The Rag Blog

The story is big and dangerous. It’s everywhere you look. It’s part of a history that grows worse with the decades. “One step forward, two steps back” as someone once said.

It’s all about selling Canada out economically, culturally, politically, socially. It’s about selling out the country by handing over our resources, our industries, our cultural anchors, the glues that bind us together as a community – all as part of re-colonization, part of Canada becoming a mixture of Guatemala, Saudi Arabia, and Colombia – a special, rich, fawning client-state of the USA, bled of the independence to make choices on behalf of the Canadian people and their future. Bled willingly and wholeheartedly by the new reactionaries in – it seems – all the Parties and all the major economic think tanks and private corporations. How long will Canadians put up with it?

The cultural part of the sell-out presses forward like a huge sunny-day garage sale. Losing millions a year, every year of its life, The National Post is kept afloat by its reactionary owners to preach the gospel of greed, the idiocy of traditional Canadian values, the “rightful” domination of Canada by the USA, and the necessity to support political parties that embody those ideas.

Canada is peculiar in the respect that it has a large class persistently determined to deny the Canadian right to Canadian wealth. That class denudes Canadians of their right to have initiative, imagination, and to undertake independent action. Simply consider that Alberta admires itself for building its Heritage Fund to something over 12 billion dollars. Norway which manages its wealth ownership differently has a Heritage Fund of over 200 billion dollars. Think about that across the spectrum of Canadian resources being pumped out by foreign owners and sent to foreign places, some for refinement and “value added” treatment.

Maclean’s Magazine, a cultural anchor, for decades a reasonably serious though not strong advocate of an independent Canadian society, has fallen into the hands of reactionary, sell-out muckrakers. Maclean’s now offers in its sleaze menu – it would appear from its emphasis – an on-going icon to represent and “embody” Canada: Lord [Conrad] Black of Doublecross Harbour. No more needs to be said.

Meanwhile back at CBC – being carefully hollowed out in preparation for “the big chop” – CBC Radio Two is more and more a home for mentally challenged pre-adolescents on a diet of US rock magazines. Real differences in cultural understanding between Canadians and tastemakers in the imperial centre obstruct imperial marketing policy – even resist it. So orders are out: flatten CBC.

Coincidentally, Tony Burman, top-ranking journalist with CBC, editor-in-chief of CBC News, Current Affairs, and Newsworld is leaving. Flatten CBC. Midwife at the separation – a name that recurs in CBC dumbing-down stories – is Richard Stursberg, CBC television executive vice president. He oversees much of the increase in pap, cold porridge, and pong. Do I remember correctly that – wearing another hat some years ago – Richard Stursberg suggested the CBC be terminated?

All are to assist in the flattening. Michael Enright assists. Love of yankees of any kind pervades the People’s Corporation – to the point that it hires yankees whenever possible. Take Sunday Morning, hosted by that most self-satisfied of voices on Canadian radio, Michael Enright. Refer to Sunday, June 17 07. Enright and his bright programmers decided to deal with a perennial topic: empire, imperialism, its characteristics, the US Empire and its nature compared to the Roman Empire.

What better topic for Canadians to consider, people who occupy an economic, political, cultural and social US colony perched on thousands of miles of shared border? Who better to talk about and think about the effect and reach and nature of imperialism than Canadians – a people who began as French colonials and then became British colonials and now are US colonials?

Who better?

Aha! But in a colony the colonials can never have expertise – even in the matter of their own identity as colonials. Colonials can be experts in … nothing. And so Michael Enright interviewed two “experts”, one from a British university and one from a US university. No Canadian. Erase Canada. Flatten CBC. Michael Enright is on side.

Watch the “incorruptible” Brian Day erase Canada and Canadians. New president of the Canadian Medical Association, Day is back to the CMA of the Saskatchewan Doctors Strike in 1962, a period of wholesale misinformation from the CMA which fought a dirty fight to prevent publicly created medicare. Already Day has begun. Fear mongering. Bloated attacks. Dubious claims: “private clinics must run beside the public system to make it more cost effective”. Oh. Who says? And will there be US money for the new campaign against universal medicare? Ask Brian Day. US money was there aplenty to fight against medicare at the time of the Doctors Strike in 1962. Ask Shirley Douglas.

And the Canadian economy? Hollowing Out. What is Hollowing Out? It’s the handing over of ownership and control of Canadian life to (mostly US) foreign interests. It is the sell-out of industries and corporations essential to a balanced economy, and direction of their Canadian operation from foreign centres to suit foreigner’s policy. It’s the removal of independence and initiative from Canada and Canadians at all levels of society, especially in the economy. It’s the disguised re-colonization of Canada and the turning of Canadians into colonial serfs.

That process is ALWAYS at work in a colonial society. Colonial societies are societies that are, by definition, hollowed out to make the imperial society richer. That condition is growing dangerously worse now in Canada. We all know, for instance, that fawning governments have refused to let Canadian film-making become an international force. For more than sixty years Canadian governments have made deals with US governments to keep Canadian film-making a welfare activity. An industry that should be in full competition with US film making, that should be bringing kudos and billions of dollars in reward to Canada, is purposefully suppressed by Canadian government in order to please Washington. That is what we call colonialism. Shame. And double shame.

A wise investment analyst (Tom Bradley, Globe and Mail, Apr. 20 07 B16) records how in the 1990s he had to meet people in Dallas, New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey to discuss the servicing of Canadian pension plans. Why? “The parent companies had taken as many white-collar jobs out of Canada as they could and that included the pension department.”

Globe and Mail for June 20 07 trumpets the Stephen Harper belief that the “Hollowing Out” cry is mere “hype”. (A1, A4) Needless to say ”senior federal Finance Department officials “are doing the talking for Harper – traditional sell-out entities. Harper has been silent we are told not because he is a confirmed sell-out but because he doesn’t want to fan the flames of “misconception”.

On the same day the Globe and Mail reported that the brother to Hollowing Out – Globalization – (B 15) is hitting working people hard. What is Globalization? It is the takeover of governments by private corporate power; the peonization of working people everywhere; the stripping of all social securities from populations; and the employment of government power, the military, and press/media to further the wealth and the domination of private corporate interests. To put it into the words of Globe writer Marcus Walker: “many workers in developed countries are struggling to find well-paid work amid a combination of cheap imports, the relocation of factories and offices to low-wage countries, and changing technology”.

“Hollowing Out” holds hands with “Globalization”.

Even while the big trumpets are spreading the “keep happy” lie, smaller ones are telling the truth. In the Globe (May 19 07 N16) Heather Scoffield tells an old, old, old Canadian story. Stephen Harper’s propagandists say all is well, Canadians are shipping out money “to invest” in the USA. That’s a lie. US money is coming in to grab Canada. Canadian dollars are flowing out of Canada from US Branch Plants to US head offices. That is NOT Canadian investment in the USA. That is not “foreign trade”. That is imperial power wringing the wealth out of a colony. To avoid the sad, ugly term, “Branch Plants,” Statistics Canada has apparently discovered a nicer term: “sister companies”. The biggest Canada-to-US dollar flow, Scoffield reports, is Canadian subsidiaries [Branch Plants] handing money back to their US parent companies.” Economic colonialism.

Tom Bradley seemed a little surprised at the completeness of the takeovers he witnessed in the 1990s. He shouldn’t have been. From 1968 to 1972 Canada produced studies of the effects of foreign (mostly US) ownership. One after the other we had The Watkins Report, the Gray Report, and the Wahn Report.

They told us what Tom Bradley and Heather Scoffield report afresh as “news”. Very often (but of course not in every case):

(A) Foreign owners suck out Canadian jobs.
(B) They suck out capital that should be available for Canadian-initiated and directed enterprise.
(C) They work to destroy good working conditions and to destroy good quality social insurance.
(D) They block the development of Canadian invention and research, doing research and development elsewhere than Canada.
(E) Inventions made by Canadians in the employ of US Branch Plants are “owned” by the foreign companies in most cases.
(F) Foreign owners charge Canadian Branch Plants for the “use” of US technology, patented processes, and so-called US “management” expertise.
(G) They fiddle “production expenses” (and other matters) in order to cheat Canadian tax gathering authorities.

How can Canadian tax departments oversee all buying and selling activities between the Branch Plants and the parent companies? Tax departments can’t. So guess what happens?

Don’t foreign owners (mostly US owners) do ANYTHING good, you ask? Why should they? With the help of the US government they set up in Canada to grab Canadian resources, to corner markets, to kill Canadian competition, to brainwash Canadians that invasion is good for them, to make money, and to make money, and to make money – for themselves. Why would they want to do anything good?

They don’t. And only colonials, so brain-washed and indoctrinated they’re near-vegetables – only such people can believe that the wide-open, takeover-mad, unregulated market economy “Hollowing Out” Canada and “Globalizing” poverty, oppression, and despair is – to quote the Stephen Harper clones – “a net positive for the [Canadian] economy”.

I suppose that astonishment is not the word for it. Stupefaction comes to mind. I simply could not believe my ears in Beirut when a phone call told me that Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara was going to create “Palestine”. I checked the date–no, it was not 1 April–but I remain overwhelmed that this vain, deceitful man, this proven liar, a trumped-up lawyer who has the blood of thousands of Arab men, women and children on his hands is really contemplating being “our” Middle East envoy.

Can this really be true? I had always assumed that Balfour, Sykes and Picot were the epitome of Middle Eastern hubris. But Blair? That this ex-prime minister, this man who took his country into the sands of Iraq, should actually believe that he has a role in the region–he whose own preposterous envoy, Lord Levy, made so many secret trips there to absolutely no avail–is now going to sully his hands (and, I fear, our lives) in the world’s last colonial war is simply overwhelming.

Of course, he’ll be in touch with Mahmoud Abbas, will try to marginalise Hamas, will talk endlessly about “moderates”; and we’ll have to listen to him pontificating about morality, how he’s absolutely and completely confident that he’s doing the right thing (and this, remember, is the same man who postponed a ceasefire in Lebanon last year in order to share George Bush’s ridiculous hope of an Israeli victory over Hizbollah) in bringing peace to the Middle East…

Not once–ever–has he apologised. Not once has he said he was sorry for what he did in our name. Yet Lord Blair actually believes–in what must be a record act of self-indulgence for a man who cooked up the fake evidence of Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction”–that he can do good in the Middle East.

For here is a man who is totally discredited in the region–a politician who has signally failed in everything he ever tried to do in the Middle East–now believing that he is the right man to lead the Quartet to patch up “Palestine”.

In the hunt for quislings to do our bidding–ie accept even less of Mandate Palestine than Arafat would stomach–I suppose Blair has his uses. His unique blend of ruthlessness and dishonesty will no doubt go down quite well with our local Arab dictators.

And I have a suspicion–always assuming this extraordinary story is not untrue–that Blair will be able to tour around Damascus, even Tehran, in his hunt for “peace”, thus paving the way for an American exit strategy in Iraq. But “Palestine”?

The Palestinians held elections–real, copper-bottomed ones, the democratic variety–and Hamas won. But Blair will presumably not be able to talk to Hamas. He’ll need to talk only to Abbas’s flunkies, to negotiate with an administration described so accurately this week by my old colleague Rami Khoury as a “government of the imagination”.

The Americans are talking–and here I am quoting the State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack–about an envoy who can work “with the Palestinians in the Palestinian system” to develop institutions for a “well-governed state”. Oh yes, I can see how that would appeal to Lord Blair. He likes well-governed states, lots of “terror laws”, plenty of security–though I’m still a bit puzzled about what the “Palestinian system” is meant to be.

It was James Wolfensohn who was originally “our” Middle East envoy, a former World Bank president who left in frustration because he could neither reconstruct Gaza nor work with a “peace process” that was being eroded with every new Jewish settlement and every Qassam rocket fired into Israel. Does Blair think he can do better? What honeyed words will we hear?

I bet he doesn’t mention the Israeli wall which is taking so much extra land from the Palestinians. It will be a “security barrier” or a “fence” (like the famous Berlin “fence” which was actually called a “security barrier” by those generous East German Vopo cops of the time).

There will be appeals for restraint “on all sides”, endless calls for “moderation”, none at all for justice (which is all the people of the Middle East have been pleading for over the past 100 years).

And Israel likes Lord Blair. Indeed, Blair’s slippery use of language is likely to appeal to Ehud Olmert, whose government continues to take Arab land for Jews and Jews only as he waits to discover a Palestinian with whom he can “negotiate”, Mahmoud Abbas now having the prestige of a rabbit after his forces were crushed in Gaza.

Which of “Palestine”‘s two prime ministers will Blair talk to? Why, the one with a collar and tie, of course, who works for Mr Abbas, who will demand more “security”, tougher laws, less democracy.

I have never been able to figure out why the Middle East draws the Balfours and the Sykeses and the Blairs into its maw. Once, our favourite trouble-shooter was James Baker–who worked for George W’s father until the Israelis got tired of him–and before that we had a whole list of UN Secretary Generals who visited the region, frowned and warned of serious consequences if peace did not soon come.

I recall another man with Blair’s pomposity, a certain Kurt Waldheim, who–no longer the UN’s boss–actually believed he could be an “envoy” for peace in the Middle East, despite his little wartime career as an intelligence officer for the Wehrmacht’s Army Group “E”.

A glance at much of the media’s coverage of Latin America would suggest that there are two types of democracies in the region today: the good and the bad. Due to an almost pathological obsession by outlets such as the New York Times and the Economist, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador have been categorised as places where democracy is being ‘eroded’ and freedom of the press ‘curtailed’, and where popular demagogues are happily marching their people towards dictatorial systems.

In its 19 April 2007 edition, the Economist provided a classic example. Its target was the Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa. Although the report noted that Correa takes many of his cabinet secretaries around the country with him “in an attempt to bring government closer to the people”; has doubled cash transfers to 1.3 million of the nation’s poorest people; provided a further $100 million to “housing subsidies for the poor” and “increased substantially” spending on education and health, unfortunately, it was hard to “find an independent political observer” who thought Ecuadorians had something to be hopeful about.

To make matters worse, “the growing strength of the president’s grip on power… is giving cause for alarm”, stated the Economist in the most predictable fashion. Back in Venezuela, Simon Romero on May 17 filed a story for the New York Times titled: “Clash of Hope and Fear as Venezuela Seizes Land.” With a combination of historical knowledge and imagination, Romero wrote:

For centuries, much of Venezuela’s rich farmland has been in the hands of a small elite. After coming to power in 1998, and especially after his re-election in December, President Hugo Chávez vowed to end that inequality, and has been keeping his promise in a process that is both brutal and legal.

Charging the Chávez government responsible for the “largest forced land redistribution in Venezuela’s history”, Romero notes that the “violence has gone both ways” with “more than 160 peasants killed by hired gunmen” and eight landowners also murdered thus far. The slight disparity in deaths between peasants and landowners however escaped Romero’s attention, as with the fact that the government has targeted landowners with non-productive haciendas who cannot prove documentation for their original titles of purchase – a wide spread problem in the region. In short, of course the conclusions one should draw from Venezuela are all too obvious.

So where can one find the good democracy in Latin America? Where is the ‘responsible’ government? For that, if we are to believe many commentators, one must travel across the Andes to Chile and meet socialist President Michelle Bachelet. As the second female President in Latin American history after Nicaragua’s Violeta Chamorro (1990-1997), Bachelet evokes a combination of admiration but unfortunately also disappointment due to the policies of her administration.

By now much of her personal story is well known. With a father, Brigadier General Alberto Bachelet, who served loyally with the Allende government (1970-1973), Michelle and her mother Ángela Jeria were imprisoned shortly after General Augusto Pinochet’s coup on the 11th of September 1973. Having fled with her mother after her father died under torture, Bachelet lived for various periods in Australia, the former East Germany and the United States. Trained in paediatrics and military studies, Bachelet received much attention after she was made Health Minister, and later Defence Minister, under the centre-left Concertación government of Ricardo Lagos.

As a minister and now incumbent President, Bachelet must be given credit for certain achievements. Given the task as Health Minister of drastically reducing waiting lists in public hospitals within the first 100 days of Lagos’s government, Bachelet generally achieved these aims while making it mandatory for all primary-care facilities to provide emergency contraception to all females over the age of 14 who requested it.

If you don’t read Newsday, you might not know (I didn’t until this week) that Rudy Giuliani was an original member of the Iraq Study Group — the blue-ribbon commission co-chaired by James Baker and Lee Hamilton — but he was forced out after failing to show up for any of the panel’s meetings.

The day after the Newsday story appeared, Giuliani explained that he’d started thinking about running for president, and his presence on the panel might give it a political spin. “It didn’t seem that I’d really be able to keep the thing focused on a bipartisan, nonpolitical resolution,” he said.

The more likely reason for Giuliani’s no-shows is much plainer — money. Craig Gordon, the Newsday reporter who wrote the story in the Long Island paper’s June 19 edition, discovered that on the three days of meetings that Giuliani missed (before quitting), he was out of town, delivering highly lucrative speeches.

On April 12, 2006, he was giving a keynote address at an economics conference in South Korea for a fee of $200,000. On May 18, he was giving a speech on leadership in Atlanta for $100,000.

At that point, Baker gave Giuliani an ultimatum: Start showing up for sessions, or quit. On May 24, he quit, noting in a letter (provided to Gordon) that prior commitments prevented him from giving the panel his “full and active participation.” (He was replaced by former Attorney General Edwin Meese, a puzzling choice for the job; maybe he was the only public figure Baker could find on such short notice. According to someone I know who attended one session, the elderly Meese “was barely conscious.”)

Meanwhile, Giuliani was raking in exorbitant speaking fees around this time—according to Gordon, $11.4 million in the course of 14 months, $1.7 million for 20 speeches during the monthlong period that coincided with the Baker-Hamilton sessions.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I doubt that I would have forgone six figures of easy income for the privilege of yakking about Iraq with a roomful of graybeards all day long. Then again, I wasn’t about to run for president—the highest office of public service—on a résumé bereft of a single foreign-policy credential.

Rudy’s choice — to go for the money—speaks proverbial volumes about his priorities.

His explanation for dropping out—that his impending run for the presidency would tarnish the panel’s apolitical character—is dubious, to say the least.

BAGHDAD — In 2005, Abu Rusil was a penniless Shiite Muslim taxi driver who could barely afford to rent a room. Then Sunni gunmen stopped his older brother at a checkpoint, checked his ID and discovered he was a Shiite. They dragged him from his car and shot him dead on the spot.

Now Abu Rusil lives for revenge. He brags about the people he’s killed; there are so many, he boasted in an interview with McClatchy Newspapers, that he’s lost count. His tales are horrific – people buried alive, others burned in their homes, still more who died when holes were drilled in their heads and shoulders.

“Life is about getting even,” he said coldly, dressed in the all-black uniform of the Mahdi Army militia. “There is no innocent Sunni.”

There’s no way to confirm Abu Rusil’s accounts, but there’s every reason to believe them and the challenge they pose to American efforts to pacify the city. He talks of fomenting a revolution to drive the Sunnis from Iraq, of his training trips to Iran and of his need to avenge his brother’s death.

In Adhamiyah, the Sunni neighborhood where his brother died, residents confirmed that he leaves signed notes on dead Sunnis. “Best regards,” they read.

“Half of Adhamiyah is gone because I killed them,” Abu Rusil said.

In Hai al Salam, a once peaceful mixed neighborhood where Abu Rusil is a Mahdi Army commander, fear of him and his compatriots is palpable. Residents confirm that the militiamen bury people in the dead of night.

The increased American presence means little, they say.

“We are playing a game of cat and mouse,” said Haider Shwail, a Shiite whose brother was shot dead as he was making photocopies. Abu Rusil’s militiamen took $500 that his brother had in his pocket as a contribution for what they call “the Martyr’s office.”

“When the Americans are inside the neighborhood, we go out to do our shopping,” Shwail said. “When they leave, we go inside because the killing begins.”

U.S. military officers plead ignorance to the extent of the brutality, though they say they’re going after “rogue” and “criminal” members of the Mahdi Army. They say there’s little they can do if Iraqis are too frightened to talk.

“It is all very interesting that the people that are witnessing such tragedies are too afraid to tell anyone about it, so they willfully allow the continued prosecution of terror by these criminals against innocent Iraqis,” said Col. J.B. Burton, the commander of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team of the 1st Infantry Division, which has responsibility for Hai al Salam. “We’ve neither seen nor heard of this degree of horror because nobody wants to talk.”

McClatchy Newspapers interviewed Abu Rusil after asking an intermediary to find a Mahdi Army commander from Hai al Salam to comment on residents’ stories of brutality. Abu Rusil introduced himself as Abu al Hassan, then acknowledged his better known nom de guerre. He refused to be identified by his real name, though several residents said they knew it.

Abu Rusil said he’d never killed anyone until his brother’s death. He struggled to make ends meet as a taxi driver. When Sunni insurgents shot his brother, Abu Rusil and his family had to pool their money to come up with the $2,000 it cost to retrieve the body.

Now he enjoys the spoils of war as a Mahdi Army commander. He has a house and three sport-utility vehicles, which he uses in his transportation business. He confiscates cars from Sunnis to get around town. The cars, of course, now belong to the Mahdi Army.

The killings will end, Abu Rusil said, when every Sunni has left the country and Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric who heads the Mahdi Army, rules Iraq.

1. In the beginning was the Plan.

2. And then came the Assumptions.

3. And the Assumptions were without form.

4. And the Plan was without Substance.

5. And darkness was upon the face of the Workers.

6. And Workers spoke among themselves saying, “It is a crock of shit and it stinks.”

7. And Workers went unto their Supervisors and said, “It is a crock of dung and we cannot live with the smell.”

8. And Supervisors went unto their Managers saying, “It is a container of organic waste, and it is very strong, such that none may abide by it.”

9. And Managers went unto their Directors, saying, “It is a vessel of fertilizer, and none may abide its strength.”

10. And Directors spoke among themselves, saying to one another; “It contains that which aids plant growth, and it is very strong.”

11. And Directors went to Vice Presidents, saying unto them, “It promotes growth, and it is very powerful.”

12. And Vice Presidents went to the President, saying unto him “It has very powerful effects.”

13. And the President looked upon the Plan and saw that it was good.

14. And the Plan became Policy.

All my forewarnings have suddenly been actualised, all at once: Gaza has descended into total and utter chaos; Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has capitulated to Israel and to the United States without a shred of reservation; and the Palestinian democratic experiment, which was until recently an astounding success, has been smashed to pieces.

For years I have been warning of a civil war starting in Gaza. I wrote about it in my last book, The Second Palestinian Intifada. I warned via every media platform available that there are too many hands working to ensure the demise of the Palestinian national project, both from within and without. I urged Palestinians not to fall into rhetoric. I saw very clearly that the fragmentation of Palestinian national identity — an outcome of two combined realities: one stemming from the post-Oslo political culture, the other from Israel’s Bantustan ghettos imposed in the West Bank and the total isolation of Gaza — was almost perfected. I’ve toured many cities in many countries taking on Palestinian division, worried that Palestinians will reach a point where they no longer identify themselves as such, but as ideological and tribal extensions of factions and sub-factions.

In recent months I became belligerent — in the eyes of some — in my frankness. Not one public speech I gave would conclude without a few Palestinians abandoning the gathering; either Fatah loyalists furious over my chastisement of Abbas, Fatah leader Mohamed Dahlan and the rest of the clique for their corruption and deviation from the aspirations of their own people; or Islamists, angry for my suggesting that Hamas shouldn’t act as the sole proprietor of the Palestinian narrative, despite their parliamentary majority, but merely as a conduit for Palestinian constants and the will of the Palestinian people. My comments were not always popular: they ruffled many feathers, and recently they cost me my job.

The devastating embargo imposed on Palestinians after the Hamas landslide victory in January 2006, didn’t produce the results publicly projected. To the contrary, it greatly hampered the American “democratic” experiment in the Middle East. Everywhere I travelled since, I have witnessed a sense of giddiness and much hope being pinned on Hamas’s rise in politics. Thus it was resolved that Hamas had to be removed, with Abbas’s Preventive Security Forces, riddled with corruption, entrusted with the task. Dahlan, man of the hour, was given the Israeli and American nod. His Palestinian “Contras” wreaked havoc: kidnapping, assassinating and provoking endless feuds.

One can well imagine what impact such meddling would have, knowing that Gaza is essentially a huge open-air prison. I was a prisoner there until the age of 21. I remember how people picked fights for no convincing reason — isolation, hunger and hopelessness lead to self-destruction. The US and the EU took part in the siege and embargo, and Israel’s bombardment never ceased, not even for one day. Hundreds of besieged Palestinians have been blown to shreds by Israeli bombs. Their only mechanism of defence has been makeshift Qassam “missiles” that have killed no more than a dozen Israelis in six years. Thousands of Palestinians were killed in Gaza during the same period. Gaza bore all the signs that warned of disaster and civil war was looming, it was one assassin’s bullet away — one provocative statement, one kidnapping.

The pressure Hamas faced as a result was insurmountable. The movement had reached the limits of political concessions; any more would be considered a retreat from its political platform and could lead to fragmentation within its own ranks. Yet a state of isolation from within (Fatah’s total control over the 10 branches of the security apparatus), and from without (the US-led international embargo that called for Hamas’s removal), was sure to weaken Hamas and eventually deprive it of popular support. The decision was thus made that Hamas must take its chances and push for what it termed the “second liberation of Gaza”.

Now the situation is very bleak. Hamas is in control of Gaza, and Abbas and Fatah are in control of as much in the West Bank as Israel allows. This places Palestine’s destiny back in the US neo-conservative court.

Dividing the West Bank and Gaza appears central to the agenda: “This turn of events frees Abbas to focus on the much more manageable West Bank, where he can depend on the Israeli Defense Forces to suppress challenges from Hamas, and on Jordan and the United States to help rebuild his security forces,” wrote Martin Indyk, the pro-Israel lobbyist in Washington, in The Washington Post, 15 June. Most American mainstream editorials are sounding the same message. And various Arab governments, the EU, the US and Israel are flocking to back Abbas. Money, weapons and political legitimacy are being bestowed upon him from all directions. The once irrelevant leader is now the darling of the international community; the sanctions set to be lifted on his emergency government, which he has appointed after sacking the unity government, an unconstitutional act by all standards.

Israeli officials cannot imagine a more satisfactory scenario. The new experiment suggests that the West Bank will be lavished with aid and Gaza will be starved further. This is the pinnacle of injustice, and as always the US and Israel take centre stage, directing the show. Abbas and his men are presented as the true heroes, already making their debut as the true and legitimate face of Palestinian democracy, a democracy determined by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, not the Palestinians.

A number of major pharmaceutical corporations and biotech firms are concealing the nature of the biological warfare research work they are doing for the U.S. government.

Since their funding comes from the National Institutes of Health, the recipients are obligated under NIH guidelines to make their activities public. Not disclosing their ops raises the suspicion they may be engaged in forbidden kinds of germ warfare research.

According to the Sunshine Project, a nonprofit arms control watchdog operating out of Austin, Texas, among corporations holding back information about their activities are:

Abbott Laboratories, BASF Plant Science, Bristol-Myers Squibb, DuPont Central Research and Development, Eli Lilly Corp., Embrex, GlaxoSmithKline, Hoffman-LaRoche, Merck & Co., Monsanto, Pfizer Inc., Schering-Plough Research Institute, and Syngenta Corp. of Switzerland.

In case you didn’t know it, the White House since 9/11 has called for spending $44-billion on biological warfare research, a sum unprecedented in world history, and an obliging Congress has authorized it.

Thus, some of the deadliest pathogens known to humankind are being rekindled in hundreds of labs in pharmaceutical houses, university biology departments, and on military bases.

An international convention the U.S. signed forbids it to stockpile, manufacture or use biological weapons. But if the U.S. won’t say what’s going down in those laboratories other countries are going to assume the worst and a biowarfare arms race will be on, if it isn’t already.

Sunshine says failure to disclose operations also puts corporate employees involved in this work at risk. Only 8,500, or 16%, of the 52,000 workers employed at the top 20 U.S. biotech firms work at an NIH guidelines-compliant company, Sunshine says.

Francis Boyle, an international law authority at the University of Illinois, Champaign, says pursuant to national strategy directives adopted by Bush in 2002, the Pentagon “is now gearing up to fight and win’ biological warfare without prior public knowledge and review.” Boyle said the Pentagon’s Chemical and Biological Defense Program was revised in 2003 to endorse “first-use” strike in war. Boyle said the program includes Red Teaming, which he described as “plotting, planning, and scheming how to use biowarfare.”

Besides the big pharmaceutical houses, the biowarfare buildup is getting an enthusiastic response from academia, which sees new funds flowing from Washington’s horn of plenty. “American universities have a long history of willingly permitting their research agenda, researchers, institutes and laboratories to be co-opted, corrupted, and perverted by the Pentagon and the CIA,” Boyle says.

What’s more, the Bush administration is pouring billions in biowarfare research while some very real killers, such as influenza, are not being cured.

In 2006, the NIH got $120 million to combat influenza, which kills about 36,000 Americans annually but it got $1.76 billion for biodefense, much of it spent to research anthrax. How many people has anthrax killed lately? Well, let’s see, there were those five people killed in the mysterious attacks on Congress of October, 2001 — attacks that suspiciously emanated from a government laboratory at Fort Detrick, Md.

One would think the FBI might apprehend the perpetrator whose attack shut down the Congress of the United States but nearly six years have gone by and it hasn’t caught anybody. Seem a bit odd to you? Some folks suspect the anthrax attack was an inside job to panic the country into a huge biowarfare buildup to “protect” America from “terrorists.”

Milton Leitenberg, of the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy, though, says the risk of terrorists and nonstate actors using biological agents against the U.S. “has been systematically and deliberately exaggerated” by administration scare-mongering.

And molecular biologist Jonathan King of Massachusetts Institute of Technology says, “the Bush administration launched a major program which threatens to put the health of our people at far greater risk than the hazard to which they claimed to have been responding.” King added President Bush’s policies “do not increase the security of the American people” but “bring new risk to our population of the most appalling kind.”

In the absence of any credible foreign threat, Sunshine’s Hammond said, “Our biowarfare research is defending ourselves from ourselves. It’s a dog chasing its tail.” Sadly, it looks more and more every day like a mad dog.

In March 2007, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez spoke in Ciudad de Leon, Nicaragua’s second largest city, and he summed up the thing we call the Latin American Revolution:

“There are new winds blowing in Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba that allow these to form an axis of popular forces, of progressive, revolutionary, and socialist governments, which cross the entire American continent to consolidate the union of the people and to defeat the empire and its new offensive.” – President Hugo Chavez Frias

In other words, the Chavez said the “new winds” consist of an array of political and ideological forces, blowing, so far, in six countries. The most noticeable omission is Brazil where an “axis of popular forces” surely exists and the government is sometimes described as, at least , “progressive.”

What is interesting, among other things, about Chavez’s comment about “new winds” is his division of the politics of the region into something he calls an “axis of popular forces” and “governments.” These “governments” themselves appear to be specific items within the “axis of popular forces.”

Chavez goes on and divides the governments into three kinds:

* Progressive
* Revolutionary
* Socialist

Chavez could also apply this threefold division, not only to governments but also to the “axis of popular forces.”

CHÁVEZ: THE THREE-FOLD DIVISION

The gist of “socialist” seems to be mainly an economic thing that entails the distribution or redistribution, usually by the state, of the national income or the gross domestic product, in large part, to the working, poor, and middle classes or, in other words, a redistribution of national income away from the bourgeoisie. Chavez didn’t identify which of the six governments he views as socialist, but he probably referred only to Cuba and views the Venezuelan government as only socialist-oriented, not socialist, because the redistribution of national income is not yet large enough or complete.

The gist of both “progressive” and “revolutionary” as concepts seem to be primarily political in nature and not necessarily economic.

Both words are defined or used in many ways.

LENIN’S CONCEPT OF REVOLUTION

If Chavez had Lenin in mind when he spoke in Nicaragua about revolutionary things, he probably meant something like “The passing of state power from one class to another is the first – the principal – the basic sign of a revolution.” See Lenin’s “First Letter on Tactics” (1917).

In other words, the passing of power from the millionaires to the workers is … concretely … a revolutionary move.

Lenin’s definition of revolution implies that the bouncing around of power from one sector of a class, say from US bourgeois reactionaries, to another sector of the same class, say to the US bourgeois liberals and is not a revolution, but only a change of government and it may even be less. Again, a revolution, according to Lenin and those who follow Lenin, requires the passing of power outside of the old class and into a new class.

Chavez didn’t identify which of the six countries have undergone revolutions, but he probably meant only Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and perhaps Nicaragua.

There are cases of the passing of power from one class to another but one of the classes is domestic to the power and the other is foreign. One example is the current struggle between the Iraqi patriotic bourgeoisie against the aggression, occupation, and bestiality of the US imperialist bourgeoisie. The 18th century struggle of the US bourgeoisie led by George Washington against the UK imperialists serves as another example.

Are these struggles revolutionary in character although they are between the same socio-economic strata from different countries?

It is very difficult to make sense out of the word “progressive” because everybody, except Lenin, seems to make up their own definitions for convenience and propaganda. But using Lenin’s definition of revolution, we may be able to understand what the term, “progressive” is all about. To some, “Progressive” appears to be the passing of power among classes or to a sector of a class that is closer to the working class or, at least, to the revolutionaries within the working class.

Progressive change is not truly revolutionary because the class to which power passes, say to the liberal sector of the bourgeoisie or to the middle class, bears too many similarities to the class or sector from which power passed in the first place.

Some political abstentionists or people who holler for the need for non-participatory politics argue that all sectors of the bourgeoisie, are equally distant politically from the workers and the poor. Therefore, they say, the passing of power from the bourgeois reactionaries, like PAN in Mexico, to the bourgeois liberal, like PRD in Mexico, is not even “progressive.”

Again, Chavez didn’t identify which of the six countries are progressive, but he probably meant Argentina and perhaps both Ecuador and Nicaragua.

Returning to those abstentionists or the people who yell for non-participatory politics: They don’t seem to want power to pass from one class to another or from one sector of a class to another sector. They seem to want power to pass from existence to non-existence. This passing of power into non-existence is what they call “revolution.” Abstentionists deny that their intent is to help power remain where it presently lodges in bourgeois society although this is sometimes the result of their hollering.

As a rule, power passes from one class to another as a result of armed or electoral struggle; so, when we renounce both armed and electoral struggle, we want power to remain where it presently lodges.
Impressionistically, this seems to mean that about 90 percent of people are neither revolutionary nor counter-revolutionary, that is, people who want power to pass backward. This 90 percent does not want power to pass either forward or backward, they want it to remain where it presently lodges.

We can add that most progressives and most socialists are not revolutionaries, in the Leninist sense, because the passing of power to the workers is not the “first” and “principal” thing, but only something incidental or undesirable to most of the progressive/socialist type.

Revolutionaries, about whom Chavez speaks, are a distinct specie within the genus of the political Left.

FIVE COUNTRIES ON HUGO CHAVEZ’S LIST

Now we should take a quick look at five of the six countries on Chavez’s list, revisiting with each of them the concepts of progressive, revolutionary, and perhaps socialist as well as estimating the size of the “axis of popular forces” in the country.

We will conclude with Nicaragua, thereby saving the best for last.

1. Argentina

In Argentina, the liberal wing of the bourgeoisie obviously has the power. According to the latest opinion polls, the “axis of popular forces” backing the liberal bourgeois regime appear to consist of an astounding 65 percent of the people and electorate. The progressive government in Buenos Aires is anti-imperialist and bold in the defense of its sovereignty. Economically, Argentine President Nestor Kirchner redistributes the national income favoring somewhat the Argentine bourgeoisie over the foreign imperialist creditors. Kirchner has also increased discernibly the amount of the national income that goes to wages and salaries of the working and middle classes and the amount of the national income that goes to social programs — health care, education, housing , nutrition — in lieu of wages and salaries of the working and middle classes.

Although power has passed to the liberals, many of the senior positions of the regime … especially in the military, police and judiciary … remain in the hands of reactionaries. So, not all of the power has passed. These reactionaries of the Argentine bourgeoisie are bestial, depraved, compulsively genocidal, and generally rotten to the core. But the liberals, who enjoy political legitimacy and prestige, seem to have a firm grip of the executive power, especially the bureaucracy, outside of the military and police.

2. Ecuador

It’s too early for us to make heads or tails about what is going on Ecuador. Hugo Chavez only promises that Ecuador will be either progressive or revolutionary or socialist. Nobody seems to know whether Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa is a revolutionary or something else. Correa describes himself as ” a humanist and a Christian of the Left.” If Correa is what he says he is, then he may be the most revolutionary of the bunch. But it is very clear that power is passing away from the reactionary and pro-imperialist sector of the bourgeoisie. But nobody seems to know where power is ultimately headed — perhaps to the liberal bourgeois like in Argentina, to some kind of middle class thing, or to class conscious workers. We haven’t seen as yet an attempt at a major redistribution of national income in favor of the workers, the poor, and middle class, but Correa seems intent on moderating the amount of national income that goes to pay the foreign debt which was a whopping 45 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) when Correa took office.

The IMF and World Bank are very much alarmed by Correa’s presidency. The “axis of popular forces” backing Correa seem to constitute about 55 percent of the people and electorate under the current bourgeois constitution. Correa has very properly concentrated much of his time on rewriting the bourgeois constitution. Significant issues of stratification and discrimination both horizontal, such as class and other strata, and vertical, such as nationality, gender, and race complicates the analysis of the class struggle, both of the people against the rich and the rich against the people. The rewriting of the bourgeois constitution which presently, among other things, favors descendents of European immigrants over the indigenous peoples and those of mixed ancestry should alter the balance of what Hugo Chavez calls the “axis of popular forces” and reshape the course of the class struggle for decades.

3. Bolivia

Bolivia resembles Ecuador in respect to serious problems of both class and vertical differences in society. Perhaps the Bolivian problems in this regard are more serious than those in Ecuador. In Bolivia, the power, especially most of the executive power, seems to have passed to revolutionary workers. Reactionaries, centrists, and liberals are still ensconced in the legislative and judicial powers. Although Bolivian President Evo Morales and his revolutionaries seem to be in charge, he has truly reached out to almost all strata and sectors of society in appointing officials for the executive power.

The revolutionary government in La Paz expropriated some of the means of production and raised prices of its products, significantly increasing the amount of the national income. The revolutionaries in power are trying to moderate the amount of the GDP that goes to the foreign debt and fund social programs, especially for education, health care, and nutrition. The government is exploring creative ways to bring a large sector of the poor which is effectively outside of the workings of the economy into the sphere of wage labor. Bolivia also resembles Ecuador in the difficulties it faces in rewriting the bourgeois constitution which now rigs the political struggle in favor of the rich and the privileged. Like Ecuador, again, the axis of popular forces backing the revolution seem to consist of about 55 percent of the population and electorate under the current constitutional set-up.

4. Cuba

As for Cuba, it’s more difficult in the absence of opinion poll data and in the presence of multi-candidate, rather multi-party elections, to estimate the size of the “axis of popular forces” backing the Havana government. But many observers feel comfortable with the estimate that a staggering 80 percent of the Cuban people and electorate support the revolutionary government. A reported 97 percent of the officials of the revolutionary government in Cuba are workers. [I have no idea what the other 3 percent are.] The overwhelming mass of the national income goes straight to the people either as wages or as social services. Some foreign private capital is present and gets a modest share of the GDP in the form of profits, interest payments, commodities, and bourgeois salaries. Cuba is as much of a draw to revolution and socialism as Venezuela because Cuban Revolution has given the highest standard of living to its people of all the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean if we use indices of health care, education, housing, nutrition, and public access to the arts as the chief indicators of living standards of the people. Cuba shows and proves that socialism works, despite the interminable and savage hostility of US imperialists.

5. Venezuela

The political and ideological composition of the government of Venezuela resembles that of Bolivia. At the core of government is a force of extremely sophisticated proletarian revolutionaries from both the theoretical and organizational points of view. But around this revolutionary core is a plethora of “progressive” forces, including elements of the middle class and patriotic elements of the bourgeoisie. In April 2002, some of the bourgeois elements in the regime, especially in the military and police, grew fangs and attacked the revolution, seeking in a counter-revolution to pass power back to the most reactionary sectors of the bourgeoisie. But, in April 2002, the “axis of popular forces” backing the revolutionary government was something like 58 percent of the people and electorate; so, the counter-revolution barely lasted two days.

President Hugo Chavez has presided over a monumental redistribution of the national income in favor of workers, poor, and middle class at the expense of the domestic bourgeoisie and the foreign imperialists. It’s difficult to say whether the mass of the gross domestic product still flows as dividends, interest payments, rents, and bourgeois salaries to the Venezuelan bourgeoisie and the imperialists. In any case, bourgeoisie and the imperialists have certainly lost a lot of ground in Venezuela in respect to their former access to the national income. What is distinct and exciting about the Venezuelan Revolution is the colossal amount of power that has already passed to the revolutionaries.

In 1999, the revolutionaries and their diverse allies had a grip only on the bureaucracy in the executive power; but today, their grip extends to the military, central bank, and the state oil company. Only parts of the police, which collude with US imperialists and organized crime, are still “off the reservation” in the executive power. The legislative power is surprisingly pure. As for the judicial power, the revolutionaries and the progressives are in charge, but this branch of the power is plagued by a foul reactionary and bourgeois presence. The revolution, here, has reached the mopping up stage.

Another distinctive characteristic of the Venezuelan Revolution is its profound proletarian and humanitarian internationalism.

Wealth is never created by destroying things. This is extreme capitalism killing itself.” ~ Leuren Moret, June 20, 2007

An unprecedented event is scheduled to take place Sunday, June 24, 2007 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, at the Vancouver 9/11 Truth Conference. At this 9/11 Conference, Independent Scientist and world-renowned Uranium Weapons radiation expert, Leuren Moret, and International Lawyer Alfred Webre, J.D., M.Ed., will be calling publicly for the establishment of an International Citizen’s 9/11 War Crimes Tribunal.

The only disappointing aspect about this event is that 300 Million Americans will not be around to watch – and celebrate – this historical announcement, as it will be taking place in Canada. One certainly hopes that somebody remembers to bring a video camera.

Almost six years have passed since the horrific crimes which have permanently etched graphic, disturbing images into the world’s collective memory. September 11, 2001 was a day filled with tragedies of incalculable devastation and loss in which countless homes, lives, and dreams were obliterated in not much more than the blink of an eye.

But this is not just an American deal. Sure, the lives of 3,000 Americans and those who loved them were shattered that day; but for millions of Middle Easterners daily existence has been forever contaminated with the lingering, cumulative effects of radioactive, infinitesimal, invisible Uranium aerosols of war that the self-proclaimed deliverers of “democracy”-American-style, continue to spew, forever poisoning the air, water, soil and food supply.

In addition to the massive Uranium poisoning effectively conducted with the occupying military’s weapons of war, the events of September 11 forever obliterated any sense of “normal” life, as we in the United States used to know it, beginning the very moment the massive heinous killing spree was first reported.

One could say that America has become the land of the walking zombie – with citizens controlled by fear and a rapidly growing, alarming cognizance that our government, once looked upon as a benign entity that functioned as caretaker, dedicated to looking after its populace’s needs, health, and pursuit of happiness, is nothing more than a brutal police state heavily entrenched in fascist ideology; it is seen to be hiding behind a cross and a flag while single-mindedly hell-bent on imperialistic crusades in search of ever more resources, power, and control – but only for those who pull the strings, naturally … and their wealthy friends.

When I first heard about the upcoming announcement of the International Citizen’s 9/11 War Crimes Tribunal, I realized that if Leuren Moret, arguably the nation’s most ardent, knowledgeable, and passionate anti-Uranium weapons voice was involved, that this must be the “real thing”. I was also familiar with Alfred Webe, J.D., M.Ed., who had, to his tremendous credit, initiated The September 11 Treason Independent Prosecutor Act.

Still, I admit to being more than a bit curious to discover the driving force behind the pursuit of justice for the False Flag war crimes of 9/11, when the entire US government had long ago washed its hands of the matter. In short, while my heart pounded wildly at the words “International Citizen’s 9/11 War Crimes Tribunal”, I could not help but think, as righteous as this effort might sound: would it – could it – possibly, really, actually work?

To find out what was driving this action, I first approached Leuren Moret. She has earned a M.A. degree with completed coursework for a Ph.D., and is an independent geo-scientist and environmental commissioner for the City of Berkeley, California. She has provided expert testimony on numerous occasions, including the Tokyo International Tribunal for War Crimes in Afghanistan, the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Conference, the World Depleted Uranium Weapons Conference in Hamburg, Germany, and a Public Hearing for the ICTA in Manila, Philippines. Moret also serves on the organizing committees of the World Committee on Radiation Risk and International Criminal Tribunal for Iraq and has written volumes on the topic of Uranium weapons of war.

I asked Moret what made her want to become involved with calling for a Citizen’s 9/11 War Crimes Tribunal. She replied, “I don’t think there is any choice. Someone has to stop it, and hold the perpetrators accountable.”

I should have figured that this would be her reply, as Moret had previously written about tracking radiation from Depleted Uranium at the Pentagon. It was obvious that she did not believe the pre-packaged caveman story either.

Wondering what outcome did she think – or hope – this might have, Moret replied encouragingly: “People are beginning to act, and to think, and to get in touch with their anger. That becomes the power to fight back and to feel empowered. If we are able to reach our spiritual energy and our real potential, the perpetrators will soon be chased down the street, caught, and hanging from the gallows.”

In complete candor, the visual that phrase conjured up was one I had never before so graphically contemplated. Admittedly, as loathe as one might be to admit out loud to such gruesome thinking, the image of the war-making civilian-killers from Washington, in their designer suits and star-emblazoned, military-green uniforms, lifelessly dangling from the tallest old oak trees inside Lafayette Park, holds a certain fascinating – while undoubtedly macabre – appeal.

Well, if you stop to think about it for a moment, what punishment, would be just, proper, and fitting for such beasts-in-human-form-only who have, quite literally, knowingly, and radioactively contaminated not “only” several nations, but an entire planet for all eternity?

Moret continued, “It’s a process. Getting people into the process is the most important step. After that, it takes on its own path and dynamic and we just need to be there engaged in the process. I know. That’s how it happened to me … Suddenly you look around and say, ‘How did I get here?’, and realize you are doing the most important work you have ever done … and you feel nothing but the incredible lightness of being. And you realize that all these other light beings are swarming around you helping … and that is exactly what is happening. It is not hierarchical or structured, it is more like insects swarming … a global diffuse and very powerful movement that cannot be attacked or defeated.”

Further elaborating with the sense of an individual who had given intense contemplation on her purpose in this mission, Moret explained, “It’s beautiful, it’s effortless, and it’s done with the greatest sense of joy and love in the world… and we are all working side by side.

There is nothing to fear but fear itself. Toss it away, dismiss it, give it no thought or power. Just start doing…”

For God’s sake, tell me where to begin?

I was set out to write about Father’s day and the thousands of fatherless Iraqi children.The thousands of killed fathers, the thousands of fathers trying desperately hard to feed their families, daily putting their lives at great risk, in a country gripped by demonic violence. The exiled fathers, selling scraps in Amman and Damascus, bearing the brunt of daily insults. Or the unemployed fathers, feeling torn inside watching their kids go hungry. Or maybe the head bent down father, slouched posture, hiding scars beneath a worn out shirt. The father that has been imprisoned, humiliated, tortured and sodomized, unable to look his children in the eyes…

Or maybe I should write about sexual torture and sodomy instead…

The further horrors emerging from Abu Ghraib and the Taguba report…
More reports of “abuse”. And I am sure Abu Ghraib is not over. I am certain that more Abu Ghraibs are taking place in Iraq, in those shadowy detention centers…
Abu Ghraib.
An American brave boy caught with his pants down, sodomizing an Iraqi female detainee. I cannot stomach the scene and will prepare a longer post on that, to expurgate your filth… Torn rectums and feces come to mind.

Wait, I think I will write about feces instead…

An orphanage in Baghdad. 24 young boys founds laying naked in their own pool of excrements, starved, covered with feces and flies, hands tied to bare metal beds.
With the “liberation”, the main orphanage of Baghdad was bombed. Of course no one spoke of that one. Hundreds of children took to the streets and were trafficked in, traded in.
UNICEF wrote a brief report on it but then it disappeared from their website.
Trading in dollars for each child’s head, like in a slave market, exported to neighboring Gulf countries as…only Allah knows as what…

Heads and more heads…Perhaps I need to write about rolling heads…

A leaked autopsy report from the Iraqi ministry of Health (what an oxymoron that title is) states that Barzan Al-Tikriti’s head was very slowly slit with a sharp instrument whilst his body showed bruises from kicks. They slowly severed his head, very slowly and kicked his jolting body at the same time, in another pool of blood…

Severed…Wait, maybe I should write about forced circumcision in Basrah. A public castration. Another bloody scene.

Mahdi Militiamen (remember Mahdi, your darling drill boy?)rounded up a group of Sabaeans. Sabaeans are one of the oldest “ethnic” groups in Iraq, converting them by force. At gun and drill point, they agreed to embrace the Mahdi creed.
An old Sabaean of 70 years, with a beard reaching his belly, was circumcised.
Bloody severed foreskin.

Did I say blood? Which reminds me of Othman’s blood clot, stuck in his leg…

“Layla I need some blood thinner, I need aspirin – Help me for God’s sake”.
Othman cannot leave the house, cannot get to a pharmacy, cannot see a doctor. Snipers, checkpoints, fear…”They are burying me alive at home”…he says.

Buried alive at home…Yes this is what I will be writing about.

Alia was driving her car with Auntie Sameera to get some gasoline.
Suddenly, her car was riddled with bullets. They were lucky.
A man in black walks up to her.

– What have you done? You nearly killed all of us.
– Why did you not stop?
– I did not see you. There is no uniform, no checkpoint, no nothing.
– I waved.
– I did not see you. I am sorry.
– I do not want your apology. I want you to go home and stay there. I never want to see your face in this neighborhood again. You are to stay at home where you belong.

Home, a home…any home…I think I will write about that instead.

Marwan is a Palestinian Iraqi. This is how he defines himself.

“I do not know where my family is. They are stranded somewhere in the desert, between Syria and Iraq. Layla, I already lost 4 of them in Baladiyat. I regret Saddam so much…”

Ah regrets and nostalgia…Maybe I need to write about this instead.

Salman, an Iraqi shia. An staunch anti-Saddam says to me.

“There is no end to this dark tunnel, Layla. Give us back a strong government, with an iron fist. I would pay anything to have that back…”

Did I hear pay ? Pay, paychecks…

Now check this one out.
I mentioned in one of my posts that a junior member of parliament in the Green Zone brothel makes 30’000 dollars a month plus fringe benefits. Now do you want to know how much the matron makes? No joke here.

Jalal Talabani makes 1 million dollars A MONTH plus fringe benefits. This heavy hooker has pocketed in 2 years, 24 million dollars! Whilst the majority of the Iraqis don’t have a piece of bread…

Bread…That reminds me of Nadia’s husband. After being sacked from his job as an accountant, he took up the job of a baker. I just learned that he has typhoid.
Raging fevers in raging Iraq…

So kindly tell me, where would you like me to start? Pick and choose.

Fatherless day, orphans in feces, sodomy Americana, blood pools, home burials, severed heads, public castrations, erring homelessness, regrets and nostalgia or how to make a million bucks per month in Iraq? Or maybe I need to stop here and put out this fever?

So when you decide, let me know. But do remember there is no end in sight…

Now, If you don’t mind, I would like to go and crawl into some corner, take up a foetal position and vanish…Vanish from these endless beginnings, vanish from my own powerlessness, vanish far away….