The Rag Blog

In a move that many grassroots activists believe signals a coming trend, two states have put taxpayer-financed toll roads up for sale to foreign companies. More disconcerting is the fact that these have the potential becoming a massive network of toll roads facilitating free trade throughout North America under the framework of the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA.

In Indiana, foreign interests are obtaining the first lease agreement with a state government to privately operate an existing toll road—paying $3.8 billion for a 75-year lease to operate the Indiana Toll Road.

In addition, the historically significant Pennsylvania Turnpike also may be headed to the proverbial auction block, as confirmed by American Free Press. But apparently it’s not a done deal.

AFP reported last December that Pennsylvania state Rep. Richard Geist had planned to introduce House Bill 1 to sell the Pennsylvania Turnpike to private investors. The Indiana Toll Road deal prompted Hoosiers to send scores of “Ditch Mitch” bumper stickers critical of Gov. Mitch Daniels’s unwavering support of the sale. It involved a deal between the state and ITR Concessions LLC, a partnership of the Cintra Company of Spain and the McQuarie Bank of Australia.

WASHINGTON: In June, short of people to process cases of incompetence and fraud by federal contractors, officials at the General Services Administration responded with what has become the government’s reflexive answer to almost every problem.

They hired another contractor.

It did not matter that the company they chose, CACI International, had itself recently avoided a suspension from federal contracting; or that the work, delving into investigative files on other contractors, appeared to pose a conflict of interest; or that each person supplied by the company would cost taxpayers $104 an hour. Six CACI workers soon joined hundreds of other private-sector workers at the G.S.A., the government’s management agency.

Without a public debate or formal policy decision, contractors have become a virtual fourth branch of government. On the rise for decades, spending on federal contracts has soared during the Bush administration, to about $400 billion last year from $207 billion in 2000, fueled by the war in Iraq, domestic security and Hurricane Katrina, but also by a philosophy that encourages outsourcing almost everything government does.

Contractors still build ships and satellites, but they also collect income taxes and work up agency budgets, fly pilotless spy aircraft and take the minutes at policy meetings on the war. They sit next to federal employees at nearly every agency; far more people work under contracts than are directly employed by the government. Even the government’s online database for tracking contracts, the Federal Procurement Data System, has been outsourced (and is famously difficult to use).

The contracting explosion raises questions about propriety, cost and accountability that have long troubled watchdog groups and are coming under scrutiny from the Democratic majority in Congress. While flagrant cases of fraud and waste make headlines, concerns go beyond outright wrongdoing. Among them:

Competition, intended to produce savings, appears to have sharply eroded. An analysis by The New York Times shows that fewer than half of all “contract actions” — new contracts and payments against existing contracts — are now subject to full and open competition. Just 48 percent were competitive in 2005, down from 79 percent in 2001.

– Keane devises and pushes Bush’s “surge”.
– McCaffery wants more arms and money for Iraqis.
– Hoar and Odom, little connected to military business,
call for withdrawal.
– The importance of “contractors” in sustaining the war; “doing the patriotic bit.”

As Congress weighs action on the escalation of the Iraq War, it may want to consider the business connections of retired generals who have been making recommendations, particularly those of retired four-star Army general John M. “Jack” Keane, who is one of the authors of President Bush’s “surge” policy.

Reviewing the testimony of Mr. Keane and three other former generals on January 18 before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, there is a distinct pattern. Those most involved in the military industry, Mr. Keane and former four-star army general Barry McCaffery, endorsed, respectively, escalation and continued investment in the Iraq War. Those with the least involvement in the military industry, former Marine General John P. Hoar and former army Lt. Gen. William Odom were for withdrawal.

JACK KEANE, who rose to the level of acting Chief of Staff and Vice Chief of Staff of the Army before retiring in December 2003, told the committee that President Bush’s “surge” plan, which calls for sending 21,500 more troops to Iraq, “is remarkably similar” to the plan he devised last fall with Fredrick Kagan, a staffer of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a Washington think tank that has provided analysis and justification for the Iraq War from its beginning. He told the committee that he presented the plan directly to President Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney.

Keane, who is a commentator for ABC News, is a member of the board of directors of General Dynamics, among the top 10 largest military contractors, with reported revenues in 2005 of $21 billion. The company’s 2005 annual report, appearing on its website, notes:

It is hard to determine what exactly happened in the parliamentary session in Baghdad yesterday. What we know is that the I’tilaf bloc (the Shi`a bloc) left the session in anger after the Speaker, Mahmud al-Mashhadani, read a statement by tribal leaders that contested the official version of the battle that took place in the environs of Najaf last week. The government claimed that an attack was launched by American and government forces to foil a plot by a millenarian cult that was planning to attack the holy city of Najaf during the celebrations of `Ashura and assassinate high Shi`a clerics.

According to Az-Zaman, the Iraqi police has prevented the press from covering the entirety of the heated debates in the Iraqi parliament over the events in Najaf and other issues that have sharply divided the Iraqi parliament. The Iraqi daily said that security forces prevented journalists from taking photos or covering the debates after the session degenerated into name-calling and mutual attacks.

More than 700 Palestinian refugees who have been driven out of Iraq are stranded in squalid tented camps on the Syrian border. Damascus is refusing to let them in, despite the wintry conditions and limited supplies of food, water, fuel and medicines.

“This is a human tragedy,” Tayseer Nasrallah, head the of the refugee affairs committee in the West Bank city of Nablus, protested yesterday. Other Palestinians charged the Iraqis with ethnic cleansing. Officials in Ramallah said at least 180 Palestinians had been murdered in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Human Rights Watch reported last week that only 15,000 of the 34,000 Palestinian refugees living in Baghdad before 2003 were still there. “They are harassed by the Iraqi government and are targeted by Shia militias because of the benefits they used to receive from Saddam Hussein’s government and their perceived support for the insurgency in Iraq,” said the New York-based organisation.

“Ministry of Interior officials have arbitrarily arrested, beaten, tortured and in a few cases forcibly ‘disappeared’ Palestinian refugees. The ministry has also imposed onerous registration requirements on Palestinian refugees, forcing them to constantly renew short-term residency permits and subjecting them to harassment.”

The human rights group accused Shia militant groups of murdering dozens of the refugees in recent months and leafleting Palestinian neighbourhoods threatening further killings if they did not get out. On 23 January unidentified men, some in police uniform, abducted 60 Palestinian men from their homes in three Baghdad neighbourhoods. When they were released, they showed signs of physical abuse. All have now left Iraq with their families.

the Iraqi Medium Basic Salary = $300

A month is 30 days à $10 daily

20 Liters of Kerosene = $17 = enough for 12 hours of heating four kerosene heaters

20 liters of Gasoline = $12 = 120 km for a car and 8 hours for an 8Kv Generator

1 (16 Kg) LPG cylinder (cooking gas) = $ 20 enough for a week cooking

1 kilogram of tomatoes = $1.5

6 pieces of unleavened bread (Staple food) = $ 0.95

1 Kilo of Beef = $10

1 amp of hired street electricity = $9 for 7 hours a day/ per month of 185 Volts

Unrelated? Confusing?

If we understand that the national electricity grid provides is only two hours a “day” (one hour each 12 hours) then we conclude that electricity is useless in providing Heating, Water Boilers etc.

If we rely on hired electricity and a boiler works on 3500 Watts that means you need 15 Amps that’s $135 just for seven hours of Hot Water per month.

Kerosene for four heaters working Twelve Hours daily = $2040

Etc

Etc

Etc.

Al-Hayat this morning brings together three big Iraq stories: (1) Problems with the new security plan showing up before it even starts; (2) followup to the Syria-immigration story; and (3) the Najaf-Zarka debacle. Although the reporter doesn’t make the point in any explicit way, I think in conjunction with other recent events, these can be seen as signs of the end-times, if not for the world as a whole, at least for the Maliki administration.

(1) Security. The Al-Hayat reporter writes:

Iraqi security officials say the armed groups are changing strategy with each government announcement about the “new plan”. Interior Ministry spokesman…said “The terrorists’ strategy changes as the government’s strategy changes.” And he added: “It is the takfiiri groups that are primarily responsible for the collapse of security, and the Sadriya calamity is proof positive that these groups have very strong intelligence that lets them know about each change and alteration that the government makes together with its security ministries”.
What did he mean about “proof positive”? The following may or may not be relevant. The self-styled “Iraqi resistance reports” posted in English on Albasrah.net include this for last Saturday, after reporting on the truck-bombing at the Sadriya market:
Two days before Saturday’s truck bombing, the same building was raided by US occupation troops who arrested nine people and found and took away the bodies of two Sunni youths who had been detained on the second floor of the building, which served as a Shi‘i sectarian slaughter house for Sunnis.

Local witnesses said that the Americans also found Sunni prisoners being detained in the building. The Americans set the prisoners free and tuned the bodies of the two dead victims over to al-Yarmuk Hospital but made no further investigation or announcement about the Jaysh al-Mahdi death squad stronghold.

Of course it is possible that the government spokeman only meant that the truckbombers knew of the absence of checkpoints and so on. But that wouldn’t be “strong intelligence”.

Still on the security theme, the Al-Hayat reporter adds this:

Another military leader, insisting on anonymity, expressed skepticism about the possibilities for success of the new plan. He told Al-Hayat that terrorist operations are esclating ahead of implementation of the plan, and that in itself represents a setback, because the plan calls for eradication of these gangs.

And that reallly dovetails nicely [the reporter notes in conclusion] with what observers say about the latest US intelligence report [referring to the NIE] where it talks about the dangers of civil war, namely that it is an attempt to provide cover for the failure of the announced new security plan, at a time when there is this domestic American debate about the next strategy and the need to send more troops.

The Peace Movement Ups the Ante on Demands to Congress to Cut War Funding

“Senator Clinton, we’re blocking your door, until you cut this web of war!” was the chant heard through the halls of Congress outside Hillary Clinton’s office last Tuesday, where activists with the women’s peace group, CODEPINK, asked Hillary to stop supporting funding for the war in Iraq. 50 activists entered Hillary’s office and effectively wove themselves into a web of pink yarn and ribbons to symbolize the senator’s web of deception and the innocent people—Americans and Iraqis—caught in it. The group asked Hillary to pledge to fund college scholarships and healthcare, an issue the senator triumphs, not bombs and destruction. Activists held banners that bared slogans such as, “Hillary: Be a Woman for Peace” and “It takes an Invasion to Raze a Village,” and donned pink slips with the “Cut the Funding” message. After being forced out of Clinton’s office, six women were arrested while blocking Clinton’s door.

Those arrested included three Bay Area residents—Heather Box, Leslie Angeline, and myself. We were compelled to urge Senator Clinton to take leadership from our representatives, Lynn Woolsey and Barbara Lee, and stand up for peace. New York resident and arrested activist Sonia Silbert captured this sentiment when she said, “As young women we’ve been inspired by the powerful women who have paved the way and we’ve all been waiting to vote for a woman for president. But we want a woman who stands for values we can be proud of: the values of peace and justice, and healthcare not warfare.” Heather Box also stated, “I am here to represent my friends that are serving in Iraq because they cannot be here- and they want to be here. They want to come home and they want to be taken care of when they get here.”

The Justice Department is completing rules to allow the collection of DNA from most people arrested or detained by federal authorities, a vast expansion of DNA gathering that will include hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, by far the largest group affected.

The new forensic DNA sampling was authorized by Congress in a little-noticed amendment to a January 2006 renewal of the Violence Against Women Act, which provides protections and assistance for victims of sexual crimes. The amendment permits DNA collecting from anyone under criminal arrest by federal authorities, and also from illegal immigrants detained by federal agents.

Over the last year, the Justice Department has been conducting an internal review and consulting with other agencies to prepare regulations to carry out the law.

The goal, justice officials said, is to make the practice of DNA sampling as routine as fingerprinting for anyone detained by federal agents, including illegal immigrants. Until now, federal authorities have taken DNA samples only from convicted felons.

The law has strong support from crime victims’ organizations and some women’s groups, who say it will help law enforcement identify sexual predators and also detect dangerous criminals among illegal immigrants.

“Obviously, the bigger the DNA database, the better,” said Lynn Parrish, the spokeswoman for the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, based in Washington. “If this had been implemented years ago, it could have prevented many crimes. Rapists are generalists. They don’t just rape, they also murder.”

Peter Neufeld, a lawyer who is a co-director of the Innocence Project, which has exonerated dozens of prison inmates using DNA evidence, said the government was overreaching by seeking to apply DNA sampling as universally as fingerprinting.

“Whereas fingerprints merely identify the person who left them,” Mr. Neufeld said, “DNA profiles have the potential to reveal our physical diseases and mental disorders. It becomes intrusive when the government begins to mine our most intimate matters.”

Immigration lawyers said they did not learn of the measure when it passed last year and were dismayed by its sweeping scope.

BAGHDAD, 4 February (IRIN) – Fatah Barakat, 10, will never forget getting caught in crossfire between Iraqi militia fighters and US-led forces in Sadr City, a suburb of Baghdad, a year ago. A grenade that exploded near him blew off his right leg. Now, Fatah has a habit of holding onto his left leg.

“Since I lost one of my legs, I like to make sure that the other one is still here. My mother tells me that I have to stop doing this. But it is hard for me, knowing that I will never be able to play like other children and play football as I used to do every day,” Fatah said.

Fatah’s life has changed dramatically since the tragic incident. His mother has stopped him from going outside because she does not want him to get injured and he is shy about having only one leg.

“Once, I was out in shorts and my friends started to laugh at me saying that I was a useless boy and could only play dominos,” he said.

Fatah’s mother has been frantically looking for some form of assistance for her son but all she got so far is five kilos of rice from an NGO.

“When I ask NGOs or the government for a wheelchair for my child, or to pay for surgery or even an artificial leg, they just answer me by saying that people are dying every day and others getting displaced and they don’t have time to worry about just one child,” Rand Muhammad, Barakat’s mother, said.