The Rag Blog

The findings of a new Pentagon study – “Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq” – are sobering: The conflict, it concludes, has clearly morphed from a Sunni-led insurgency fighting foreign occupation “to a struggle for the division of political and economic influence among sectarian groups and organized criminal activity.”
Related News

In other words, “some elements of the situation in Iraq are properly descriptive of a civil war.” Most of the daily, convulsive conflicts are characterized by a sectarian competition for power and influence, “principally,” the report notes, “through murders, executions, and high-profile bombings.” But the report emphasizes that the violence remains relatively localized–at least among the country’s 18 provinces. While four provinces, among them Baghdad, Anbar, and Diyala, are home to 37 percent of the population, they account for some 80 percent of the country’s attacks (chart on Page 15 of the report).

The report includes cautions that it was undertaken before the current Baghdad security plan had a chance to gain steam and should be viewed as a baseline from which to measure future progress.

In that regard, as America approaches the start of the fifth year of the war in Iraq, the so-called surge plan is starting to show modest but encouraging signs under Gen. David Petraeus, who commands all U.S. military forces there. According to an Iraqi military spokesman, since the start of the plan on February 14, violent incidents in the capital are down from 1,440 between January and February to some 265 since then. Those figures most likely do not include unidentified bodies of those found murdered in Baghdad, which some estimates indicate may add another 200 people to the month’s death toll.

Residents report that market squares are coming back to life under recent U.S. efforts to close the areas to traffic even as Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, the chief spokesman for U.S. forces in Iraq, cautioned that February had seen “an all-time high” for car bombs and reiterated calls for patience.

A slip of a girl faced one of Israel’s most feared war machines in the Occupied Palestinian Territories–the armed bulldozer–and died. This deliberate killing was no accident. Maybe the Israeli authorities would have preferred it not to happen because of the public relations backlash, but the driver of the bulldozer was wielding power that day. He had a mandate from his government to clear Palestinians out of their homes at a moment’s notice and he knew that he would be protected regardless of the crimes he dared to commit. Rachel Corrie was a US citizen, but even the US government closed ranks behind Israel and the bulldozer operator. Being an American did not protect Rachel, and four years later, the US administration still refuses to investigate her death denying her American family justice and closure.

The bulldozer killing of Rachel Corrie was not the only case of such a death in Palestine, but it was the first time a US citizen had become the target of Israel’s military. Rachel was a peace activist who had gone to Rafah in Gaza because she wanted to help bring the terrible plight of the Palestinians to the notice of the world. With others in the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), she believed that non-violent resistance was a means of doing that, and tragically, she achieved that with her death more than she could have ever done with her life.

Rachel was one of hundreds of foreigners who work as human shields in the Occupied Palestinian Territories–dedicated men and women committed to social justice who are seeking to keep the lines of communication open with the outside world while Israel is doing everything to close them. Rachel was trying to stop the bulldozer from demolishing a Palestinian physician’s family home–one of thousands that have been demolished for Jewish settlements and to make way for the Separation Wall. She wore an orange safety flap- jacket with reflective stripes, and photos clearly show her holding a megaphone. According to witnesses, she was talking to the driver and he knew that she was there. But, that did not stop him from pushing the dirt up against where she was standing into a mound with his blade and as she fell, he drove the bulldozer over her, reversed the killing machine, and ran over her again.

Israel: Scrambling for Cover

Israel’s investigations cleared itself of any wrongdoing: Rachel was not run over by the bulldozer, “but rather was struck by a hard object, most probably a slab of concrete, which moved or slid down while the mound of earth which she was standing behind was moved”; the driver of the bulldozer had a “blindspot” and could not see Rachel in front of him; the soldiers who should have been flanking the bulldozer were called away to deal with another emergency; the Israeli army had not intended to demolish the physician’s house, but was only looking for explosives in a security zone; the peace activists “were acting very irresponsibly, putting everyone in danger–the Palestinians, themselves and our forces–by intentionally placing themselves in a combat zone”; the Israeli army was not guilty of any misconduct, and therefore, was not responsible for Rachel’s death.

Only days before the Israeli findings were reported, another peace activist working with the ISM, Tom Hurndall lay in a London hospital with severe brain damage after being shot in the head by an Israeli soldier as he tried to protect Palestinian children from Israeli sniper fire being shot over their heads. Other internationals shot and killed by Israeli soldiers were: German doctor Harald Fischer, Italian cameraman Rafaeli Ciriello, British United Nations worker Iain Hook and British national James Miller. As for the Palestinians, more than 5,050 Palestinian men, women and children have been killed by Israeli troops and Israeli settler paramilitary units since September 2000.

ABC News reports that new emails reveal that the plan for firing U.S. Attorneys originated in the White House. Both Karl Rove and Alberto Gonzales discussed the idea of firing all 93 U.S. attorneys in early January 2005. From the article:

New unreleased e-mails from top administration officials show the idea of firing all 93 U.S. attorneys was raised by White House adviser Karl Rove in early January 2005, indicating Rove was more involved in the plan than previously acknowledged by the White House.

The e-mails also show Attorney General Alberto Gonzales discussed the idea of firing the attorneys en masse while he was still White House counsel — weeks before he was confirmed as attorney general.

The e-mails directly contradict White House assertions that the notion originated with recently departed White House counsel Harriet Miers and was her idea alone.

Google will erase personal information on billions of internet searches in an attempt to secure the privacy of its users, the company has announced.

The search engine, which is being sued for $1bn by the media company Viacom for alleged copyright infringement, said it would destroy huge tracts of identifying information it holds on internet searches. Information such as who made what search and when is kept “for as long as useful” but under the new policy, all identifying data will be erased after 18-24 months.

Peter Fleischer, a lawyer for Google, said: “We believe that privacy is one of the cornerstones of trust. We will be retroactively going back into our log database and anonymising all the information there.”

This morning The Encampment to Stop the War went into the Rayburn Building to confront the Democrats as the House Appropriations Committee holds their first meeting to fund the continuation of the slaughter in Iraq. 10 Encampment members were arrested. A few of us were the first in line in the hallway outside the chamber where the meeting is now taking place. The balance of Encampment members picketed the outside of the building.

In the hallway outside the chamber they lined us up for entrance into the chamber. After waiting for about an hour, the Capital Police opened up a door on the other end of the hallway to bring a large number of staffers in. The police then told us that there would not be enough room for us to attend the public meeting. The time was 8:56, 4 minutes before the meeting was scheduled to begin. About a dozen Encampment members and several members of Code Pink began to chant:

“LET US IN – IT’S THE PEOPLES’ HOUSE!”

As Encampment members became louder demanding their right to attend this public meeting. The police arrested 3 members of the Encampment in the hallway: GAEL MURPHY,
RALPH LOEFFLER, MEL STEVENS

Gael, Ralph and Mel sat down on the floor and refused to leave as everyone loudly demanded their right to attend this important meeting. The police forced them face down on the floor, handcuffed them and took them out. The protest in the hallway became louder and the House Appropriations Committee were forced to delay their meeting by about a half hour because of the growing disturbance directly outside the chamber doors.

Following these arrests, 6 more Encampment Members were arrested for blocking the front door of the Rayburn Building: SHARON BLACK, SARA FLOUNDERS, DUSTIN LANGLEY, LARRY HOLMES, LORIE BLANDING, BOB NASH.

This report is an account of one of several actions carried out by the Encampment Against the War today. LeiLani Dowell and Namwiinga Simwiinga-Khumalo led a delegation of 12 women to the Iraqi Embassy to protest the new, U.S.-backed Iraqi government’s decision to hang 3 Iraqi women, Wassan Talib, Zainab Fadhil and Liqa Muhammad for their resistance to the U.S. occupation. The women were sentenced to hang on March 3rd for carrying out successful military operations against the U.S. military and Iraqi police. One of them gave birth to a child and is now nursing the baby in prison. There has been a total corporate media blackout on these death sentences. However, the alternative internet media brought massive international pressure upon the U.S. and Iraqi governments and the women were given a temporary reprieve.

The delegation of women from the Encampment to Stop the War arrived at the Iraqi Embassy at 2:50 p.m March 15, 2007. They broke out placards and began marching in a circle in front of the embassy. Passing motorists saw their placards and honked horns of support. They caused enough of a raucous to cause people inside the embassy began looking out their windows. Two Secret Service men approached the women. The SS asked them what they were doing there. LeiLani Dowell told them they were there to protest the war in Iraq and the hanging of these women. She told them they came from the Encampment to Stop the War to present petitions to the Iraqi Ambassador, seeking the freedom of the women. She told them they chose to come at this time because their mission is a matter of live and death – and because March 8 happens to be International Working Women’s Day and March is International Women’s Month.

SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) — A California woman whose doctor says marijuana is the only medicine keeping her alive is not immune from federal prosecution on drug charges, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

The case was brought by Angel Raich, an Oakland mother of two who suffers from scoliosis, a brain tumor, chronic nausea and other ailments. On her doctor’s advice, she eats or smokes marijuana every couple of hours to ease her pain and bolster a nonexistent appetite as conventional drugs did not work.

The Supreme Court ruled against Raich two years ago, saying that medical marijuana users and their suppliers could be prosecuted for breaching federal drug laws even if they lived in a state such as California where medical pot is legal.

Because of that ruling, the issue before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was narrowed to the so-called right to life theory: that marijuana should be allowed if it is the only viable option to keep a patient alive.

Raich, 41, began sobbing when she was told of the decision and said she would continue using the drug.

Havana.

Anyone following the news in recent times cannot be unaware of the wave of progressive change sweeping Latin America and the Caribbean. For many lonely years Cuba held high the torch through its exemplary programs to provide universal health care and education, both gratis, along with world class cultural, sports and scientific achievements. Although you won´t find a Cuban today who says things are perfect, far from it, probably all would agree that compared with pre-revolutionary Cuba there is a world of improvement. All this they did against every effort by the United States to isolate them as an unacceptable example of independence and self-determination, using every dirty method including infiltration, sabotage, terrorism, assassination, economic and biological warfare and incessant lies in the cooperating media of many countries. I know these methods too well, having been a CIA officer in Latin America in the 1960´s. Altogether nearly 3500 Cubans have died from terrorist acts, and more than 2000 are permanently disabled. No country has suffered terrorism as long and consistently as Cuba.

All through the years, beginning even before taking power in 1959, the Cuban revolution has needed to have intelligence collection capabilities in the U.S. for defensive purposes. Such was the fully justified mission of the Cuban Five, jailed since 1998 with long sentences after conviction for various crimes in Miami where they had no chance for a fair trial. Convictions were for conspiracy to commit espionage to murder. Nevertheless their sights were exclusively set on criminal terrorist planning in Miami for operations against Cuba, activities ignored by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. They neither sought nor received any classified U.S. government information. Their cases are still on appeal, and will be for years to come, but their completely biased convictions rank with the legal lynching in the 1920’s of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, the anarchist immigrants, as among the most shameful injustices in U.S. history. Freedom for the Cuban Five should be the cause of everyone for whom fairness, human rights and justice are important, both in the United States and around the world, joining in the activities of the 300 Free the Five solidarity committees in 90 countries.

Current U.S. policy with its means and goals can be found in the nearly 500-page 2004 report of the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba together with an update published in 2006 that has a secret annex. A fundamental goal, the same in 2007 as I remember it was in 1959, is isolation of Cuba to keep this bad example from spreading, and the current policy if successful, would mean no less than Cuban annexation to the U.S. and complete dependence, in fact if not in law, as Cubans rightfully claim. Other fundamental goals from 1959 are still, nearly 50 years later, to foment an internal political opposition and to cause economic hardship in Cuba leading to desperation, hunger and despair. It is no exaggeration to call these goals genocidal.

Yet, U.S. economic warfare of nearly 50 years against Cuba hasn’t worked even though the Cubans who keep book estimate its cost at more than $80 billion. After the Cuban economy’s free fall in the early 1990’s, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, it began to recover in 1995. By 2005 growth was 11.8% and in 2006 it was 12.5%, the highest in Latin America. Some sectors have surpassed their development levels of the late 80’s, before the collapse, and others are nearly back. Cuba’s exports of services, nickel, pharmaceutical and other products are booming, and try as it may, the U.S. has not been able to stop this.

George Bush has been touring Latin American countries this March with two goals in mind: keep the continent divided and keep it subservient to U.S. imperialist interests.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has also been visiting his neighbors. His goals are the opposite: to unite the countries of Latin America and to encourage and support the continent’s independence from U.S. imperialism.

This March 9 the two presidents were faced off on opposite sides of the river separating Argentina and Uruguay. Bush had just arrived in Uruguay, where he was driven in a well-armored limousine caravan, protected from a strong demonstration protesting the visit. Chávez, after signing a treaty with Argentine President Néstor Kirchner for the cooperation of the two countries’ energy companies, spoke to a public meeting of 40,000 people in the Cancha de Ferro soccer field in Buenos Aires.

As the work day in the Argentine capital ended, residents from Buenos Aires and its working-class suburbs began to pour into the stadium. Coming in chartered buses, by public transport and on foot, they represented the dozens of political and nationalist left parties, from the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo to the unions and community organizations that make up the anti-imperialist majority of Argentines, along with visitors and immigrants from Paraguay, Chile and Uruguay—there were many Uruguayan flags—plus at least two anti-imperialists from the United States.

Even from the middle-class apartment house behind the stadium, people had hung a Brazilian and other national flags to show their solidarity with the pro-Chávez, anti-Bush demonstration.

When Chávez began to speak sometime after 8 p.m., it was obvious the people were with him, and he with them. Every upbeat phrase was cheered, from any reference to Fidel Castro, Cuba or the Argentine-born Che Guevara to the heroes of the Latin American independence struggle, from Simón Bolívar to Don Jose de San Martín of Argentina.

But nothing aroused more noise—both cheers and whistles depending on the statement—than Chávez’ ironic comments about the U.S. president. “He doesn’t even smell of sulfur anymore,” said Chávez, alluding to his own comments last fall at the United Nations, “but he has the smell of a political corpse, who will soon disappear into cosmic dust.”

The Venezuelan president and most others in the stadium were quite aware of Bush’s weakened position and waning popularity back in the U.S., where political polls put his approval rating at under 30 percent. Chávez spelled out how Bush had failed to provide for the victims of Hurricane Katrina and left tens of millions without health care.

“If he really wanted social justice in the world, he should do something, instead of just talking,” said the Venezuelan. “He should order the U.S. troops out of Iraq and use the vast sums of money from the war to end hunger and death throughout the world.

By M.R. Narayan Swamy, New Delhi, March 14: Drawing an analogy with Vietnam, a long-time Iraqi dissident says the armed resistance in his country against the US is winning, but it will take a long time to make the American troops go home.

Kamal Majid, a Professor Emeritus in the University of Wales (Cardiff), also said here that Iraqis had every right to invite foreigners to join the fighting against the US troops as Washington too had other governments on its side.

“The Iraqi people are optimistic that they will succeed (against the US),” Majid told an “International Conference on War, Imperialism and Resistance” here, drawing thunderous applause at the end of an impassioned speech.

And soon afterwards, the 77-year-old academic, who counts Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih and Irrigation Minister Latif Rashid as his students, told IANS that he expected violence in Iraq to continue for a long time.