The Rag Blog

The role of Iraq’s central government as a guiding hand over the country’s vast oil reserves has been so altered in the current version of the controversial draft oil law that two of the document’s authors now oppose it.

“The judgment of many is if the oil and gas is the property of the whole nation, it should be managed by whom? The custodian of the whole nation, and that’s the federal government,” said Tariq Shafiq, a London- and Amman, Jordan-based consultant and director of Petrolog & Associates. Shafiq, who just last summer was crafting the legislation, told UPI during a recent Washington visit that subsequent revisions have watered down the central government’s role with political bartering that will lead to mismanagement of the world’s third-largest oil reserves.

Shafiq also warned of overdevelopment of the country’s oil and gas resources, especially if the undiscovered reserves are developed or Kurdistan or other regions develop their fields outside of a central oil strategy.

The law, which was approved by the council of ministers in February, is now stalled in a power struggle between the central government and Kurdistan Regional government over how much of the 115 billion barrels in proven oil reserves each side will control. Various factions, including the powerful oil unions and Sunni political parties, have warned against allowing international oil companies too much access.

And the Iraqi Parliament likely won’t be able to overcome political friction, let alone the deteriorating security situation in the country, to move forward soon on the oil law.

“The pledge by some Iraqi politicians to pass the new oil law by the end of June is not likely to be fulfilled, and Iraqi lawmakers are not expected to tackle this issue until after the parliamentary recess scheduled for the end of July,” Greg Priddy, global energy analyst at the business risk consultant Eurasia Group, wrote Tuesday in the firm ‘ s Energy Trendwatch. “By then, all branches of the Iraqi government will come under tremendous pressure from the U.S. administration, which has listed the new hydrocarbon law as a major priority to be addressed by mid September, when it is expected to submit a full report to the U.S. Congress.” The roots of the Baghdad row — which highlights the future of Iraq: how strong the central government will be and how much power the regions and provinces will wield — are seeded in the 2005 constitution. Key issues of federalism and control over oil were left vague to shore up enough support for passage. Nearly two years later, there is no political consensus.

Shafiq said he and his co-authors took this into account when drafting the law.

They created a Federal Petroleum Commission as a decision-making body to set policy and approve plans and contracts for developing the oil sector. It would incorporate two bodies: “A think tank” of technocrats “made up of nine members, at least three from (oil) producing provinces, but all Iraqis,” and “a negotiating unit for grants of rights to third parties,” taking contract negotiations out of the Oil Ministry ‘ s hands (though the ministry would prequalify companies). The governorate or region the contract applies to would be a part of the negotiating body, another way the drafters interlay federal/local authority, Shafiq said. This was also embedded in the reconstituted Iraq National Oil Company, which was “independent from the state,” Shafiq said, a holding company to develop the oil. (Here again the constitutional squabble takes hold, with the KRG and central government at odds over how much of Iraq ‘ s reserves should be centrally controlled.) INOC would be owned by the state, but with an independent board of directors. Affiliate local companies, owned up to 50 percent by the respective regions or governorates, would carry out INOC’s day-to-day, on-site operations. The directors of the local companies would sit on INOC’s board, ensuring combined local control over the central government’s oil arm.

As the Senate considers reforming national labor law, the percentage of American workers in unions continues its long and severe decline. What is causing the downturn, and what is prompting the legislation, is not a decreased need for unions — according to polls, about half of non-supervisory workers want to join one — but that employers are increasingly breaking the law to prevent their workplaces from being unionized.

Fifty years ago, more than 30 percent of private-sector workers were in a union. That share today is 8 percent. Globalization and the new, technology-driven economy have contributed to this decline, but advanced economies in Europe survive these same developments with union coverage rates as high as 80 percent. Much of the falloff is actually the result of illegal, anti-union actions by employers. Our recent analysis of cases brought before the National Labor Relations Board, which oversees union-management relations in most of the private sector, shows that employers illegally fire as many as one in five union organizers.

Actions by the world’s largest employer are a case in point. When butchers at Wal-Mart’s Jacksonville, Texas store joined the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, Wal-Mart permanently closed its meat-cutting departments, switched to pre-packaged meat, and fired four of the union supporters.

Picking on Wal-Mart is unfair, as much of the business community despises unions. Unions fight for increased wages and benefits, redistributing earnings from employers to workers. Corporate managers, on the other hand, maximize profits for shareholders and hefty compensation packages for those at the top. Compelled by the threat of lower profits, many employers will do whatever it takes to avoid a union workplace.

Not infrequently, this means breaking the law. The National Labor Relations Act makes it illegal to intimidate or fire workers for union activity. Yet, according to our study of data from the National Labor Relations Board, there has been a steep rise in illegal firings of pro-union workers in the last few years. Currently, one in 53 pro-union workers are fired illegally during an election campaign. And employers generally fire the workers who are leading the union organizing activities. If 10 percent of union supporters are actually organizers in their workplace, NLRB data show that about one in five union organizers are illegally fired for their activism.

Interestingly, union membership has actually increased in the public sector. Whereas the private sector — the bulk of the U.S. economy — has seen unionization fall by three-quarters over the last 50 years, public-sector union membership has tripled over the same period, to about 36 percent. Persistent, illegal activity by employers in the private sector explains the disparity. Illegal firings exist in the public sector, of course, but they are less prevalent. Additional civil service protections ensure that firings are more onerous to the government than they are to a private employer. Besides, we should expect less union-busting in the public-sector: there is no profit motive.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower once lambasted union busters, proclaiming that “only a fool would try to deprive working men and women of the right to join the union of their choice.” The fools today are actually quite rational, practicing the cool calculus of costs and benefits.

In a worst-case scenario, the cost of firing a union supporter includes legal proceedings and remuneration to the discharged employee. At a maximum, discharged employees will receive missed earnings minus any income they have earned in the meantime. The total award usually amounts to less than $4,000, a small price to pay to avoid sharing profits with employees through a union-negotiated contract.

Unions are pressing for increased fines and other changes in labor law that reduce the incentives for employer aggression. Without those reforms, it will remain the case that crime really does pay.

For Americans, it should be startling to see the word “detainee” suddenly appear in a different country, on a different continent, and referring not to alleged jihadi terrorists but to a group of Americans. After all, “detainee” is the word the Bush administration coined to deal with suspected terrorist captives who, they argued, should be subjected to extra-legal treatment as part of the Global War on Terrorism. Now, that terminology is, as critics long predicted might happen, being turned against American citizens. I am referring to the current detention of Americans in Iran.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government currently holds in custody Haleh Esfandiari, Kian Tajbakhsh, Parnaz Azima, and Ali Shakeri, Iranian-American scholars and activists accused of being spies and/or employees of the U.S. government intent on fomenting dissent and disruption within Iran. (A fifth American, Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent engaged in business of an unknown nature in Iran, disappeared on March 8th.) The four are apparently behind bars at Tehran’s Evin prison, notorious for its special wing for political prisoners and, among human rights activists, for being the location of the lethal beating of a Canadian-Iranian journalist in 2003. Evin and other Iranian prisons are cited by Human Rights Watch for frequent torture and mistreatment of arrested Iranian dissidents.

The Iranian government has said that the detained are threats to “national security,” despite protests that they were visiting their families and/or engaged in purely peaceful work. The U.S. Government has been denied information on their treatment and the possible accusations against them.

The Bush administration is naturally incensed over the incarceration of these Americans. As well its officials should be. “It is absolutely incredible to us,” said State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey, “to think that there could be any possible doubt in the Iranians’ minds that these individuals are there simply to conduct normal, basic human interactions, including family visits.” President Bush himself has insisted that “their presence in Iran poses no threat.” The Associated Press reported that Bush was also “‘disturbed’ by the fact that Iran has still not provided any information about the welfare and whereabouts” of the missing Levinson and has condemned Iran for being “defiant as to the demands of the free world.”

President Bush is correct. These detentions represent a travesty of justice and a violation of the rules of conduct among nations. It is horrifying that these Americans, who are engaged in foreign affairs at non-governmental and scholarly levels, are held, seemingly without recourse to law and certainly without respect for international rights.

But there is another disturbing reality here which must be faced. In numerous ways, the U.S. has robbed itself of the right to proclaim the very principles by which these prisoners should be defended. Though President Bush and his spokespersons may not see it, their past policies have set a trap for the government — and for Americans generally. More than five years after setting up Guantanamo, and then implementing national security strategies based upon torture, secret prisons, and illegal detentions, the Bush administration has managed to obliterate the moral high ground they now seek to claim in relation to Iran.

The new American prisoners in Iran belong, in part, to a broader diplomatic game of chicken now raging between the two governments that began with the U.S. capture in January of five Iranian officials in Irbil in Iraqi Kurdistan, prisoners the U.S. continues to hold somewhere in Iraq without charges. The more telling context, however, is that of Bush administration detention policy from the moment in 2002 when it set up its prison in Guantanamo, Cuba, offshore from American justice, to this day.

At the inception of the war on terror, the Bush administration broke the very rules it now accuses the Iranians of breaking. As part of a high-stakes stand-off with countries associated with Islamic fundamentalism, it was the Bush administration that first collected individuals, some guilty of crimes, some simply swept up in the chaos — initially off the Afghan battlefield and then off the global one. Often, they did so with very little knowledge of, or care about, whom they were rounding up. They incarcerated these prisoners for long periods without releasing their names or, often, their whereabouts; they refused to give them the established rights of prisoners of war; they defied the united protests of allies around the world; and they sought to justify this whole policy with the term “detainee.”

In fact, uncomfortable parallels between notorious Guantanamo and grim Evin abound. At Gitmo, as at Evin, information about “detainees” has often been difficult to obtain. At Gitmo, as at Evin, the government has been a champion of denying prisoners access to lawyers. At Gitmo, as at Evin, “national security” concerns invariably trump the need to produce evidence or to indict prisoners. At Gitmo, as at Evin, there have been repeated reports of coercive interrogations and the mistreatment, as well as torture, of prisoners.

At Gitmo, as at Evin, authorities deny such accusations despite obvious evidence to the contrary. One year ago, journalists were invited to assess conditions at Evin for themselves. Allowed to see only the women’s section of the prison, they were shown the medical facilities and told about the excellent food the prison serves — self-evident proof of the fair treatment of prisoners. So, too, media tours of Guantanamo stress the quality of the food and the superior medical treatment available in the prison complex. At Gitmo, suicide is an ever-present threat. At Evin, according to a BBC journalist on the tour, authorities boasted of only one suicide in six months — as if that were a record to be proud of. Iranian authorities refused to discuss “political prisoners” because “Iran does not recognize this as a category.” So, too, the most suitable term for those held at Gitmo, “prisoner of war,” has been forbidden on the premises.

In all these ways, but especially by wielding their chosen term “detainee,” and by defining “detainees” as essentially without rights as Americans would understand them, the Bush administration has stripped the United States of its traditional standing as the foremost champion of human rights. It has relinquished its bona fides to express the kind of moral outrage that could indeed buttress international support and legal due process for Americans who have been illegally imprisoned. Even more surprising, when administration officials, including the President, denounce the Iranians, they are tin-eared. The hypocrisy in their own words just doesn’t register. When George W. Bush shows his outrage at the imprisonment of Americans without cause, evidence, or due process, it’s as if he has no sense that, in much of the rest of the world, these are exactly the charges that ring out against his own administration.

Essentially, a frantic, fear-filled, information-impoverished, but stubbornly defended policy has finally blown back on America’s own citizens. This was something former Secretary of State Colin Powell — who last weekend called for the closing of Guantanamo — predicted in January 2002 might well happen to captive U.S. troops, if not citizens, if the United States refused to classify its detainees in the Global War on Terror as prisoners of war.

Whether or not President Bush hears the hypocrisy in his own pleas, the fact remains that his detainee policy has deprived the government of a means of defending its own citizens on the international stage. It has, in effect, amputated the very legs it would need to stand on to protest against the Iranian detentions.

Try as they might, Bush administration officials can only cry foul by calling attention to their own systematic violations of justice and the law. In their mouths, the appeal to fundamental rights rings hollow indeed, depriving Americans of the protections afforded by once-accepted standards of decency and justice. Here, as on so many other fronts, the President’s fierce “national security” policy has created an ever more insecure future for this country.

Abstract

Problems facing the intelligentsia of Iraq have been neglected in the scale of that country’s ongoing tragedy. Since 2003, the new phenomenon of targeted and systematic assassinations, kidnappings and threats to professionals and academics has surfaced. These are escalating.

Over 830 assassinations have been documented, victims killed along with their families. Numbers includes: 380 university academics and doctors, 210 lawyers and judges, and 243 journalists/media workers but not other experts, school teachers or students; neither professionals displaced internally and externally. All aspects of life are affected.

The victims are often highly qualified, PhD or equivalent. Assassinations are not specific to sect or gender but victims are predominantly Arab.

Hundreds of legal workers have left Iraq in addition to those already killed and injured, thereby denying thousands of Iraqis their legal rights. Working lawyers numbers have decreased by at least 40% in the past year alone and hundreds of cases shelved.

Neither has sports escaped; the President and 36 member National Iraqi Olympic Committee were kidnapped in July 2006; the majority are thought to be dead. These were the only democratically elected Olympic representatives in the region.

The reported incidents are only the tip of an iceberg; many cases go unreported. This is in addition to the huge exodus to neighbouring countries and, for the lucky few, to Europe.

MEMORANDUM
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
SUBJECT: Countering Terrorism; How Not To Do It

On June 6, 2002, former FBI Special Agent Coleen Rowley testified before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary about the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 and how the FBI could do a better job detecting and disrupting terrorism. Time magazine had acquired (not from Rowley) a long letter she wrote to FBI Director Mueller listing a string of lapses in the month before 9/11 that helped account for the failure to prevent the attacks. As painful and embarrassing as it was after such tragedy to unravel the mistakes, Rowley insisted that the unraveling was necessary in order to address effectively the threat of further terrorist attacks. Her VIPS colleagues asked Rowley to review what has happened in the five years since her testimony, and we have contributed to this memorandum. In what follows, Rowley outlines how the primacy given to PR and other political factors has encumbered still further the FBI’s ability to deal in reasonable and effective ways with the challenge of terrorism.

Given the effort that many of us have put into suggestions for reform, how satisfying it would be, were we able to report that appropriate correctives have been introduced to make us safer. But the bottom line is that the PR bromide to the effect that we are “safer” is incorrect. We are not safer. What follows will help explain why.

Wrong-headed actions and ideas had already taken root before that Senate hearing on June 6, 2002. Post 9/11 dragnet-detentions of innocents, official tolerance of torture (including abuse of U.S. citizens like John Walker Lindh), and panic-boosting color codes, had already been spawned from the mother of all slogans-“The Global War on Terror”-rhetorically useful, substantively inane. GWOT was about to spawn much worse.

Within a few hours of the Senate hearing five years ago, President George W. Bush reversed himself and made a surprise public announcement saying he would, after all, create a new Department of Homeland Security. The announcement seemed timed to relegate to the “in-other-news” category the disturbing things reported to the Senate earlier that day about the mistakes made during the weeks prior to 9/11. More important, the president’s decision itself was one of the most egregious examples of the doing-something-for-the-sake-of-appearing to-be-doing-something-against-terrorism syndrome.

As anyone who has worked in the federal bureaucracy could immediately recognize, the creation of DHS was clearly a gross misstep on a purely pragmatic level. It created chaos by throwing together 22 agencies with 180,000 workers-many of them in jobs vital to our nation’s security, both at home and abroad. It also enabled functionaries like the two Michaels-Brown and Chertoff-to immobilize key agencies like the previously well-run Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), leading to its feckless response to Hurricane Katrina.

Radical, Reckless Departures From the Law

There were so many other missteps, so much playing fast and loose with the law, that it is hard to know where to begin in critiquing the results. One transcendent error was the eagerness of senior political appointees to exploit the “9/11-Changed-Everything” chestnut to prime people into believing that effective detection and disruption of terrorism required radical departures from rules governing our criminal justice and intelligence collection systems. Departures from established law and policies were introduced quickly. Many of the worst of these came to light only later-extraordinary rendition, “black-site” imprisonment, torture, and eavesdropping without a warrant. (We now know that senior Justice Department officials strongly objected to the eavesdropping program.)

The first protests came from those most concerned with human rights and constitutional law. But, by and large, the fear-laden populace “didn’t get it.” The prevailing attitude seemed to be, “Who cares? I want to be safe.” Everyone wants security. But all too few recognize that security and liberty are basically flip sides of the same coin. Just as there can be no meaningful liberty in a situation devoid of security, there can be no real security in a situation devoid of liberty. It took a bit longer for pragmatists to observe and explain how the draconian steps departing from established law and policy-not to mention the knee-jerk collection and storing of virtually all available information on everyone- are not, for the most part, helping to improve the country’s security.

The parallel with the introduction of officially sanctioned torture is instructive. TV programs aside, many if not most Americans instinctively know there is something basically wrong with torture-that it is immoral as well as illegal and a violation of human rights. Pragmatists (experienced intelligence and law enforcement professionals, in particular) oppose torture because it does not work and often is counterproductive. Nevertheless, the president grabbed the headlines when he argued on Sept. 6, 2006 that “an alternative set of procedures” (already outlawed by the U.S. Army) for interrogation is required to extract information from terrorists. He then went on to intimidate a supine Congress into approving such procedures.

Virtually omitted from media coverage were the same-day remarks of the pragmatist chief of Army intelligence, Lt. Gen. John Kimmons, who conceded past “transgressions and mistakes” and made the Army’s view quite clear: “No good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices. I think history tells us that. I think the empirical evidence of the last five years, hard years, tells us that.”

Who should enjoy more credibility in this area, Bush or Kimmons?

The War on [fill in the blank]

“War! Huh… What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!” This 1969 song lyric turns out to be even more applicable to Bush’s “global war on terror” than to the Vietnam War. As for “The War on Drugs,” that one was readily recognized as little more than a catchy metaphor helpful in arguing for budget increases. But the use of our armed forces for war in Iraq was guaranteed to be self-defeating and to increase the terrorist threat.

— Military weapons are inherently rough, crude tools. Our rhetoric makes bombs and missiles out to be capable of “surgical strikes,” but such weapons also injure and kill innocent men, women, and children, taking us down to the same low level inhabited by terrorists who rationalize the killing or injuring of civilians for their cause. Civilian casualties also serve to radicalize people and swell the terrorist ranks to the point where it becomes impossible for us to kill more terrorists than U.S. policy and actions create. (In one of his leaked memos, former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld asked about that; he should have paused long enough to listen to the answer.) This inherent “squaring of the error” problem in applying military force in this context has been a boon to terrorist recruitment, and has spurred activity to the point of having actually quadrupled significant terrorist incidents worldwide.

— Declaring “war” on the tactic of terrorism elevates to statehood what actually may be scattered, disorganized individuals, sympathizers, and small groups. It empowers the terrorists as they add to their numbers and provides the status of statehood to what often should be regarded and treated as a rag-tag group of criminals.

— There is, of course, political advantage for a “war president” to rally Americans around the flag, but the negatives of the axioms “truth is the first casualty of war” and “all’s fair in love and war” far outweigh any positives. Ultimately, the recklessness and cover-up mid-wived by the “fog of war” (everything from the friendly fire that killed Pat Tillman to the torture at Abu Ghraib and other atrocities) just magnify the “squaring the error” effect. Judiciousness-and just plain smarts-tend to be sacrificed for quick action.

On August 6, Congress begins its month long recess. August 6 also marks the start of Year 62 After Hiroshima-the one and only time that nuclear weapons were used. And it marks Year 17 After Iraq Sanctions, when the brutal economic sanctions regime against Iraq was first imposed by the international community.

On August 6, the Occupation Project will launch a reinvigorated campaign of sustained nonviolent civil disobedience / civil resistance to end Iraq war funding. Office occupations-both legal and extralegal-will commence at the offices of Representatives and Senators who refuse to publicly pledge to vote against any additional funding of the Iraq war. Occupations will continue at least through the end of September. The Occupation Project will work in conjunction with campaigns organized by Declaration of Peace, National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance, CODEPINK, Veterans for Peace, Grassroots America for Us and others.

The hottest weather of the year occurs in August. Let us commit to creating the hottest political weather: focused upon Congress to force an end to the Iraq war. Let us commit to forcing Congress to vote down the $145 billion being sought in supplemental spending to wage the Iraq – Afghanistan war through September of 2008. Let us commit to forcing Congress to force the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of this year.

Let us commit to using every nonviolent means at our disposal to defeat the Iraq war supplemental spending bill for 2008 and to bring every U.S. soldier home from Iraq by the end of this year.

Last fall, in Panora, Iowa social justice advocates discussed ways to bring the occupation of Iraq home to the offices of Representatives and Senators. The Occupation Project grew from these discussions. From February 5 through Tax Day, over 320 arrests occurred at the offices of 39 Representatives and Senators across the country. 15 of the 39 voted against the final Iraq war supplemental spending bill that Congress passed in May. 14 of the 15 who voted against the final bill had voted in favor of the Iraq war spending bill last year. Actions occurred at the offices of both Republicans and Democrats-challenging the reality that both parties are responsible for the ongoing war.

Meanwhile, sustained campaigns of office occupations that did not result in arrests took place in such diverse locations as Nashville, Tennessee (the birthplace of the Occupation Project); Huntsville, Alabama; Seattle, Washington; San Francisco, California; and across the state of Minnesota. Social justice advocates entered the offices on a weekly basis (and, in the case of Sacramento, CA, on a daily basis) and occupied the offices, pressing the demand that the Representative or Senator commit to voting against any additional funding for the war.

These next three months are critical to ending the war in and occupation of Iraq. Through the end of July, Grassroots America for Us is organizing the Swarm on Congress, intensive and extensive lobbying on Capitol Hill. In August, we must turn up the heat on Representatives and Senators while they are in their home districts and states for the month long recess.

In early September, General Petraeus will report to Congress on the progress-or lack thereof-that is being made in Iraq. Shortly after, the House will vote on HR 2451 as an amendment to the Iraq – Afghanistan war supplemental spending bill. Next the House will vote on the final version of the $145 billion war supplemental for FY 2008, and send it to the Senate for consideration. It will be a one-two punch vote. It is entirely probable that the final version of the supplemental spending bill will not be publicly available until less than 24 hours prior to the vote (the final version of the supplemental passed in May was not publicly available until the morning of the vote).

H.R. 2451 (sponsored by David Obey and Jim McGovern) requires that the redeployment of U.S. forces out of Iraq begin within 90 days of enactment. The partial redeployment is to be completed by June 30, 2008.

HR 2451 will keep U.S. troops in Iraq to: protect the U.S. embassy and diplomatic personnel; protect U.S. forces remaining in Iraq; engage in “target special actions limited in duration and scope to killing or capturing members of al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations with global reach”; and to train and equip the Iraqi Security Forces. Erik Leaver of the Institute for Policy Studies examined nearly identical language in March 2007 and concluded that it would allow for upwards of 40,000 to 60,000 U.S. troops to remain in Iraq.

Our demand must remain clear: end all funding for the Iraq war and withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of this year. The language of HR 2451 is not sufficient.

And what of the argument that a vote against the $145 billion supplemental spending for 2008 will further endanger the well-being of U.S. troops currently deployed in Iraq? U.S. troops will not be in danger when the U.S. withdraws the troops from Iraq. $36 billion of this $145 billion will be for the procurement of ammunition, weapons systems and combat vehicles that will not be delivered to the military until 1 to 3 years has passed. The Army seeks $46 billion for “operations and maintenance” to fund its actions at current levels through September 30, 2008-a sure way to place U.S. soldiers and Iraqi citizens in further danger. (see “Iraq and Afghanistan Supplemental Spending 2008” at for an in-depth analysis of the 2008 war funding request).

Recall that the President is seeking $482 billion for the baseline military budget for 2008. That’s an 11 percent increase over the current year’s budget-and nearly 62% more than was spent on the military in 2001. The money is clearly available to safely and quickly withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of this year.

It is easy to be discouraged and lose heart after Congress passed the Iraq war bill in May. It is easy to be tempted to give up completely on the legislative process.

But giving up on the legislative process is, indeed, the easy route to take. It is the route that ensures that the Iraq war will continue as a war without end.

Instead, we should intensify our legal and extralegal lobbying efforts. We should recognize that nearly twice as many Representatives voted against the supplemental this year than last year and that, for the first time, Senators voted against an Iraq war supplemental spending bill because of their opposition to the war’s continuation (Arlen Specter voted against the supplemental in 2006 was because he did not believe it provided sufficient funds for a medical program). We should maintain pressure upon those Representatives and Senators who voted against the final war supplemental spending bill-working to ensure that they again vote against war funding this fall.

We should also recognize that the only way that this war will be ended is if we organize to exert sufficient pressure on Republicans and Democrats to force an end to war funding. With this in mind, we should recognize the tricks of the parliamentary trade and demand that David Obey and Nancy Pelosi do more to end the war. But we should also recognize that had Obey bottled up the war supplemental in committee or Pelosi refused to allow a floor vote, Jerry Lewis (as ranking Republican on the Appropriations Committee) would have submitted his own version of a war supplemental and obtained 218 signatures on a discharge petition to force his version to be voted upon in the House.

Ending the war requires pressure on both Democrats and Republicans-both via legal lobbying and nonviolent civil disobedience / resistance.

Multiple efforts and allied campaigns are underway to force an end to the war in and occupation of Iraq. Become engaged with these efforts and organize locally.

· Join the efforts of the Swarm on Congress, an intensive and extensive lobbying effort in Washington, D.C. through the end of July initiated by Grassroots America for Us

· Organize local actions with the Occupation Project campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience / civil resistance / office occupations to demand that Representatives and Senators vote to end to all funding for the Iraq war. A reinvigorated campaign will be launched on August 6 to continue through the vote on war funding in September. Get involved at http://vcnv.org/project/the-occupation-project. You can contact the Occupation Project via email at occupationproject@vcnv.org for suggestions and advice on how to organize a local Occupation Project campaign. Resources including voting records, legal information, etc. are available on this website.

· CODEPINK’s work includes the Occupation Project and the Don’t Buy Bush’s War campaigns (among other critical work to end the war).

· Join the Declaration of Peace campaign efforts. DoP will be lobbying Representatives and Senators through the summer, culminating with a week of actions nationally during the critical week of September 14 to 21. Visit www.declarationofpeace.org.

· Participate in the efforts of the National Campaign of Nonviolent Resistance (NCNR) as it challenges the war in Iraq through nonviolent direct action. NCNR has organized actions at military recruiting centers, Congressional offices, the Pentagon and weapons manufacturers. Visit www.iraqpledge.org.

· Participate in the legislative network of United for Peace and Justice as well as its nonviolent direct action working group to force an end to the war. Visit www.unitedforpeace.org.

Time is short to end funding for the Iraq war. And the costs are immeasurably high each day that the war continues. Much organizing work remains to be done.

Break time is over.

BAGHDAD (IPS) – Simmering in the summer heat, Iraqis now have a dream called electricity.

It is a part of the bigger dream of reconstruction that collapsed. On all measurable levels, the infrastructure is worse than under the former regime of Saddam Hussein, even when it was crippled by the harshest economic sanctions in modern history.

Iraqis lack security, jobs, potable water, and these days when it really pinches, electricity.

“This permanent electricity failure is just another way of giving Iraqis slow death.”
“Electricity is life,” said 45-year-old Zahra Aziz, a schoolteacher and mother of four, using a hand-fan in an attempt to cool herself. “Modern life depends on power, and we do not have that here. Having no electricity means having no water, no light, no air-conditioning, and in other words, no life.”

Most people IPS spoke to in Baghdad said they get one hour of electricity in 24 hours.

“June is a very hot month, and this permanent electricity failure is just another way of giving Iraqis slow death,” Umayma Salim, a doctor who quit her work at a hospital in Baghdad due to security threats told IPS.

“We are getting all kinds of diseases — sun strokes among those work outdoors to provide their children food, and psychological effects on all people. The weak functioning of hospitals and other infrastructure facilities have brought all kinds of complications of health and life.”

“We are boiling here Sammy,” a woman said to her husband on her mobile phone while talking to IPS. “You enjoy the breeze and electricity in Jordan my dear, but do try to take us off this frying pan. We are sweating like Niagara falls over here.”

Temperatures in Iraq are usually above 40 degrees centigrade in June, and can jump to more than 50 degrees in July and August.

“We cannot supply frozen and cooled food properly because of electricity failures,” Jamal Rfai, a supermarket owner in Baghdad told IPS. “We bring very limited quantities and if there is any curfew or trouble in the street, then it is all wasted because of the heat, and of course no one will compensate our loss.”

Workers at water service stations speak of incessant electricity cuts. “The main problem we are facing is electricity supply,” a worker who gave his name as Ahmed told IPS. “We have our standby generators, but they are meant to be used in emergency, not for so many hours a day as we do nowadays. Besides, the fuel supply is also not sufficient.”

Waiting time at petrol stations in Baghdad continues to average more than 24 hours. People sleep in their cars, or hire others to sit in their cars for them. And there is no guarantee there will be petrol at the end of the wait.

Most factories have stopped production because of the security situation and the lack of electricity.

“I moved my plastic bags factory to another area seeking better security, but now I cannot work because there is no electricity,” Ahmad Ali, a factory owner from Baghdad told IPS. “We are wasting our time hoping for something that we will never have because this occupation intentionally kills life in this country.”

Similar complaints are coming from farmers. Many say production is down at least 80 percent from what it was before the U.S.-led occupation.

“It is deliberate damage caused by the occupation,” Salim Abdul-Sattar, a local politician from Baghdad told IPS. “To cut electricity is to cut the main vein of life, and that is the main goal of the occupation.”

Abdul Sattar believes that the occupation authorities “could have provided electricity in a few months if they wanted to, but this problem is useful for what they call creative chaos.”

Most of Iraq faced near total electricity failure last week. Iraqi media outlets like al-Hurra and al-Iraqiyah which are known to be heavily influenced by the U.S. government broadcast messages claiming that terrorists had attacked the main electricity stations, causing power outages.

The Iraqi government scoffs at claims by international human rights organisations that security and living conditions in Iraq are deteriorating, reports Nermeen Al-Mufti from Baghdad

In a country where no less than 70 civilians are killed on any given day, and where over a million have fled their homes to live in makeshift camps, the Iraqi parliament has taken the extraordinary step of forming a committee to question what they term “exaggerated reports” by international humanitarian organisations about the situation in Iraq.

Alaa Al-Talabani, chairperson of the committee on civil society organisations, was quoted by the local press as saying that a parliamentary committee had been established to investigate the statistics and reports released by international organisations about the security and living conditions in Iraq. “A great number of those organisations, including the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), have no headquarters in Baghdad and issue statistics that border on the fictitious,” Al-Talabani said.

The committee on civil society organisations intends to question representatives of these international organisations about the statistics they release. “Reports from the Human Rights Commission, the UNHCR and the ICRC have made serious allegations concerning the deteriorating health and social conditions of large numbers of orphans and widows. These reports and figures do not reflect reality, and some are exaggerated,” Al-Talabani remarked.

In an interview with Al-Ahram Weekly, an ICRC spokesman in Iraq Hesham Hassan said that the ICRC had expressed dismay at Al-Talabani’s remarks, as well as “the suggestion that the credibility of international organisations was questionable. We work independently and provide credible and reliable data derived from the activities of our special mission and the Iraqi Red Crescent.” Hassan explained that the situation in Iraq was deteriorating due to the government focussing exclusively on political matters.

¡Presente!

By the time candles supposedly made from remains of a deceased ExxonMobil janitor named Reggie Watts were handed out, an audience of oil and gas professionals attending a keynote luncheon at Calgary’s Gas and Oil Exposition realized they’d been had.

A man named “S.K. Wolff,” claiming to be an analyst for the Washington-based National Petroleum Council, and co-speaker “Florian Osenberg,” said to represent ExxonMobil, were getting ready to show a memorial video made by Watts when security officers forcibly ushered the two men from the stage.

Wolff is really Andy Bichlbaum and Osenberg is Mike Bonanno — or so they say.

As the Yes Men, the pair have travelled the world with an anti-globalization agenda perpetrating hoaxes on groups ranging from the World Trade Organization to the BBC.

In Calgary, ostensibly to promote their book and a documentary they filmed three years ago at the Plaza Theatre tonight, the activists said they couldn’t resist taking a shot at the oil and gas trade show, held over three days this week at Stampede Park.

“This was a great opportunity for us, like the holy grail, really,” said Bichlbaum. “We’ve never had an audience like this. These people are wrecking the Earth and they’re quite conscious of it.”

The premise of the presentation, which included a PowerPoint lecture by “S.K. Wolff,” was that as humans begin to die as a result of calamities caused by climate change, their remains could be harvested for an alternative fuel source called “vivoleum” that would eventually replace oil.

Osenberg, supposedly the director of human resources with the vivoleum program, took the stage carrying a lit candle while volunteers handed out candles to the audience.

The approximately 250 assembled guests were told the vivoleum for the candles had been “sourced” from an ExxonMobil maintenance worker who donated it before dying of cancer.

The candles were actually made of wax and human hair from barbershops.

Organizers of GO-Expo were not impressed. Officials from dmg world media, the company that runs GO-Expo, apologized profusely for the incident.

Police were called in, but no charges were laid and no investigation will be launched, said a spokesman.

Bichlbaum and Bonanno said they were each issued a $287 fine for trespassing.

“The organizers were furious,” said Bichlbaum. “They thought we should be charged with crimes against humanity or something. The police were great. They were just going to let us go but the organizers insisted we be charged with criminal trespass.”

The Yes Men started their unique form of protesting when they created a fake WTO website to protest the Seattle summit in 1999. When conferences began inviting them to speak, thinking they were actual representatives of the WTO, they began accepting.

“It is the absolute responsibility of everybody in uniform to disobey an order that is either illegal or immoral.” General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, National Press Club, February 17, 2006.

“They will be held accountable for the decisions they make. So they should in fact not obey the illegal and immoral orders to use weapons of mass destruction.” General Peter Pace, CNN With Wolf Blitzer, April 6, 2003

The surprise decision by the Bush regime to replace General Peter Pace as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has been explained as a necessary step to avoid contentious confirmation hearings in the US Senate. Gen. Pace’s reappointment would have to be confirmed, and as the general has served as vice chairman and chairman of the Joint Chiefs for the past 6 years, the Republicans feared that hearings would give war critics an opportunity to focus, in Defense Secretary Gates words, “on the past, rather than the future.”

This is a plausible explanation. Whether one takes it on face value depends on how much trust one still has in a regime that has consistently lied about everything for six years.

General Pace himself says he was forced out when he refused to “take the issue off the table” by voluntarily retiring. Pace himself was sufficiently disturbed by his removal to strain his relations with the powers that be by not going quietly.

The Wall Street Journal editorial page interpreted Pace’s removal as indication that “the man running the Pentagon is Democratic Senator Carl Levin of Michigan. For that matter, is George W. Bush still President?”

The Wall Street Journal editorial writers’ attempt to portray Pace’s departure as evidence of a weak and appeasing administration does not ring true. An administration that escalates the war in Iraq in the face of public opposition and pushes ahead with its plan to attack Iran is not an appeasing administration. Whether it is the war or Attorney General Gonzales or the immigration bill or anything else, President Bush and his Republican stalwarts have told Congress and the American people that they don’t care what Congress and the public think. Bush’s signing statements make it clear that he doesn’t even care about the laws that Congress writes.

A president audacious enough to continue an unpopular and pointless war in the face of public opinion and a lost election is a president who is not too frightened to reappoint a general. Why does Bush run from General Pace when he fervently supports embattled Attorney General Gonzales? What troops does Bush support? He supports his toadies.

There are, of course, other explanations for General Pace’s departure. The most disturbing of these explanations can be found in General Pace’s two statements at the beginning of this article.

In the first statement General Pace says that every member of the US military has the absolute responsibility to disobey illegal and immoral orders. In the second statement, General Pace says that an order to use weapons of mass destruction is an illegal and immoral order.

The context of General Pace’s second statement above (actually, the first statement in historical time) is his response to Blitzer’s question whether the invading US troops could be attacked with Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. But Pace’s answer does not restrict illegal and immoral only to Iraqi use of WMD. It is a general statement. It applies to their use period.
Despite the illegality and immorality of first-use of nuclear weapons, the Bush Pentagon rewrote US war doctrine to permit their use regardless of their illegality and immorality. For a regime that not only believes that might is right but also that they have the might, law is what the regime says.

The revised war doctrine permits US first strike use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear countries. We need to ask ourselves why the Bush administration would blacken America’s reputation and rekindle the nuclear arms race unless the administration had plans to apply its new war doctrine.
Senator Joseph Lieberman, a number of neoconservatives, prominent Jewish leaders such as Norman Podhoretz, and members of the Israeli government have called for a US attack on Iran. Most Republican presidential candidates have said that they would not rule out the use of nuclear weapons against Iran.

Allegedly, the US Department of State is pursuing diplomacy with Iran, not war, but Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns gives the lie to that claim. On June 12 Burns claimed that Iran was not only arming insurgents in Iraq but also the Taliban in Afghanistan. Burns’ claims are, to put it mildly, controversial in the US intelligence community, and they are denied not only by Iran but also by our puppet government in Afghanistan. On June 14, Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak told the Associated Press that Burns’ claim has no credibility.

But, of course, none of the administration’s propagandistic claims that set the stage for the invasion of Iraq had any credibility either, and the lack of credibility did not prevent the claims from deceiving the Congress and the American people. As the US media now function as the administration’s Ministry of Propaganda, the Bush regime believes that it can stampede Americans with lies into another war.

The Bush regime has concluded that a conventional attack on Iran would do no more than stir up a hornet’s nest and release retaliatory actions that the US could not manage. The Bush regime is convinced that only nuclear weapons can bring the mullahs to heel.

The Bush regime’s plan to attack Iran with nuclear weapons puts General Pace’s departure in a different light. How can President Bush succeed with an order to attack with nuclear weapons when America’s highest ranking military officer says that such an order is “illegal and immoral” and that everyone in the military has an “absolute responsibility” to disobey it?

An alternative explanation for Pace’s departure is that Pace had to go so that malleable toadies can be installed in his place.