The Rag Blog

Wassit, Jan 22, (VOI) – Large numbers of civil servants, leaders and members of political and religious movements and civil society workers staged a sit-in on Monday outside the U.S. base Delta in Wassit province to protest the arrest of two council members.

The protestors demanded the immediate release of the detained officials and an apology from the U.S. forces that made the arrests.

A U.S. force raided the provincial council on Tuesday and detained Qassem al-Aaraji and Fadel Jassem Abul-Taiyeb, without giving any reasons. The whereabouts of the two members are not known so far.

On Friday and as the protests continued demanding a release of the detained council members, the U.S. army said the two detained members were suspected of involvement in smuggling weapons.

Hamid Majid Idi, a participant of Monday’s protest, said the sit-in was an expression of denunciation of the arrests.

Another protestor told VOI “The sit-in is public and popular and it started in the morning outside Wassit Provincial Council and the demonstrators marched to reach the U.S. base in west of Kut.

Kut, capital city of Wassit province is 180 km southeast of Baghdad.

Jan. 22 (Bloomberg) — George W. Bush came to power in 2001 vowing to make his mark on history by overhauling taxes, pensions and schools. Instead, an item not on the original agenda — the war in Iraq — may consign him to the bottom tier of U.S. leaders.

That’s the view of a number of historians and presidential scholars, who say that unless Bush’s decision to inject some 20,000 more troops succeeds in quelling sectarian violence, he risks joining the ranks of such poorly regarded American leaders as James Buchanan and Warren G. Harding.

“Iraq has done enormous damage” to Bush’s standing, says Robert Dallek, the biographer of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Bush, he says, will rank “somewhere at the bottom.” Bruce Buchanan, a political scientist at the University of Texas in Austin, says Bush’s effort to reverse the course of events in the war is “his last chance to avoid the dustbin of history.”

As Bush puts the finishing touches on tomorrow’s State of the Union address, the chaos in Iraq is emboldening political opponents and putting his presidency under siege. In a Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll conducted Jan. 13-16, 49 percent of respondents said Bush will be remembered as a poor or below- average president, with 28 percent ranking him as average. Only 22 percent said Bush will be judged a success.

Army investigators say that Col. Michael D. Steele, a decorated combat veteran and brigade commander in Iraq, issued improper orders to his soldiers that contributed to the deaths of four unarmed Iraqi men during a raid in May, according to military documents.

No charges have been filed against Colonel Steele in the Army’s continuing investigation. But two Defense Department officials said last week that Colonel Steele was formally reprimanded in the summer by Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the former commander in Iraq, for not reporting the deaths and other details of the raid. The action was not made public.

The reprimand and the controversy surrounding the raid have effectively ended the career of Colonel Steele, an aggressive officer known for unorthodox methods and who was portrayed in the book and movie “Black Hawk Down” as a fearless fighter during Special Operations missions in Somalia in 1993.

The four Iraqi men were killed on a channel island northwest of Baghdad on May 9 by members of the division’s Third Brigade Combat Team, which Colonel Steele commanded. Four soldiers were later charged with murder by military prosecutors, who said they captured the men, then turned them loose and killed them as part of a staged escape attempt. Over the past two weeks, two of the soldiers have pleaded guilty to lesser charges.

The military’s administrative investigation into Colonel Steele centered on how he communicated the rules of engagement, the instructions that all soldiers must follow to determine whether they may legally use lethal force against an enemy, to his soldiers before the raid.

The colonel improperly led his soldiers to believe that distinguishing combatants from noncombatants — a main tenet of the military’s standing rules of engagement — was not necessary during the May 9 mission, according to a classified report in June by Brig. Gen. Thomas Maffey, a deputy commander tapped by General Chiarelli to investigate Colonel Steele. “A person cannot be targeted on status simply by being present on an objective deemed hostile by an on-scene commander,” General Maffey wrote in his June 16 report.

As the US Congress prepares to vote on resolutions opposing additional American troops in Iraq, senior Democrats have warned President George W Bush that it is only the first of a series of steps that are being contemplated if he fails to heed the signals coming out of Capitol Hill.

The Non-Binding Resolution is likely to be debated and voted upon soon but Bush and his deputy Dick Cheney have said they will not budge from sending thousands more troops to Iraq no matter how much Congress opposes it.

The Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Joseph Biden, who is also seeking the Democratic Party nomination for the Presidential election of 2008 has rejected the argument put forth by the Cheney that such political resolutions only embolden terrorists like Osama bin Laden.

“It’s about time we stopped listening to that ideological rhetoric and that “Bin Laden” and the rest. Bin Laden isn’t the issue here. Bin Laden will become the issue,” Biden said.

DUBAI, Jan 21 (Reuters) – Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said in remarks aired on Sunday he will push for dialogue between the United States and neighbouring Syria, which he said was helping Baghdad clamp down on terrorism.

Talabani, who paid a landmark visit to Syria earlier this month, said he had not received any request to mediate between Damascus and Washington from either nation.

But, “I personally will seek to give a true picture about Syria’s intentions and policy to the U.S. administration and I will seek to encourage our American friends to have a dialogue with Syria,” he told Al Arabiya television.

Syria’s U.S. ties went frosty when President Bashar al-Assad voiced opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq in 2003.

Iraqi and U.S. officials have often accused Syria of not doing enough to stop the flow of militants crossing its Iraqi borders to fight U.S.-led troops. Damascus repeatedly said it was doing all it can to control the long desert border.

“Syria wants … stability in Iraq and is backing us in fighting terrorism. There is no justification for a stern (U.S.) stance on Syria,” said Talabani, who lived in Syria in exile in the 1970s.

When we are talking about regime change in Iraq, you believe that the US did this for oil. But at the same as you know the US gets oil from other Gulf countries, South American countries, and Norway. How do you explain that?

The primary issue is not access but rather control. That is clear both from internal documentation and from the historical record. The US followed the same Middle East policies for decades when it was not using a drop of Middle East oil, and even now, intelligence projects that while controlling the Middle East for the traditional reasons, the US should rely on more secure Atlantic Basin reserves: West Africa and the Western hemisphere. Hence the kinds of considerations you raise are of only limited significance.

Over 60 years ago, the State Department described the oil reserves of the Gulf as “a stupendous source of strategic power” and “one of the greatest material prizes in world history.” Iraq is at the heart of the region, and is itself estimated to have the second largest reserves in the world (after Saudi Arabia). Iraqi sources are also very cheap to extract: no deep sea drilling, extraction from tar sands, etc. Establishment of a US client state in Iraq, and a base for long-term military deployment (as is now being implemented), would greatly enhance US dominance over this “stupendous source of strategic power” and ensure that the wealth from this great “material prize” would flow into the preferred hands. That is understood by the more astute policy analysts and planners. One of them, Zbigniew Brzezinski, pointed out that if the invasion of Iraq succeeded, the US would gain “critical leverage” over its industrial rivals in Europe and Asia. He was reiterating the observations of one of the most important of the early post-war planners, George Kennan, who advised that control over Middle East oil would provide the US with “veto power” over industrial rivals. The same factors enter into the conflicts over pipelines from Central Asia: US planners want to ensure that they go to the West, not the East, and that the pipelines should follow a complicated path to avoid Russia and Iran, so as to ensure US control. China, Russia, and other participants in the Asian Energy Security Grid and Shanghai Cooperation Council naturally have different ideas. Vice-President Dick Cheney, the most influential foreign policy figure in the Bush Administration, observed that control over pipelines can serve as a “tool of intimidation.” He was referring of course to control by others, but understands perfectly well that the same is true of US control.

These matters, though obvious, are largely excluded from Western discourse. Doctrinal managers would like us to believe that the US and UK would have “liberated” Iraq even if its major exports were lettuce and pickles and the major energy resources of the world were in the South Pacific. It takes really impressive discipline “not to see” the obvious.

Failing to prove the previous justifications to invade Iraq, the US then used democracy concerns to justify the war. This is your viewpoint stated in an interview. But as you know in the agenda of post- 9/11 New World Order spreading democracy is a key objective. So why do you doubt this democracy? While it is obvious that Saddam had and used chemical weapons against the Kurds?

To be more accurate, I was citing reports in the mainstream press and scholarship, which reviewed these very clear changes as they occurred. Interviews do not have footnotes, but the sources are cited in my books Hegemony or Survival (2004) and Failed States (2006). Bush, Blair, Powell and others stressed insistently that the “single question” is whether Saddam will abandon his programs of weapons of mass destruction. It was only after the failure to discover WMD that government rhetoric shifted to the President’s “messianic mission” to bring democracy to Iraq and the Middle East. Very quickly, journalism and much of scholarship shifted and commentators “jumped on the bandwagon,” as the prominent Middle East specialist Augustus John Norton accurately wrote. The “messianic mission” was proclaimed in Washington in November 2003 with great fanfare, and since then has become a staple of commentary, as reviewed in Failed States.

True, there were also the ritual phrases about bringing democracy, but they were marginal, and are routine no matter what policies are being undertaken. These conclusions, clear from the factual record, are now underscored by recently released secret documents, including the Presidential Directive of Aug. 29, 2002, called “Iraq Goals, Objectives and Strategy.” The proimary goal is “to eliminate Iraqi weapons of mass destruction” and to prevent Iraq from “becoming a more dangerous threat to the region and beyond,” and to cut Iraq’s “links to and sponsorship of international terrorism.” Scattered through, again, are the routine and meaningless phrases about “moderation, pluralism and democracy,” which no one takes seriously because they accompany every plan, and always have. Not only is all of this familiar from long before, but it is also quite similar to the rhetoric of other powers, including the worst monsters. Even Stalin proclaimed the mission of establishing democracy. These are among the reasons why no one should pay attention to the exalted rhetoric of political leaders: it is predictable, and therefore carries no information.

I might add that of all the people in the world, Kurds should be the first to recognize these elementary truths, after their long history of betrayal on the part of pretended benefactors.

There have also been strenuous efforts to create the myth that the post-9/11 agenda was spreading democracy. That is dramatically false. 9/11 was followed by a remarkable display of contempt for democracy, both in words and in deeds, perhaps unique in history. I have reviewed the record in the books mentioned, and will not repeat here, but it is unmistakable.

The truth of the matter is recognized by the most prominent scholar/advocates of “democracy promotion.” The most respected of them is Thomas Carothers, head of the Democracy and Law project of the Carnegie Endowment, who describes himself as a neo-Reaganite. He writes in part from an insider’s perspective, having served in Reagan’s State Department programs of “democracy enhancement.” He is an honest scholar, and recognizes that these programs were a failure, in fact, a highly systematic failure. In the regions where US influence was least, there was progress in democracy, despite strenuous efforts of the Reagan administration to prevent it. The worst record was in the regions where the US had the most influence. He also explains the reasons: Washington would permit only “top-down forms” of democracy in which traditional elites, linked to the US, would retain power in deeply undemocratic societies.

Condi feels good about herself. She thinks her trip to the region was a success. She got Abbas and Olmert to agree to talk about future statehood for Palestine. What about Hamas, do they not have a say in the matter? Are they not the legal representatives of the Palestinian people elected a year ago?

Regarding Hamas…Rice also found a positive aspect to Hamas, noting that its involvement in the political system and participation in elections have made things “in some sense more complicated,” but she said its inability to govern “has led Hamas to, I think, some very, very difficult situations in which they’re trying to find their ways out.” Rice noted that in 2000, Hamas had been a resistance movement not at all involved politically.

INABILITY TO GOVERN????? Who’s fault is that? Was it not Israel that said it would NEVER negotiate with a Hamas led government? Was it not the United States that said it would NEVER negotiate with a Hamas led government? Was it not both the States and Israel that cut Hamas off from all funds coming to them?

Well…. wake up and smell the coffee guys…. HAMAS IS THE GOVERNMENT OF PALESTINE! Like it or not, they are the ones that will decide who to negotiate with about statehood…. not Abbas. Abbas knows this and better stop playing his game of power tripping, it will only cause him to fall flat on his face.

[Rachel’s introduction: “What intrigues Williams are not just extreme forms of racism, but their subtler, more insidious, day-to-day manifestations. A huge body of research on health disparities has led him to conclude that stress resulting from institutionalized racism and discrimination, be it real or perceived, blatant or muted, is an ‘added pathogenic factor’ that contributes to well-above-average levels of hypertension, respiratory illness, anxiety, depression, and other ills in minority populations.”]

By Richard Saltus

In his latest bid to unearth the dark, tangled roots of disparities in health between blacks and whites, Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) newcomer David R. Williams has gone to South Africa….

Insidious racism

Williams looks at social policies and historical patterns of discrimination through a sociologist’s lens. By sifting and sorting data in fresh ways, he has cast new light on the causes of blacks’ poorer health and rates of survival, observe his new colleagues at HSPH. In August, Williams joined the faculty as the Florence Sprague Norman and Laura Smart Norman Professor of Public Health in the Department of Society, Human Development, and Health.

What intrigues Williams are not just extreme forms of racism, but their subtler, more insidious, day-to-day manifestations. A huge body of research on health disparities has led him to conclude that stress resulting from institutionalized racism and discrimination, be it real or perceived, blatant or muted, is an “added pathogenic factor” that contributes to well-above-average levels of hypertension, respiratory illness, anxiety, depression, and other ills in minority populations. Socioeconomic status is just part of the problem. While lower-income people generally tend to be less healthy, Williams says, “blacks do more poorly than whites at every level of socioeconomic status.”

The roots of health disparities run so deep that they’re invisible to most of society, he has found. “A lot of what I struggle with is understanding the larger social, political, and economic context in which health is embedded and the broader forces, many of them hidden, that shape mobility and access to health care,” Williams says. “I have argued, for example, that residential segregation, resulting from historical racist policies, is a fundamental cause of excess levels of ill health in the African-American population.”

Segregation by neighborhood is so high at every income bracket in the United States that, in many cities, it comes close to levels once legally mandated by apartheid in South Africa, Williams says. Sixty- six percent of blacks would have to move in order to distribute blacks and whites evenly.

Truth in numbers

Over the past decade, Williams has been among the top 10 most-cited researchers in the social sciences. His more than 100 papers have yielded insights such as these:

Blacks die at twice the rate of whites in the age groups 1-4 and 25-54–a grim fact often missed in comparisons of overall mortality rates, which yield a 30 percent mortality disadvantage for blacks.

In Pitt County, North Carolina, the odds of having hypertension were seven times higher for black men who as children and adults had low socioeconomic status (SES) than for black men whose SES was high.

[Catherine Austin Fitts served as Assistant Secretary of Housing and Federal Housing Commissioner at HUD in the first Bush Administration; she previously served as Managing Director and Member of the Board of Directors of the Wall Street investment bank, Dillon, Read & Co., Inc.]

The day after 9-11, a person whom I respect and care about a great deal said to me, “George Bush was anointed by God for a time such as this.” He then asked me what I thought. I said that I thought that the Bush family was anointed by financial fraud, narcotics trafficking, and pedophilia. Stunned, he said, “If that is true, then it’s hopeless.” I replied that things were far from hopeless, but that for me solutions started with faith in a divine intelligence rather than affirming a dependent relationship with organized crime.

Last week I had dinner with a wonderful couple — activists in the San Francisco Bay Area — and the woman told me how wonderful she thought Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth was. She then asked for my opinion. When I gave it, she said, “If that is true, then it’s hopeless.” We then proceeded to have a rich conversation about why folks who used to call themselves “liberal” or progressive are in the same trap as folks who use to call themselves “conservative.”

In order to respond to the problem of global warming, it is necessary to look at the ways that we as citizens support criminal activity by our government and how we as consumers, depositors and investors support the private banking, corporate and investment interests that run our government in this manner. This is easier said than done. When we ‘get it’ — i.e., that we have to withdraw from a co-dependent relationship with organized crime in order to save and rebuild our world — we can find ourselves struggling to envision the system-wide actions that are needed and feeling overwhelmed by the task of determining how to go about them personally and in collaboration with others.

My nickname for our current economic system is “The Tapeworm.” For decades I have listened to Americans from all walks of life insist that we must find solutions within the system — i.e. within the socially acceptable boundaries laid down by the Tapeworm. Believing that our solutions for addressing global warming lie within the system defined by the Tapeworm goes hand in hand with obtaining our media from companies controlled by the Tapeworm, and having to choose from among leaders anointed by the Tapeworm, such as Al Gore. This belief is, in fact, the source of our hopelessness.

George Orwell once said that omission is the greatest form of lie. Gore’s omissions in An Inconvenient Truth are so extraordinary that it is hard to know where to start.

Watching An Inconvenient Truth is more useful for understanding how propaganda is made and used than for understanding the risks of global warming (I am not qualified to judge the scientific evidence here — I am assuming that Gore’s presentation on global warming is sound).

The fundamental lie that Al Gore is telling comes from defining our problem as environmental — in this case global warming, whereas our environmental problems — as real and important as they are — are but a symptom of the problem, not the problem. Gore defines our problem as “what.” He is silent on “who.” For example, Gore does not ask or answer:

** Who is doing this?

** Who has been governing our planet this way and why?

** Cui bono? Who benefits?

** Who has suppressed alternative technologies resulting in our dependency on fossil fuels? Why?

** Who has generated how much financial capital generated from this damage?

** How did things get this bad without our changing? How much was related to fear of and dirty tricks of those in charge?

** How do we recapture resources that have been criminally drained and use them to invest in restoring environmental balance?

Utah Phillips once said, “The earth is not dying. It is being killed, and the people killing it have names and addresses.” In one sentence, Utah Phillips told us more about global warming than Al Gore has told us in a lifetime of writing and speaking, let alone in An Inconvenient Truth.

(With apologies to reader anonymous who called attention to this interesting article, this is only a short summary, with a few extracts. The article is by Abdulbari Atwan, who is editor in chief of Al-Quds al-Arabi, but this piece isn’t in that paper, but rather in today’s edition of the Egyptian paper Al-Shaab, from where it was also picked up by a Libyan paper called Akhbar Libya).

Atwan writes that anyone who knows Hosni Mubarak knows what when he is upset with something he can’t help letting people around him know about it, so people know that following the recent visit of Condoleeza Rice he has been quite upset and puzzled about why the United States seems to be so angry: What to they want us to do that we aren’t already doing, asks Mubarak. Atwan says the anxiety and the bitterness are understandable, but what he doesn’t get is why Murarak is in the dark about the reasons. America is facing deteriorating crises in the region: Afghanistan is going from one failure to another. Iraq has turned into a nightmare. Confrontation with Iran is extremely close if not closer, and is awaiting only the trigger-mechanism.

In these circumstances, the United States is looking to its allies in the region for help, but what the United States finds is that these allies themselves [far from being able to help the United States solve any of its crises] are themselves in need of help, in fact they are a millstone around its neck.