The Rag Blog

When Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, better known as “Lula”, visits Washington on March 31, he will likely spend most of his time with President Bush discussing ethanol, a relatively safe subject for the two leaders. Earlier this month, Brazil and the United States, the world’s two top ethanol producers, announced the creation of an international forum to help turn biofuels into a globally traded commodity. Brazil, unlike the U.S., has spent thirty years developing its ethanol technology, and is producing a surplus of a sugar-based version of that fuel.

Lula has been criticized for following the Bush Administration on foreign trade policy, but he may be in even more hot water for following Bush on a foreign military adventure. When President Lula relieved U.S. Marines in Haiti by having Brazil take the lead of the UN peacekeeping mission (MINUSTAH) in early 2004, he got Bush, whose troops were spread thin, out of a tight spot. Lula also earned brownie points for Brazil’s bid for a permanent seat on a potentially-expanded UN Security Council.

But all this came at a price. MINUSTAH was the only UN peacekeeping mission in history deployed without a peace agreement. It’s true purpose was to consolidate the February 29, 2004 coup against the democratically-elected government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide. This genesis put MINUSTAH in a quandary from the beginning. In order to fulfill its mission of supporting the illegitimate, unpopular and brutal Interim Government of Haiti (led by a Bush supporter flown in from Florida), MINUSTAH was forced to join the dictatorship’s attacks on poor neighborhoods that would never accept the overthrow of their democracy.

In August 2006, the British Medical Journal The Lancet published a mortality study that concluded 8,000 people were killed in the first twenty-two months of the coup. In almost half of the reported deaths, the perpetrators were identified as security agents of the coup government, former soldiers or armed anti-Lavalas groups. No murders were attributed to Lavalas members. Although the government and its paramilitary allies did the lion’s share of the killings, MINUSTAH participated as well. In a July 6, 2005 raid, MINUSTAH soldiers shot 22,000 bullets (by the UN’s own count) into the thin walls of the poor Cite Soleil neighborhood. Up to sixty civilians were killed, dozens more wounded, but none received help from the “peacekeepers.”

Although a democratic government was inaugurated last May, MINUSTAH continues to kill civilians. In the early morning of December 22, 2006, 400 Brazilian-led MINUSTAH troops in armored vehicles carried out a massive assault on the Bois Neuf and Drouillard districts of Cite Soleil in Port-au-Prince. The military operation, which claimed the lives of dozens of area residents, took place near the site of the July, 2005 raid.

Citizens of Lebanon, beware. Arieh Eldad has it out for you. After the scandal-ridden government of Ehud Olmert falls, probably within the next few weeks, a new government, likely led by Binyamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, will attack Lebanon. “We have no choice. We will have to do it,” Eldad tells the neocon website, NewsMax. “Dr. Eldad explained that Israel was facing a new strategic threat, caused in part by its own failure to deal a crushing blow to Hezbollah in Lebanon and the impression of weakness last summer’s failed war created in the minds of Israel’s enemies.”

In fact, short of killing hundreds of thousands of Lebanese, there is no way for Israel to “deal a crushing blow to Hezbollah,” as more than half of the population supports the Islamic organization, created in response to Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Since Israel will certainly face defeat on the ground in Lebanon, as it did last summer, the only option will be to shock and awe the country into submission.

But it is simply not Hezbollah. “The Hezbollah template for attacking Israel is being repeated in Gaza, Dr. Eldad said. ‘Hamas is building bunkers. They are bringing missiles across the Egyptian border, and the Egyptian government is failing to prevent it. So I hope the next Israeli government will be courageous enough to carry out these operations before it is too late.’” Swap “courageous” for “psychotic” and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what Eldad and Moledet have in mind for the grandmothers and toddlers of Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank.

Arie Eldad, a member of the “right-wing” (that is to say, fascist) Moledet political party, heads the Ethics committee of the Knesset. Of course, when we talk about ethics here, we are talking about a brand of “moral principles” alien to the West and Christianity. According to Eldad, sanctions of the sort to be levied against Iran are based on Western logic. “But when states have missions that are bigger than life, they are not obeying the basic rules of logic that Western civilization obeys.”

And what is are these “missions that are bigger than life”?

Ethnic cleansing. Moledet advocates the “voluntary transfer” of the Palestinian population out of the West Bank and Gaza. A few years ago, Moledet bought space on billboards around Tel Aviv, calling for ethnically cleansing the Palestinians. “Only transfer will bring peace,” read the billboards. Imagine this tactic repeated here in the United States. “Only sending the Blacks back to Africa will reduce crime.” It does not take an overactive imagination to envision the response. But in Israel this sort of behavior is normal, even considered mainstream politics.

Think about it this month, as you get ready to fill out your tax forms. “Since 1973, Israel has cost the United States about $1.6 trillion. If divided by today’s population, that is more than $5,700 per person,” reports the Christian Science Monitor. “Israel is the largest recipient of US foreign aid. It is already due to get $2.04 billion in military assistance and $720 million in economic aid in fiscal 2003. It has been getting $3 billion a year for years.”

This “military assistance” translates into “770 cluster-bomb sites” in southern Lebanon, according to the United Nations. “And the current U.N. estimate is that Israel dropped between 2 million and 3 million bomblets on Lebanon, of which up to a million have yet to explode,” according to Saree Makdisi of UCLA’s International Institute. It also translates into 3,020 Palestinians killed since 2000, the wanton destruction of the Palestinian health and educational infrastructure, widespread and growing poverty and unemployment, environmental degradation, and a large and increasing number of Palestinians interned in prisons, well over 650,000 since 1967. Concern over such things, of course, is an artifact of “Western logic,” as a large number of Israelis consider Palestinians little more than “drugged cockroaches in a bottle,” as Rafael Eitan, former Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces, characterized them.

Eldad soon moved on to Iran. “Eldad is not suggesting economic or diplomatic ‘engagement,’ as the State Department might use the term. He is talking about having Israel’s military take out Iranian nuclear and missile sites if the Western nations refuse to do the job…. Iran is behaving on a state level as a suicide bomber behaves on the personal level, Dr. Eldad said…. Eventually, military action against Iran will become necessary.”

In other words, if AIPAC and the neocons cannot once again trick the American people into attacking Iran, as they tricked them into attacking Iraq in the name of Israel, the IDF will do it. Of course, this is nonsense, Israel will not go it alone against Iran. In fact, Eldad is simply spewing more rhetoric, as Israel has long expected the United States to attack and slaughter its enemies. If the invasion of Lebanon last summer demonstrated anything, it is that Hezbollah can hold its own and Israel is impotent to change the situation “on the ground,” in essence a result of its own unwavering policies of aggression, be it by way of direct military confrontation or black flag operations.

“Like most Israeli leaders, Dr. Eldad would prefer that the United States and its partners take out Iranian nuclear and missile sites, if for no other reason than the vastly superior conventional firepower the U.S. could bring to bear.”

Israel has plenty of “superior conventional firepower,” courtesy of the American tax payer, never mind what its leaders tell the media. Point is here, Israel expects the United States to pay for—in squandered treasure and sacrificed lives—its long-standing effort to balkanize Arab and Muslim states, beginning most recently with Iraq and continuing with Iran.

“Because Iran has built its nuclear plants in deeply buried, hardened facilities, it will be difficult if not impossible.”

Translation: simple high-explosives, depleted uranium, and millions of cluster bombs will no longer do the trick—it is time to nuke the Arabs and Muslims, as “Western logic,” i.e., use of nuclear weapons is unconscionable, does not apply.

“If Israel is left alone and the point of no return [in Iran’s nuclear weapons program] arrives, then Israel will have to do the job. But most probably we will not be able to do it with conventional warheads. And this is something the world should know.”

The country is not at war. It is the US military that is engaged in an Iraqi conflict

There’s a helluva difference between Cairo University and the campus of Valdosta in the Deep South of the United States. I visited both this week and I feel like I’ve been travelling on a gloomy spaceship – or maybe a time machine – with just two distant constellations to guide my journey. One is clearly named Iraq; the other is Fear. They have a lot in common.

The politics department at Cairo’s vast campus is run by Dr Mona El-Baradei – yes, she is indeed the sister of the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency – and her students, most of them young women, almost all scarved, duly wrote out their questions at the end of the turgid Fisk lecture on the failings of journalism in the Middle East. “Why did you invade Iraq?” was one. I didn’t like the “you” bit, but the answer was “oil”. “What do you think of the Egyptian government?” At this, I looked at my watch. I reckon, I told the students, that I just had time to reach Cairo airport for my flight before Hosni Mubarak’s intelligence lads heard of my reply.

Much nervous laughter. Well, I said, new constitutional amendments to enshrine emergency legislation into common law and the arrest of Muslim Brotherhood supporters was not a path to democracy. And I ran through the US State Department’s list of Egyptian arbitrary detentions, routine torture and unfair trials. I didn’t see how the local constabulary could do much about condemnation from Mubarak’s American friends. But it was purely a symbolic moment. These cheerful, intelligent students wanted to see if they would hear the truth or get palmed off with another bromide about Egypt’s steady march to democracy, its stability – versus the disaster of Iraq – and its supposedly roaring success. No one doubts that Mubarak’s boys keep a close eye on his country’s students.

But the questions I was asked after class told it all. Why didn’t “we” leave Iraq? Are “we” going to attack Iran? Did “we” really believe in democracy in the Middle East? In fact “our” shadow clearly hung over these young people.

Thirty hours later, I flicked on the television in my Valdosta, Georgia, hotel room and there was a bejewelled lady on Fox TV telling American viewers that if “we” left Iraq, the “jihadists” would come after us. “They want a Caliphate that will take over the world,” she shrieked about a report that two children had deliberately been placed in an Iraqi car bomb which then exploded. She ranted on about how Muslim “jihadists” had been doing this “since the 1970s in Lebanon”. It was tosh, of course. Children were never locked into car bombs in Beirut – and there weren’t any “jihadists” around in the Lebanese civil war of the 1970s. But fear had been sown. Now that the House of Representatives is talking about the US withdrawal by August 2008, fear seems to drip off the trees in America.

Up in the town of Tiger, Georgia, Kathy Barnes is reported to be looking for omens as she fears for the life of her son, Captain Edward Berg of the 4th Brigade, US 3rd Infantry Division, off to Iraq for a second tour of duty, this time in George Bush’s infamous “surge”. Last time he was there, Mrs Barnes saw a dead snake and took it as a bad sign. Then she saw two Canadian geese, soaring over the treetops. That was a good sign. “A rational mind plays this game in war time,” as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution eloquently pointed out. “A thunderclap becomes a herald, a bird’s song a prophecy.”

Dr Michael Noll’s students at Valdosta are as smart and bright-eyed as Dr El-Baradei’s in Cairo. They packed into the same lecture I had given in Egypt and seemed to share a lot of the same fears about Iraq. But a sullen seminar that same morning was a miserable affair in which a young woman seemed to break down in anger. If “we” left Iraq, she said in a quavering voice, the jihadists, the “terrorists”, could come here to America. They would attack us right here.

I sighed with frustration. I was listening to her voice but it was also the voice of the woman on Fox TV, the repeated, hopeless fantasy of Bush and Blair: that if we fail in Iraq, “they”, the monstrous enemy, will arrive on our shores. Every day in the American papers now, I read the same “fear” transformed into irrationality. Luke Boggs – God, how I’d love that byline – announces in his local paper: “I say let the terrorists rot in Guantanamo. And let the Europeans … howl. We are a serious nation, engaged in the serious business of trying to kill or capture the bad guys before they can do us more harm.” He calls Guantanamo’s inmates “hardcore jihadists”.

And I realise that the girl in Dr Noll’s seminar isn’t spouting this stuff about “jihadists” travelling from Iraq to America because she supports Bush. She is just frightened. She is genuinely afraid of all the “terror” warnings, the supposed “jihadists” threats, the red “terror” alerts and the purple alerts and all the other colour-coded instruments of fear. She believes her president, and her president has done Osama bin Laden’s job for him: he has crushed this young woman’s spirit and courage.

But America is not at war. There are no electricity cuts on Valdosta’s warm green campus, with its Spanish style department blocks and its narrow, beautiful church. There is no food rationing. There are no air-raid shelters or bombs or “jihadists” stalking these God-fearing folk. It is the US military that is at war, engaged in an Iraqi conflict that is doing damage of a far more subtle kind to America’s social fabric.

Off campus, I meet a gentle, sensitive man, a Vietnam veteran with two doctor sons. One is a lieutenant colonel, an army medical officer heading back to Baghdad this week for Bush’s “surge”, bravely doing his duty in the face of great danger. The other is a civilian doctor who hates the war. And now the two boys – divided by Iraq – can hardly bring themselves to speak to each other.

This is not an exaggerated figure; more cautious than not. I have thought about this quite a lot since President Bush’s meeting with U.S. automobile manufactures.

This sinister idea of converting foodstuff into combustibles was definitively established as the United States economic line within its foreign policy this past March 26.

(Editor’s Summary) Washington AP – North America’s AP news agency, which reaches every corner of the world, reported that President Bush praised the benefits of using ethanol and biodiesel fuel in automobiles during a meeting with General Motors, Ford Motor Company and Chrysler Motors. Bush’s administration plans to cut gas consumption by 20% in 10 years. (Axis of Logic)

I think that reducing and, moreover, recycling engines, which consume electricity and combustibles, is an elemental and urgent necessity for humanity. The tragedy does not consist in reducing these wastes of energy but in the notion of converting foodstuff into combustibles.

We know today with total precision that a ton of corn can only produce an average of 413 liters of ethanol, according to density, which is the equivalent of 109 gallons.

The average price of corn in the harbors of the United States is $167 per ton. It requires as much as 320 million tons of corn to produce 35 billion gallons of ethanol.

US corn harvests, in 2005, rose to 280.2 million tons, according to FAO data.

Nevertheless, the president speaks of producing combustibles from grass and wood, which anyone can understand are phrases absolutely lacking realism. Understand well: 35 billion gallons means 35 followed by nine zeros.

Experienced and well organized U.S. farmers will come up with beautiful examples of production for humans and per hectare: corn converted into ethanol; residues of this converted into animal feed with 26% protein; cattle excrement utilized as primary material for production of gas. Of course, this is after great investments, which can only be expended by powerful firms, those operating on the basis of electric and combustible consumption.

Apply this recipe to Third World countries and we will see how many people among the hungry masses will cease consuming corn. Or even worse: financed loaned to the poorest countries to produce ethanol from corn or any other type of foodstuff and not one tree will remain to defend humanity against climatic change.

Other wealthy countries have programmed to use not only corn but wheat, sunflower and rapeseed oil, and other foodstuff for the production of combustibles. For Europeans, for example, there could be business in importing all the soy beans in the world with the aim of reducing automobile combustible wastes and feed their animals with the residue of this vegetable, especially rich in all types of essential amino acids.

In Cuba, alcohol is produced as a sub-product of the sugar industry after making three extractions of sugar from cane juice. The change of climate is already affecting our sugar production. Great draughts come alternating with record rains, which hardly permits us to produce sugar over a hundred day period with adequate yields during our most moderate winter. Due to the prolonged draughts at sowing and cultivating periods, there is less sugar per ton of cane and less cane per hectare.

In Venezuela, I understand that they don’t use alcohol for export but to improve the quality of environment for their own combustibles. And then, independent of the excellent Brazilian technology for producing alcohol, to employ such technology for the direct production of alcohol based on sugar cane juice in Cuba constitutes nothing more than a dream or nonsense for those who play with this idea.

In our country, the soil dedicated to direct production of alcohol can be much better utilized for the production of food for the people and for protecting the environment.

All the world’s countries, rich and poor, without exception could save millions and millions of dollars in investment and combustibles simply by changing all the incandescent light bulbs to fluorescent lights, something which Cuba has achieved in all the nation’s homes. This signifies a relief to resist climatic change without starving to death the world’s masses of poverty stricken people.

As one can observe, I do not use adjectives to qualify the system and the owners of the world. This task is excellently done by experts of information and of socio-economic sciences, and by honest politicians, who abound in the world and who constantly stir up the present and future of our species. A computer and the growing number of Internet networks suffice.

Today, for the first time, there is truly a global economy and a dominant power in the economic, political and military terrain, something quite distinct from the Rome of emperors.

Some will ask, why do I speak of hunger and thirst. I reply: it is not about the other side of the coin, rather of various faces of other pieces, which could be a die with six faces, or a “polyhedron” with many faces.

In this case, look at an official news agency founded in 1945 and generally well informed about economic and social problems of the world: la TELAM. It wrote:

“About two billion people will inhabit countries and regions of the earth in just 18 years in which water will be a vague memory. Two-thirds of the world’s population could live in places where that scarcity produces social and economic tensions of such magnitude that could bring people to war for the precious `blue gold´.

“During the last century, the use of water has augmented at a rate of more than twice the rate of population growth.

“The WWC (World Water Council) estimates that for the year 2015 the number of inhabitants affected by this grave situation will rise to 3.5 billion.

“The United Nations celebrated World Water Day on March 23, in which it announced a confrontation with this scarcity of water in coordination with FAO. Its objective is to emphasize the growing importance of the lack of water worldwide, and the necessity of a greater integration and cooperation, which must permit sustained and efficient use of water resources.

“Many regions of the planet suffer a severe water scarcity, where people live with less than 500 cubic meters per person annually. The chronic lack of this vital element is increasing in more regions.

“Principle consequences of the lack of water are the insufficient quantity of this precious liquid for food production, the impossibility of industrial development, and urban, tourist, and health problems.”

So far goes the TELAM cable.

It must be mentioned that in this case there are other important facts, such as the melting ice in Greenland and the Antarctic, the damages to the ozone, and the growing quantity of mercury in many fish species and routine consumption.

There are even more themes which could be approached, but I simply attempt within these lines to comment on the meeting with Bush and the principle guests of the North American automobile companies.

Letter sent to the BBC Radio 4 on 29th March 2007

It is time that Mr Blair and Mrs Beckett told the truth about the maritime boundary between Iraq and Iran. There was in 1978 (I believe I have the correct year) a treaty which fixed the river boundary between the two countries at the middle of the Shatt-al–Arab, but the line of this boundary was due to be reviewed every ten years in accordance with natural displacement of the river bed. This has never been done. Beyond the estuary into the Arabo-Persian Gulf no agreement has ever been made as to where the boundaries between Iran, Iraq and Kuwait run.

This means that it is perfectly possible that any particular point in that area can, according to the law of each of these three countries, be within its boundary. Unless he has hopeless (supposedly expert) advisers, Mr Blair must have been informed that he cannot prove that the Royal Navy boats were in Iraqi waters, and equally well no-one can prove that they were definitely within Iranian waters. By persisting in making such ridiculous claims, he and Mrs Beckett are putting in danger the lives and liberty of British service personnel throughout the region.

From the manner in which Mr Blair has reacted to this incident, I draw the conclusion that it might have been set up deliberately to provide an excuse to treat Iran as an aggressor, and thus to try to justify all kinds of hostile action against Iran.

Furthermore, I find it hard to believe that HMS Cornwall did not have sufficiently sophisticated radar and other means of knowing about the Iranian forces moving towards the two small boats in a relatively calm sea.

For the sake of the Royal Navy personnel now held in Iran, Mr Blair should admit that he was mistaken, always a hard thing for arrogant politicians to do, and concede that the sovereignty over that whole area of the Gulf is unsettled in international law. Then diplomacy could have a chance.

Everyone should feel deep sympathy for these pawns in the political game being played by Mr Blair, and for their families back in the United Kingdom.

Best regards

Robert Thompson

BAGHDAD (April 1) – Sen. John McCain criticized reports out of Iraq he said focused unfairly on violence, saying Sunday that Americans were not getting a “full picture” of progress in the security crackdown in the capital.

McCain, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, was combative during a press conference in the military’s media center in the heavily guarded Green Zone, and responded testily to a question about remarks he had made in the United States last week that it was safe to walk some Baghdad streets.

“The American people are not getting the full picture of what’s happening here. They’re not getting the full picture of the drop in murders, the establishment of security outposts throughout the city, the situation in Anbar province, the deployment of additional Iraqi brigades which are performing well, and other signs of progress having been made,” said McCain, of Arizona.

He said the Republican congressional delegation he led to Iraq drove from Baghdad’s airport to the center of the city, citing that as proof that security was improving in the capital. Prominent visitors normally make the trip by helicopter.

April 1, 2007

BAGHDAD (AFP) – At least 2,078 people died in Iraq last month, 15 percent more than in February despite a massive security crackdown in Baghdad, the epicentre of violence, a security official said on Sunday.

On average, 67 people died across the country every day in March, compared to 64 in February.

A significant increase in Iraqi civilian, army and police deaths was evident last month, the official said, based on detailed statistics collected by the defence, interior and health ministries.

Civilian deaths topped the toll with 1,869 Iraqis killed in insurgency and sectarian bloodletting in March, compared to 1,646 in February.

Another 2,719 civilians were wounded last month, compared to 2,701 in February.

In March, 165 Iraqi policemen were killed against 131 the previous month, while 44 Iraqi soldiers died compared to 29 in February, the official said.

In March, 277 Iraqi policemen and 51 soldiers were wounded against 147 and 47, respectively during February.

The official said the death toll among militants had fallen to 481 in March compared to 586 killed the previous month.

But those arrested surged to 5,664 in March against 1,921, reflective of the massive Iraqi-US security operation launched on February 14 in which 80,000 troops have been deployed in and around the capital to root out insurgents.

The US military also lost 85 personnel in March, taking to 3,244 an AFP tally based on Pentagon statistics as of April 1, compared to 3,159 on February 28.

——————————————————————————–

Those who fail to learn from the past must repeat it, we’re told, and in 40 years working for marijuana legalization (1) in four different states, I’ve seen certain problems over and over. A rapid turnover of entry-level activists often found in local work is perhaps due, not to the flighty nature of marijuana users, but to the unsatisfactory state of a movement which purports to represent them. Please, I’m not criticizing people who work selflessly to end prohibition – perhaps those most likely to read this journal! – so don’t take my remarks as unduly negative. There are important exceptions to my criticisms, but I don’t plan to describe them. I’ve been asked about lessons from Alaska’s 2004 legalization campaign, and since failure’s lessons are most costly, that’s where I’ll focus.

In mid-2004, largely due to misfortunes of other organizers, I went from Texas to Alaska to work on the final run-up to the vote on citizen-initiated Proposition 2 (Prop. 2), which would mandate regulating marijuana as Alaska regulates tobacco and alcohol, essentially legalizing cannabis commerce there. I knew the task would be challenging, not least because I would be a rank “Outsider” in a state where I had no experience and no strong movement contacts, but marijuana’s unique status there convinced me to take on what quickly became an untenable assignment. Prop. 2 drew 44.25% of the November vote, in which 60% of Alaskans supported George W. Bush’s re-election. We were lucky if we didn’t lose votes during the three month “official” campaign.

The stealth dismissal of U.S. attorneys by the Bush administration carries echoes of the Nixon administration firing special prosecutor Archibald Cox in 1973. Now, as then, we may be witnessing criminal acts of obstruction of justice at the highest levels of government. If left to fester, they will poison our system.

Cox was investigating White House misdeeds when Nixon told Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire him. Richardson refused and resigned, as did Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus. Third-in-charge, Robert Bork, complied, and the “Saturday Night Massacre,” as it was called, came to epitomize an imperial administration, acting above the law and using its power to interfere with legitimate processes of justice.

Outrage among the American people triggered the impeachment inquiry against Nixon and his eventual resignation.

In the current U.S. attorney massacre, the public outrage and the line of inquiry invited by these events feel eerily familiar: Why were these eight U.S. attorneys ousted? Why did the Justice Department misrepresent the reasons for the firings? Why were political aide Karl Rove and other top administration advisers involved in the decisions of whom to fire? Why is Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ aide who helped coordinate the firings, Monica Goodling, invoking the Fifth Amendment to avoid testifying before Congress? And what did the president know and when did he know it?

So far the press and Congress have followed evidence of two patterns of firing – for refusing to smear enemies and refusing to protect friends. Fired prosecutors David Iglesias of New Mexico and John McKay of Washington would not pursue criminal voter fraud charges against political opponents in the way the administration wanted. Fired U.S. Attorney Carol Lam of San Diego had prosecuted and was investigating Republicans.

Removal of Frederick A. Black in Guam immediately after he began investigating lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a Bush friend, may be been a precursor to this.

One by one, the helium-inflated excuses for arresting and imprisoning Suzi Hazahza have been popped and now lie on the ground. And the single memory humanizing the government that still holds her unlawfully behind bars is the look on one Federal Magistrate’s face Thursday in Dallas when he was told by a US Attorney that Congress has stripped the federal bench of any right to order Suzi Hazahza freed until a full six months of illegal detention have passed.

Anguish is the word that some observers have used to describe the look on the judge’s face as he wrestled with the impotence of his authority before the power of Homeland Security to arrest and detain innocent immigrants.

“Believe it or not, immigration law is replete with that language,” explains New York immigration attorney Joshua Bardavid from his New York office on Friday evening, as sounds of the street honk outside his window. “Congress has told the courts that many discretionary decisions by immigration authorities are unreviewable.” In this case, the unreviewable decision involves the unlawful six-month imprisonment of an innocent immigrant in the hellish privatized Rolling Plains prison of Haskell, Texas.

Over the weekend, Bardavid will work up his motion pleading with the Federal Magistrate to exercise his unimpeachable power to enforce the Constitution, with its protections against unlawful seizure and guarantees of due process. But the argument will be a a tough sell politically, because in order to take legal responsibility for Suzi Hazahza, the federal courts will have to state plainly that Homeland Security is using its discretionary authority to break the Constitution on American soil. For an aspiring federal magistrate under the administration of George the Bush II, such a ruling could mean the end of a career and almost certain reversal by the racist Fifth Circuit judges who gave us Hopwood not too many years ago (the ruling that abolished affirmative action in Texas for several years).

“It is extraordinarily upsetting and frustrating that we can live in a system where it is possible that a judge concludes that detention is unlawful but that he himself has no authority to release the prisoner,” says Bardavid. But that could be the best hand-wringing effort that the federal courts will make in this case. And it would be a nauseating retreat from the principle of habeas corpus at home.

A little after two on the afternoon of Sept. 26, 2002, Maher Arar, a Canadian businessman of Syrian descent, on his way home to Ottawa after a family vacation, deplaned at New York’s JFK Airport — and walked into a nightmarish history.

Arar also found himself in an all-too-contemporary wasteland of fear, ignorance, racist xenophobia and careerist atavism otherwise known as U.S. foreign policy. It is the service of these two important books to link that gruesome past and present of his emblematic ordeal, a plight in a wider sense we all share.

Canadians will be more familiar with the Arar case, which only two months ago brought a belated public apology from Prime Minister Stephen Harper and a $10.5-million compensation, torture-chamber money that spoke more eloquently than any ministerial words to the shame of the Canadian government. Wrongly accused of ties to al-Qaeda based on plainly bogus information and guilt by the merest association, Arar, his Canadian passport discarded like used tissue, was arrested and interrogated by U.S. agents for five days without seeing a lawyer, and more than a week before the Canadian consul finally showed up — only to lie to him by saying that the United States would not deport him to Syria as they were threatening.

Days later, he was being beaten and tortured in a Syrian dungeon, where the young McGill University graduate would suffer for more than year, until his wife’s tireless campaign and his own desperate false confession brought his release.