The Rag Blog

For the first time, the United Kingdom’s consumer debt now exceeds our gross national product: a new report shows that we owe £1.35 trillion(1). Inspectors in the United States have discovered that 77,000 road bridges are in the same perilous state as the one which collapsed into the Mississippi(2). Two years after Hurricane Katrina struck, 120,000 people from New Orleans are still living in trailer homes and temporary lodgings(3). As runaway climate change approaches, governments refuse to take the necessary action. Booming inequality threatens to create the most divided societies the world has seen since before the first world war. Now a financial crisis caused by unregulated lending could turf hundreds of thousands out of their homes and trigger a cascade of economic troubles.

These problems appear unrelated, but they all have something in common. They arise in large part from a meeting that took place 60 years ago in a Swiss spa resort. It laid the foundations for a philosophy of government that is responsible for many, perhaps most, of our contemporary crises.

When the Mont Pelerin Society first met, in 1947, its political project did not have a name. But it knew where it was going. The society’s founder, Friedrich von Hayek, remarked that the battle for ideas would take a least a generation to win, but he knew that his intellectual army would attract powerful backers. Its philosophy, which later came to be known as neoliberalism, accorded with the interests of the ultra-rich, so the ultra-rich would promote it.

Neoliberalism claims that we are best served by maximum market freedom and minimum intervention by the state. The role of government should be confined to creating and defending markets, protecting private property and defending the realm. All other functions are better discharged by private enterprise, which will be prompted by the profit motive to supply essential services. By this means, enterprise is liberated, rational decisions are made and citizens are freed from the dehumanising hand of the state.

This, at any rate, is the theory. But as David Harvey proposes in his book A Brief History of Neoliberalism, wherever the neoliberal programme has been implemented, it has caused a massive shift of wealth not just to the top one percent, but to the top tenth of the top one per cent(4). In the United States, for example, the upper 0.1% has already regained the position it held at the beginning of the 1920s(5). The conditions that neoliberalism demands in order to free human beings from the slavery of state – minimal taxes, the dismantling of public services and social security, deregulation, the breaking of the unions – just happen to be the conditions required to make the elite even richer, while leaving everyone else to sink or swim.

So the question is this. Given that the crises I have listed are predictable effects of the dismantling of public services and the deregulation of business and financial markets, given that it damages the interests of nearly everyone, how has neoliberalism come to dominate public life?

Richard Nixon was once forced to concede that “we are all Keynesians now”: even the Republicans supported the interventionist doctrines of John Maynard Keynes. But we are all neoliberals now. Mrs Thatcher kept telling us that “there is no alternative”, and by implementing her programmes, Clinton, Blair, Brown and the other leaders of what were once progressive parties appear to prove her right.

The first great advantage the neoliberals possessed was an unceasing fountain of money. American oligarchs and their foundations – Coors, Olin, Scaife, Pew and others – have poured hundreds of millions into setting up thinktanks, founding business schools and transforming university economics departments into bastions of almost totalitarian neoliberal thinking. The Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institute, the American Enterprise Institute and many others in the US, the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Centre for Policy Studies and the Adam Smith Institute in the UK were all established to promote this project. Their purpose was to develop the ideas and the language which would mask the real intent of the programme – the restoration of the power of the elite – and package it as a proposal for the betterment of humankind.

Their project was assisted by ideas which arose in a very different quarter. The revolutionary movements of 1968 also sought greater individual liberties, and many of the soixante-huitards saw the state as their oppressor. As Harvey shows, the neoliberals coopted their language and ideas. Some of the anarchists I know still voice notions almost identical to those of the neoliberals: the intent is different, but the consequences very similar.

Hayek’s disciples were also able to make use of economic crises. One of their first experiments took place in New York City, which was hit by budgetary disaster in 1975. Its bankers demanded that the city follow their prescriptions: massive cuts in public services, the smashing of the unions, public subsidies for business(6). In the United Kingdom, stagflation, strikes and budgetary breakdown allowed Margaret Thatcher, whose ideas were framed by her neoliberal adviser Keith Joseph, to come to the rescue. Her programme worked, but created a new set of crises.

If these opportunities were insufficient, the neoliberals and their backers would use bribery or force. In the US the Democrats were neutered by new laws on campaign finance. To compete successfully with the Republicans, they would have to give big business what it wanted. The first neoliberal programme of all was implemented in Chile following Pinochet’s coup, with the backing of the US government and economists taught by Milton Friedman, one of the founding members of the Mont Pelerin Society. Drumming up support for the project was a simple matter: if you disagreed, you got shot. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank used their power over developing nations to demand the same policies.

But the most powerful promoter of this programme was the media. Most of it is owned by multi-millionaires who use it to project the ideas that support their interests. Those which threaten their plans are either ignored or ridiculed. It is through the newspapers and television channels that the socially destructive ideas of a small group of extremists have come to look like common sense. The corporations’ tame thinkers sell the project by reframing our political language (for an account of how this happens, see George Lakoff’s book, Don’t Think of an Elephant!(7)). Nowadays I hear even my progressive friends using terms like wealth creators, tax relief, big government, consumer democracy, red tape, compensation culture, job seekers and benefit cheats. These terms, all deliberately invented or promoted by neoliberals, have become so commonplace that they now seem almost neutral.

Neoliberalism, if unchecked, will catalyse crisis after crisis, all of which can be solved only by the means it forbids: greater intervention on the part of the state. In confronting it, we must recognise that we will never be able to mobilise the resources its exponents have been given. But as the disasters they have caused develop, the public will need ever less persuading that it has been misled.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. Larry Elliott, 23rd August 2007. Consumers’ debt overtakes gross domestic product. The Guardian.

2. Ed Pilkington, 24th August 2007. Guano theory in bridge collapse. The Guardian.

3. Anthony Lane, 27th August 2007. New Orleans: A National Humiliation. The New Statesman.

4. David Harvey, 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford University Press.

5. See the graph on p17 of Harvey’s book.

6. David Harvey, ibid.

Barring a miracle–and miracles are in short order on Texas’ death row–Kenneth Foster is likely to die Thursday. The battle around his case has been a heroic one. Kenneth’s horrifying story of being condemned to death on a misapplication of an already draconian legal monstrosity–Texas’ “Law of Parties,” which enshrines guilt by association–as well as his own clear-eyed and articulate work telling his story and speaking out for others, have won him a host of supporters.

Foremost, of course, there is his family, including his heartbreakingly articulate daughter Nydesha–who has never touched her father, and now may never do so. There is the Coalition to Save Kenneth Foster, a group of activists who have rallied to his defense. There is also the New York hip-hop collective the Welfare Poets, and Kenneth’s wife, the Dutch hip-hop artist Jav’lin, who dedicated the moving song Walk With Me on the Poets’ Cruel and Unusual Punishment CD to her husband’s struggle to live. Mumia Abul-Jamal, from his own death row confinement, wrote in solidarity, while Amnesty International called the case “a new low for Texas”–and that is low indeed.

There are others. Sportswriter Dave Zirin’s Jocks 4 Justice, a coalition of socially conscious sports figures like Ruben “Hurricane” Carter, Etan Thomas and Dr. John Carlos, said that Kenneth should live. Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa filed an amicus curae brief for Kenneth. And the European Union singled Kenneth’s case out as particularly egregious in condemning Texas’ 400th execution. (Governor Perry’s response was to state that the U.S. had fought a war to be free of European influence, and that “Texans are doing just fine governing Texas.”)

The major papers in Texas have all come out against the execution. There is even a soul-searching statement from Sean-Paul Kelley, a boyhood friend of Michael LaHood, the murder victim in whose name Kenneth will be strapped to a gurney this Thursday: “the execution of a young man who didn’t even kill Mike? That’s not justice.” Kelley writes. “It’s senseless vengeance, a barbarism cloaked in the black robes of justice.”

With the picture of this broad, international roster of supporters before our eyes, a coalition of activists in New York decided to approach our own formally anti-death-penalty Democratic representative Charles Rangel, co-founder of the Congressional Black Caucus. Kenneth’s impeding execution is clearly a Civil Rights issue, as is the death penalty in general. It is difficult to imagine a wealthy white 19-year-old receiving the same treatment that Kenneth did. All five–yes, five–of the executions scheduled in Texas for this month are people of color (four are Black, one is Latino).

Two weeks ago, Rangel’s staff took a draft letter we wrote to Governor Perry on Kenneth’s behalf, which we hoped he would sign onto. They pumped us for information about the case; they wanted to know who was on board already. We told them that we wanted Rangel, as a politician with an abolitionist record, to take the lead in making Kenneth’s case heard in the halls of power. Then we waited. And as of last week, we were informed that Rangel would not see our letter for “several more days.” Given that after Tuesday it did not really matter, since it is was on Tuesday that the Pardons Board was to make its decision whether or not to recommend the case to the Governor (it has been delayed to today, Wednesday), this was the same as shutting the door.

So Monday morning, we decided to pay a visit to Charles Rangel.

We brought members of Harlem’s Campaign to End the Death Penalty (CEDP) and supporters of Kenneth. There was Ray Ramirez from the Welfare Poets, and Ronnique Hawkins from the Anti-Lynching Movement, and Michael Letwin, the radical lawyer and former President of the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys/UAW. There was Jeffrey Deskovic, recently released on DNA evidence after 17 years in jail, and Lawrence Hayes, former Black Panther, New York death row inmate and Campaign founder. There was a man whose son has been a penpal of Kenneth’s for years. We were students and activists and independent journalists, former prisoners and family members–those that have the most at stake in fighting the death penalty and criminal injustice. And we were there to ask that our anti-death-penalty representative to take a stand while it still mattered.

They didn’t want to let us up at first, but at last Rangel’s policy advisor came down to meet our community delegation. He sat us around a cafeteria table, and explained to us that Rangel was a very busy man, that he hadn’t read the letter and that we hadn’t gotten it to him in time. He explained that whether we liked it or not, Kenneth had been convicted by a real law in Texas, and that Rangel had to be careful what he said about that. He seemed to have forgotten–the fight for racial justice in the US meant overturning “real” laws like slavery and Jim Crow. Unjust laws are made to be broken. Rangel, the man said, had a pile of papers on his desk. This representative of our elected official sat at a table with those who’d been railroaded by the criminal injustice system and had their lives destroyed by it and told them that Kenneth’s case was not urgent enough.

But, they’d “talk to the communications director at the Congressional Black Caucus.” They’d “put it in front of Rangel.”

Kenneth Foster’s execution date is Thursday at 6 pm.

Meanwhile, a few of us, waiting outside in Adam Clayton Powell Plaza for our press conference to begin, were confronted by security guards for carrying “Save Kenneth” signs. They told us we needed a permit. Not even for holding up the signs. Just for holding them in our hands. A guard in a beret told us we were inciting a disturbance–that is, he seemed to think that the sight that the words “Save Kenneth Foster” and a picture of Kenneth and Nydesha under someone’s arm might incite a disturbance.

Just another example of post-9/11 paranoia in New York, maybe. But it also shows how the law-and-order agenda has sapped away all our rights, has made acceptable affronts that would have seemed absurd a few years ago, with the death penalty being only the sharpest expression of this. Kenneth himself has written about how his case symbolizes this assault. And Kenneth, through his own activism behind bars, has helped build a movement to shine a light on the injustice–to expose the racism, the bloodlust and the social blindness that our criminal injustice system is built onnot least of all the out-of-control Texas death machine.

And it seems that some people would rather not have to be confronted with this.

There is a final thought. At the end of the day, Kenneth is being executed for not having predicted a murder that he had no way of predicting, for not having read Mauricio Brown’s mind when he exited the car Kenneth has been driving. For not having called out to stop a murder he did not know was going to be committed. He is being killed for not seeing the future, “sentenced to death for leaving his crystal ball at home,” as Amnesty puts it.

Our representatives, unlike Kenneth, can see the future. They know exactly the hour and the date that the killing of Kenneth Foster will take place. The state of Texas is methodically, inexorably plotting the death of Kenneth Foster, piece by piece, hour by hour.

Some politicians have built their careers on promises of racial equality–careers they’ve too-often put ahead of the lives of individuals like Kenneth when it could make a difference. Texas is bucking a national trend against the death penalty. Texas kills with impunity, at least in part because none of our Democratic elected officials will call out to stop them. This may or may not make them “party” to Kenneth’s murder by some obscure legal standard — the important thing is that the cries for justice have been too infrequent.

We know that unjust laws like the “law of parties” are applied only to the voiceless and never to the powerful with their lawyers and policy advisers. But this doesn’t change the fact that those with power should speak out when their influence could make the difference. Or that it is long past time to call for a halt to the Civil Rights catastrophe that is the Texas killing machine, the fulcrum of the moral abyss that is the U.S. penal system. And if we cannot count on our elected officials to make this cry for justice heard, it will be up to us, at the grassroots–the kind of people represented so well Monday at Charles Rangel’s office–to make it heard.

Ben Davis is a member of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty in New York City.

What you can do:
Call the Governor and the Texas Board and urge them to grant clemency to Kenneth Foster:
Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles:
Phone (512)406-5852
Fax (512)467-0945

Gov. Rick Perry
Phone (512)463-1782
Fax (512)463-1849

In the administration of George W. Bush, the Republican Party has achieved the greatest combination of idiocy and evil in human history.

The Republicans have bogged America down in a gratuitous and illegal war. The war has destroyed Iraq, killed between 650,000 and 1,000,000 Iraqi civilians, displaced 4,000,000 Iraqis, and littered the country with depleted uranium. Bush’s war remains unwon despite its five year duration and $1 trillion in out-of-pocket and incurred future costs.

Bush’s invasion of Iraq is a war crime under the Nuremberg standard, a direct counterpart to Hitler’s invasion of Poland. Both were based on lies and deception, and the declared reasons for both were masks for secret agendas.

Bush’s invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, his planned attack on Iran, and his support for Israel’s attack on Lebanon and genocidal policies toward the Palestinians have radicalized the Middle East and Muslims worldwide. American and Israeli aggression have vindicated Osama bin Laden’s propaganda, produced massive recruits for Al Qaeda, and unleashed destabilizing forces throughout the Middle East

Bush’s wars are strengthening Islam. Abdullah Gul has just been elected president of Turkey. Gul is described by the American media as “former Islamist.” Gul is supported by the ruling political party of prime minister Erdogan, another “former Islamist.”

Gul’s election to the presidency by 76% of the Turkish parliament has upset Turkey’s secularized military, long in the pay of the US government. On August 27 Turkey’s military chief, General Yasar Buyukanit, declared that “centers of evil systematically try to corrode the secular nature of the Turkish Republic.” The Turkish military, many believe at the request and pay of the US, has overthrown four Turkish governments since 1960, the last only 10 years ago.

With President Bush’s rant about “bringing democracy to the Middle East,” the Turkish military is less able to impose Western values on an Islamic people. Similarly, the American puppet in Egypt cannot as easily suppress the Islamic values and aspirations of Egyptians.

US puppet rulers in Jordan and Pakistan, and even the Saudis and oil emirates, report the ground shaking under their feet. America’s puppet in Pakistan is in trouble, and his difficulties are compounded by US military incursions into Pakistan. The Bush administration is considering contingency plans to seize Pakistan’s nuclear weapons in the event the American puppet is overthrown, delusional contingency plans considering the over-stretched US military.

In the postwar years, the US managed with its money and influence to secularize an elite class in Middle Eastern countries, an elite that identifies with the West and not with their own cultures. This artificial elite has produced a wide political gap between the masses of the people and the rulers. Increasingly, Muslim masses perceive their rulers as allied with foreign powers against them.

In Iraq the American puppet government of Nuri al-Maliki seems to be on its last legs. The Sunnis have pulled their support, as has the most important Shi’ite leader, Muqtada al-Sadr, who realizes that the Maliki government is too complicit in US crimes to be a legitimate government of Iraq. With both the Bush administration and Congress blaming Maliki for America’s failure in Iraq, Maliki’s fate looks increasingly to be that of Ngo Dinh Diem, America’s Vietnam puppet who was blamed for the failure of US intervention in Vietnam.

Just as Hitler long denied German defeats on the Russian front and even in his last days was ordering non-existent German divisions to relieve Berlin, the Bush regime finds a new straw to grasp in Iraq each time the previous straw proves to be a delusion. The latest straw is “the surge.” While Americans surge, the British have been defeated in southern Iraq and have withdrawn to two bases in eerie similarity to the French at Dien Bien Phu. The British bases are subjected to between 30 and 60 mortar and rocket attacks each day. British generals want their troops out of Iraq. The longer UK prime minister Brown keeps them in Iraq in order to appease the Bush administration, the harder it will be to rescue the survivors.

With American retreat south to Kuwait now potentially cut off, how will the US extract its troops and equipment when American defeat can no longer be denied?

The Bush administration and its politicized military are already blaming the failure of “the surge” on Iran. Iran is alleged to be training and arming Iraqis who resist the US occupation. Bush has said he will hold Iran responsible. There is abundant evidence that the Bush administration is preparing yet another illegal attack on a Muslim country without assessing the consequences.

The Bush administration seems destined to produce such disasters that it will be driven to the use of nuclear weapons in order to avoid defeat. The Bush administration possesses the combination of evil and stupidity required to escalate a failed “cakewalk war” into a nuclear one.

Many of the administration’s most evil members–Wolfowitz, Feith, Libby, Rumsfeld, Rove, and Gonzales–have been discarded as the tragedy deepens, but Cheney remains ensconced as does the moron in the White House. Before they fall, Bush and Cheney will bring more sorrow to the world and more shame to Americans.

One more Republican conservative was outed this week for his illicit sexual conduct. “Roll Call,” the newspaper that covers Capitol Hill, broke the story that Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor disorderly conduct for soliciting a male undercover police officer in a toilet at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Craig agreed to pay $500-plus in fines and fees, received a suspended 10-day jail sentence plus one year’s probation.

With a true politician’s cynicism, Craig insists that he was innocent and would not have accepted the plea had he had a lawyer. He must have missed his buddy Fred Thompson on “Law & Order.”

Last year, the gay activist Web site – blogactive.com ­ outed Craig as a closeted gay man. Craig’s office denied the allegation, claiming that the accusation was “completely ridiculous” and with “no basis in fact.”

Craig joins a growing list of Republicans caught-up in sex scandals. Most recently, David Vitter, Louisiana’s Republican senator, was exposed for his use of the “DC Madam’s” escort service. Last year, two congressmen, Mark Fowley (R-FL) and Don Sherwood (R-PA), lost their House seats because of, respectively, questionable conduct with underage male interns and an out-of-wedlock affair. And, of course, there is good old Ted Haggard, the former Evangelical pastor, who was outed for his affair with a male escort.

Hidden in the closet of the Republican house of secrets, along with under-the-table earmarks and other clandestine deal making, are the innumerable outings of gay party stalwarts. While an individual’s sexual proclivity is really no one’s business other than the individual, the moral hypocrisy that marks much of both local and national Republican agenda serves only to deny the sexual desires of all Americans.

RENO, Nev. — President Bush said Tuesday that “there are unmistakable signs” that his troop buildup in Iraq is working and blasted critics who say that the failure of Iraq’s national government to foster political reconciliation proves that the troop increase is failing.

Bush painted a stark picture of what might happen if U.S. troops withdraw from Iraq, saying that would embolden Iran, al Qaida and other extremists to spread instability throughout the Middle East and spur a regional nuclear-arms race that would endanger the world.

“Iran could conclude that we are weak — and not stop them from gaining nuclear weapons,” he told the American Legion convention here. “And once Iran had nuclear weapons, it could set off an arms race in the region.”

The president’s speech appeared to have two objectives: to amplify his warning to Iran that he won’t tolerate its aggression, and to build public support for his “surge” policy in Iraq before Congress returns from vacation next week to weigh anew what to do there.

On Iran, Bush was unusually hawkish. He said Iran’s regime embodied and sustained one of two strains of radicalism — Shiite Muslim extremism — that threatened the Middle East. The other is Sunni Muslim extremism, led by al Qaida.

“Iran’s actions threaten the security of nations everywhere,” he said. “We will confront this danger before it is too late.”

The president said Iranians were supplying extremists in Iraq with money and weapons that were killing U.S. troops. “I have authorized our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran’s murderous activities,” he said.

Bush gave a more extensive argument to his view that his troop increase is working. He said coalition forces were killing and capturing far more insurgents in recent months, sectarian violence was down, political reconciliation was improving in several provinces, the central government was helping with provincial reconstruction and that electricity production was rising.

“The surge is seizing the initiative from the enemy — and handing it to the Iraqi people,” he said.

GENEVA (Aug. 28) – The United States has 90 guns for every 100 citizens, making it the most heavily armed society in the world, a report released on Tuesday said.

U.S. citizens own 270 million of the world’s 875 million known firearms, according to the Small Arms Survey 2007 by the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies.

About 4.5 million of the 8 million new guns manufactured worldwide each year are purchased in the United States, it said.

“There is roughly one firearm for every seven people worldwide. Without the United States, though, this drops to about one firearm per 10 people,” it said.

India had the world’s second-largest civilian gun arsenal, with an estimated 46 million firearms outside law enforcement and the military, though this represented just four guns per 100 people there. China, ranked third with 40 million privately held guns, had 3 firearms per 100 people.

Germany, France, Pakistan, Mexico, Brazil and Russia were next in the ranking of country’s overall civilian gun arsenals.

On a per-capita basis, Yemen had the second most heavily armed citizenry behind the United States, with 61 guns per 100 people, followed by Finland with 56, Switzerland with 46, Iraq with 39 and Serbia with 38.

France, Canada, Sweden, Austria and Germany were next, each with about 30 guns per 100 people, while many poorer countries often associated with violence ranked much lower. Nigeria, for instance, had just one gun per 100 people.

“Firearms are very unevenly distributed around the world. The image we have of certain regions such as Africa or Latin America being awash with weapons — these images are certainly misleading,” Small Arms Survey director Keith Krause said.

“Weapons ownership may be correlated with rising levels of wealth, and that means we need to think about future demand in parts of the world where economic growth is giving people larger disposable income,” he told a Geneva news conference.

The report, which relied on government data, surveys and media reports to estimate the size of world arsenals, estimated there were 650 million civilian firearms worldwide, and 225 million held by law enforcement and military forces.

Five years ago, the Small Arms Survey had estimated there were a total of just 640 million firearms globally.

“Civilian holdings of weapons worldwide are much larger than we previously believed,” Krause said, attributing the increase largely to better research and more data on weapon distribution networks.

Only about 12 percent of civilian weapons are thought to be registered with authorities.

Compared to this occupation, even colonialism looks like a nice ride.

At least, colonialism still managed to build a road or two, a couple of schools and maybe a health dispensary.

But tell me, what has this occupation done apart from destroy ?
Do you understand the word DESTRUCTION ? Do you know what it means?

Ok, let me refresh your memories since you do not know what destruction is.

Remember when you had two towers crumbling to the ground, in a mass of rubbles, with fire shooting all over the place ?
Yes, that is destruction.

Ok, let me refresh some more since you happen to have a few amnesic lapses.
Do you remember your 3’000 dead and their families still seeking therapy 6 years down the line?
Yes, that is destruction.

Do you remember how that tiny spot looked so desolate, empty, ravaged, afterwards ?
Yes, that is destruction.

Do you remember the people crying, shocked, lost ?
Yes, that is destruction.

But that was no occupation.

Occupation is multiplying that one episode of destruction by 1000. Nay, by 1’000.000.000 and you get the full picture today.

THAT IS CALLED OCCUPATION.

Your tanks rolling on pavements where people are meant to be walking, destroying the pavements and the lamp posts on their way and running over a couple of civilians. That is OCCUPATION.

Your guns shooting innocent civilians at checkpoints just because one of your shits is having a bad day. That is OCCUPATION.

Your jets roaming the skies day and night and bombarding neighborhoods and villages and killing children, women and men. That is OCCUPATION.

Your especially designed prisons filled with innocent “local” detainees, for years without trial. That is OCCUPATION.

Every single street, building, school, office, in rubbles and ruins. That is OCCUPATION.

No water, no electricity, no food, no functional hospitals…That is OCCUPATION.

Arbitrary arrests, arbitrary killings, daily house searches, ransacking, pillaging from the “locals”. That is OCCUPATION.

Raping women, girls, boys, men. Torturing them, spitting on them, humiliating them, insulting them, castrating them, sodomizing them, burning them, pissing on them.
That is OCCUPATION.

Destroying houses of worship, burning Holy Books, and drawing crucifixes on the walls, pissing and shitting inside, and shooting the elders. That is OCCUPATION.

Having 1 million widows dressed in black, orphaned children eating from garbage dumps, 70% unemployed, villages where famine is rampant, 4 million “locals” with their homes and belongings destroyed and now living in squalor, begging the streets.
That is OCCUPATION.

Seeing young women and mothers sell their bodies in exchange for bread and older women sleeping on sidewalks. That is OCCUPATION.

Having your children, boys and girls, either sold to strangers, kidnapped as sex slaves, or caught in pedophile rings. That is OCCUPATION

Having your schools, universities, libraries burned down and emptied. That is OCCUPATION.

Witnessing the fleeing and/or the slaughter of your academics, researchers, scholars, doctors, nurses, engineers, scientists…That is OCCUPATION.

Seeing your palm trees, your fields, your parcs, your rivers, your soil either burned down, or razed to the grounds or filled with garbage and dead bodies, or contaminated with toxic waste, radiation and Depleted Uranium. That is OCCUPATION.

Turning your agricultural land that used to sustain you into poppy fields, open for drugs traffickers and mafias. That is OCCUPATION.

Walking out of your doorstep and stumbling on rotting cadavers, immersed in pools of sewage and have your neighborhood turned into a junk yard. That is OCCUPATION.

Having your loved ones kidnapped, abducted, tortured, mutilated, raped and dumped in some street. That is OCCUPATION.

Seeing the “locals” riddled with disease, cancer, allergies, asthma, swellings, inflammations of all sorts, skin lesions due to your “smart” bombs, plus the fact that they can’t get treatment for already existing ailments. That is OCCUPATION.

Looking at your cultural, historical heritage in ruins. Seeing your museums, art galleries, musical conservatory…emptied. Seeing your archelogical sites turned into military bases and the walls of your ancient towers either destroyed or filled with yankee graffitis. That is OCCUPATION.

Having neighborhoods sealed and turned into ghettoes, building huge walls that suffocates you in. That is OCCUPATION.

Seeing your family ripped apart, either because you are christian, sunni, shia, yezidi, sabaean and having your friends disappearing or be driven out in hordes. That is OCCUPATION.

Not being able to walk the streets, go out at night, curfews, bombs, snipers, explosions, mortars, militias, armies, mercenaries, contractors…That is OCCUPATION.

Having your life reduced to survival and catching your breath. That is OCCUPATION.

Running from morgue to morgue, cemetery to cemetery, counting the 1 Million massacred. That is OCCUPATION.

Becoming an undertaker, coffin maker or a professional mourner because that is the only lucrative affair today. That is OCCUPATION.

Dismantling the State apparatus, the “local” army, sacking civil servants or killing them, taking over ministries and government offices. That is OCCUPATION.

Installing a puppet government made of corrupt thugs, criminals, spies, bandits, psychopaths, sectarian, chauvinistic fundamentalists, and embezzlers…That is OCCUPATION.

Dividing your country, enabling its cleansing, partitioning it along sectarian and ethnic lines when these lines were non existent before, even forcing couples to divorce as a result of these new maps. That is OCCUPATION.

Emptying your country’s treasury of its wealth in billion of Dollars, making fraudulent contracts and stealing by every mean possible. That is OCCUPATION.

And last but not least, witnessing your smelly shits, squatting the palaces of the legitimate President that you slaughtered. That is OCCUPATION.

And I can write a thousand more lines on occupation…So forgive me, Iraq, if I have missed out on something.

The scale of the human disaster in the Iraq war has become clearer from statistics collected by two humanitarian groups that reveal the number of Iraqis who have fled the fighting has more than doubled since the US military build-up began in February.

The Iraqi Red Crescent Organisation said the total number of internally displaced has jumped from 499,000 to 1.1 million since extra US forces arrived with the aim of making the country more secure. The UN-run International Organisation for Migration says the numbers fleeing fighting in Baghdad grew by a factor of 20 in the same period.

These damning statistics reveal that despite much- trumpeted security improvements in certain areas, the level of murderous violence has not declined. The studies reveal that the number of Iraqis fleeing their homes ­ not intending to return ­ is far higher than before the US surge.

The flight is especially marked in religiously mixed areas of central Iraq, with Shia refugees heading south and Sunnis towards the west and north of the country.

Calling it the worst human displacement in Iraq’s modern history, a report by the UN migration office suggests that the fierce fighting that has followed the arrival of new US troops is partly responsible.

The spectre of ethnic cleansing now hovers over the once relatively harmonious country. The UN found that 63 per cent of the Iraqis fled their neighbourhoods because of threats to their lives. More than 25 per cent said they fled after being thrown out of their homes at gunpoint.

The statistics were released as President George Bush’s policy of staying the course in Iraq was under grave threat yesterday as the scale of the humanitarian disaster became clearer and a key Republican senator said that it was time to bring the troops home.

A dangerous rift has also emerged inside the US military between the high command, which says the strain the war is putting on the military endangers American security, and commanders on the ground who still say it is a winnable war.

For President Bush, the greatest danger may come from losing the support of Senator John Warner, one of the most influential Republicans in Congress on Iraq. Just back from a trip to the country, he bluntly told the President to start pulling troops out in time for Christmas. He did so as a damning new assessment was delivered by all 15 US intelligence agencies. Written by the CIA, it concluded that the government in Baghdad was “unable to govern effectively” and “will become more precarious” in the next six to 12 months, with little hope of reaching accommodation among political factions.

There was further bad news for the President overnight when it emerged that the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff is quietly advising that US forces in Iraq be halved by early next year. The advice, from Marine General Peter Pace, is a direct challenge to the White House and other senior military chiefs, in particular the man now running the war in Iraq, the Army General David Petraeus.

General Petraeus has told President Bush that forces in Iraq need to be kept higher than 100,000 troops well into next year. General Petraeus is widely expected to back the White House view that in the absence of political progress in Iraq, US troops need to be increased.

Attorneys for immigrant children at a Central Texas detention center have reached a settlement agreement with the government that would create changes both big and small — from increasing oversight to letting youngsters bring pencils and paper to their cells.

Attorneys with the Department of Homeland Security and the American Civil Liberties Union reached an agreement Sunday but need final approval from a judge. The case was scheduled to go to trial on Monday before U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks in Austin.

The agreement involves a range of reforms at the center in Taylor, which is the focus of international controversy over reports that families were kept in prisonlike conditions. Attorneys for the ACLU and co-counsel filed 10 lawsuits on behalf of immigrant children in March in U.S. District Court, stating that detainees were subject to psychological abuse from guards, received poor medical care and inadequate nutrition.

The Texas center — one of only two in the nation that house immigrant families facing deportation — is privately run by the Corrections Corporation of America and was once a medium-security prison.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials denied that immigrant families were treated below acceptable standards, according to the settlement agreement. But ICE agreed to a range of conditions in the proposed settlement — including increasing scrutiny of the length of time families are detained and allowing for independent monitoring by the judge assigned to mediate the case, U.S. Magistrate Judge Andrew W. Austin.

Other concessions allowed children to have curtains around toilets and go on field trips with their parents’ permission.

‘Urgent problem’

ICE spokeswoman Nina Pruneda would not answer questions about the settlement on Monday, but she released a statement that defended conditions at Hutto and welcomed the outside monitoring.

The judge’s participation “will help improve communication about the facility and end any misconceptions and allegations falsely made about the Hutto facility,” the ICE statement said.

Pruneda also said Monday afternoon that ICE could not provide the number of detainees currently in Hutto.

Lisa Graybill, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, said the center has made progress since the ACLU first sued in March, including changing the menu, allowing limited, supervised visitation and providing more hours of schooling.

Children are no longer required to wear prison uniforms and are allowed to spend more time outdoors.

ACLU attorneys have argued that conditions at Hutto don’t comply with Flores v. Meese, an earlier federal settlement agreement that calls for immigration authorities to house children in the least restrictive environment possible, such as shelters or foster homes.

In April, Sparks ruled that the plaintiffs in the ACLU lawsuit were “highly likely” to prevail in arguments that immigration officials had violated legal standards for their treatment. The judge called the children’s detention in “substandard conditions” an “urgent problem.”

Under the terms of the settlement, children 12 and older would be able to move freely about the center. Immigration officials also would eliminate periodic head counts, instead having immigrants check in on their own, the agreement states.

Only families designated for “expedited removal” are to be housed at Hutto, barring a shortage of bed space at other facilities, according to the agreement.

Plaintiffs all released

Immigrants placed into expedited removal typically have a final order of deportation and are moved through the system relatively quickly. More complex cases, such as asylum claims, take months — or sometimes years — to resolve.

The settlement proposal also requires that ICE provide a full-time pediatrician and immunize children in the center. The settlement proposal is a “recognition that the environment needs to be more homelike and less penal,” Graybill said. “It has resulted in significant changes for kids who have to spend time at Hutto.”

ICE officials opened the Hutto facility in May 2006 as part of a push to end the controversial “catch-and-release” policy. Before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, most families caught by immigration authorities were released because of a shortage of space in detention centers. Immigration officials reported that many of the released families did not show up for scheduled court hearings.