The Rag Blog

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.

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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.

The worse things get in the Middle East, the more it seems English language analysis begins and ends with the realization of the important fact that Bush is an ignorant bully. Unfortunately this often lends itself to melodrama, in the sense that other Mideast actors are assigned only secondary roles, with less than three-dimentional characters. And an incomplete and cartoon-like representation of the players lends itself to further public-relations manipulation. An example: King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia referred to the American occupation of Iraq as “illegal” (or “illegitimate”) in his opening speech at the Riyadh summit, and this clearly took the American administration by surprise. Since American public opinion had been convinced for a long time that Abdullah was another poodle, this seemed to be little short of a rebellion on the farm. Certaintly it was another manifestation of American policy gone haywire. One part of the PR response from Washington has been to stress that “No, Abdullah has long been impatient with the Bush’s lack of action on Palestine; he brought pictures with him to Crawford; he almost walked out until Bush promised to do something; and so on.” And the other part is that Abdullah is still on board with the idea of “resolv[ing] the Palestinian issue so they can turn the region’s attention to combatting the threat from Iran.” In other words, the new spin on Abdullah is that his impatience over the inhumanity of Palestine finally boiled over and he lashed out, in the context of the more-urgent need to get that out of the way so as to combat the threat from Iran. In this way, one cartoon-version of Abdullah, the rebellious poodle, is in the process of being replaced by another, Abdullah the angry humanitarian, cornered.

It is true that what boiled over was the Saudi realization that their regional influence was under threat not only from Iran, but now increasingly from Iraq too. The reference to an illegitimate occupation of Iraq was really an attack on an illegitimate regime, and for Abdullah a threatening regime, in Iraq, sponsored by his supposed ally Bush. It had just recently become clear that the Allawi-American scheme for creation of an alternate, and more Sunni-friendly Green-Zone regime was being discontinued. If there was any one development that pushed Abdullah into using unexpectedly harsh language, that was probably it.

It is true that the feeling of growing threat from Iran and Iraq has changed the Saudi perspective. The Saudi regime now feels an urgent need for local allies, and given the lack of Arab leadership elsewhere (meaning Egypt), this means taking on the missing Arab-leadership role itself, and that in turn means: Promoting action, or at least apparent action, on Palestine. The Saudis are hoping not only for good PR on the Arab street, but also for an end to their feud with Bashar Assad’s administration in Syria, weaning Syria away from Iran and back into the Arab fold (and similarly of course with Hamas). While it isn’t clear how the proposed Palestinian negotiations will relate to the possible Syria-Israel talks on Golan and other issues, at least the Saudi-Syrian relationship is friendlier than it has recently been (the two having in effect taken opposite sides in the Israel-Hizbullah war). And this is additionally important because Syria and Saudi Arabia have been rivals for influence in Lebanon. What the Saudis are looking for is authority and problem-solving influence in all of these areas. This is not the same as “turn[ing] the region’s attention to combatting the threat from Iran”.

Let me ask you something.
Are you as bothered as I am by not knowing the whole Truth?

If anything, the Iraqi “experience” has managed to raise so many questions not only about politics per se but also about perceptions, resilience, sense of belonging, emotions, impulses…in short about humans.

I do not wish to engage you in some phenomenological exercise. I am simply at a point where I need to corner that reflection in the mirror, I need to corner that Truth.

Moving from the political to the personal, from the outside to the inside…
Something about losing one’s country is very hard to express in words.
I find myself constantly rummaging through concepts, phrases, trying to find accurate nouns, precise verbs and it keeps slipping through my fingers, evading me, eluding me…

The only sentence I found that is probably as close to what I need to express, came from a mail I received from a fellow Iraqi and this is what he had to say:
“Since March 19, 2003 I am a shadow of my former self. The past four years have changed me forever.”
Another mail tells me the same thing using slightly different wordings:
“I no longer recognize myself, I am beside myself…”

Simple powerful sentences that reveal something deep and true…
It sounds as if that former Self that one knows or has gotten used to has also been invaded and occupied…changed forever.
It sounds as if this is no longer my country, this is no longer my home, this is no longer my self…
I am no longer myself. I am shadow of me as if someone else or something else took over and I am standing by the sides watching it all and I no longer recognize anything…

It goes beyond bewilderment, amazement, stupefaction, or shock…It is worse.
It is estrangement from one’s self.

Twenty-year-old Will Klatt, wearing a green knit hat, baggy jeans and black jacket pulled over a hoodie, stands before a Civil War monument at the center of Ohio University’s main campus in Athens. Although a February snow is falling steadily, more than a hundred students have turned out for this rally called by a new organization with a very familiar name: Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).

“Many of us at Ohio University have taken classes on the principles of democracy, on justice, on ethics,” says Klatt, “and with the presumption that we will use this knowledge, acquired in our classes, to become more informed citizens. Yet this knowledge we acquire is nothing if we do not put it into practice.”

The students, including frat boys and jocks, clap and whistle. They are here in protest against new fees, elimination of four varsity sports programs and increased administrative bonus pay. Each decision, organizers say, reflects a lack of student power on campus–as do “free-speech zones” confining student protest to irrelevant corners of campus. “We are talking,” says Klatt, “about the corporatization of our university.”

Angry at the Iraq debacle, emboldened by the Bush-Cheney tailspin, a new student radicalism is emerging whose concerns include immigrants’ rights, global warming and the uncertainties facing debt-ridden graduates. Such considerations distinguish the new SDS from its historical namesake, which took shape in a very different context of economic affluence and establishment liberalism.

LONDON (AP) — New “landmark” research finds that alcohol and tobacco are more dangerous than some illegal drugs like marijuana or Ecstasy and should be classified as such in legal systems, according to a new British study.

In research published Friday in The Lancet magazine, Professor David Nutt of Britain’s Bristol University and colleagues proposed a new framework for the classification of harmful substances, based on the actual risks posed to society. Their ranking listed alcohol and tobacco among the top 10 most dangerous substances.

Nutt and colleagues used three factors to determine the harm associated with any drug: the physical harm to the user, the drug’s potential for addiction, and the impact on society of drug use. The researchers asked two groups of experts – psychiatrists specializing in addiction and legal or police officials with scientific or medical expertise – to assign scores to 20 different drugs, including heroin, cocaine, Ecstasy, amphetamines, and LSD.

Nutt and his colleagues then calculated the drugs’ overall rankings. In the end, the experts agreed with each other – but not with the existing British classification of dangerous substances.