The Rag Blog

MONTPELIER, Vt. (April 20) – Vermont senators voted Friday to call for the impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney , saying their actions in Iraq and the U.S. “raise serious questions of constitutionality.”

The non-binding resolution was approved 16-9 without debate – all six Republicans in the chamber at the time and three Democrats voted against it. The resolution was the latest, symbolic, effort in the state to impeach Bush. In March, 40 towns in the state known for its liberal leaning voted in favor of similar, non-binding resolutions at their annual meetings. State lawmakers in Wisconsin and Washington have also pushed for similar resolutions.

The Vermont Senate is believed to be the first state chamber in the country to pass such a resolution, said Bill Wyatt, a spokesman for the National Conference of State Legislatures.

“Many chambers passed resolutions about the war in Iraq, but none that we are aware have called for impeachment,” he said.

The resolution says Bush and Cheney’s actions in the U.S. and abroad, including in Iraq, “raise serious questions of constitutionality, statutory legality, and abuse of the public trust.”

“I think it’s going to have a tremendous political effect, a tremendous political effect on public discourse about what to do about this president,” said James Leas, a vocal advocate of withdrawing troops from Iraq and impeaching Bush and Cheney.

Researchers funded by the federal government want to shut down the internet and start over, citing the fact that at the moment there are loopholes in the system whereby users cannot be tracked and traced all the time.

Time magazine has reported that several foundations and universities including Rutgers, Stanford, Princeton, Carnegie Mellon and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are pursuing individual projects, along with the Defense Department, in order to wipe out the current internet and replace it with a new network which will satisfy big business and government:

One challenge in any reconstruction, though, will be balancing the interests of various constituencies. The first time around, researchers were able to toil away in their labs quietly. Industry is playing a bigger role this time, and law enforcement is bound to make its needs for wiretapping known.

There’s no evidence they are meddling yet, but once any research looks promising, “a number of people (will) want to be in the drawing room,” said Jonathan Zittrain, a law professor affiliated with Oxford and Harvard universities. “They’ll be wearing coats and ties and spilling out of the venue.”

The projects echo moves we have previously reported on to clamp down on internet neutrality and even to designate a new form of the internet known as Internet 2.

This would be a faster, more streamlined elite equivalent of the internet available to users who were willing to pay more for a much improved service. providers may only allow streaming audio and video on your websites if you were eligible for Internet 2.

Of course, Internet 2 would be greatly regulated and only “appropriate content” would be accepted by an FCC or government bureau. Everything else would be relegated to the “slow lane” internet, the junkyard as it were. Our techie rulers are all too keen to make us believe that the internet as we know it is “already dead”.

Google is just one of the major companies preparing for internet 2 by setting up hundreds of “server farms” through which eventually all our personal data – emails, documents, photographs, music, movies – will pass and reside.

However, experts state that the “clean slate” projects currently being undertaken go even further beyond projects like Internet2 and National LambdaRail, both of which focus primarily on next-generation needs for speed.

THE crisis over Iraq’s refugees is the first major policy issue in which Iraqi civilians are front and center. We debate how the surge looks today or how oil will be distributed tomorrow on the banks of a swelling river of human misery: two million Iraqis who couldn’t bear to live in Iraq anymore, and another two million displaced internally but too poor to flee.

This week, representatives from dozens of countries and international nongovernmental organizations have gathered in Geneva to discuss what might be done in the wake of the largest population shift in the Middle East since 1948. The world is asking what George W. Bush, who started the war in Iraq and presides over the country that historically accepts more refugees than any other, will do for these desperate people.

Many of them will most likely be denied refuge in the United States because, under the Patriot and Real ID Acts, they are tarred with having provided material support to terrorists — in the form of ransoms paid to kidnappers to secure a family member’s release. Last month, Congress tried to create a waiver for those who provided material support “under duress.” Lamentably, it was killed by Senator Jon Kyl, who said he’d respond with legislation to “provide relief from terrorism-related immigration bars to … groups that do not pose a threat to the United States.”

Are we so imprecise in our fifth year of this war that our government cannot distinguish between those who worked and ate alongside us and a member of Al Qaeda?

Consider Rita, an Iraqi Christian woman who worked for the Coalition Provisional Authority and helped manage the TIPS Hotline, which Iraqis can call to share critical information about wanted terrorists or pending attacks on the United States military. Her supervisor, Bernard Kerik, wrote in a recommendation letter that her “courage to support the coalition forces has sent an irrefutable message: that terror will not rule, that liberty will triumph, and that the seeds of freedom will be planted into the great citizens of Iraq.”

But Rita’s courage was repaid by insurgents who abducted her 16-year-old son at gunpoint on his way to school one August morning. Terrorists demanded $600,000 for his release. She doesn’t know how much her husband ultimately paid the kidnappers because he divorced her, blaming her work for the American government for the calamity that had befallen the family. He took her traumatized son and daughter to Syria, and she hasn’t seen or heard from them since. When the death threats became unbearable, she fled to Jordan.

Appallingly, Rita’s family cannot be resettled in the United States because of the material support bar. Unless the secretary of homeland security himself applies a waiver for her, she’ll never reach American soil. Does this woman, who lost everything because she worked for the Americans, who had a security clearance from our government to work in its embassy, pose a threat to the United States? If she does, then who doesn’t?

After all this time, we see hearts and minds as bombs and guns. If we cannot recover such basic distinctions, then we have surely lost more than the war.

Five years before we invaded Iraq, one senator had the remarkable foresight to speak about our responsibility to any Iraqis who might help the United States: “If we would have people in Iraq, or elsewhere in the world, trust us and work with us, then we need to take care that the United States maintains a reputation for trustworthiness and for taking care of its friends.” He was even more direct about what was at stake: “The world will be watching and judging how America treats people who are seen to be on our side. We cannot afford to foster a perception of unfairness that will make it more difficult for the United States to recruit supporters in the future.” So spoke Senator Kyl in 1998.

I thought I had witnessed the depths of our government’s inability to rapidly help Iraqis during the year that I worked for the United States Agency for International Development in Baghdad and Falluja. That was until I went to Washington in February with a list of all of my former Iraqi colleagues who are now refugees because they helped us.

While the State Department bureau in charge of refugee resettlement has been trying feverishly to respond belatedly to the crisis, it is not equipped or authorized to act expeditiously. In her Jan. 16 testimony to the Senate, the assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration, Ellen Sauerbrey, said that the plight of Iraq’s refugees was the bureau’s “very top priority.” More than two months later, she reported to the House that it could take six months (and likely longer) before our Iraqi friends might find refuge here.

What kind of superpower can’t convert its “very top priority” into a program that starts saving its allies’ lives before their visas expire and they are forced to return to Iraq? Rita is on my list, which has grown to include hundreds of former colleagues and others who endured similarly shattering fates because they believed in America enough to help us in Iraq. They wonder if they chose poorly when they signed on with us, and they are rapidly losing hope that the United States will offer them a life preserver before it’s too late. Those who paid ransoms for their lives or those of their loved ones are scared to explain in their asylum applications the chief reason they fled their country, because they worry it will disqualify them — a perverse indication of the extent to which our government has lost its way since we invaded.

This is not an issue President Bush can delegate anymore. His bureaucracies are moving perilously slowly. They need the leadership of an American president. How will the United States help those whose belief in us cost them their country? We need to honor the sacrifice of these Iraqis — and start recovering the moral credibility our country forfeits each day they go without our help.

Yale Divinity School students burned a copy of the Bill of Rights and the Ten Commandments at a recent Ash Wednesday service before marking their foreheads with the ashes – not as protest, they say, but to repent for their own complicity in “the ongoing injustice being perpetuated by our nation.”

“Ash Wednesday is the beginning of Lent where we remember our sins and the ways that we are complicit in evil in our society. As an American, the way that’s most clear today is through the War on Terror and the war on Iraq,” said Christopher Doucot, a first-year master’s student who came up with the idea for the service. About 40 to 45 students, faculty, administrators and local residents attended the service, intended to provide an opportunity for reflection on such topics as secret prisons, “indiscriminate bombings,” domestic spying and torture.

“We were reminding ourselves of our own complicity,” said Doucot. “We’re not pointing fingers at anyone but ourselves.”

A Tuesday Yale Daily News account of the unusual Ash Wednesday service indicated that the ritual burning has “sparked concern among the school’s alumni and some students.” But while it’s obvious that in a country that periodically debates banning flag-burning, such an approach to melding politics and prayer might not prove popular, Doucot said that he has not heard from anyone who was offended, “not a soul.” Rev. Dale Peterson, associate dean of students at Yale Divinity School, said that if there was any controversy, he wasn’t aware of it. It was just a small service, said Reverend Peterson, who was among the attendees, held on a day that at least two much larger services were occurring on campus.

Doucot did acknowledge however that organizers were hoping the action would draw attention to their concerns. “You don’t do things to be provocative,” he said of the service. “But one of the fears I have is being ignored.”

“I absolutely hope people have a visceral reaction … if they have that strong of a reaction to how a symbol is treated, how it’s burned, then there’s hope that upon reflection, they will have as strong of a visceral reaction to that symbol being violated in practice, which is what searches without warrants do, which is what torture does.”

The service was conducted quietly, without signs or fanfare. Participants stood in a circle and read each commandment or constitutional amendment aloud. Each text was then burned, one by one.

“As the organizers of the service, we believe that the rights and responsibilities held up in those two documents have already been violated by this government, as well as by ourselves as citizens and Christians,” said Tamara Shantz, a third-year divinity student, via e-mail. “The burning was then symbolic of what has already been accomplished, not as a symbol of our lack of respect for the values upheld in the Bill of Rights and the 10 Commandments.”

“It wasn’t burning these documents as if they were not of importance,” explained Reverend Peterson. “It was the exact opposite. We were putting them on our foreheads, after asking God’s forgiveness for not living up to the ideals of them.”

But while Jessica Anschutz, a third-year divinity student who also helped organize the service, said that the first she heard of any controversy was from The Yale Daily News reporter, Tuesday’s article has succeeded in raising the profile of the small service.And not all Yalies, it turns out, are comfortable with the premise behind this particular approach to prayer.

“[Ash Wednesday] is a fully spiritual event; it’s not political in any sense. To pervert it like that is really inappropriate especially at a place like a divinity school,” said Stephen Schmalhofer, a Yale junior and author of the blog, ” For God, For Country and For Yale.“

“It seems that to put this in a political context completely removes this from the Christian tradition of the event, which is something that too often happens at the Yale Divinity School … they have the tendency to manipulate these traditions for political statements, to really rip these traditional devotions from the Christian community in which they were conceived,” Schmalhofer said.

Jonathan Serrato, a sophomore at Yale and the student outreach chair for the St. Thomas More Undergraduate Council, said that while he believes the organizers of the Ash Wednesday service had good intentions and were trying to make a good point, their approach was inappropriate.

“I do believe that there is a call for Christians of all denominations to ‘wake up’ and realize that we must live our faith and do everything in our power to correct what we see as wrong in society, even if the most we can do is try,” Serrato said in an e-mail. “However, I don’t feel that this event was appropriate for the time or the message that they were trying to convey. For me, Lent is a time of personal cleansing and preparation for life after death. Also for me, the ashes given on Ash Wednesday are sacred and come from the blessed palms from the previous year’s Palm Sunday, and I feel that this event could be considered unintentionally disrespectful.”

“It does seem like this is the kind of thing that you have to do very, very delicately, but it appears that this is something they did do delicately,” said William “Beau” Weston, a professor of sociology at Centre College in Kentucky and a Yale Divinity School alumnus.

“It’s actually a pretty classy act. It does raise one’s alarm to have students burning anything, but there are circumstances in which that’s an appropriate thing to do. Ash Wednesday names the context,” said Weston.

“The tradition of using worship as a time to engage the hearts of the people and engage in dramatic action is a rich one,” added Bill McKinney, president of the Pacific School of Religion, a Berkeley seminary, and a professor of American religion. “If you think of liturgy as the work of the people, which is its original meaning, then for the people to express ritually their most powerful hurts and pains and needs, for those who feel that our country’s on the wrong track, it’s very much consistent with the way worship works.”

GENEVA, April 17 (Reuters) – Jordan and Syria begged the international community on Tuesday to help them shoulder the burden of some 2 million Iraqi refugees straining their resources and economies.

Senior officials from the two states were addressing a meeting convened by the United Nations to tackle the problem of nearly 4 million Iraqis driven by the conflict to seek refuge either inside or outside Iraq.

“We, in the Syrian Arab Republic, are facing a huge mass of refugees … this lays great pressure on the economy and infrastructure of our country,” Vice Foreign Minister Fayssal Mekdad told the talks.

Syria is hosting an estimated 1.2 million Iraqis — a number equal to 12 percent of its own population — and needs another $256 million to continue providing them with aid, health care and education over the next two years, Mekdad said in a speech.

Mukhaimer Abu Jamous, secretary-general of Jordan’s Interior Ministry, said 750,000 Iraqi refugees were costing his government $1 billion a year, stretching to the limit the resources of a country of just 5.6 million.

“We hope that this important conference results in a clear and firm commitment by the international community to take part in shouldering the great burden,” he said.

U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres, who is chairing the two-day talks, said host countries in the region had vowed to keep open their borders.

“Today it is clear that the countries of asylum have pledged that they would go on granting protection to Iraqis and that they consider to send Iraqis forcibly into the country against their will is not acceptable,” he told a news conference at the end of the first day.

Donor countries had pledged financial aid and to take in more of the most vulnerable Iraqi refugees for resettlement, he said, without giving details.

International Conference on Addressing the Humanitarian Needs of Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons inside Iraq and in Neighbouring Countries

Mr. Chairman,

Iraq is facing a humanitarian crisis with up to an estimated eight million people in need of immediate assistance and protection. The affected population faces escalating violence, ongoing military operations, human rights violations, and a crisis of protection. At the same time, the increase in violence has severely constrained humanitarian space and relief provisions have become very limited. The humanitarian situation is further exacerbated by the combination of degraded basic services, loss of livelihoods, and rampant inflation, which have increased the vulnerability of the people.

While horrific violence dominates the lives of millions of ordinary people inside Iraq, the displacement, malnutrition, chronic poverty, and illness that have been increasing over the last four years are crippling the lives of hundreds of thousands more. The protection vacuum that characterises much of Iraq has resulted in huge unmet needs and a denial of fundamental rights. The people of Iraq have a right to humanitarian assistance, but this right is being neglected.

Understanding the Crisis

The humanitarian crisis in Iraq has not yet been adequately acknowledged, fully assessed, or properly understood. While donors and the UN system have been pre-occupied with reconstruction, development, and political benchmarks, they, and the Iraqi government itself, are only just starting to acknowledge the existence of humanitarian needs. This conference is a welcome step.

As UNHCR has estimated, there are 1.9 million internally displaced persons in Iraq, a figure increasing by some 50,000 each month, in addition to the 40,000 to 50,000 fleeing from Iraq on a monthly basis. While the situation is particularly severe in the centre of the country and to a slightly lesser degree in the South, authorities and host populations also struggle to provide for displaced populations in the more stable and developed areas of the North.

The situation may be further evolving with the authorities in some districts or governorates reportedly denying permission to people to settle within their boundaries and even threatening to expel them. While the course of displacement in 2004-2005 was assessed as a short-term phenomenon, the new displacement reality is shaping up to be a long-term trend. The overwhelming volume of internal displacement has been concentrated in a short time period. The ensuing needs have been exacerbated by ongoing violence, dismal security conditions and declining living standards for IDPs and their host communities alike. These need to be addressed as a matter of urgency through a collaborative and coordinated response.

Certainly the refugee and IDP caseloads are in immediate need of humanitarian relief, as are the “hidden” affected people inside Iraq who suffer the impact of violence on their daily lives: shortfalls in basic services, inefficient functioning of the Public Distribution System (PDS), loss of livelihoods and uncontrolled inflation. As a major proportion of IDPs in Iraq are living with communities, families, and friends it is important that humanitarian assistance focus on the coping mechanisms of whole communities by improving water supplies, electricity, shelters, schools, and income generation activities and not focus on building camps and emergency latrines. The constant pressure faced by Iraqi citizens has steadily eroded their coping mechanisms and traditional forms of solidarity that are extended in times of crises, with the result that they require external sources of relief assistance.

Special Protection Needs

Many groups continue to suffer persecution in Iraq, particularly professionals; women; Iraqis employed by foreign contractors, the UN or other international organisations including NGOs; and ethnic and religious minorities. Internally displaced persons (IDPs) are frequently victims of human rights violations originating from ethno-religious differences or of a political and criminal order. The security of third-country nationals, stateless persons, and particularly the Palestinian refugees and thousands of refugees from Turkey, Iran and Syria in Iraq has drastically deteriorated.

Based on 2005 figures, nearly 5.6 million Iraqis were living below the poverty line and over 4 million people are food insecure and in dire need of different types of humanitarian assistance. Twenty-eight percent of Iraqi children suffer from malnutrition: the chronic malnutrition rate of children in food insecure households is 23%. One child in 10 suffers from chronic disease or illness. Children in Iraq have more chance of dying before the age of five than children in any other Middle Eastern country. Women are suffering because of unjust policies and from the militancy of intolerant groups. Special consideration should be given to single-headed households and youth, who are the most vulnerable.

Four years of daily violence and a high level of psychological trauma, following 20 years of wars and sanctions has inflicted enormous damage on the mental and physical health of tens of thousands of direct victims, including tortured people, as well as their families and society at large. Assistance to strengthen medical and psychological rehabilitation services is needed to enable victims to regain their capacity to effectively contribute to the development of their society.

The Challenges of Working in Iraq

International and national NGOs working in Iraq have become some of the very few key humanitarian implementers on the ground, yet they face multiple obstacles in responding to the numerous needs. NGOs have met with success and failures compounded by the problems faced by all stakeholders involved in delivering aid and assistance. However the main comparative advantages that NGOs, especially national NGOs, have are their flexible approaches and their ability to react quickly to develop strategies and responses. NGOs are able to adapt their structures and activities to the volatile context and newly emerging needs, build relative trust and acceptance in the communities in which they operate, adhere to an impartial and neutral approach in their service delivery within the limitations of keeping a low profile, and help correct some of the misperceptions the population may have about NGOs, their affiliations and objectives. NGOs delivering humanitarian aid distinguish themselves from other types of agencies, and especially from the military, by emphasising their neutrality and impartiality through their actions, and putting the humanitarian imperative as an absolute first.

Responding Better

These efforts have allowed INGOs to maintain their own capacities and to extend their services and assistance at a national level, particularly by building upon the capacity of national NGOs. Of critical importance, they are still able to access communities and represent one of the very few humanitarian actors and witnesses on the ground. However, the conflicts in Iraq are saturated with multiple stakeholders’ strategic interests and agendas, politicising the context and compromising humanitarian access conditions. The result is that NGOs often face obstacles in accessing the most vulnerable. There is a need to review access options and obstacles, make use of the comparative advantages and experiences that NGOs have, and to identify viable solutions and the supports needed for their implementation.

The clear implication is that more humanitarian assistance is needed in Iraq, both immediately and for the foreseeable future. Recognition of, and actions to assist, vulnerable communities are in place, but as conditions have worsened, assistance has not been able to keep pace. It is essential that humanitarian space is maintained and expanded for relief to be provided. The main constraints to increased assistance are determining how to get the job done in an adverse security environment, and having sufficient and adequately flexible financial and human resources in place to address the most serious unmet needs.

The ability to respond is often constrained by a lack of flexible funding that can adapt to the changing humanitarian needs. Furthermore, the withdrawal of some donors is limiting the amount of funding available for humanitarian programmes from countries that are not parties to the conflict. Some NGOs feel that taking funds from parties involved in the conflict jeopardises their neutrality and impartiality, in addition to increasing the risk taken by their teams in the field. This decrease in funds from other sources undermines the humanitarian response in the field, even as the needs have escalated.

An International Response to the Situation

Despite the current security challenges facing humanitarian work in Iraq, there are a number of areas where more can be done to address humanitarian needs. This conference is one way of acknowledging the humanitarian crisis, but in order to improve the ability of NGOs to respond in a neutral and impartial manner, donors and UN agencies need to provide greater, more readily accessible, long-term, flexible emergency humanitarian funds. The necessary mechanisms must be put in place to ensure that NGOs, including Iraqi NGOs, can receive funds in a timely manner, building on discussions underway to better operationalise remote programming mechanisms for monitoring and evaluation.

As stated earlier, the IDP situation in Iraq is going to be long-term and the numbers will likely grow the longer the crisis lasts. Therefore, emergency relief is not enough. International donors have to give more generously so that the needs of the IDP population for temporary housing that offers protection from cold and heat, water and sanitation, and temporary schools for IDP children can be adequately addressed. To meet these needs it will be essential to cooperate with Iraqi national and local NGOs. At the same time, involving Iraqi NGOs and building upon their capacities will contribute to a strong civil society in the future.

The primary responsibility to assist IDPs lies with the Iraqi authorities. There is a need to support the capacities of the Government of Iraq to enable them to make funds, goods, and facilities available to NGOs, facilitate the movement of aid workers, and ensure the delivery of humanitarian aid.

The UN, NGOs, and other humanitarian actors on the ground need to illustrate that despite the challenging situation, it is still possible to address humanitarian needs inside Iraq, if the necessary resources are made available, by increasing their communication and exchanges of information with other humanitarian actors. The UN particularly needs to revisit the way in which it is working in Iraq by overhauling its security procedures. NGOs are able to work with international staff in many parts of Iraq. It is time for the UN humanitarian agencies to find similar means of working in the country to respond to humanitarian needs. The UN needs to play a greater role in protection, coordination, and information-sharing through a significantly increased presence throughout Iraq.

There is a need to work better together to develop indicators and a verification mechanism to identify priority needs and an early warning mechanism, as well as to continue developing capacity building programmes with Iraqi aid workers and local communities so that they can better respond to humanitarian needs.

In today’s closely connected world it is not possible to turn a blind eye to a humanitarian crisis anywhere in the world, however great the challenges. To meet needs in Iraq, UN agencies, governments, international donors and international, national and local NGOs must cooperate to develop innovative approaches that make it possible to work even in the most adverse security environment.

Belgium’s Defense Minister said last week that he would act to extract payment from Israel for the removal of cluster bomb fragments that the Israel Defense Forces fired into Lebanese territory during the Second Lebanon War.

During a meeting with representatives of Medical Aid for the Third World (MATW), an international medical organization, Defense Minister Andre Flahaut said the weapon was “the resort of cowards and a violation of international law.”

The organization’s coordinator, Dr. Bert De Belder, told Haaretz that Flahaut was receptive to the idea that Israel should be regarded as a polluter, and be made to pay for the removal of the pollution so far estimated at $13 million.

According to De Belder, Flahaut said he will recommend to Prime Minister Verhofstadt to adopt the principle.

Flahaut, scheduled to visit Lebanon this week, informed De Belder that he intended to advise the Lebanese government to support making Israel financially accountable. De Belder and the other members of the MATW delegation presented Flahaut with a petition signed by 3,415 Belgian supporters, including 13 MPs from various political factions.

The MATW did not address the issue of how the funds would be collected from Israel.

“We left that up to the Belgian government, as the removal is performed at its expense by the Belgian contingent to the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon,” De Belder said.

He acknowledged that his organization dealt mainly with humanitarian aid and not with international law, adding that it was also “dedicated to international justice.” He also said: “Our petition was reviewed by attorney Selma Ben Khelifa, who specializes in human rights”.