The Rag Blog

Today, March 8, KOOP Radio celebrates International Women’s Day both with women-oriented programming throughout its broadcast day, beginning at nine in the morning, and with a celebration at Mother Egan’s Irish Pub, beginning at eight in the evening.

Saturday night’s event at Mother Egan’s includes musical guests Megan Tubb, Larissa Ness, and Fine Fifteen; local activist Marguerite Jones; Vagina Monologues organizer Sascha Tunney; Circle of Health representatives; and other community groups.

You may visit the KOOP Website to see the full list of sponsors, which, among the many, include the KOOP programs “The Radical Mother’s Voice,” hosted by Sarah Fusco and Laura Shook (Wednesdays at 1:30 pm); and “Issues for YourTissues,” hosted by Katie Vitale (Wednesdays at 2:00 pm), not to mention CodePink Austin! Suggested donation at the KOOP Radio event at Mother Egan’s is five dollars. Mother Egan’s Irish Pub is located at 715 W. 6thSt.

Allan Campbell / KO-OP Fm / The Rag Blog

International Women’s Day March on Hutto Detention Center in Taylor Texas.

Adrienne Evans / The Rag Blog

To read all about the Hutto Family Detention and the efforts to close it on The Rag Blog, go here.

Have you seen these people?

The 1953 CIA Coup in Iran and the Roots of Middle East Terror

Democracy Now Interview With New York Times foreign correspondent Stephen Kinzer, author of All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror.

I think the National Intelligence Estimate might have perversely made the attack (On Iran) more likely.

AMY GOODMAN: From Gaza, we turn now to Iran. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iraq Sunday for a historic meeting with Iraqi leaders, first visit to Iraq by an Iranian president since the Iran-Iraq conflict of the ’80s. At a news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Baghdad, Ahmadinejad said his visit would open a new era in Iraq-Iran ties. He also rejected US allegations his government is interfering in Iraq’s affairs.

PRESIDENT MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD: [translated] We want to tell Mr. Bush that accusing others will increase the problems of America in the region and will not solve them. The Americans have to accept the region as it is. The Iraqi people do not like America.

AMY GOODMAN: Earlier, Ahmadinejad had made light of US allegations, saying, “Is it not funny that those with 160,000 forces in Iraq accuse us of interference?”

While Ahmadinejad’s visit could be a pivotal moment in improving Iran-Iraq ties, it’s also seen as a sign of the dwindling drumbeat for war coming from Washington. It’s been nearly three months since the release of a National Intelligence Estimate concluding Iran had shut down its nuclear weapons program years ago. The report was a major blow to Bush administration efforts to shore up support for a possible military strike on Iran.

Stephen Kinzer is the author of All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and The Roots of Middle East Terror. The book chronicles the CIA-backed 1953 overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected government after Iran nationalized its oil industry. The aftershocks of the coup are still being felt. His book has just come out in paperback, and he’s traveling the country to warn against a US attack on Iran.

I sat down with him to talk about what is happening today in Iran.

STEPHEN KINZER: It’s more possible than you’d like to think. In a reality-based, fact-based policy environment in Washington, you’d think that the idea of attacking Iran would be off the agenda now. Not only is there no enthusiasm in the military for this, or even in the Defense Department civilian side, we’re very stretched in Iraq, obviously, and there doesn’t seem to be any public demand or urgency for it. In addition, we had this National Intelligence Estimate, which undercut what had been the principal argument for an attack, which was Iran is just about to develop a nuclear weapon and therefore we need a preemptive attack. Now, our sixteen intelligence agencies have issued this report saying, actually, no, they’re not developing a nuclear weapon nor have they been working on this project for at least five years. So, that also, you would think, would eliminate this possibility.

Unfortunately, though, I think the—first of all, the fact that the possibility is fading a little bit off the public agenda and public opinion is being kind of anaesthetized to this possibility increases the danger, because there doesn’t seem to be any public outcry or any outcry in Congress. Secondly, I think the National Intelligence Estimate might have perversely made the attack more likely in one sense. Before that estimate came out, the US’s policy was going to be: now we’re going to get the Security Council and the European Union to agree to really tight sanctions on Iran, because they’re about to develop a nuclear weapon. And we thought we were going to be able to do that because it was that urgent. But now, the reason why we said those sanctions were so urgent has been undercut by our own intelligence agency, so the sanctions option is more or less off the table. They’re not going to agree to sanctions now. And I think that might lead people in the White House to think, well, sanctions option isn’t there anymore; I guess bombing is the only option.

Here’s the nightmare argument that I could imagine being made inside the Oval Office. We had to suffer 9/11 because wimpy Clinton did not go over there and take care of that threat while it was gathering. There’s a threat gathering in Iran. It could be even more serious with millions killed in a nuclear bomb attack on the West. The next president won’t be able to carry out this drastic action for political reasons. But obeying the call of history, we’re going to realize we’ve got to take care of this threat before it grows out of hand.

I fear that some variation of this argument, particularly as the election approaches later this year, could lead us into a crazy adventure that’s not only going to set back the cause of democracy in Iran by a generation; strengthen the regime that we profess to detest; eliminate the entirely pro-American sentiment that now exists among the population of Iran; probably set off retaliation attacks by Iran on Israel and maybe states in the Persian Gulf; possibly result in the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran could do by just sinking a couple of tankers, and that’s 20 percent of the world’s oil right there; undoubtedly trigger a huge explosion of anti-American violence in Iraq, probably also in Afghanistan; and it would further destabilize Pakistan, which is already in upheaval. And I think throughout the Muslim world you’d see great upheaval.

So you can foresee all these negative effects, but based on what we now know about the long-term effects of the last time we intervened in 1953, I think I could predict one thing; despite all those negative effects, we could predict: history suggests that the worst long-term effects of this operation would be ones that nobody can now imagine. That’s the lesson we learned from the aftermath of 1953. And that’s why that story of 1953 is now so relevant again as we’re preparing possibly for another attack.

Read it here.

Latin American Crisis “Made In The USA”
By Bill Van Auken

07/03/08 “WSW” — – Nearly a week after Colombia’s cross-border raid against an encampment of the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) guerrilla movement in neighboring Ecuador, Latin America continues to confront its worst regional diplomatic and military crisis in decades. The US government and mass media have weighed in with unsolicited judgments and advice, attributing the tense standoff between Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela to the threat of terrorism to Colombia, the complicity in terrorism on the part of Venezuela and overheated animosities between the respective heads of state of these three countries.

State Department spokesman Tom Casey declared that “it’s important to recognize that the events that took place were, in fact, a response to the presence of terrorists.” Similarly, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino affirmed that Colombia “was defending itself against terrorism.”

This official reaction extends to Colombia—Washington’s principal client state in South America and the recipient of some $600 million annually in American military aid—the mantle of the Bush Doctrine, which holds that in the “global war on terrorism” such niceties as respect for sovereign borders and international law no longer apply.

The Washington Post went a step further, calling the March 1 raid a “remarkable success” and accusing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa of “backing an armed movement with an established record of terrorism.” It compared the strike on the FARC camp to US air strikes against Al Qaeda in Pakistan.

[snip]

As for the air raid itself, Ecuador’s Defense Minister Wellington Sandoval reported the attack included the use of five “smart bombs” of the type utilized by the US military. “It is a bomb that hits within a meter of where it is programmed, from high velocity airplanes,” he said. He added that to target Reyes with such weapons, “they needed equipment that Latin American armed forces do not have.”

Both Washington and the right-wing regime in Colombia were determined to stop any further hostage releases in order to further efforts to politically isolate the Chavez regime and to enforce the Bush administration’s proscription against negotiations with “terrorists.”

At the same time, the bombs dropped on the FARC encampment were undoubtedly also meant as a message to Sarkozy not to meddle in Yankee imperialism’s “backyard.” It should be recalled that the French president, shortly after his election, sent his then-wife to Libya to consummate the release of six medical workers who had been held for eight years on false charges. This political coup managed to bypass the European Union, which had been negotiating the release, and paved the way for lucrative Libyan contracts for French corporations. Washington had no intention of seeing Paris pursue a similar path in relation to Venezuela, which constitutes the fourth largest source of US oil imports.

In the final analysis, this episode in the “global war on terrorism,” which has brought three South American nations to the brink of armed conflict, is the product of a filthy political murder carried out to defend the strategic and profit interests of US capitalism.

It is a reminder that “Murder, Inc.”—as the CIA became known during the 1960s and 1970s, when it organized numerous assassinations and assassination attempts, along with right-wing coups and dirty wars—is still very much in business in Latin America.

Source

$300 Million From Chavez To Farc A Fake: Here’s the written evidence
By Greg Palast

07/03/08 “ICH” — — Do you believe this?

This past weekend, Colombia invaded Ecuador, killed a guerrilla chief in the jungle, opened his laptop – and what did the Colombians find? A message to Hugo Chavez that he sent the FARC guerrillas $300 million – which they’re using to obtain uranium to make a dirty bomb!

That’s what George Bush tells us. And he got that from his buddy, the strange right-wing President of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe.

So: After the fact, Colombia justifies its attempt to provoke a border war as a way to stop the threat of WMDs! Uh, where have we heard that before?

The US press snorted up this line about Chavez’ $300 million to “terrorists” quicker than the young Bush inhaling Colombia’s powdered export.

What the US press did not do is look at the evidence, the email in the magic laptop. (Presumably, the FARC leader’s last words were, “Listen, my password is ….”)

I read them. (You can read them here.) While you can read it all in español, here is, in translation, the one and only mention of the alleged $300 million from Chavez:

“… With relation to the 300, which from now on we will call “dossier,” efforts are now going forward at the instructions of the boss to the cojo [slang term for ‘cripple’], which I will explain in a separate note. Let’s call the boss Ángel, and the cripple Ernesto.”

Got that? Where is Hugo? Where’s 300 million? And 300 what? Indeed, in context, the note is all about the hostage exchange with the FARC that Chavez was working on at the time (December 23, 2007) at the request of the Colombian government.

Indeed, the entire remainder of the email is all about the mechanism of the hostage exchange. Here’s the next line: “To receive the three freed ones, Chavez proposes three options: Plan A. Do it to via of a ‘humanitarian caravan’; one that will involve Venezuela, France, the Vatican[?], Switzerland, European Union, democrats [civil society], Argentina, Red Cross, etc.”

Read all of it here.

Uribe Learns that the Internet Makes Everyone’s Laptop Magic
By Borev

07/03/08 “Borev” — – What a relief! Latin America’s littlest strongman decided to “revise” his pledge bring Hugo Chavez up on charges of “genocide” and/or “terrorism” before the International Criminal Court. Venezuelan newspapers chalk it up to Uribe’s “democratic spirit,” but it probably had a bit more to do with “lawyers” and “dictionaries” and “a super dubious past.”

Anyway it got us thinking: What if the shoe were on the other foot? I mean, sure, back in the day Senator Uribe was considered to be one of the world’s top drug dealers, working for the Medellin cartel and being—how did U.S. intelligence put it?— “a close personal friend of Pablo Escobar.” But that was 1991, this is now, and surely we couldn’t hold a grudge going back to the early 90s (sorry just a little laptop humor!) Haha here at BoRev, we don’t need any miracle computer to tell you what a liberal democracy is made of. We’re kicking it analog after the jump.
For the record, Colombian paramilitaries are also listed as a terrorist group in the US and Europe. With that in mind, Uribe’s political allies alone make the FARC look like boy scouts. Por ejemplo:

>>> Fourteen of Uribe’s closest congressional allies remain behind bars for their terrorist links, and are slowly revealing where bodies have been dumped, leading to discovery of mass graves last spring.

>>> His foreign minister was forced to resign a year ago when her brother (a senator) was arrested for overseeing the killing of thousands of peasants. (Yeah that’s “thousands” with a “thu”)

>>> His campaign manager/secret police chief was jailed that same month for “giving a hit list of trade unionists and activists to paramilitaries, who then killed them.”

>>> His Army chief “collaborated extensively” with illegal death squads and, back in 2002, colluded in the massacre of 14 people for their supposed leftist politics.

>>> His police intelligence unit illegally wiretapped the phones of journalists and opposition figures for two years

>>> His Defense Minister “tried to plot with the outlawed private militias to upset the rule of a former president,” and

>>> In last fall’s elections, a whopping 30 major candidates turned up murdered.

And of course our little hero gags newspapers from reporting on corruption, jails journalists without trial, gave himself the power to rule by decree, overrides Supreme Court decisions by fiat, refers to human rights monitors as “political agitators in the service of terrorism,” and amended the Constitution to give himself a new term. But other than that he’s a goddamned democratic beacon.

Source

Already we have riots, hoarding, panic: the sign of things to come?
By Carl Mortished, World Business Editor

07/03/08 “The Times” — – The spectre of food shortages is casting a shadow across the globe, causing riots in Africa, consumer protests in Europe and panic in food-importing countries. In a world of increasing affluence, the hoarding of rice and wheat has begun. The President of the Philippines made an unprecedented call last week to the Vietnamese Prime Minister, requesting that he promise to supply a quantity of rice.

The personal appeal by Gloria Arroyo to Nguyen Tan Dung for a guarantee was a highly unusual intervention and highlighted the Philippines’ dependence on food imports, rice in particular.

“This is a wake-up call,” said Robert Zeigler, who heads the International Rice Research Institute. “We have a crisis brewing in rice supply.” Half of the planet depends on rice but stocks are at their lowest since the mid1970s when Bangladesh suffered a terrible famine. Rice production will fall this year below the global consumption level of 430 million tonnes.

Street protests and rioting in West Africa towards the end of last year were a harbinger of bigger problems, the World Food Programme said. The global information and early warning system of the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) has monitored outbreaks of rioting in Mexico, Morocco, Uzbekistan, Yemen, Guinea, Mauritania and Senegal. There have also been protests in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, over government price increases.Population pressure and increased wealth are mainly to blame for the resurgence of food insecurity. More people are eating meat and dairy products in Asia, which increases the demand on the animal-feed industry. Milk powder prices rose from $2,000 to $4,800 per tonne last year as rising consumption of milk products in Asia coincided with shortages in the Western world. Drought in Australia has worsened the problem as have government policies in Europe and America to increase the use of biofuels.

Mounting concern about rice has prompted the Indian Government to restrict exports of certain varieties. The measure triggered a surge in global rice prices, which have risen 50 per cent in a year, according to the FAO. The rice shortage is even felt in Britain where the price of basmati, the biggest-selling variety, is rising rapidly.

Wheat is suffering even greater pressures, with prices up 115 per cent in a year. A succession of droughts in Australia has put upward pressure on the cost of a food commodity that is already in short supply. Stocks are at a 40-year low and exports are being restricted from Beijing to Buenos Aires. Ukraine started closing its door to grain exports in June and Russia set a 40 per cent export tariff on wheat in January.

Argentina has delayed the reopening of its wheat export registry until April to protect domestic supplies, and China, a net exporter of corn, rice and wheat last year, has imposed export quotas on grain in order to stem runaway food price inflation. A surge in its inflation index in December was blamed entirely on rising food prices, notably pork, which rose 48 per cent.

Farmers worldwide are worried about feed costs. In Europe pig and poultry breeders are threatening to cut production unless they are paid higher prices.

Source

From How Many Miles From Babylon.

Money on the Table
posted by Eleutheros

This morning while going about the usual homestead tasks the radio was carrying Bush’s address concerning the economy where he opined that he saw no reason to think we were headed for recession. What caught my ear, though, was that during the usually catalog of political clichés numerating what the people want, he said people wanted to be able to put money on the table.

Of course true disciples of Eleuthronomics will instantly recognize here the fallacy of viewing money as if it were something real.

I know, it’s just another of those colorful Bushisms. But it reflects an underlying way of thinking that Bush does not hold alone.

If the love of money is the root of all evil, then thinking that money is real, that it is something that one ‘puts on the table’, is the root of foolishness.

Source

An Iraqi pilgrim finds kindness in the ‘Triangle of Death’
By Hussein Kadhim | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Wednesday, March 5, 2008

KARBALA, Iraq — With thousands of other Shiite Muslims, I walked through the infamous “Triangle of Death” where suicide bombers, presumably Sunni extremists, had attacked fellow pilgrims two days before.

Our trek covered 50 miles from Baghdad to the holy city of Karbala, and we passed through 14 cities, places best known as scenes of death, division and destruction.

On this, my second pilgrimage since the Americans overthrew Saddam Hussein, my fears turned to amazement as complete strangers, Sunnis and Shiites alike, opened their doors to me. The poor passed out food and sweet tea they could hardly afford.

I began the walk as a spiritual journey, a personal opportunity to feel close to Imam Hussein, the grandson of the prophet Mohammed, who was martyred in the year 680. By the end, I found the spirit of my nation in roadside tents, modest homes and gifts of food.

The walk and the religious ceremony of Arbaeen commemorate the life of the great man for whom I’m named. The people of Kufa asked Hussein to save them from the oppressive rule of the Umayyad Caliphate, but then they betrayed him. During the battle of Karbala, Hussein was beheaded along with 71 of his followers, and the women and children were imprisoned.

According to Shiite tradition, on the 40th day after his death his son, Ali ibn Hussein, returned his father’s head to his body, and it was buried with his body in Karbala. Arbaeen commemorates that day, and about 10 million pilgrims converged on the city this year to mourn his death and commemorate his life.

My pilgrimage started in central Baghdad, where I crossed the Jadriyah Bridge with dozens of other people. Tents were set up on the side of the road, where neighborhood volunteers offered us food and drink. I picked up a boiled egg sandwich and orange juice and tucked away biscuits and juice in my bag for later.

In Saidiyah, the scene of fierce battles between Sunnis and Shiites, and Dora, a neighborhood where al Qaida in Iraq once targeted passing Shiite pilgrims, towering concrete walls brought me comfort. Two days before my walk, someone had thrown grenades into the crowd, killing three people, pilgrims like me.

It took me three hours to reach Baghdad’s gate in the south, where the road leads into what’s called the Sunni “Triangle of Death”. Around me, women clutched their babies, little boys walked close to their parents and the elderly marched on. At prayer time, I stopped at one of the roadside tents to pray.

A young man sat with his two-year-old daughter in a stroller. Her legs were limp. She couldn’t walk, and he was penniless.

“I can’t go abroad to treat her, I don’t have the money for such a trip,” he told me. “I hope that walking to Karbala with my little baby will give her the Imam’s blessing to help her walk.”

Here, in the Triangle of Death, I saw the greatest kindness.

Read all of it here.

Let’s Pay Tribute to the Spectacular Wrongness of William F. Buckley
By David Michael Green / AlterNet / March 5, 2008

William F. Buckley was a smart man, that’s for sure.

He could throw around more ten-dollar words than his beloved Catholic Church has sinners (even excluding the priesthood). He knew all the right places to ski and the proper wines to drink while listening to this concerto or appreciating that symphony. A product of privilege right down to the French boarding schools he attended, Buckley was as sophisticated, erudite and insightful as they come.

Except on the subject of politics, that is — which just happened to be his life’s great work.

And aren’t we lucky for it?

I mean, what can you say about a guy who wrote “General Franco is an authentic national hero” at the same time he found Dwight Eisenhower too liberal to endorse for president? What are we to make of a lover of democracy who called whites in the American South “the advanced race,” entitled to prevail politically even if they were numerically inferior, and who even left the door open to using violence toward that end?

Heck, for that matter, what can be said of someone so culturally perceptive that he could write, “The Beatles are not merely awful. They are so unbelievably horrible, so appallingly unmusical, so dogmatically insensitive to the magic of the art, that they qualify as crowned heads of anti-music.” (Was it the “We’re more popular than Jesus” quote that rattled you Bill, or were you just jealous about all the screaming chicks?)

What can we say about a guy this spectacularly wrong? Probably he got it best himself when he noted, “I profoundly believe it takes a lot of practice to become a moral slob.” As it turned out, he got a lot of practice.

Buckley is often credited with being the father of modern conservatism (pardon the oxymoron) in America. It is said that before he founded the National Review in 1955, there was essentially no such movement in the country. It is said (no less than by Reagan himself), that the line is drawn directly from Buckley to Goldwater to Reagan. (For some completely inexplicable reason, conservatives usually leave off Gingrich and Bush the Younger from that genealogy.)

Buckley was an astute observer of the human condition, despite keeping, shall we say, a certain polite distance from most of the poor humans who happen to find themselves stuck in that sometimes challenging condition. He was once asked by NPR’s Terry Gross whether being raised in European boarding schools and being a member of Yale’s notoriously elitist Skull and Bones Society hadn’t left Buckley a trifle, um, out of touch with real people (the hoi polloi, that is, as they’re referred to at the Club)? Au contraire!, he skillfully parried. Buckley did a lot of reading and therefore understood people quite well!

So well, indeed, that he came out in support of segregation during the era when the civil rights movement was the most important, the most consuming political question of the day. So who do you think history will judge to have gotten this question right, eh? — Martin Luther King Jr. or Bill Buckley? One could say that Buckley’s position was just about the most spectacular example ever recorded of the missing of a historical train. There was Ol’ Bill (who actually didn’t even have the excuse then of being old), standing on the (whites only) platform, watching the Morality Express go whooshing by.

But then, wasn’t missing just such trains precisely the point of conservatism?

Buckley certainly thought so. In the essay with which he launched the National Review, he committed it and the conservative movement to the project of “stand[ing] athwart history, yelling Stop.”

Yep, that’s actually a bona fide quote from the man himself. If that sounds a bit anachronistic as the grand rallying cry for a modern political movement, you’re — ahem — still not getting it, I’m afraid. The thwarting and reversal of progress is precisely the point of conservatism.

After all, progress is scary. Progress is difficult. Progress is messy. And progress means having to share.

So Buckley launched a movement to yell “Stop!” and they all did, and they were grandly successful, as a matter of fact. For three decades, conservatives have ruled America and stopped progressive change in its tracks. Moreover, they’ve worked assiduously to undo those achievements that so many of us took for granted as the very markers of civilization itself.

Sometimes they have only wanted to unravel a couple of decades worth of history, as when they oppose civil rights, women’s rights or environmentalism. Sometimes it is more on the order of a century, as when they seek to dismantle social safety net programs like Social Security and Medicare. Sometimes their handiwork goes back several centuries, as when they find First Amendment ideas such as separation of church and state to be troublesome, or when they object to that whole pesky checks-and-balances thing. But sometimes it is the work of an entire millennium they wish to unravel, as they rip up the inconvenient notions of democracy itself, expressed as far back as the Magna Carta.

So, how ’bout it folks? Anybody here excited to return our society to the gleaming days of the 12th century? Watch where you step in the street! I mean, um, the latrine. Well, what’s the difference, anyhow? And monarchy is really not so bad after all, you know — once you get used to it. It only has a bad name because it gets treated so unfairly by the liberal press. You know, like George W. Bush.

Read the rest here.

From Bob Simmons / The Rag Blog

American Flies Five People From Chicago to London

It is estimated that each passenger produced 43 tons of CO2 – consuming enough fuel to carry a Ford Mondeo around the world five times.

Operating the near empty flight is estimated as having cost American about £30,000. But a spokesman said it had no alternative.

“With such a small passenger load we did consider whether we could cancel the flight and re-accommodate the five remaining passengers on other flights.

“However, this would have left a plane load of west-bound passengers stranded in London Heathrow who were due to fly back to the US on the same aircraft.

“We sought alternative flights for the west-bound passengers but heavy loads out of London that day meant that this was not possible.”

Richard Dyer, Friends of the Earth’s transport campaigner said: “Flying virtually empty planes is an obscene waste of fuel. Through no fault of their own , each passenger’s carbon footprint for this flight is about 45 times what it would have been if the plane had been full.

“Governments must stop granting the aviation industry the unfair privileges that allow this to happen by taxing aviation fuel and including emissions from aviation in international agreements to tackle climate change.”

Source.

From Jesse James Retherford / The Rag Blog

Lupe Valdez, gay hispanic sheriff of Dallas County, at Gay Pride Parade

Source.

From Harry Edwards / The Rag Blog