger to a new experience of opportunity and hope. And nobody represents that shift more than Barack Obama. There is a generational shift occurring within the black community itself, between an older generation who are sometimes perceived to be stuck in the politics of victimization and grievance, and a younger generation who believe that opportunity and progress are now possible–not by ignoring, but by being committed to actually changing the facts of oppression and discrimination.

Barack Obama represents that hope of dealing with the substance of the issues of injustice while at the same time articulating the politics of hope, and even the possibility of racial unity.

Obama’s attraction to many who are white, especially a new generation, demonstrates the promise of a new racial politics in America. But to be a leader for a new generation of black Americans, Barack Obama had to be firmly rooted in the black church tradition, where the critique of white America, the sustenance of the African American community, and God’s promise for the future are all clearly articulated. That’s why he began attending Trinity Church where he was converted to Jesus Christ in the black liberationist tradition of, among others, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

So it would be a great tragedy if the old rhetoric of black frustration and anger were to now hurt Barack Obama, who has become the best hope of beginning to heal that very frustration and anger. Obama has never chosen to talk about race in the way that Rev. Jeremiah Wright does on the video clips that keep playing, and indeed has never played “the race card” at any time in this election. It’s been his opponents that have, especially the right-wing conservative media machine that wants America to believe he is secretly a Muslim and is from a “racist” church.

This most recent controversy over race just demonstrates how enormous the gap still is between whites and blacks in America–in our experience and our capacity to understand one another. May God help us to heal that divide and truly bless America.

Jim Wallis is the author of The Great Awakening, Editor-in-Chief of Sojourners and blogs at http://www.godspolitics.com/.

Source.


Is America Too Racist for a Black President?

[This is an interview with Rev. Jeremiah Wright conducted for Spiegel International by Marc Hujer one year ago, posted on March 13, 2007. Rev. Wright is highly respected in clerical circles; here is some of the substance behind the media-trumpeted bombast. Thorne Dreyer / The Rag Blog.]


SPIEGEL: Barack Obama seems to be developing a compassionate liberal answer to the so-called “compassionate conservative” platform US President George W. Bush ran on in 2000. Is the Democratic Party looking to take more care of the religious voter?

Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.: I wouldn’t say “more care.” The United Church of Christ has a 350 year history of being on the side of social justice. Our denomination was against slavery. We were a part of the Underground Railroad; part of the abolitionist movement. So it’s nothing new for us.

What is new is that Barack says we need to stop being afraid to talk about our faith and how our faith and values influence public policy and the decisions we make. We’ve been biting our tongues because we don’t want to offend our Jewish friends and our Muslim friends. The new movement is toward not being afraid to talk about your faith. But you should also stop thinking you have absolute truth — that your faith is the only one.

SPIEGEL: Isn’t that the nature of faith, though? Believing strongly in your faith to the exclusion of others?

Wright: We’re not on this planet alone. Right now, the average American or the average German or the average Brit couldn’t tell you the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite. I mean, you got Christians who lynch people in the name of Jesus, and you got Muslims who fly planes into buildings. But you got some Muslims who don’t do that. You got some Christians who ain’t got time to lynch people.

We need to stop lumping folks together and start living together. Otherwise, we’re going to kill each other off because you don’t believe what I believe. That’s crazy. Before Democrats were quiet because they didn’t want people to think they were fanatics.

Barack has broken that ice.

SPIEGEL: But how far can you go? As Barack Obama points out in his book, “The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream,” religion is more about convictions and truth, whereas politics is about compromise. Where are the limits to introducing faith into the political arena?

Wright: Let’s take a simple issue. Far right radical conservative Christians want to put prayer back in the school. Now my family may start off the day in prayer, and I’m going to teach my daughters and my sons how to pray. But I’m not going to force your kids to pray like my kids. In public, I have to understand that I’m still going to pray tonight and tomorrow morning, and my girls and my son better pray too.

But I’m not going to force my Jewish friends, my Muslim friends, my Hindu friends, my Sikh friends to hear a Christian prayer in a public forum like school. We understand that private faith does not force public decisions. That’s how you work at compromise. I haven’t given up what I believe, but I live in community with — in a city, state, nation, and world with — people who don’t believe what I believe. That doesn’t make them defective or inferior.

SPIEGEL: That sounds different from what Obama wrote in his book. He wrote that faith should return to the center of both private and public life. Should he ever become president, what would that mean?
.
Wright: From what I know of Barack — from what he has written, from his speeches and from the life I know he has lived — faith in public life does not mean that God tells you to bomb another country or to go get Saddam Hussein. Faith in public life means that every child, regardless of their religious belief, should have health care. That every child should be able to go to school based on the intelligence they have not only the ability of their parents to pay. Because my faith saying I can bomb Iraq is the same as your faith saying you can take over a passenger plane and fly it into the World Trade Center.

SPIEGEL: Can you be a good Christian and be pro-choice?

Wright: Both. You can be a good Christian and be pro-life. You can be a good Christian and be pro-choice.

SPIEGEL: You mean it’s a purely political question and faith has nothing to say about it?

Wright: First of all, we shouldn’t even be having this discussion. Neither one of us can get pregnant. But what a woman decides about her body and her God is her business. Women who are pro-life can be just a good a Christian as a woman who is pro-choice and vice versa.

It gets to be a problem when I decide one position should be the law for everybody. In public life, we have to find a way to live together even though we disagree — and some things we will never agree on. But we’ve got to leave this I’m-going-to-kill-you-because-you-don’t-believe-what-I-believe attitude behind.

SPIEGEL: So why bring faith into the public arena at all, if it’s so divisive?

Wright: Faith should be pulled into the public arena when it affects how we live. If it doesn’t — if it’s so heavenly focused — it does no earthly good. What does my faith say about 44 million people with no health care? What does my faith say about the fact that my girl can’t be a nuclear physicist because she’s black and from the inner city and because her schooling options are not what they are for George W. Bush’s girls or for Bill and Hillary’s daughter Chelsea? My faith says, no, that’s not what God intended. It pulls it back into the public arena the idea that there’s got to be something fair for all of us.

SPIEGEL: Do you think Obama would be able to win Christian voters back from the Republicans were he to become the Democratic nominee for the White House?

Wright: That’s hard to tell. If the pattern of what we saw in the November elections — where evangelical Christians, whether Republicans or Democrats, abandoned the stay-the-course doctrine, abandoned the years of lies — if that pattern continues, I think politicians like Barack are going to win people back. We’re making more enemies than winning friends at the moment. We’re making enemies because (what the Bush administration is doing) is not Christ.

SPIEGEL: Thousands of people listen to your sermons. Can you as a pastor help move voters from the right side of the political spectrum back to the left?

Wright: First of all, not that many people are church goers. But that’s America in general. That said, historically, the black church it has been the political force. It caused blacks to fight to get out of slavery, for example. African-Americans used their faith to not lose hope and to keep on fighting.

A clergy person needs to be aware of that and needs to keep in mind the clergy’s role in changing the public life for the betterment of all. Not just those who believe like I believe, look like I look, think like I think, live where I live. But for all. How do we treat the most vulnerable in this society? What are we doing for our old people? What are we doing for our kids? What are we doing for our poor? The clergy need to put those questions on voters’ minds.

SPIEGEL: Barack Obama has been criticized as a so-called “post-racial politician” who shies away from those interests traditionally important to black voters in the United States…

Wright: I think that criticism is unjustified. It’s a cute term, but he shouldn’t be criticized for who he is — a person who doesn’t “play the race card,” but who instead talks about the issues. Look at it this way. Nobody wants their wives to live in fear of getting from the house to the grocery store or to her job. Whether they’re black wives or white wives isn’t the issue. I don’t care what color they are. The bullets don’t discriminate.

We’ve got to do something to make sure they have a safe environment. Now to call that post-racial is unfair. We’ve got some common needs that we need to address. How do we put policies in place that will ensure their safety in the future? That’s the kind of politician Barack is.

SPIEGEL: Do you think he will be President in two years?

Wright: No. Unless Barak pulls off nationally what he was able to pull off locally, and wins the hearts and minds of people who have been perennially anti-black. Racism is so deeply engrained in this country that he could be flawless in terms of his policies. But he’s still a black man in this country, which has a sorry history in terms of how it sees African-American males. That’s my 65-year-old, jaded perception of where this country is. I was pleasantly surprised in the Senate election. I would like to be as pleasantly surprised in the presidential election.

Source.

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Cheney in Baghdad

Posted on March 18, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Cheney cites ‘phenomenal’ Iraqi security progress
As bombing kills 40
By Hannah Allam and Qassim Zein / McClatchy / March 17, 2008

BAGHDAD — Vice President Dick Cheney on Monday made a surprise visit to Baghdad, where he pledged that U.S. forces would “not quit before the job is done” and said that a massive troop buildup had achieved “phenomenal” improvements in security.

At sunset Monday, however, a female suicide bomber killed at least 40 people and injured more than 50 when she blew herself up in a crowded pedestrian area near a Shiite Muslim shrine in the southern holy city of Karbala, according to government and hospital officials. Among the victims were several Iranian pilgrims who’d come to worship at the Imam Hussein shrine, one of Islam’s most sacred sites.

And the U.S. military announced the deaths of two soldiers who were killed Monday when their Humvee struck a roadside bomb north of Baghdad, bringing the number of American troop deaths to at least 3,990 since the war began.

Cheney told a news conference in Baghdad that the invasion of Iraq five years ago this week was a “difficult, challenging, but nonetheless successful endeavor.” However, he said that obstacles remain and that the decision on whether to begin reducing forces depends on political reconciliation and the ability to preserve the hard-won security gains of the past year.

“It would be a mistake now to be so eager to draw down the force that we risk putting the outcome in jeopardy,” Cheney said. “And I don’t think we’ll do that.”

Cheney’s trip overlapped with a visit by Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who arrived Sunday for a two-day fact-finding mission for the Senate Armed Services Committee. Cheney is on a nine-day tour with stops scheduled in Saudi Arabia, Jerusalem, the Palestinian territories, Turkey and Oman.

Both Cheney and McCain have been strong backers of the “surge” strategy, which sent 30,000 more American troops to Iraq in an effort to drive out Islamist extremists and reduce the sectarian violence that has claimed thousands of lives and transformed Baghdad into a maze of walled-off, segregated neighborhoods.

The year-old surge has helped reduce bloodshed throughout Iraq — with the number of attacks down by more than half — though many skeptical Iraqis view the lull in violence as temporary.

Cheney spent Monday in a tightly choreographed hopscotch, moving at least six times for high-level meetings. In the fortress-like Green Zone compound, which houses the U.S. and Iraqi headquarters, he met Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki; Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq; and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker.

Maliki said his talks with Cheney focused on negotiations for a long-term U.S.-Iraqi security agreement that would replace the United Nations mandate for foreign troops, which expires at the end of the year.

Traveling under military guard along roads that had been swept for bombs and were lined with security forces, Cheney ventured a mile or so outside the Green Zone to call on Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Abdelaziz al Hakim, the head of the powerful Iranian-backed Shiite party known as the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council.

Cheney intended to press Iraqi leaders to pass an oil law that could help persuade international energy firms to invest in production, U.S. officials said. He also was urging Iraqis to stick to their goal of October elections and discussing mutual concerns about neighboring countries such as Turkey, Syria and Iran.

“I was last in Baghdad 10 months ago, and I can sense, as a result of the progress that’s been made since then, that there have been some phenomenal changes, in terms of the overall situation, both with respect to the security situation, where Iraqi and American forces have done some very good work, as well as with respect to political developments here in Iraq,” Cheney said after meeting Maliki.

The majority of casualties in the Karbala suicide bombing were female pilgrims who’d gathered at refreshment stands about a half-mile from the shrine, said Saleem Kadhim, a spokesman for the Husseini Hospital, which received 40 dead and 56 injured from the blast.

Medics from nearby towns were called in to help the overflowing hospital, and the government imposed an open-ended citywide curfew on Karbala.

“I was near the bus station when I saw a woman who was pushing others and then, a few seconds later, I saw a flame in the sky,” said Jassim Hussein, 32, who helped carry victims from the scene. “I blame the Baathists and members of the old regime. As you know, Karbala is a target for so many enemies, especially those against the Shiites. And I also blame the security forces because we don’t have checkpoints in this area.”

Iraqi authorities seemed confident that the bomber was a woman, though the U.S. military cautioned that it was too early to determine the attacker’s identity. In the extremely conservative south, nearly all women wear flowing black robes called abayas, which some male militants have donned to carry out attacks or to escape capture.

In other violence Monday, a car bomb exploded at a busy intersection in the Baghdad neighborhood of Karrada, wounding eight people. Three separate roadside bombs in the capital also left casualties: One policeman was killed and one wounded when their patrol was targeted near a teachers’ training institute in Mansour; three Iraqi civilians died at a busy intersection near the Shaab Stadium in Zayuna; and one civilian was injured near the landmark Mr. Milk grocery store in Mansour.

(Allam reported from Baghdad; special correspondent Qassim Zein reported from Najaf. Steve Lannen of the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader contributed, along with special correspondent Hussein Kadhim.)

Source.

From Carlos Lowry / The Rag Blog

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Dowd on Dubya

Posted on March 18, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Soft Shoe in Hard Times
By Maureen Dowd / March 16, 2008

Everyone here is flummoxed about why the president is in such a fine mood.

The dollar’s crumpling, the recession’s thundering, the Dow’s bungee-jumping and the world’s disapproving, yet George Bush has turned into Gene Kelly, tap dancing and singing in a one-man review called “The Most Happy Fella.”

“I’m coming to you as an optimistic fellow,” he told the Economic Club of New York on Friday.

His manner — chortling and joshing — was in odd juxtaposition to the Fed’s bailing out the imploding Bear Stearns and his own acknowledgment that “our economy obviously is going through a tough time,” that gas prices are spiking, and that folks “are concerned about making their bills.”

He began by laughingly calling the latest news on the economic meltdown “a interesting moment” and ended by saying that “our energy policy has not been very wise” and that there was “no quick fix” on gasp-inducing gas prices.

“You know, I guess the best way to describe government policy is like a person trying to drive a car in a rough patch,” he said. “If you ever get stuck in a situation like that, you know full well it’s important not to overcorrect, because when you overcorrect you end up in the ditch.”

Dude, you’re already in the ditch.

Boy George crashed the family station wagon into the globe and now the global economy. Yet the more terrified Americans get, the more bizarrely carefree he seems. The former oilman reacted with cocky ignorance a couple of weeks ago when a reporter informed him that gas was barreling toward $4 a gallon.

In on-the-record sessions with reporters — and more candid off-the-record ones — he has seemed goofily happy in recent weeks, prickly no more but strangely liberated and ebullient.

Even though he ordinarily hates being kept waiting, he made light of it while cooling his heels for John McCain, and did a soft shoe for the White House press. Wearing a cowboy hat, he warbled a comic Western ditty at the Gridiron Dinner a week ago — alluding to Scooter Libby’s conviction, Saudis getting richer from our oil-guzzling, Brownie’s dismal Katrina performance, and Dick Cheney’s winsome habit of withholding documents.

At a dinner on Wednesday, the man who is persona non grata on the campaign trail (except for closed fund-raisers) told morose Republican members of Congress that he was totally confident that “we can retake the House” and “hold the White House.”

“I think 2008 is going to be a fabulous year for the Republican Party!” he said, sounding like Rachael Ray sprinkling paprika on goulash. That must have been news to House Republicans, who have no money, just lost the seat held by their former speaker, and are hemorrhaging incumbents as they head into a campaign marked by an incipient recession and an unpopular war.

If only they could see things as the president does. Bush, who used his family connections to avoid Vietnam, told troops serving in Afghanistan on Thursday that he is “a little envious” of their adventure there, saying it was “in some ways romantic.”

Afghanistan is still roiling, as is Iraq, but W. is serene. “Removing Saddam Hussein was the right decision early in my presidency, it is the right decision now, and it will be the right decision ever,” he said, echoing that great American philosopher Dan Quayle, who once told Samoans, “Happy campers you are, happy campers you have been and, as far as I am concerned, happy campers you will always be.”

W. bragged to Republicans about his “considered judgment” in sending more troops to Iraq and again presented himself as an untroubled instrument of divine will. “I believe there’s an Almighty,” he said, “and I believe a gift of that Almighty to every man, woman and child is freedom.”

Although the president belittled the Democrats for their policy of “retreat,” his surge has been a temporary and expensive place-holder for what Americans want: a policy to get us out of Iraq.

“Has it allowed us to reduce troop levels to below where they were when it started?” Michael Kinsley wrote recently. “The answer is no.” Gen. David Petraeus told The Washington Post last week that no one in the U.S. and Iraqi governments “feels that there has been sufficient progress by any means in the area of national reconciliation.”

Maybe the president is just putting on a good face to keep up American morale, the way Herbert Hoover did after the crash of ’29, when he continued to dress in a tuxedo for dinner.

Or maybe the old Andover cheerleader really believes his own cheers, and that prosperity will turn up any time now, just like the W.M.D. in Iraq.

Or perhaps it’s a Freudian trip. Now that he’s mucked up the world and the country, he can finally stop rebelling against his dad and relax in the certainty that the Bush name will forever be associated with crash-and-burn presidencies.

Whatever the explanation, it’s plumb loco.

Source.

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Two Wrens

Posted on March 18, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

two wrens on my window sill
plainly looking in
scouting for that place to safely
put their wren eggs in
peering at the far left corner
where the day before they’d been
a ready-made perfect nest
for two ready to begin

through an open door they’d flown
while hoping me a friend
and they found a crafted basket
hung near the trash bin
they landed on it poked around
found nothing to offend
flung debris down to the floor
in their natural whirl-wren
then flew out the way they’d come
expecting to return again

they’d been there once before
at least had one of them when
I’d emerged into the room
much like a bear into its den
I didn’t know it was around
until it began to ascend
to a window then the ceiling
as its path did amend
till it found the open doorway
after time well-spent

that debris on the floor
from its nest-exploring stint
included dollar bills that fluttered down
and two-dollar ones that went
some collected by my mother
with a hope and a glint
for a future she’d not know
but for a time heaven-sent

besides the money I had placed there
like a charm to intend
to increase my wealth and income
by some multiple of ten
there were a dozen birds’ feathers
one found floating on the wind
and a young deer’s right antler
with its leftward bend
a desiccated black beetle
with its pincers unpinced
and some gemstones with some meaning
that had once made sense
and one feather from a heron
that seemed suited for a prince

there were fortunes from some cookies
with a mystical hint
and other memories you could touch
like found fur that was meant
to remind me forever
of a cat who seemed sent
from the soul of a city
that needed to repent
this orange fur so soft
yet the city so bent
that it would kill this kitty
to escape paying more rent
with its heart so hard
that love’s hardly made a dent
well this kitty’s passed
but I like to think I know where he went
and someday this city’s heart
will be healed as with a stent

two wrens on my window sill
clearly looking in
wondering where has gone the nest
to lay their wren eggs in
it was there just yesterday
their presence they had lent
poking round the crafted basket
right near the trash bin

just turn around you dear little busy
hopping happy wrens
you’ll see it hangs right behind you
on the deck beside some limbs
where you can perch and keep watch
and understand it never ends
all your love and your labor
and your care it imprints
and lives on and multiplies
in your absence
in the nest that you found
and improved and did amend
so that you’ll never have to be
on the outside looking in

two wrens on my window sill
is where it all begins
with two wrens on my window sill
is where my story ends
with two wrens on my window sill
I’ll always have two friends
with two wrens on my window sill

Two Wrens

By Larry Piltz
St. Patrick’s Day 2008

Indian Cove / Austin, Texas / The Rag Blog

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Om

Posted on March 18, 2008 by RagBlog

Don’t Argue. Just Do It.
By Jerome Doolittle

This is your own, personal mantra. Repeat it to yourself silently, over and over, with your eyes shut and your ears plugged. It will help, I promise. It has worked for others.

No cognition, no dissonance.

Source

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An Economic Allegory

Posted on March 18, 2008 by RagBlog

The Emperor Cult
By Tim Case

“Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse, or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long persevered in, which they hold to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends.” ~ Isabel Paterson, The God of the Machine

17/03/08 “Lew Rockwell” — – Too often history is viewed through the blinders of what ruler made what decision, or what war occurred, on what date. This had led to many not understanding the effects the state and its leadership could or will have on their lives.

This, I believe, also leads to one of the reasons for a continuing admiration, if not adoration, of the state and the state leadership.

We don’t know or aren’t told what effect such and such ruler’s decisions had on the masses of people and their lives. What did they feel or think? How did it change their lives? What was the people’s response; was it flight, fright, or fight? Let me give you an extreme, but not uncommon example.

Preceding the U.S. entry into WWI, America’s president, Woodrow Wilson, set the stage for one (of many) of the Federal government’s most profane periods in American history.

While still “neutral” President Woodrow Wilson in his State of the Union address on December 7, 1915, said in part:

“There are citizens of the United States, I blush to admit, born under other flags, but welcomed under our generous naturalization laws to the full freedom and opportunity of America, who have poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life; who have sought to bring the authority and good name of our Government into contempt… necessary that we should promptly make use of processes of law by which we may be purged of their corrupt distempers… I am urging you to do nothing less than save the honor and self-respect of the nation… disloyalty, and anarchy must be crushed out… I need not suggest the terms in which they may be dealt with.”

He was speaking of the German-Americans and many who heard or read his speech took it as a directive to attack German ideas and beliefs. Whole communities went so far as to suspect anyone who spoke German of treason to the U.S. government while being loyal to the German Kaiser.

California Congressman Julius Kahn went even further when speaking of the German people living in America:

“I hope that we shall have a few prompt hangings and the sooner the better. We have got to make an example of a few of these people, and we have got to do it quickly.”

The hatred that was being garnered against these American citizens is exemplified by the New York Times headlines of April 6, 1918: “Senators favor shooting traitors,” then six days later by the Chicago Tribune’s headlines “Cure treason and disloyalty by firing squad.”

In 1918 my grandmother, who was of German heritage, was 22 years old. Many years later I asked her why she wouldn’t speak German, even though I knew she could speak it fluently. What she told me was chilling.

She related to me, with tears in her eyes, that during 1915 to 1918 she was so frightened that she would be arrested, shot or hung by the federal government, for speaking her native language that she swore she would never speak German again. She never did and she forbad me from ever leaning German as a second language!

Was my grandmother an isolated example? No, there were many among the loyal German communities that lived in fear and were dehumanized by being called “Huns” or worse.

It is easy to see then how the perception of history may change when we can show the consequences of government policy on people’s lives, along with the dates and events.

While some may think of the events of the early 1900’s as being recent history, it is still history. Furthermore with history, regardless of the era, we are dealing ultimately with the lives of real men, women and children who lived it, suffered through it, and struggled to cope with the events that were overtaking them.

The same is true of those who lived, worked, and supported the Roman Empire.

When Augustus Caesar took the throne in 27 BC, at the age of 36, it marked the end of almost a century of revolution, civil wars, civil disturbances, confiscations of property, and prohibitions. Tacitus tells us that the whole world was exhausted and was thrilled to acquiesce to the Roman Empire just to have peace.

One of Augustus’ first acts was to reform the tax system. Next he again standardized the silver coin of the realm, the denarius, at 84 to the pound and the realm’s gold coin, the aureus, at 40 to 42 to the pound.

This had a calming effect on the Romans and restored the unity, pride and material affluence of the people (in fact only about 10% of the population would actually benefit from the prosperity) in the Roman Empire which also solidified Augustus’ reign as emperor.

During the early days of the republic the Romans had lived comfortably with a modest tax which can be rightfully called a wealth tax. However, by the time of Augustus the Roman people were saddled with a progressive tax and a system of tax collection that was fraught with repression and criminal extortion.

Augustus’ idea was to set a flat tax based on wealth and population. This new tax was modeled on the ancient tax system of the early republic and was based on both population and individual wealth. This is probably what he meant when he said of himself:

“I restored many traditions of the ancestors, which were falling into disuse in our age, and myself I handed on precedents of many things to be imitated in later generations.”

The effect of Augustus’ new tax system was that it standardized the amount of revenue the Roman state would receive yearly and stopped the brutal progressiveness of the older tax system.

This placed the citizens of Roman Empire in a unique position, because now they knew each year what their tax liability was but more importantly they knew that anything they earned above the required tax was theirs, no matter how much their income increased.

The obvious result of such a tax system was that there was now a major incentive to become producers, especially since the marginal tax rate above the required tax was zero. Never mind that the wealth earned this year would be assessed and taxed next year; they now had a full year to use their money to increase their income before their wealth was reassessed.

The Forum Romanum called by the Romans Forum Magnum or just the Forum, was the center of Roman life; as such it was the Roman heart of commerce and banking along with being the location for the administration of justice.

The importance of the Forum made the streets leading to and from it prime locations for businesses which supported many bookshops, shoe shops, the finest spice shops and the daily needs of Rome’s citizens.

Augustus’ pro-growth tax system brought about the lowest interest rates in Roman history. This is turn led to people borrowing investment capital for new businesses or speculating in commodities.

Business ventures require loans, and loan contracts were quickly standardized throughout the empire.

Julius Alexander, the lender, required a promise in good faith that the loan of 60 denarii of genuine and sound coin would be duly settled on the day he requested it. Alexander, son of Cariccius, the borrower, promised in good faith that it would be so settled, and declared that he had received the sixty denarii mentioned above, in cash, as a loan, and that he owed them. Julius Alexander required a promise in good faith that the interest on this principal from this day would be one percent per thirty days and would be paid to Julius Alexander or to whomever it might in the future concern. Alexander, son of Cariccius, promised in good faith that it would be so paid. Titius Primitius stood surety for the due and proper payment of the principal mentioned above and of the interest.

Transacted at Alburnus Maior, October 20, in the consulship of Rusticus (his second consulship) and Aquilinus.

We have no way of knowing what this gentleman wanted to use the 60 denarii for, but consider for a moment the timing of this loan which closed on October 20th.

In ancient Rome wheat was the staple of the people, which made its supply critical. Estimates of the yearly market need in Rome for wheat range from 20 to 40 million modii; where a modii is approximately 15 pounds or ¼ bushel of wheat. This means that the average consumption of wheat in ancient Rome was 30 million modii – 450,000,000 pounds – annually.

Given that at this time the population of Rome was in the neighborhood of 5,000,000 we find the average need per person, annually was 6 modii: 90 pounds – 1½ bushels. Of course these totals are going to be greater or lesser based on gender, age, ability to pay and doesn’t take into account the state’s grain welfare program.

However, it shows that Rome required vast amounts of wheat, and highlights its tenuous position.

Something happened to the grain shipments in 18 BC because Augustus Caesar wrote:

From that year when Gnaeus and Publius Lentulus were consuls, when the taxes fell short, I gave out contributions of grain and money from my granary and patrimony, sometimes to 100,000 men, sometimes to many more.

There are many things that could hinder the flow of wheat to Rome but the one thing that not even the might of Rome could change was the weather on the Mediterranean Sea.

The transporting of goods overland was cost prohibitive except for short distances and that left shipping via the Mediterranean Sea to bring the majority of goods to Rome. That is until November of each year when the storms on the Mediterranean closed it to trade until March of the following year. Even during October and April it would be dangerous to sail the Mediterranean, due to sudden storms, so we can assume that wheat imports would begin to taper off in October of each year and would not resume again until sometime in April.

The five plus months when the wheat ceased to arrive must have caused the price to rise based on the simple laws of supply and demand since this law was the controlling factor in Rome’s economy.

If Alexander, son of Cariccius took out the loan because he was a baker and wanted a hedge against wheat shortages for the five months that the Mediterranean was closed to shipping; he would have been able to purchase 120 modii – 30 bushels, 1800 pounds – of wheat.

Many have called the era from Caesar Augustus until the death of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, in 180 AD, the golden years of the Roman Empire. In some ways it was. Augustus’ sweeping reforms dealt with all aspects of the Roman life and set the stage for a very successful period in Roman history. Gibbon even goes so far as to call this period the time when the “human race was most prosperous and happy.”

What is missed in all the jubilation is that Caesar Augustus was ahead of his time. His Fabian socialist ideals were the firm foundations upon which the misery of countless generations would eventually rest.

The Roman people loved their emperor and the peace that came with Augustus’ programs. They were caught up in their success and daily life; raising their children, paying their bills along with the myriad of things that just living entails.

Like the sirens of Greek mythology whose sweet singing lured mariners to destruction on the rocks, so is the promise of the state; regardless of the age.

The Romans were simply people, and being human they either didn’t see or refused to believe the destruction that was overtaking them even as the producers in their society started becoming insolvent then dejected due to the heavy controls that the state was imposing on their lives.

By 192 AD the tax base began to fail; as tax revenues decreased the Roman state began to micromanage the economy, which bound farmers to their farms and craftsmen to their workbenches. All businesses soon became de facto organs of the state; it was business at the point of a sword which tried to control and direct all aspects of the markets. The Roman state’s efforts were to no avail, commerce continued to deteriorate due to the tax burden.

The Roman state’s answer was to exacerbate the problem by increasing the money supply, so denarii with less silver content were issued.

As inflation raged prices sky rocketed (at one point inflation reached an estimated 15,000%), people began to put aside and hide the older, high silver content coins and pay their taxes in the newly issued coins of less value. International trade soon slowed to a crawl. The “real” value of the state’s revenues, as expected, was proportionally reduced.

It wasn’t long before the Roman state began requisitioning cattle and food directly from the farmers, and other producers were simply robbed, as needs arose, by the army. The result was social chaos ensuing from state terrorism which some have christened “permanent terrorism.”

The Roman state even went so far as to demand that state permission be given before anyone could change their residence or occupation. The state fixed prices and wages which eventually led to a complete failure of the visible market, since there was no work there was nothing to buy or sell so the people resorted to food riots, lawlessness and city flight.

The same creeping socialism that affected the Roman Empire has been at work in America since the adoption of the Constitution over the Articles of Confederation, and like those ancient people of Rome we are caught in its trap. Was it the love of the state or our foolishness that resulted in our not seeing what is now overtaking us? Future historians will have to decide.

For the present we will continue to put up with TSA theft of private property, special travel ID’s, threats from Homeland security that permission will be needed for employment and government regulations designed to “monitor” commerce.

As our civilization continues its slide into the socialistic abyss of monetary suicide and as the real possibility of famine lurks on the horizon, let’s at least not allow the words of the Roman poet, satirist, and literary critic, Horace to be a vision of our future.

Time corrupts all. What has it not made worse?
Our grandfathers sired feebler children; theirs
Were weaker still – ourselves; and now our curse
Must be to breed even more degenerate heirs.

Tim Case is a 30-year student of the ancient histories who agrees with the first-century stoic Epictetus on this one point: “Only the educated are free.”

Copyright © 2008 LewRockwell.com

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The So-Called Success of the Surge

Posted on March 18, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Dahr Jamail portrait ©2005 Robert Shetterly.

Rule, Not Reconciliation
by Dahr Jamail / FPIF / March 17, 2008

As we mark the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, rhetoric around the “success” of the so-called surge continues. Presidential hopefuls, along with members of the Bush administration, continue to tout “progress,” citing fewer U.S. casualties and moves amongst Iraqi groups towards “reconciliation.” While indeed, there has been a reduction in violence, it is lost in the headlines that thousands of Iraqis still are losing their lives each month in the conflict. But even worse, the “success” of the surge has the potential to bring violence to all time highs.

In his final State of the Union address in January, George W. Bush proudly held up the newly formed “Awakening Groups,” known locally in Iraq as the Sahwa, as examples of both Iraqi cooperation and independence. Members of these groups now total nearly 80,000, and are paid $300 of U.S. taxpayer money a month to not attack occupation forces. These groups are referred to as “Concerned Local Citizens” by the military, as though they are comprised of concerned fathers and uncles who suddenly became keen to collaborate with members of a foreign occupation force which has eviscerated their country.

In reality, most of the Sahwa are resistance fighters who are taking the money, arms, and ammunition, whilst biding their time to build their forces to move, once again, against the occupation forces which now support them, in addition to planning to move against the Shia dominated government. Furthermore, it is widely known in Iraq that many of the Sahwa are al-Qaeda members, the irony of which is not lost to Iraqis, who heard the U.S. propaganda as to the reasons the Sahwa were formed: to drive al-Qaeda from Iraq and to promote security so as to enable political reconciliation within the government in Baghdad by providing the space for this to occur.

Illustrating the counter-productive nature of Bush’s plan, Iraq’s puppet government, led by U.S.-installed Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is having nothing to do with the Sahwa. When the U.S. military began to organize the Sahwa by buying off prominent Tribal Sheikhs across Iraq’s al-Anbar province, Maliki made it clear that none of the Sahwa would ever be granted positions within the government security apparatus.

And why should he feel differently? With Shia mlitiamen and death squad members he supports comprising the brunt of the Iraqi military and police, why would Maliki choose to grant legitimacy to the very groups who wish to gain a counter-balance of power in the Baghdad government?

Despite the periodic bickering and blaming from the Bush administration aimed at Maliki and his government, the Prime Minister remains in power for the sole reason that he and his cronies enjoy the backing of the occupation forces. After all, this is an “Iraqi” government that is located within the Green Zone. It is an “Iraqi” government that would not last five minutes without that kind of protection, as polls in Iraq indicate that it enjoys less than one percent support from the Iraqi population.


Arming (and splitting) Shia and Sunni
“I can’t think of a more classic example of divide and rule,” Phil Aliff, a then active duty U.S. soldier with the 10th Mountain Division told me at Fort Drum last October. He served nearly one year in Iraq from August 2005 to July 2006, in the areas of Abu Ghraib City and Fallujah, both west of Baghdad. Aliff was disgusted in the U.S. policy of, as he described it, “Arming the Sunni while politically supporting the Shia … how is that promoting reconciliation?”
According to the U.S. military, 82 percent of the Sahwa are Sunnis. Now the Sahwa, as my Iraqi colleague Ahmed Ali and I have been reporting for Inter Press Service, are openly challenging the government in Baghdad. In Baquba, the capital city of Diyala province, they are in the process of forcing the resignation of the Shia police chief of the province, Gen. Ghanim al-Qureyshi. A local Sahwa member told Ali in Baquba recently that their demands also include “the nomination of four Sunni assistants to be available as the new police chief, hiring 5,000 members of the Sahwa to serve as government security personnel, and government police no longer to be allowed into certain predominantly Sunni districts in an effort to eliminate the sectarian conduct of the police.”
So much for reconciliation. The Sahwa albeit wrought with its own infighting, corruption, and power struggles, now form an effective counterweight to the Iraqi government and are beginning to demand posts in various ministries in Baghdad, as well as power within government security forces.
Read the rest of it here.
[Dahr Jamail has reported from inside Iraq and is the author of Beyond the Green Zone. He writes for Inter Press Service, The Asia Times, and is a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus. A fourth-generation Lebanese-American, he grew up in Houston.]

Dahr Jamail to Speak in Austin
Thursday, April 3, 7:00 p.m.
UT campus, Geology 2.324

In late 2003, weary of the overall failure of the U.S. media to accurately report on the realities of the war in Iraq for the Iraqi people and US soldiers, Dahr Jamail went to Iraq to report on the war himself.

Jamail spent eight months in occupied Iraq as one of only a few independent U.S. journalists in the country. In the Middle East, he also has reported from Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.

Jamail’s dispatches were quickly recognized as an important media resource. He is now writing for the Inter Press Service, The Asia Times and many other outlets. Jamail’s reports have also been published with The Nation, The Sunday Herald, Islam Online, the Guardian, Foreign Policy in Focus, and the Independent to name just a few.

His newest book is Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq (Haymarket Books). Vivid, insightful, and often in the participants’ own words, Beyond the Green Zone goes past the polished desks of the corporate media and Washington politicians to tell first hand of the reality of life under U.S. occupation.Geology building is on the UT East Mall, next to the MLK statue.

Co-sponsored by the UT Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the UT School of Journalism, International Socialist Organization, MEChA, Campus Progress, and Campus Antiwar Movement to End the Occupation.

More info: 512-471-1947 or dcloud@mail.utexas.edu

Praise for Beyond the Green Zone

“Very prescient, brave.” — Seymour Hersh

“From the earliest days of the war, Dahr Jamail has been a human conduit for the voices of Iraqis living under US occupation. In the face of tremendous personal risk, his commitment to the crucial, principled task of bearing witness has never wavered, and this extraordinary book is the result.” –Naomi Klein, author, No Logo

“This book pierces the miasma of ignorance, mendacity and embedded egotism that has shaped most coverage of Iraq in the American press. It is a passionate and deeply insightful look at the reality of war and occupation, and also an example of international journalism at its best.” –Stephen Kinzer, former bureau chief, New York Times, and author, All the Shah’s Men

“Dahr Jamail does us a great service, by taking us past the lies of our political leaders, past the cowardice of the mainstream press, into the streets, the homes, the lives of Iraqis living under U.S. occupation. He is a superb journalist, in the most honorable tradition of that craft, in the tradition of Heywood Broun, John Reed, I.F. Stone. If what he has seen could be conveyed to all Americans, this ugly war in Iraq would quickly come to an end.” –Howard Zinn

Michael Corwin / The Rag Blog

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The End of the Sovereign Self

Posted on March 18, 2008 by RagBlog

Tomgram: Philip K. Dick Meet George W. Bush

Blowing Them Away Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry: Globalization Bush-style
By Tom Engelhardt

Imagine, for a moment, that you live in a small town somewhere near the Southern California coast. You’re going about your daily life, trying to scrape by in hard times, when the missile hits. It might have come from the Iranian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) — its pilot at a base on the outskirts of Tehran — that has had the village in its sights for the last six hours or from the Russian sub stationed just off the coast. In either case, it’s devastating.

In Moscow and Tehran, officials announce that, in a joint action, they have launched the missile as part of a carefully coordinated “surgical” operation to take out a “known terrorist,” a long-term danger to their national security. A Kremlin spokesman offers the following statement:

“As we have repeatedly said, we will continue to pursue terrorist activities and their operations wherever we may find them. We share common goals with respect to fighting terrorism. We will continue to seek out, identify, capture and, if necessary, kill terrorists where they plan their activities, carry out their operations or seek safe harbor.”

A family in a ramshackle house just down the street from you — he’s a carpenter; she works at the local Dairy Queen — are killed along with their pets. Their son is seriously wounded, their home blown to smithereens. Neighbors passing by as the missile hits are also wounded.

As it happens, there are no terrorists in the vicinity. Outraged, you organize your neighbors and march angrily in protest through the town, shouting anti-Russian, anti-Iranian slogans. But, of course, there is nothing you can really do. Iran and Russia are far away, their weaponry powerful, your arms nonexistent. The state of California is incapable of protecting you. This is, in fact, at least the fourth time in recent months that a “terrorist” has been declared “taken out” from the air or by a ship-based cruise missile, when only innocent Californians have died.

As news of the “collateral damage” from the botched operation dribbles out, the Russian and Iranian media pay next to no attention. There are no outraged editorials. Official spokesmen see no need to comment further. No one is held responsible and no promises are made in either Tehran or Moscow that similar assassination strikes won’t be launched in the near future, based on “actionable intelligence,” possibly even on the same town. In fact, the next day, seeing UAVs once again soaring overhead, you load your pick-up and prepare to flee.

Swatting Flies in Somalia

Philip K. Dick meet George W. Bush. When it comes to such a thing happening in the United States, we are, of course, at the wildest frontiers of science fiction. The U.S. is a sovereign nation. We guard our air space and coastal waters jealously. Any country violating them for purposes of aggressive action, no less by launching a missile against an American town, would be committing an act of war and would certainly be treated accordingly.

If, somehow, such an event did occur, it would be denounced in Washington and on editorial pages across the country as a shocking contravention of international legal conventions and a crime of war… unless, of course, we did it in a country where sovereignty has been declared meaningless.

In fact, an almost exact replica of the above fictional incident — at least the fourth of its kind in recent months — did indeed take place at the beginning of March in the embattled failed state of Somalia. (For that country’s most recent abysmal collapse, the Bush administration, via an invasion by Ethiopian proxy forces, can take significant credit.) One or two houses in Dobley, a Somali town, were hit, possibly by two submarine-launched Tomahawk Cruise missiles in what a U.S. official termed “a deliberate strike against a suspected bed-down of known terrorists.”

The missiles were evidently meant for Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, an al-Qaedan suspect in the bloody bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. He was, however, not in Dobley, despite the “actionable intelligence” on hand. Accounts of the dead and wounded in the town vary. One report claimed only wounded Somalis (and two dead cows); most spoke of anywhere from four to ten dead civilians. Local district Commissioner Ali Nur Ali Dherre told CNN that three women and three children had been killed and another 20 people wounded; while a “U.S. military official said the United States is still collecting post-strike information and is not yet able to confirm any casualties. He described [the] strike as ‘very deliberate’ and said forces tried to use caution to avoid hitting civilians.”

For the dead Somalis, not surprisingly, we have no names. In stories like this, the dead are regularly nobodies and, though the townspeople of Dobley did indeed march angrily in protest yelling anti-American slogans, just about no one noticed.

In our world, only the normal smattering of small news reports dealt with this modest sidebar in the President’s Global War on Terror (GWOT). On the GWOT scorecard — if you remember, for a long time George Bush kept “his own personal scorecard” of top terror suspects in a desk drawer in the Oval Office, crossing off al-Qaedan figures as U.S. forces took them down — this operation hardly registered. One terrorist missed, and not for the first time, possibly a few dead peasants in some god-forsaken land. Please, move on…

In a recent Pentagon briefing for reporters featuring Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Michael Mullen, who had just returned from a trip to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, 4,500 words of back-and-forth were interrupted by this question from a reporter:

“Secretary Gates, the strike on Somalia two days ago — did the missiles that were fired — did they strike their target? And was the target Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan? Do you have a report back from the field? And Admiral Mullen, what message did you give to President Musharraf, and why did you meet with him?”

Gates responded to the Somali part of the question in eight words: “You know we don’t talk about military operations.” He might have added: …unless they’re successful.

That was evidently all that the incident and its minor “collateral damage” deserved in such a global war. So Gates and Mullen moved on immediately. So many matters more important than a single “decapitation” strike that didn’t succeed to consider.

Read the rest, including links and references, here.

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Million Musicians March : Alan Pogue

Posted on March 18, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Saturday’s Peace Parade takes off from the capitol. Ragphoto by Alan Pogue.

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Beyond Cruel and Unusual Punishment

Posted on March 17, 2008 by RagBlog

Judge calls immigration officials’ decision ‘beyond cruel’
By Henry Weinstein, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
March 13, 2008

In a stinging ruling, a Los Angeles federal judge said immigration officials’ alleged decision to withhold a critical medical test and other treatment from a detainee who later died of cancer was “beyond cruel and unusual” punishment.

The decision from U.S. District Judge Dean Pregerson allows the family of Francisco Castaneda to seek financial damages from the government.

Castaneda, who suffered from penile cancer, died Feb. 16. Before his release from custody last year, the government had refused for 11 months to authorize a biopsy for a growing lesion, even though voluminous government records showed that several doctors said the test was urgently needed, given Castaneda’s condition and a family history of cancer, Pregerson said.

But rather than test and treat Castaneda, government officials told him to be patient and prescribed antihistamines, ibuprofen and extra boxer shorts, the judge wrote in a decision released late Tuesday. In summary, the judge wrote, the care provided to Castaneda “can be characterized by one word: nothing.”

Pregerson blasted public health officials’ “attempt to sidestep responsibility for what appears to be . . . one of the most, if not the most, egregious” violations of the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment that “the court has ever encountered.”

At this stage of the proceedings, “the only question is whether” the plaintiffs’ allegations, if true, show that government officials “were deliberately indifferent to his condition. The court finds that they do,” Pregerson said.

Read all of it here.

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