The Rag Blog

On my day off, I do all the jobs that have accumulated over the week; those we try to put off – until … forever.

Sweeping the patios and cleaning the garden is one of them.

Ages ago we used to have enough water, and at quite high pressure to enable me – and others – to wash off the dust and sand that accumulate as a result of sand storms and unusually dusty weather. It used to be quite an enjoyable task for me because I love water. I would spray the walls and sniff the odor of freshly sprayed plaster. I would wash the trees and spray the flowers to make their colours brighter still. At the end of all this spraying I would reluctantly put down the hose, take up the brush to lift the dirt and put it in the garbage bin. Every one of my kids used to fight over this watery duty; but they would run away from the very last detail – lifting the accumulated dirt.

Now the situation has changed … we can no longer wash the patios, no longer wash the trees, just barely water the plants and sprinkle the dry grass. The patios have to be dry-swept, the garage and the pavement outside, too.

No one offers to help – until the very end, when I prepare to lift the accumulation to throw it away. At that moment my son comes running, “You haven’t thrown them away have you??”, “No, they’re right here”.

Very carefully, he goes through the dry dirt, twigs and leaves to pick out small metal cylinders, dusty and shiny at the same time; some longer, some shorter; he inspects them carefully – just in case. The odor of gunpowder lingers in them. He washes and dries them, and adds them to his hoard. “I think, with this lot I will beat Hammoudi; last week he had more than me!”

This what we have gained.

Shiny cylinders on our doorstep.

Shiny cylinders on our roofs.

Shiny cylinders penetrating our lives in – oh – so many ways.

04/21/07 “ICH ” — — Mobilizing to save civilization means restructuring the economy, restoring the economy’s natural support systems, eradicating poverty, and stabilizing population. We have the technologies, economic instruments, and financial resources to do this. The United States has the resources to lead this effort. Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University’s Earth Institute sums it up well: “The tragic irony of this moment is that the rich countries are so rich and the poor so poor that a few added tenths of one percent of GNP from the rich ones ramped up over the coming decades could do what was never before possible in human history: ensure that the basic needs of health and education are met for all impoverished children in this world. How many more tragedies will we suffer in this country before we wake up to our capacity to help make the world a safer and more prosperous place not only through military might, but through the gift of life itself?”

It is not possible to put a precise price tag on the changes needed to move our twenty-first century civilization off the overshoot-and-collapse path and onto a path that will sustain economic progress. What we can do, however, is provide some rough estimates of the scale of effort needed.

To fund the needed restructuring of the energy economy, we rely on shifting subsidies from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy. For meeting our social goals, the additional external funding needed to achieve universal primary education in the more than 80 developing countries that require help is conservatively estimated by the World Bank at $12 billion per year. Funding for an adult literacy program based largely on volunteers will take an estimated additional $4 billion annually. Providing for the most basic health care in developing countries is estimated at $33 billion by the World Health Organization. The additional funding needed to provide reproductive health care and family planning services to all women in developing countries is less than $7 billion a year.

Closing the condom gap by providing the additional 9.5 billion condoms needed to control the spread of HIV in the developing world and Eastern Europe requires $2 billion—$285 million for condoms and $1.7 billion for AIDS prevention education and condom distribution. The cost of extending school lunch programs to the 44 poorest countries is $6 billion. An estimated $4 billion per year would cover the cost of assistance to preschool children and pregnant women in these countries. Altogether, the cost of reaching basic social goals comes to $68 billion a year.

“Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate” (Abandon all hope, you who enter here) Dante Alighieri – The Divine Comedy; ‘Inferno’

04/22/07 “ICH” – — – There is an inordinate frenzy to occupy the White House in 2009. Perhaps Mr. Bush’s overreach and abuse of Executive powers has inspired candidates; or it may simply be the idea of rescuing the United States from her various dilemmas. What is undeniable is that while some candidates may be sincere in their aspirations, others simply want a chance to kill in our name. Twitching fingers ready to commit genocide, one presidential candidate had even been practicing how to commit mass murder to a tune.

Senator John McCain (R, Arizona) while on a campaign in N. Carolina, was videoed singing “bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” to the tune of the Beach Boys “Barbara Ann”.[i]

To this ‘hero’ of the Vietnam War, the White House means not only prolonging the Iraq war and the death of more Americans and slaughter of Iraqis, which he has strongly endorsed , but also the genocide of innocent Iranians. Given that he is lagging behind in fundraising, it comes as no surprise that he should target Iran, lie about Iran’s aspirations to destroy Israel, and hope to receive AIPAC’s blessings and be bank-rolled by them. No doubt, in spite of inciting mass murder, the mainstream media will boost his popularity with the backing of AIPAC, and he will be the frontrunner for the 2008 Republican elections – the war hero who learned nothing from Vietnam and the killing massacre that went on there.

It is up to us, the American people to evaluate our standing at home and in the world. Have we reached the ‘point of no return’, the gates of hell described by Dante, where the likes of McCain will lead our future to more lies and bloodshed? Not only has our country been run amok by the current Administration, but those who look to step into their shoes are planning to take us to far darker places. McCain is not only a United States Senator who represents the people of Arizona, but he is a high profile representative of the United States. What message are we giving to the world when presidential candidates walk around telling the world that America will “bomb, bomb, bomb” whomever they don’t like?

The Justice Department is conducting a probe of a $6 billion reading initiative at the center of President Bush’s No Child Left Behind law, another blow to a program besieged by allegations of financial conflicts of interest and cronyism, people familiar with the matter said yesterday.

The disclosure came as a congressional hearing revealed how people implementing the $1 billion-a-year Reading First program made at least $1 million off textbooks and tests toward which the federal government steered states.

“That sounds like a criminal enterprise to me,” said Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chairman of the House education committee, which held a five-hour investigative hearing. “You don’t get to override the law,” he angrily told a panel of Reading First officials. “But the fact of the matter is that you did.”

The Education Department’s inspector general, John P. Higgins Jr., said he has made several referrals to the Justice Department about the five-year-old program, which provides grants to improve reading for children in kindergarten through third grade.

Higgins declined to offer more specifics, but Christopher J. Doherty, former director of Reading First, said in an interview that he was questioned by Justice officials in November. The civil division of the U.S. attorney’s office for the District, which can bring criminal charges, is reviewing the matter.

Doherty, one of the two Education Department employees who oversaw the initiative, acknowledged yesterday that his wife had worked for a decade as a paid consultant for a reading program, Direct Instruction, that investigators said he improperly tried to force schools to use. He repeatedly failed to disclose the conflict on financial disclosure forms.

“I’m very proud of this program and my role in this program,” Doherty said in the interview. “I think it’s been implemented in accordance with the law.”

Taking a cue from Cold War Soviet policy in Berlin – not to mention the enlightened approach of the Israeli government in the West Bank – the Bush Regime has begun walling off a Sunni enclave in Baghdad, driving a stake into the heart of the flickering reconciliation efforts among the Iraqi grassroots and solidifying the nation’s deadly sectarian divisions — thus abetting the aims of the violent extremists operating both within and outside the Bush-backed Iraqi government.

The Sunnis of Adhamiya are being sealed into a ghetto by three miles of concrete, 12 feet high, made up of giant 14,000-pound slabs being installed by monstrous cranes and heavy machinery in the dead of night, the Los Angeles Times reports. When the enclosure is finished, Adhamiya will be an open-air prison, with access into and out of the ghetto controlled by U.S. and, presumably, Iraqi government forces. Already the wall is destroying fragile personal and commercial ties between the area’s Sunni population and the surrounding Shiite areas, say residents. It will also draw even more violence to the area, they add:

“Are they trying to divide us into different sectarian cantons?” said a Sunni drugstore owner in Adhamiya, who would identify himself only as Abu Ahmed, 44. “This will deepen the sectarian strife and only serve to abort efforts aimed at reconciliation.”

Some of Ahmed’s customers come from Shiite or mixed neighborhoods that are now cut off by large barriers along a main highway. Customers and others seeking to cross into the Sunni district must park their cars outside Adhamiya, walk through a narrow passage in the wall and take taxis on the other side.

Several residents interviewed likened the project to the massive barriers built by Israel around some Palestinian zones. “Are we in the West Bank?” asked Abu Qusay, 48, a pharmacist who said that he wouldn’t be able to get to his favorite kebab restaurant in Adhamiya.

Residents complained that Baghdad already has been dissected by hundreds of barriers that cause daily traffic snarls. Some predicted the new wall would become a target of militants on both sides. Last week, construction crews came under small-arms fire, military officials said.

“I feel this is the beginning of a pattern of what the whole of Iraq is going to look like, divided by sectarian and racial criteria,” Abu Marwan, 50, a Shiite pharmacist, said.

(04-19) 15:08 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) — Strange things sometimes come out of President Bush’s mouth. “Polls just go poof.””Remember the rug?”

When Bush went to Ohio on Thursday to talk about terrorism, he ended up musing about marriage and chicken-plucking plants, the agony of death and his Oval Office rug, which resembles a sunburst.

About his legacy, Bush said historians are still assessing George Washington, the nation’s first leader. “My attitude is, if they’re still writing about (number) one, 43 doesn’t need to worry about it.”

On being married: “A good marriage is really good after serving together in Washington, D.C.”

Maybe the president just felt like jabbering at the town hall-style event in Tipp City, Ohio. He began talking about terrorism and ended 90 minutes later after chattering about everything from life after the White House to Vietnam War and the brutal Khmer Rouge regime.

Some highlights:

_”Politics comes and goes, but your principles don’t. And everybody wants to be loved — not everybody. … You never heard anybody say, `I want to be despised, I’m running for office.'”

_”The best thing about my family is my wife. She is a great first lady. I know that sounds not very objective, but that’s how I feel. And she’s also patient. Putting up with me requires a lot of patience.”

_”There are jobs Americans aren’t doing. … If you’ve got a chicken factory, a chicken-plucking factory, or whatever you call them, you know what I’m talking about.”

_”There are some similarities, of course” between Iraq and Vietnam. “Death is terrible.“

_”I’ve been in politics long enough to know that polls just go poof at times.”

As he has before, Bush told the story about how his first presidential decision was to pick a rug for the Oval Office, a task he quickly cast to his wife. He told her to make sure the rug reflected optimism “because you can’t make decisions unless you’re optimistic that the decisions you make will lead to a better tomorrow.”

Two scenes from the tube did a job on me tonight.

The first one was from a documentary called “Iraq’s missing millions”.
Yes you guessed right. It referred to the 20 Billion Dollars of Iraqi money that simply evaporated during Bremer’s “governance” of the “new” Iraq.
The 20 Billion dollars of Iraqi money that were meant to “reconstruct” Iraq.

The program filmed a hospital in Diwaniya, the Southern part.
This was no hospital, this looked like a run down insalubrious toilet. No hospital sheets, no curtains, no medication, no oxygen masks, no surgical gloves, no intravenous serums…

In something that looked like an ancient non-functional incubator, laid Zahra, an infant girl and not too far, Abbas, her twin infant brother.

Zahra looked blue black, the colors of asphyxiation. She lacked Vitamin K and some other drug. She was terribly malnourished. She lacked air, she lacked life.

The doctor had no oxygen mask. He pressed a long thick tube, the only one available, against her tiny nostrils, trying to insert bits of it, hoping to give her some oxygen, hoping to revive her ever slowing heart beat.

Zahra’s father was absent. He went searching for the drug and the vitamin K on the black market. Zahra’s father had to pay for them from his own pocket.
By the time he made it back to the hospital and despite the doctor’s best efforts, Zahra was gone.

The doctor told Zahra’s grandmother: “This infant is finished”.
The following day, Abbas, her twin brother was finished too.

Zahra’s father rushes in with two ampoules of Vitamin K. It was too late.
Someone hands him a cardboard box. Zahra’s face is covered with a tiny piece of cloth and placed in the box. Just like that.

A cardboard box. You know the one you store your shoes in, or your old newspapers, or any junk you want to eventually get rid of. In the “new” Iraq, infants are placed in those boxes.

The second scene was from Guantanamo. You know Gitmo Bay, your seaside resort.
380 “prisoners” are still with no trial. Many of them are on hunger strike.
One of them is Sami al-Hajj, a sudanese cameraman working for Al Jazeera. Married, father of small boy.

Sami Al-Hajj amongst others, has been in Gitmo for over three years now and still no charges and no trial.
Sami has been on a hunger strike for 100 days already.

One of the lawyers in charge of Sami’s “case” gave a demonstration of how Sami and others are force fed by the democratic american authorities there.

They take the “detainee”, strap him with leather belts to a sturdy wooden chair. Tie his arms, feet and head, paralyzing any movement.

A 1 meter long tube is then thrust into the “detainee’s” nostrils, with no anesthesia of course, past his larynx, through his oesophagus right into his stomach and the food is thus forcefully ingested.

This “procedure” is repeated twice a day.
Sami Al-Hajj has been undergoing this tubal “nourishment” twice a day for 100 days.

Zahra and Sami have much in common. They are Arab “speaking”, muslims, brown skinned and share the same “tube” destiny.

In fact they were both caught in the american dark, tight, tunnel of torture with no end in sight…as if trying to live through an interminable tube…

Why do 32 deaths in Virginia receive blanket coverage while nearly 200 fatalities in Iraq are barely reported?

04/20/07 “The Guardian’ — 04/19/07 – Thirty-two die in American university shooting. Result? Huge media coverage in the US and Britain. In Iraq, almost 200 die, arguably the worst day of carnage in that beleaguered country since the coalition invasion. Result? Coverage so restrained as to be, in many cases, totally negligible. Could you even find it in the Times this morning? Why?

General reasons first. The media operate what amounts to a hierarchy of death. Here are the criteria: foreign deaths always rank below domestic deaths. Similarly, on the basis that all news is local, deaths at home provide human interest stories that people want to know about, while the deaths of foreigners are merely statistics.

Sure, the victims and their families are human beings, too, but if they are thousands of miles away they cannot – in the eyes of the media’s editorial controllers – generate the same sympathy and interest as deaths near at hand.

Deaths in ongoing conflicts always receive less coverage than unexpected deaths elsewhere (because the latter are, by their nature, unpredictable and news values always rate new-ness above old-ness).

Now let’s get down to some other controversial home truths. The deaths of non-white people in foreign parts – and, I would contend, often at home – are never accorded equal status by the white, western media. The deaths of Arabs and Muslims (and, in many media eyes, there is no difference) are overlooked because they are, variously, anti-western, anti-Christian or anti-capitalist, or all three, and are therefore undeserving of sympathy. By virtue of their religion and their ethnicity they cannot expect the same treatment as the people in the west (who, of course, are also more civilised, better educated and altogether more wholesome). In other words, it’s racist.

Finally, specific reasons. Iraq is considered to be a basket case.

There’s no hope. We cannot understand it. Sunni v Shia (like Catholic v Protestant) is surely too difficult to resolve. There’s no point in going into depth about deaths among fanatics and fundamentalists. They are, as I said earlier, just statistics now. So home-grown massacres are infinitely more newsworthy and (dare I say so) sexier.

An Iraqi doctor who made international headlines after stating that civilian deaths in the Iraq war far exceeded officially reported numbers is not being allowed to travel to North America to meet other academics.

Riyadh Lafta and his colleagues have been trying for months to get a U.S. travel visa so the doctor could speak at a medical conference at the University of Washington today.

The State Department has cited miscommunication as the reason for the visa holdup.

As an alternative, Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, B.C., invited Lafta to deliver his lecture today, which was to have been broadcast by video to the UW. But this week, the British government denied him a four-hour transit visa for a stopover between the Middle East and Canada.

Lafta, an epidemiologist, teaches at Al-Mustansiriya University College of Medicine in Baghdad and co-wrote an October 2006 article about Iraqi civilian deaths in The Lancet, a respected British medical journal.

The UW’s School of Public Health and Community Medicine invited him to talk about that study and elevated cancer levels, particularly affecting children, in southern Iraq, said Amy Hagopian, an acting assistant professor.

Hagopian, who is conducting research with Lafta, believes the Bush administration is purposely blocking his travel to the United States. “My hypothesis is the Bush administration was extremely threatened by The Lancet study,” she said.

State Department spokesman Steve Royster denied that politics played a role in Lafta’s visa never being issued.

“This is a matter of a simple but unfortunate miscommunication,” he said.

A British foreign affairs spokesperson could not be reached Thursday for comment.

U.S. Embassy officials in Amman, Jordan, where Lafta applied for a visa in July 2006, tried contacting the doctor twice by e-mail for information, Royster said. But they say they never received a response, and incomplete visa applications can be held.

Royster was uncertain if embassy staff members tried contacting him in other ways, or if his North American colleagues knew of the miscommunication.

Hagopian called his explanation disingenuous.