The Rag Blog

Editor’s Note: This is the second installment in Ron Ridenour’s wonderful series on his volunteer farm work in Cuba after the fall of the Soviet Union which left Cuba in dire economic straits. The response of the Cuban people to their devastating losses at that time are not only creative and resourceful, but downright exemplary and inspiring. If you missed the Ridenour’s first report on his work in 1992-1993, we encourage you to read it first as it sets the stage for his second report below. – Les Blough, Editor

Food Distribution

Batabano’s Farm production director, Aldolfo Montalvo, and Contingente Col. Mambi Juan Delgado overall leader biggest headache in achieving the huge and new task of feeding much of the province of Havana was distributing the harvests before they wasted away.

I attended the first national assembly meeting in Havana concerning the progress of plan alimentario, in which distribution was discussed. Candido Palmero, the chief of Contingente Blas Roca, one of the most distinguished contingents, delivered a report to the nation’s leaders. Palmero had recently been named head of all the new agricultural contingents. He told the deputies that the contingents could guarantee the production goals for next year but there was one major problem. The large calloused-handed man paused. He and Fidel looked at one other from across the large hall. The president gestured for Candido to continue.

“What I can’t guarantee is that you will eat all the harvested crops, because we don´t have our own trucks to distribute the goods.”

Palmero now spoke to a hushed assembly. “We recommend that farm-workers should have the responsibility, the authority and the means to do the entire job, from breaking ground to delivery.”

A food truck unloading in Havana. In the early-to-mid nineties old trucks like these were used to distribute food. All that has changed since the Bolivarian Revolution began in Venezuela.

Fidel enthusiastically agreed and so did the deputies, who decided that each state farm would get its own transportation to delivery production. This would first be tried in Havana’s fifteen municipalities. The bureaucratic distribution system is a centralized one in which all harvests are transported to central markets, called Acopios, where they are unloaded. Smaller distribution trucks are then assigned to load the products again and distribute them to smaller neighborhood markets. This process is almost never carried out in a timely fashion. The double work of loading and unloading, and transporting results in constant losses of edible foods.

In 1993, Defense Minister Raúl Castro said that the Farming Production Cooperatives (CPA) were six times more effective than the state collectives. CPAs had been formed in the 1960s as cooperatives of private farmers, owners and usufructaries. Members share in profits from sales and can hire day laborers at peak times. State farm workers received fix wages regardless of production quantity or quality. Raúl proposed that most of the granjas, which held 80% of agricultural lands (four million hectares), be transformed into new usufruct cooperatives with some CPA benefits.

The government then established a new cooperative structure, Basic Unit of Co-operative Production-UBPC, “to simulate greater production”.
Key features of the new UBPC decree-law 142 are:

* Co-operative members have full use of the land without owning it—unlike CPAs where co-operators are full owners.

* UBPC members are owners of production, like the CPAs, in that they are free to work and organize as they choose but must sell their produce to the state at agreed upon prices.

* Farm equipment, seed, fertilizer, herbicides, pesticides, petroleum, parts, irrigation and other supplies are provided by the state on credit.

* Labor is paid, in part, by profit-sharing. The state advances an average monthly wage and capital to get started. Credit is repaid from the sale of harvests.

* UBPCs must be cost-accountable, profitable enterprises.

* UBPC members elect their leadership, which is subject to recall. Worker leadership represents all workers before state managers and state investors.

Hidden behind the smoke of firing guns and chaotic scenes in Iraq is the greedy face of Multinational Corporations and their political patrons, who have been waiting to make a killing in the oil fields of Iraq. Oil exploration and extraction used to be a state enterprise of Iraq during Saddam Hussein’s rule. With Saddam Hussein through the gallows, one obstruction is cleared.

Oil, the “Black-Blood” of Global Economy, is an Iraqi natural resource. But the draft legislation is on the table to be presented to the Iraqi parliament to sign it into a law. It is currently being termed as “Hydrocarbon Law”. This law will allow oil-hawks to take a bigger bite out of the energy resource in the war ridden and collapsed state of Iraq. It is going to be called Production Sharing Agreement (PSA). Common practice for investments is to offers rights for extraction for 10-15 year whereas in case of Iraq it may be up to 30 years. Until the costs of a project have been recovered oil companies would be allowed to keep 70% of the profit. Elsewhere 40% would be a standard. Once the costs are recouped the companies’ share falls to 20%, which is still double other comparable agreement.

There were prophetic voices in the world alarming about greed for oil when WMD-danger was being moved as an argument for invasion of Iraq. British and the US high officials, at that time, had vehemently denied any intentions of controlling Iraqi oil. Tony Blair went to the extent of saying that Iraqi oil should be put into a trust fund to be run by UN for Iraqis. Obviously, it seems that the promises made before the war have been conveniently forgotten.

There are vast oil reserves in many parts of the world. Iraq has about 115 billion barrels, the second largest in the world. Despite the present violence there, it appears to be most promising for future profits. Elsewhere there are hindrances like tight controls of states, limitations on extraction of oil as in Venezuela by Hugo Chavez, and high cost of drilling out of North America etc. These are few factors for looking at huge oil fields in Iraq where the oil geological stratum is not too far deep under the surface. It will translate into the lowest cost of extraction in the whole world.

In a scenario where cost of extraction remains the same as the selling price is not a viable business strategy, to state the obvious; projections in case of Iraq are that there will be high yield with good profit margins. Oil corporations have always been aware of this fact. This fact alone makes the core of US Middle East foreign policy that was turning progressively hawkish against Iraq over the decades, partly due to the absence of polarity in the world that former Soviet Union provided and partly due to Saddam Hussein’s nationalism-based opposition to opening oil fields to private corporations for extraction of oil.

Here we have one branch of the Traditional Media reporting the true facts on the ground only to have the elite crew in the White House press corps ignore it when the president lies about these same facts to the very uniformed military personnel he intends to send into harm’s way.

If I’m lying, you’re dying: Pres. Bush was caught rewriting recent history in a speech he gave Thursday to the troops at Ft. Benning, Georgia, some of whom are preparing for their third deployment to Iraq. Here is the transcript of the president’s load of bull:

“The [Iraqi] Prime Minister came and said, look, I understand we’ve got to do something about this violence, and here is what I suggest we do. Our commanders looked at it, helped fine-tune it so it would work. . . .

“The commanders on the ground in Iraq, people who I listen to — by the way, that’s what you want your Commander-in-Chief to do. You don’t want decisions being made based upon politics, or focus groups, or political polls. You want your military decisions being made by military experts. And they analyzed the plan and they said to me, and to the Iraqi government, this won’t work unless we help them. There needs to be a bigger presence. . . .

“And so our commanders looked at the plan and said, Mr. President, it’s not going to work until — unless we support — provide more troops. And so last night I told the country that I’ve committed an additional — a little over 20,000 more troops, five brigades of which will be in Baghdad.”

Meanwhile, back in reality, the facts are quite different. The strategy of escalating the war came from the West Wing, not the Iraqi leadership or Bush’s generals:

[A Washington Post story Wednesday] made it abundantly clear that adding U.S. troops was not an idea that emerged from the American commanders — nor, for that matter, from the Iraqis.

And, as it turns out, two stories in this morning’s New York Times add to the evidence: “A narrative pieced together from interviews with participants and from public testimony suggests that through much of the process, generals who had been on the ground in Iraq during the past year had favored that the new strategy begin with a substantially smaller force than the one that President Bush announced to the nation on Wednesday night. In the end, it was Mr. Bush who appeared to drive his commanders along to the conclusion that more troops were needed.”

Not only were the Iraqis not involved in creating the plan, they are not happy about it, according to another Times report:

So, not surprisingly: “Iraq’s Shiite-led government offered only a grudging endorsement on Thursday of President Bush’s proposal to deploy more than 20,000 additional troops in an effort to curb sectarian violence and regain control of Baghdad. The tepid response immediately raised questions about whether the government would make a good-faith effort to prosecute the new war plan.”

Where was the White House press corps on this? Didn’t anyone in that elite corps of journalists know the facts about the origins of the escalation?

Or maybe the president lies so often, they’re inured to it.

The Armed Forces can’t adequately equip those already in uniform, but the Pentagon is committing itself to massive corporate contracts for new high-tech weapons systems slated to come on-line decades from now.

We are not winning the war on terrorism (and would not be even if we knew what victory looked like) or the war in Iraq. Our track record in Afghanistan, as well as in the allied “war” on drugs, is hardly better. Yet the Pentagon is hard at work, spending your money, planning and preparing for future conflicts of every imaginable sort.

From wars in space to sci-fi battlescapes without soldiers, scenarios are being scripted and weaponry prepared, largely out of public view, which ensures not future victories, but limitless spending that Americans can ill-afford now or 20 years from now.

Even though today the Armed Forces can’t recruit enough soldiers or adequately equip those already in uniform, the Pentagon is committing itself to massive corporate contracts for new high-tech weapons systems slated to come on-line years, even decades, from now, guaranteed only to enrich their makers.

Future Combat Systems

The typical soldier in Iraq carries about half his or her body weight in gear and suffers the resulting back pain. Body armor, weapon(s), ammunition, water, first aid kit — it adds up in the 120 degree heat of Basra or Baghdad.

As usual, it takes a few days for the truth to emerge, not that the corporate media here in America notices.

Instead of killing Fazul Abdullah Moham-med, Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan and Abu Taha al-Sudani, supposedly “al-Qaeda” operatives responsible for the 1998 US embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, the Pentagon killed “herdsmen … gathered with their animals around large fires at night to ward off mosquitoes” in Somalia, according to the Independent.

“Oxfam yesterday confirmed at least 70 nomads in the Afmadow district near the border with Kenya had been killed. The nomads were bombed at night and during the day while searching for water sources. Meanwhile, the US ambassador to Kenya has acknowledged that the onslaught on Islamist fighters failed to kill any of the three prime targets,” described as “backfir[ing] spectacularly” by the British newspaper.

The American company appointed to advise the US government on the economic reconstruction of Iraq has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars into Republican Party coffers and has admitted that its own finances are in chaos because of accounting errors and bad management.

BearingPoint is fighting to restore its reputation in the US after falling more than a year behind in reporting its own financial results, prompting legal actions from its creditors and shareholders.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, BearingPoint employees gave $117,000 (£60,000) to the 2000 and 2004 Bush election campaigns, more than any other Iraq contractor. Other recipients include three prominent Congressmen on the House of Representatives’ defence sub-committee, which oversees defence department contracts.

BearingPoint is being paid $240m for its work in Iraq, winning an initial contract from the US Agency for International Development (USAid) within weeks of the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. It was charged with supporting the then Coalition Provisional Authority to introduce policies “which are designed to create a competitive private sector”. Its role is to examine laws, regulations and institutions that regulate trade, commerce and investment, and to advise ministries and the central bank.

Last week The Independent on Sunday revealed that a BearingPoint employee, based in the US embassy in Baghdad, had been tasked with advising the Iraqi Ministry of Oil on drawing up a new hydrocarbon law. The legislation, which is due to be presented to Iraq’s parliament within days, will give Western oil companies a large slice of profits from the country’s oil fields in exchange for investing in new oil infrastructure.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 13 — The Pentagon has been using a little-known power to obtain banking and credit records of hundreds of Americans and others suspected of terrorism or espionage inside the United States, part of an aggressive expansion by the military into domestic intelligence gathering.

The C.I.A. has also been issuing what are known as national security letters to gain access to financial records from American companies, though it has done so only rarely, intelligence officials say.

Banks, credit card companies and other financial institutions receiving the letters usually have turned over documents voluntarily, allowing investigators to examine the financial assets and transactions of American military personnel and civilians, officials say.

The F.B.I., the lead agency on domestic counterterrorism and espionage, has issued thousands of national security letters since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, provoking criticism and court challenges from civil liberties advocates who see them as unjustified intrusions into Americans’ private lives.

But it was not previously known, even to some senior counterterrorism officials, that the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency have been using their own “noncompulsory” versions of the letters. Congress has rejected several attempts by the two agencies since 2001 for authority to issue mandatory letters, in part because of concerns about the dangers of expanding their role in domestic spying.

The military and the C.I.A. have long been restricted in their domestic intelligence operations, and both are barred from conducting traditional domestic law enforcement work. The C.I.A.’s role within the United States has been largely limited to recruiting people to spy on foreign countries.

Carl Kropf, a spokesman for the director of national intelligence, said intelligence agencies like the C.I.A. used the letters on only a “limited basis.”

Pentagon officials defended the letters as valuable tools and said they were part of a broader strategy since the Sept. 11 attacks to use more aggressive intelligence-gathering tactics — a priority of former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. The letters “provide tremendous leads to follow and often with which to corroborate other evidence in the context of counterespionage and counterterrorism,” said Maj. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman.

Government lawyers say the legal authority for the Pentagon and the C.I.A. to use national security letters in gathering domestic records dates back nearly three decades and, by their reading, was strengthened by the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act.

Jan. 12 – A new report suggests the Bush administration, the medical industry and business lobbyists have distorted and exploited the medical-malpractice “crisis” in the name of profit.

In an analysis released Wednesday by Public Citizen, the consumer advocacy group says the real crisis is the lack of accountability for doctors who commit avoidable medical errors.

Public Citizen researchers analyzed fifteen years of data from the federal National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB), which includes information on malpractice payouts made by doctors and disciplinary action against them. The Data Bank has known limitations, but Public Citizen says it is the best-available source on the subject.

The analysis found that the number of easily preventable medical errors, including operating on the incorrect body part or leaving a foreign object inside a patient’s body, jumped 40 percent between 2003 and 2005. The latter count – 705 cases – was the highest rate in eleven years.

The majority of malpractice payouts are also made by repeat offenders, according to Public Citizen’s analysis. About 6 percent of doctors were responsible for more than half of all malpractice payouts made between 1991 and 2005. The report noted that the overwhelming majority – 85 percent – of doctors have not been behind a single malpractice payout since the Data Bank was created.

While removing problematic practitioners from the field through license suspension or revocation could reduce the rate of medical liability, Public Citizen says doctors are infrequently disciplined beyond the monetary payment. The analysis of the Data Bank found that two-thirds of doctors responsible for ten or more malpractice payouts were not disciplined at all by their state boards of medicine.

The analysis of the Data Bank found that two-thirds of doctors responsible for ten or more malpractice payouts were not disciplined at all by their state boards of medicine.

Britons flying to America could have their credit card and email accounts inspected by the United States authorities following a deal struck by Brussels and Washington.

By using a credit card to book a flight, passengers face having other transactions on the card inspected by the American authorities. Providing an email address to an airline could also lead to scrutiny of other messages sent or received on that account.

The extent of the demands were disclosed in “undertakings” given by the US Department of Homeland Security to the European Union and published by the Department for Transport after a Freedom of Information request.

About four million Britons travel to America each year and the released document shows that the US has demanded access to far more data than previously realised.
advertisement

Not only will such material be available when combating terrorism but the Americans have asserted the right to the same information when dealing with other serious crimes.

Shami Chakrabarti, the director of the human rights group Liberty, expressed horror at the extent of the information made available. “It is a complete handover of the rights of people travelling to the United States,” she said.

As the Americans tightened security after the September 11 attacks, they demanded that airlines provide comprehensive information about passengers before allowing them to land.

But this triggered a dispute that came to a head last year in a Catch 22 situation. On one hand they were told they must provide the information, on the other they were threatened with heavy fines by EU governments for breaching European data protection legislation.

In October, Brussels agreed to sweep away the “bureaucratic hurdles” preventing airlines handing over this material after European carriers were threatened with exclusion from the US. The newly-released document sets out the rules underpinning that deal.

As a result the Americans are entitled to 34 separate pieces of Passenger Name Record (PNR) data — all of which must be provided by airlines from their computers.

There will be timetables, deadlines, benchmarks, goals for both America and its Iraqi satraps. But the war against terror can still be won. We shall prevail. Victory or death. And it shall be death.

President Bush’s announcement early this morning tolled every bell. A billion dollars of extra aid for Iraq, a diary of future success as the Shia powers of Iraq ­ still to be referred to as the “democratically elected government” ­ march in lockstep with America’s best men and women to restore order and strike fear into the hearts of al-Qa’ida. It will take time ­ oh, yes, it will take years, at least three in the words of Washington’s top commander in the field, General Raymond Odierno this week ­ but the mission will be accomplished.

Mission accomplished. Wasn’t that the refrain almost four years ago, on that lonely aircraft carrier off California, Bush striding the deck in his flying suit? And only a few months later, the President had a message for Osama bin Laden and the insurgents of Iraq. “Bring ’em on!” he shouted. And on they came. Few paid attention late last year when the Islamist leadership of this most ferocious of Arab rebellions proclaimed Bush a war criminal but asked him not to withdraw his troops. “We haven’t yet killed enough of them,” their videotaped statement announced.

Well, they will have their chance now. How ironic that it was the ghastly Saddam, dignified amid his lynch mob, who dared on the scaffold to tell the truth which Bush and Blair would not utter: that Iraq has become “hell” .

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Mahdi Army militia members have stopped wearing their black uniforms, hidden their weapons and abandoned their checkpoints in an apparent effort to lower their profile in Baghdad in advance of the arrival of U.S. reinforcements.

“We have explicit directions to keep a low profile . . . not to confront, not to be dragged into a fight and to calm things down,” said one official who received the orders from the anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Al-Sadr heads the Mahdi Army, Iraq’s largest Shiite militia, headquartered in Najaf.

The official asked not to be named because he was not authorized to reveal the militia’s plans.

Militia members say al-Sadr ordered them to stand down shortly after President George Bush’s announcement that the U.S. would send 17,500 more American troops to Baghdad to work alongside the Iraqi security forces.

Bush’s “surge” speech is a hoax, but members of Congress and media commentators are discussing the surge as if it were real.

I invite the reader to examine the speech. The “surge” content consists of nonsensical propagandistic statements. The real content of the speech is toward the end where Bush mentions Iran and Syria.

Bush makes it clear that success in Iraq does not depend on the surge. Rather, “Succeeding in Iraq . . . begins with addressing Iran and Syria.”

Bush asserts that “these two regimes are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq. Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops.”

Bush’s assertions are propagandistic lies.

The Iraq insurgency is Sunni. Iran is Shi’ite. If Iran is supporting anyone in Iraq it is the Shi’ites, who have not been part of the insurgency. Indeed, the Sunni and Shi’ites are engaged in a civil war within Iraq.

Does any intelligent person really believe that Iranian Shi’ites are going to arm Iraqi Sunnis who are killing Iraqi Shi’ites allied with Iran? Does anyone really believe that Iranian Shi’ites are going to provide sanctuary for Iraqi Sunnis?

Bush can tell blatant propagandistic lies, because Congress and the American people don’t know enough facts to realize the absurdity of Bush’s assertions.

Why is Bush telling these lies? Here is the answer: Bush says, “We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.”

In those words, Bush states perfectly clearly that victory in Iraq requires US forces to attack Iran and Syria. Moreover, Bush says, “We are also taking other steps to bolster the security of Iraq and protect American interests in the Middle East. I recently ordered the deployment of an additional carrier strike group to the region.”

What do two US aircraft carrier attack groups in the Persian Gulf have to do with a guerilla ground war in Iraq?