The Rag Blog

Shaikh Abd al-Hadi al-Muhammadawi read out the sermon in the Kufa Friday Prayers Mosque. Muqtada demanded that US troops leave the country “even if the American Congress were to decide they should stay in Iraq.” He insisted, “The issue of whether US troops should remain in Iraq depends on the Iraqi people, and no one has a right to extend their stay or to demand that they remain.”

He added, “The departure of American forces from Iraq at the present time will bestow security on Iraq, represent a victory for peace, and mete out defeat to terrorism.” He called on the Iraqi people “to fly the Iraqi flag above their homes and buildings and government offices to signify Iraqi sovereignty and independence.”

He also pressed on all sections of the population “the necessity of letting the entire world hear that Iraqis reject the occupation.”

He criticized “what has befallen Iraq during the Occupation, including tyranny, despotism, and the shedding of the blood of innocents.” He complained about the lack of health and city services.”

It takes four brave IDF boys and one psyched-up dog to stop one lone unarmed Palestinian woman.

“Yes, I got two limes and added their juice to the recipe you sent. The yield was certainly enough for three and possibly four breasts, easily four thighs. Anyway, I did two breasts. One’s frozen for a future meal and I really enjoyed the other. The smoky taste is wonderful. Using two limes gave it a bit of punch. One might have been enough. I broiled the breasts in my convection oven – the first time I’ve used it since moving to Gabriola. That, of course, kept ’em moist.” R. Southerland

Okay, now I’m worried.

There have been several rounds of reports that the war-obsessed Bush administration was getting ready to attack Iran-first last September, then in December, and more recently in January and February.

The one thing that kept me thinking that a catastrophic war with Iran might not be in the offing was oil prices, which didn’t seem to be acting as one would expect them to if there were a major war looming in the Persian Gulf. Oil prices, in fact, have been drifting slowly downward since September 2006, when they hit $68.85. Yet if there were going to be a hot war between the U.S. and Iran, one would expect much higher prices. After all, most of the combat would be occurring along Iran’s heavily armed coastline and in the Gulf, through which over a quarter of all the world’s oil passes. In the event of such a conflict, oil shipments would shut down from that region as underwriters jacked the price of insuring oil tankers in the Gulf to astronomical levels. Estimates of how expensive oil could become in the event of a US attack on Iran, the world’s second largest oil producing nation, have ranged as high as $200/barrel-a level that would bring the global economy to a screeching halt.

Well, there are new reports circulating now that an attack by US air and naval forces could come in early April, and this time, the oil traders are taking them seriously. On Tuesday, oil futures shot up $5/barrel to hit $68/barrel-quite a jump, and the highest price for oil since last September.

Reports say that traders were responding to rumors-unsubstantiated-that Iran had fired on an American ship in the Gulf, and no doubt also to the ongoing tensions over Iran’s capture and detention of 15 British sailors, whom it claims had illegally entered Iranian territorial waters.

Phil Flynn, a trader with Alaron Trading in Chicago, was quoted as saying that the oil market has been “on pins and needles” because of the tensions in the Persian Gulf between the US and Iran.

Adding to worries about oil supplies from the Gulf, no doubt, is the vast armada that the U.S. has amassed up close to Iran’s borders-an armada that includes two fully armed aircraft battle groups, equipped with hundreds of strike aircraft and tomahawk cruise missiles and capable of delivering a crippling blow to Iran’s military and industrial infrastructure.

Americans opposed to war are a distinct minority. If the Iraq War were going well, most Americans would support it. Yet the Iraq venture has been such a disaster for America that peace groups have a chance to expose the pro-war interests in the nation and advance an alternative foreign policy based on law and international cooperation. Incredible war costs, a growing police state at home, loss of allies, and tremendous anti-Americanism abroad have given most Americans pause about our foreign policies.

Even so, Washington is on the verge of extending the war with an attack on Iran. To change American policy, we need to understand the differences between the antiwar movements on the Left and the Right before identifying how they might cooperate.

The War Party

The leadership of both parties supports war and empire. The Republican establishment’s war promoters include the big conservative foundations, congressional leadership, old-line media such as National Review and the Wall Street Journal op-ed page, and the Religious Right’s Armageddonites. The recent Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) meeting suppressed any antiwar debate, while speaker after speaker denounced foreigners, immigrants, and Arabs. Cheers resonated for PATRIOT Act author John Yoo, and John Bolton was a banquet speaker. The current Republican presidential front-runners all favor continuing the wars in the Middle East.

Against the above some lonely libertarians and a very few constitutional conservatives opposed attacking Iraq, both in 2003 and before the first Gulf War in 1990. Although many Republicans opposed the Kosovo war, they did so mainly because a Democrat, Bill Clinton, started it. The rationale for that U.S. intervention, like with Iraq, was also based on falsifications.

Most Democratic congressional leaders also voted for the Iraq war. Outsider Howard Dean, a vocal opponent of the war, was blown away by the Democratic establishment in 2004. In a recent Washington Post analysis, political scientist Tony Smith explains why the Democrats can’t put together a successful vote against the Iraq war. Many of the Democrats, according to Smith, are influenced by an ideology of using American military power for Wilsonian ends. They take their cues from “special interests…that want an aggressive policy– globalizing corporations, the military-industrial complex, the pro-Israel lobbies, those who covet Middle Eastern oil.” The policies of these powerful “neo-liberals,” Smith writes, coincide with those of the “neo-conservatives.”

War is Washington’s big business. The military industrial complex has never been more profitable. Last year, 15,300 earmarks for defense spending went to projects carefully designed to gain adherents in every state. The F-22 fighter plane, for instance, has 1,000 subcontractors in 43 states. Electronic chips and secret superweapons are so complicated that profits can be hidden all along the production line well beyond the scrutiny of outsiders. Even newly planned missiles for Poland to “defend Europe” from Iran may be less about a grand strategic design than simply about selling more arms. Russia’s resultant concerns and European dismay are considered inconsequential.

As former British ambassador Craig Murray points out, the British seem to have faked a maritime boundary.

The British Ministry of Defense has released coordinates where fifteen British sailors and marines were picked up by Iranians after searching a merchant ship:

“As shown on the chart, the merchant vessel was 7.5 nautical miles south east of the Al Faw Peninsula and clearly in Iraqi territorial waters. Her master has confirmed that his vessel was anchored within Iraqi waters at the time of the arrest. The position was 29 degrees 50.36 minutes North 048 degrees 43.08 minutes East.

The MoD asserts that this position is within Iraqi waters:

This places her 1.7 nautical miles inside Iraqi territorial waters. This fact has been confirmed by the Iraqi Foreign Ministry.

Which leads to the obvious question. On what basis are the British asserting that the line they painted in their graphic is indeed the “Iraq / Iran Territorial Water Boundary.”

A mysterious decimation of bee populations has German beekeepers worried, while a similar phenomenon in the United States is gradually assuming catastrophic proportions. The consequences for agriculture and the economy could be enormous.

Is the mysterous decimation of bee populations in the US and Germany a result of GM crops?

Walter Haefeker is a man who is used to painting grim scenarios. He sits on the board of directors of the German Beekeepers Association (DBIB) and is vice president of the European Professional Beekeepers Association. And because griping is part of a lobbyist’s trade, it is practically his professional duty to warn that “the very existence of beekeeping is at stake.”

The problem, says Haefeker, has a number of causes, one being the varroa mite, introduced from Asia, and another is the widespread practice in agriculture of spraying wildflowers with herbicides and practicing monoculture. Another possible cause, according to Haefeker, is the controversial and growing use of genetic engineering in agriculture.

As far back as 2005, Haefeker ended an article he contributed to the journal Der Kritischer Agrarbericht (Critical Agricultural Report) with an Albert Einstein quote: “If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.”

Honeybee colony collapse drives price of honey higher and threatens fruit and vegetable production.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Beekeepers throughout the United States have been losing between 50 and 90 percent of their honeybees over the past six months, perplexing scientists, driving honey prices higher and threatening fruit and vegetable production.

At a House Agricultural Subcommittee hearing in Washington, D.C., today, members of various organizations came together to share their concerns about what they have been calling the “Colony Collapse Disorder,” or CCD.

Honeybees have been mysteriously dying across the United States, sending honey prices higher and threatening the agriculture industry.
Beginning in October 2006, beekeepers from 24 states reported that hundreds of thousands of their bees were dying and their colonies were being devastated.

In December 2006, beekeepers’ associations, scientists and officials formed the CCD working group, in hopes of identifying the cause and solving the problem of CCD.

A lawsuit filed in the Federal District Court for the Northern District of California (No. C07-01049) in February names the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as defendants, charging that government regulators have issued “false and misleading statements” about medical benefits of the herb cannabis (Cannabis spp., aka marijuana).1

Americans for Safe Access (ASA; http://www.safeaccessnow.org) in Oakland, CA, the largest national membership organization of patients, medical professionals, scientists and concerned citizens promoting safe and legal access to cannabis for therapeutic use and research, is challenging the government’s contentions that marijuana “has no currently accepted medical use” and that “no animal or human data support” its safety or efficacy,2 despite what the group’s attorney characterized as “mounting scientific and anecdotal evidence to the contrary.”1

For example, a just-released study conducted at the Clinical Research Center, San Francisco General Hospital found that smoked marijuana relieved pain of peripheral neuropathy in HIV/AIDS patients.3 Commenting on the results, Rob Kampia, Executive Director of the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), a Washington, D.C.-based lobbying group, called them, “all the more remarkable because researchers … are only allowed to test government-supplied marijuana, which is of notoriously poor quality. There’s every reason to believe results would be even better if scientists were permitted to study a better-quality product.”4

Studies conducted in England, where researchers face fewer restrictions, have found marijuana itself, its constituent compounds (cannabinoids, etc.), and a standardized pharmaceutical preparation have been useful in relieving side effects of cancer chemotherapy, as well as chronic nerve pain, spasticity of multiple sclerosis, and other conditions.5,6,7,8,9

Moreover, regarding the safety of employing smoked-inhaled marijuana, a study recently conducted at the University of California at Los Angeles,10 and reviewed in the recent issue of HerbalGram (#73),11 has found that smoking marijuana does not appear to increase a person’s risk of developing lung, head, or neck cancers. This study, which was based on a survey of 611 Los Angeles residents with lung cancer, 601 with cancer of the head and neck regions, and 1,040 residents without cancer, found that even the heaviest marijuana smokers did not have an elevated risk of developing cancer.10

Meanwhile, in another matter related to medical marijuana, an administrative law judge has recommended that University of Massachusetts at Amherst professor Lyle Craker be allowed to grow marijuana for research purposes,12,13 in the latest move in Craker’s six-year quest to break the present government monopoly on producing marijuana for legitimate researchers.2,14 Unless the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) overrules Judge Mary Ellen Bittner’s decision, Lyle Craker and his colleagues may soon provide a high-quality cannabis product for US researchers. If the DEA rejects Bittner’s opinion—and it would not be the first time it has done so where marijuana is concerned—it is possible that another lawsuit might be filed against the agency.

For anyone interested in social progress, the ‘Oaxaca Commune’ stands out as an event worthy of attention and study. In the Mexican state of Oaxaca the overwhelming majority of people suddenly awoke from political hibernation and became active in shaping social life. In consequence, the old apparatus of the state, dedicated as it was to the interests of the rich, was destroyed, and a new structure, based on direct representation of the many, was established.

The ‘popular assembly’ (APPO) that arose out of the mass movement of Oaxaca was not the first of its kind. History has numerous examples of similar political formations, always birthed amid a revolutionary climate.

The first modern example took place in Paris in 1871, when working-class people revolted against the policies of ‘their’ government, and created a new form of social administration to suit the needs of the average person. Like Oaxaca, the ‘Paris Commune’ consisted of delegates from a varying political/social background, working together to enact policies that reflected the demands of the majority, in contrast with the previous government that ruled according to the interests of a tiny elite.

In 1905 Russia, unmistakably similar organizations sprang into existence. These worker’s councils, called ‘Soviets’, were the organizational basis for the failed uprising in 1905, and were reconstructed anew and on a broader level for the successful revolution of 1917. For several years, the coordinated efforts of the nationwide system of Soviets acted as the backbone of organization for the successful civil-war and subsequent reconstruction. Following the successes of Russia, soviet-style organizational methods were constructed throughout Europe in response to the widespread social turbulence caused by World War I. In 1919, the working class of Germany formed soviets of their own, which acted as the foundation for the heroic but failed revolution.

The Project for a New American Century (PNAC) – Rebuilding America’s Defenses published in September 2000 and authored by infamous hawks and neo cons such as Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle is the blueprint for the US world domination and the wars of the future and now, those of the recent past. The PNAC was founded in 1997 by well-known Zionist neo-conservatives Robert Kagan and William Kristol of the Weekly Standard. It is almost the operational stage to implement in the real world George H. W. Bush’s idea of a New World Order proposed after the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Without wanting to be “corny” or “alarmist” and be accused of using the following comparison to “demonize” the Bush regime, the only other blueprint for world domination in recent history was Hitler’s Mein Kampf written in 1923–24 when he was in jail.

Hitler came to power democratically and constitutionally in 1933 and six years later plunged the world into a conflict which cost 50 million lives and destroyed most of Europe and Japan, as well as western parts of the Soviet Union. The PNAC blueprint for world domination has now been activated in 2001 with the invasion of Afghanistan. Iraq followed and there have been threats to Syria and Iran.

In an interview with John Pilger, PNAC co-author Richard Perle stated on the US war on terrorism,

“No stages, this is total war. We are fighting a variety of enemies. There are lots of them out there. All this talk about first we are going to do Afghanistan, then we will do Iraq . . . this is entirely the wrong way to go about it. If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely and we don’t try to piece together clever diplomacy, but just wage a total war . . . our children will sing great songs about us years from now.”

Diplomacy is out of the window since all the plans have been laid about which countries to invade next. Members of PNAC are so self-assured they are advancing the US best interests that they publish policy papers specifically outlining their plans, plans that many fear may be laying the groundwork for a Third World War.

In the original PNAC document the following quote is telling:

“The process of transformation is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor.” The “new Pearl Harbor” came and went as the Twin Towers were demolished (“pulled” in demolishment jargon) and within hours both Wolfowitz and Cheney were calling for an invasion of Iraq, even before anyone knew who had been responsible for the attacks.

Since that time five and a half years ago, no WMD’s have been found in Iraq, no nuclear weapons, no link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden is still as elusive as ever. So, the justification for invading Afghanistan and Iraq was based on lack of evidence, outright lies, spun and diffused by the corporate media in the pay and at the service of the GOP dominated by hawks and neo cons – especially Fox News. The motivation was not revenge since there’s no proof that Saddam or Osama had anything to do with the attacks on the WTC. The justification was, and still is, the blueprint of the PNAC since these plans have to be executed. This is US foreign policy under the Bush regime and will probably be the same under the “Hillary regime”. The underlying reason is oil and the sustainability of the American Way of Life meaning US world domination.

In a similar way Hitler followed his blueprint using the catalyzing event of the Reichstag fire in 1933, later revealed in declassified documents to have been set by Hermann Goering, to blame this on Jews and communists and so launch a witch hunt against these undesirables. The Lebesraumpolitik (living space policy) described in Mein Kampf led to the conquest of other nations and the demonizing of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and other minorities who had to be exterminated to “cleanse the world of such filth”. Nowadays, the corporate media demonizes Arabs and Muslims as “terrorists” as an adjunct to justify military invasions in terms of public opinion and thus the media play their insidious role in furthering the PNAC.

The next PNAC target is Iran. As usual Iran is being painted as a “nuclear threat” since it is enriching uranium to generate electricity. Iran has to do this now since its oil reserves will be almost depleted by 2020. This is like the Iraq-WMD pack of lies so as to justify any attack in the eyes of US public opinion and look as if the US is acting in the interests of “national security” since Iran is now a nuclear threat and could build the Bomb. It is strange that India and Pakistan both have nuclear weapons and are not seen as a menace by the US, when neither country has signed the nuclear non proliferation treaty!

At the time of writing the crude oil price has risen to around US$64/barrel due to tension with Iran. This time 15 British sailors were arrested and taken prisoner after violating Iranian territorial waters. This incident may not mean very much but the British navy vessel involved, HMS Cornwall, is filled with the latest electronic gadgetry and the captain must have known where his sailors were. Today Blair said that “efforts to release the 15 Royal Navy personnel will enter a “different phase” if diplomatic moves fail.” Does this sound like a veiled threat?

After Blair’s statement and coincidentally or otherwise, the US Navy has begun its most extensive maneuvers in the Gulf region since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but denies saber-rattling aimed at Iran.

Two days ago, on his weekly TV program, Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez read an article aloud and on air from the Russian media which stated that “the US attack on Iran was slated for 4am on Friday (Good Friday) April 6th and is due to last until 4pm the same day. 21 nuclear facilities would be targeted, but not the atomic reactor being constructed jointly by Iran and Russia.”

Let’s all hope that the Russian piece President Chavez read aloud is based more on rumor and speculation than facts. But when he read out this news, the US maneuvers in the Gulf has not begun. Involved in what are hopefully just maneuvers are two aircraft carriers, plus their strike groups in the region and war games have begun involving as many as 100 US war planes.

An attack on Iran and a possible land invasion to take oil installations would place the US Empire on the doorstep of both Russia and China – the main obstacles to US world domination. The closeness of the US to these countries’ borders in Iran and Afghanistan could generate a standoff. In contrast to the nations already invaded, Russia and China possess nuclear weapons and have the delivery systems to launch the missiles.

However, PNAC member Richard Perle, when he was in the Reagan administration calling for coups in Central America, claimed that a nuclear war with Russia could be “winnable”. This attitude is highly dangerous for the whole planet, and with US nuclear hegemony greater than ever, there is no reason to doubt that Perle and his cohorts are even more convinced that a nuclear conflict could be “winnable” twenty years later if a conflict were to arise with either China or Russia. PNAC implicitly foresees this possibility if either country is a threat to US global preeminence. It is unrealistic for the US to fight a conventional war in either of these countries due to the geography and demographics of both.

Assuming the Iranian adventure goes ahead – and we sincerely hope and pray that common sense prevails and it does not – the next target could be Venezuela. With the largest oil reserves of any country on the planet, these resources are just a few hours tanker ride away from the Gulf of Mexico coast and vital as US supplies dwindle. The Bush administration has been at loggerheads with President Chavez for almost 7 years.

Chavez’s vision of integrating Latin America and the Caribbean basin, a multi polar world as opposed to a PNAC unipolar one, plus ideological differences in terms of fair trade versus free trade, socialism versus capitalism and his emphasis on national sovereignty are all anathema to the neo con mindset. In no way do they dovetail with US national interests or “US preeminence” in PNAC speak.

Pressure is continually brought to bear on Venezuela using the corporate and international media misrepresenting and manipulating the reality of the Bolivarian Revolution. The next two years will signal what plans the US has for Venezuela, but that is the subject of another article if and when tensions and US threats are stepped up.

The Bush regime will end in early 2009 and perhaps a more moderate president will be elected and diminish world tensions by replacing PNAC with a more “realpolitik” foreign policy. The hawks will definitely try to push their PNAC plans forward in the coming two years while Bush is still in the White House. This could mean that the world will be heading into a more dangerous phase than at anytime since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.

The NY Times writes, “But demagoguery and showmanship will do nothing to solve Venezuela’s 20 percent inflation rate…. Venezuela’s currency, the bolívar, has lost about a fifth of its value since January”

Nice to see the Gray Lady up to her old tricks.

I haven’t been covering economic affairs for a couple of weeks, so I thought on reading this that perhaps I had missed the news of Venezuela’s devaluation, though I didn’t think so. And a quick check of Google News (in Spanish, the English language press coverage of Venezuela is worthless) tells me that in fact I didn’t miss it. It did not happen.

Because Venezuela operates with a system of foreign currency controls and allocations on the basis of a fixed exchange rate set by the Central Bank, if there had been a devaluation, to honestly report on it, the NYT would have had to tell us when the last time was that the Bolívar’s official exchange rate changed, but of course that is impossible since the *truth* is that Bolívar’s exchange rate has not changed.

What has changed is the black market exchange rate used by wealthy Venezuelans to turn the local currency into dollars for smuggling out of the country. And I know that bourgeois journalists are true experts on black market currency operations. Because operating in the black market is banned by journalistic ethical standards AND the business practices and policies of reputable bourgeois rags like the NY Times. This brings you a very nice profit if you’re in a country like Venezuela, because you buy all your local currency on the black market, but report all your local expenses at the official rate, and it can get so extreme that every penny you spend in the country comes back to you dressed as a nickel — though Venezuela is far from there yet.

However, unlike other countries in the midst of a revolution where the black market dollar became for all practical purposes the only rate, in Venezuela’s case the official rate is the dominant one because of the billions of dollars a month the country receives from oil exports.

So what the NY Times is telling us is really that the rich are growing increasing desperate about their prospects in revolutionary Venezuela. So they are willing to take growing exchange losses just to cash out. After telling us for years that Chavez is a wild man, a clown, with no coherent plan or policy, adopting this random measure and that arbitrary decision, all of a sudden it dawns on them that there IS a plan … a strategic perspective … of transforming Venezuela’s economy from one moved by increasing the private profits of the few to one moved by serving the needs of the many. And the recent nationalizations of several imperialist concerns shows them that the Revolution has both the political will and political power to increasingly take the country on that road.

That leaves only the question of how to present matters abroad to people who do not and cannot possibly know for themselves what’s really going on. And hence the Big Lie: Venezuela’s currency has dropped 20% since the beginning of the year.

And there will be plenty more reporting and editorializing along the lines of the Venezuelan economic “catastrophe” in coming months and years. For what is coming will be catastrophic for the bourgeoisie and upper layers of the middle classes. Prices will skyrocket in the shops they frequent, full of imported luxury goods which will be priced at the black market exchange rate plus a hefty markup. Many of the stores will fail. It may even get so bad you won’t even be able to get Prada handbags anymore in Caracas. And you can be sure you’ll be able to read all about it in the lying pages of the New York Times.

[JURIST] The US District Court for the District of Columbia Tuesday dismissed [press release] a lawsuit [complaint, PDF; ACLU case file] against former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld [official profile] for authorizing torture and abuse of detainees by US personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan. The suit asserted that Rumsfeld bears direct responsibility for detainee abuse and that his actions violated the US Constitution, federal statutes and international law. Chief Judge Thomas Hogan [official profile] based the dismissal on the immunity of government officials from lawsuits and the premise that US constitutional rights do not apply overseas. While noting that the allegations of torture were “horrifying,” Hogan concluded that policy considerations counsel against permitting government officials to be sued for political decisions.