The Rag Blog

Showing up for work!
1992-1993

At the crack of dawn one humid July morning, I mounted my trusty iron horse and pedaled off to La Julia in Batabano municipality, 50 kilometers south of my Havana residence. I was on my way to participate in what Che called that “special atmosphere” of collective volunteer labor.

“To build communism, you must build new man, as well as the economic base…the instrument for mobilizing the masses … must be moral in character … Work must cease being what it still is today, a compulsory social obligation, and be transformed into a social duty … Our goal is that the individual feels the need to perform voluntary labor out of internal motivation, as well as because of the special atmosphere that exists.” (1)

A “Special Period” was declared by the State soon after the collapse of European state socialism. Cubans lost 63% of their foodstuffs, previously imported from Comecon trade partners. They also lost 85% of export income including oil-for-sugar barter trade.

Cuba’s leaders designated plan alimentario (food plan) as priority number one, alongside tourism. The state emphasizes becoming self-sufficient in many areas. Everybody’s belt had to be tightened.

After cycling without stop for two hours, a sign marked GIA-2 appeared on the flat horizon saturated with banana plants and vegetable crops. The camp looked like others I had just passed: white-painted, one-story concrete dormitory buildings neatly arranged in rows. Shrubs, flowers and garden vegetables grew between the buildings. In the distance, I could just make out the sea where I had sailed past Batabano on petroleum runs.

GIA-2´s director, Oscar Geerken, a handsome man in his mid-40s, led me to his cubicle where I’d be staying. It had four, two-tiered bunk beds, thin foam rubber mattresses and pillows. Two ventilators whirled overhead to cool the room and chase away persistent mosquitoes—Cuba’s only dangerous animal, Fidel was fond of saying.

“We built this camp ourselves with help from local constructors,” proudly proclaimed the mustachioed Oscar, “and we did it in just 29 days.”

Geerken was a chemistry teacher and school administrator, who had come here with the original 120 founders, in November 1990. He, like the others, would get his job back following two years of volunteer work, or even before if he quit earlier.

Something funny has been happening to the CCTV cameras in our neighbourhood. They have started growing ears. Not real ones – at least not yet – but audio functions enabling them to “hear” what is happening around them as well as see. At the moment the experiment is confined to six cameras operating in the Soho area of Westminster, London, which has a high concentration of clubs and bars. An advanced wireless network which the council is building relays the information to a monitoring centre. If it is successful, it will be expanded to other selected areas. Police in the UK are also thinking about installing new CCTV cameras sensitive enough to record conversations up to 100 yards away to thwart hooliganism but, wisely, are keen to have a national debate about it first.

Westminster council claims that the devices don’t eavesdrop since they monitor ambient noise, not actual voices. For instance, if the decibels emanating from clubs rise above acceptable levels late at night then the authorities are automatically informed so, instead of sending out noise monitoring officers they can ring the club’s owners to warn them or, if it is serious enough, take the appropriate action.

WASHINGTON — President Bush quietly has claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans’ mail without a judge’s warrant.

Bush asserted the new authority Dec. 20 after signing legislation that overhauls some postal regulations. He then issued a “signing statement” that declared his right to open mail under emergency conditions, contrary to existing law and contradicting the bill he had just signed, according to experts who have reviewed it.

A White House spokeswoman disputed claims that the move gives Bush any new powers, saying the Constitution allows such searches.

Still, the move, one year after The New York Times’ disclosure of a secret program that allowed warrantless monitoring of Americans’ phone calls and e-mail, caught Capitol Hill by surprise.

“Despite the president’s statement that he may be able to circumvent a basic privacy protection, the new postal law continues to prohibit the government from snooping into people’s mail without a warrant,” said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the incoming House Government Reform Committee chairman, who co-sponsored the bill.

Experts said the new powers could be easily abused and used to vacuum up large amounts of mail.

“The [Bush] signing statement claims authority to open domestic mail without a warrant, and that would be new and quite alarming,” said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington.

“You have to be concerned,” a senior U.S. official agreed. “It takes executive-branch authority beyond anything we’ve ever known.”

A top Senate Intelligence Committee aide promised a review of Bush’s move.

“It’s something we’re going to look into,” the aide said.
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Most of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act deals with mundane changes. But the legislation also explicitly reinforces protections of first-class mail from searches without a court’s approval.

Yet, in his statement, Bush said he will “construe” an exception, “which provides for opening of an item of a class of mail otherwise sealed against inspection in a manner consistent … with the need to conduct searches in exigent circumstances.”

How many people who aren’t news junkies know that Madrid Airport was bombed on Saturday? Relatively few I would venture, and that’s because major western governments and their media mouthpieces don’t hype terror unless Muslims are behind it.

I personally only caught the story a couple of days after it happened on an obscure channel on UK digital satellite called Euro News. Operatives of the Basque separatist organization ETA packed 800kg of explosives in a car bomb that ripped apart the parking lot of Barajas Madrid Airport, killing two and injuring twenty people.

The American voters in November made it clear that it’s time to start withdrawing from Iraq. Political leaders from both parties and any number of experts are increasingly coming to the realization that American soldiers are dying, day in and day out, in pursuit of an unattainable goal.

So what is President Bush about to do? By all indications: escalate. His “new way forward” in Iraq appears to call for more troops — along with a series of other measures that might have helped if he’d taken them three years ago.

News reports suggest that Bush’s plan is not likely to win enthusiastic support, even from within his own party. But my question is: Where’s the outrage?

For pan-Arab writers like Abdulbari Atwan of Al-Quds al-Arabi, there was never any doubt about the nature of Bush-administration policy in Iraq and the whole region. It is anti-Arab and anti-Muslim. But “moderate” Arab writers have traditionally kept open the defence of incompetence or other extenuating circumstances. For one moderate writer, it seems as if something in his way of thinking snapped as a result of the Saddam lynching. Here’s Daoud Shiryan writing on the opinions page of the moderate newspaper Al-Hayat yesterday:

Today, after the boasts of Maliki about the execution of Saddam in this barbaric way, and the agreement of the American government to this hanging, in this grotesque way counter to all American and human values, we need to stop talking about the American policy mistakes in Iraq, because what they are doing in that country is in pursuance of an intentional and a filthy plan, [where] they dissolved the Iraqi army, and then it was up to us [Arabs] to find excuses for their policies, undertaken in deliberate ignorance of regional history and Iraqi social structure, and when they permitted the adoption of a constitution that ended the Arab nature of Iraq, we called that democracy, but then came the execution of Saddam, and [finally] it was made clear to us that Washington is acting according to a savagery that is unprecedented, and they are now supporting a gang of Shiites to take the place of the neo-cons in the project that they call the new Iraq…

If they help to propagate a war, heck yes.

One fact many of those who visit this blog do not know is that 35 of the 55 “deck of cards” were Shia.

Most of the Iraq military was Shia. Many of these Shia fought and died for Iraq. Not for Sistani, may god curse his bones, not for Ali, not for Sadr and not for Mohammed.

They fought for Iraq. They died for Iraq. They returned home in coffins, without eyes, and ears and burned and maimed. Those that were captured and interned in Iran were tortured by the Badr Brigade.

Many Shia who refused to side with Iran were executed.

Why is it these reports are never made in AP, AFP, Reuters, CNN, MSNBC? Why?

Why did they not interview Abu Abdullah, my neighbor in Baghdad, who was twice wounded on the battlefront. TWICE! He insisted on returning after taking shrapnel in his left thigh.

And the second time, he lost a kidney. He was always walking with a cane. Soft-spoken man who was decorated far more times than I remember.

He was revered by all in the neighborhood as the war hero among us.

AND HE WAS SHIA.

So, not surprising to read in the media today:

The spokesman for the Arab Baath Socialist Party, which ruled Iraq from 1968 to 2003, who asked to be identified as Abu Muhammad for security reasons, said: “Most Western media outlets have been helping the US occupation authorities to portray the Baath party as a Sunni party which suppressed the Shia and deprived them of their rights.

“Actually, sect was never an issue in Iraq. I am a Shia and I have been a senior Baath official … No Baath party official – no Iraqi official – ever asked me about my sect.

“When the US army occupied Iraq they issued a list of 55 wanted top Iraqi officials, starting with President Saddam Hussein; half of those senior officials were Shia.

“The Committee of Debaathification issued a list of 100,000 senior Iraqi Baathists who would not be allowed to enjoy governmental posts, 66,000 of them were Shia – so how is the Baath party a Sunni party.

The State of Israel calls it “fight for existence” or “fight against terror”. Its detractors call it “colonization”, “apartheid”, or “ethnic cleansing”. Baruch Kimmerling coined the term “politicide of Palestinians”. Edward Said spoke of slow bleeding. Recently, even words such as “genocide”[1] have been used. Let us try to define the Israeli policy, and then grapple with the question of proper naming.

It should be stated in advance, that by ףpolicyפ I mean consistent long term developments pursued by the different Israeli governments in the Occupied Territories . Its major element has been massive settlement construction in conjunction with land grab. By now the number of Israeli Jewish citizens residing beyond Israel עs 1967 border nears 0.44 million (including Jerusalem ). The built-up area of the settlements consists of less than 3% of the area of the West Bank , but the area which they officially dominate (municipal jurisdiction) constitutes over 40% [2].

Presently, more than 1/3 of the West Bank is out of reach for most Palestinians [3]. A second element has been confinement of West Bank Palestinians to disconnected enclaves, and attrition of the enclaves by military invasions and economic blockade [4].

On the other hand, I shall attach little significance to the recent Olmert-Abbas meeting, and to recent declarations by PM Olmert of forthcoming goodwill gestures towards Palestinians. Similar declarations by Israeli leaders were made periodically in the past, and have thus been an integral part of the Israeli policy.

From Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER):

Grand Canyon National Park is not permitted to give an official estimate of the geologic age of its principal feature, due to pressure from Bush administration appointees. Despite promising a prompt review of its approval for a book claiming the Grand Canyon was created by Noah’s flood rather than by geologic forces, more than three years later no review has ever been done and the book remains on sale at the park, according to documents released today by [PEER].

PEER says the new director of the National Park Service (NPS), Mary Bomar, has been stalling requests to remove a book that presents the Creationist version of the formation of the Grand Canyon titled, “Grand Canyon: A Different View,” by Tom Vail. The group also says that the park’s interpretive rangers are forbidden from providing the age of the canyon based on its geology.

In August 2003, Park Superintendent Joe Alston attempted to block the sale at park bookstores of [Vail’s book]. NPS Headquarters, however, intervened and overruled Alston. To quiet the resulting furor, NPS Chief of Communications David Barna told reporters and members of Congress that there would be a high-level policy review of the issue.

According to a recent NPS response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by PEER, no such review was ever requested, let alone conducted or completed.

You see it’s not just about murder it is about power; Klaus had broken into Hitler’s psychotic delusions with the reality of possible sudden death. The psychopathic serial killer lives in a tower of fantasies of their own making, not just of power but also of intelligence. They strive to prove to the world not only are they powerful but they’re more intelligent as well. When ever anyone questioned Hitler’s military planning he would berate them and explain his past glories, and if you make a habit of it and your career would be short.

Thousands were taken and suspended by meat hooks and then hung with piano wire, and at the express orders of Adolph Hitler the executions were filmed. At his first viewing of the films Hitler was jubilant as he watched the films with glee, innocent guilty made no difference to him it was about power. The power to inflict suffering on those perceived to threaten his fantasy. Psychopaths are the most dangerous of all mentally ill; for all intents and purposes they can appear completely normal. Like all of us the have a public personality but behind that is a hidden murderous rage, they are very ill, abused as children they seek out revenge on those that hurt them and those who threaten their fantasy.

Hitler living in Vienna out of work and down on his luck was befriended by a Jewish man who operated second hand store, the man feeling sorry for Hitler seeing he had no over coat gave him one. To you and I this would be considered and act of kindness but to the psychopath Hitler this was an affront. He was Adolph Hitler and Jews were feeling sorry for him? The nerve! If the Jews in Vienna were successful and he was not then whom he thought was responsible for that? George Bush as a make believe Texas oil man was bailed out financially time and again by Arab investors, to you and I that might be considered and act of kindness…

Hitler ordered the execution films shown to the troops but the troops refused to watch in mass. They were soldiers not psychopaths if it had been presented with the choice of executing only they guilty and freeing the innocent they would have released the innocent immediately. To Hitler it was sending a message to those who would threaten his fantasy that he had the power and enjoyed their sufferings.

When then Governor George Bush refused the last minute death row appeal for clemency from Carla Faye Tucker he mocked her sufferings to a reporter. Tucker had been born again while in prison and many evangelicals endorsed her appeal. But then Governor Bush showed her no clemency nor anyone else for that matter as Governor for eight years not once was clemency ever granted, I wonder why? Setting the record for the most executions not only as Texas governor but also anywhere in the United States.

Bush as a child had a history of tormenting small animals and while in a fraternity at Yale added the burning of pledges to the initiation ritual. To willfully inflict pain on others is a clear sign of mental illness, to do so as a child is a warning sign. To do so in college is to prove your power over others. During the blitz in London during WW2 Churchill made a point to tour the most devastated areas to show solidarity with the people to empathize with their sufferings. Hitler never once toured devastated areas of Germany because it threatened his fantasy his inviolability is it any wonder then why the President doesn’t attend soldier’s funerals or allows photographs? He wants to be able to watch TV too.

Towards the end Hitler submerged in his bunker under the chancellery began to give grandiose orders to non-existent forces. When advised by Albert Speer his ministry of supply that Germany would be out of fuel in days Hitler advised we will fight on to the end with a policy of scorched earth! Speer asked, what about the German people how will they survive? Hitler said they have failed me and do not deserve to survive. What is the administrations newest talking point? Why are we failing in Iraq? Because… It’s the Iraqi’s fault! They have failed us!

So Saddam has been murdered excuse me executed and at someone’s orders the execution was filmed, hmm, I wonder whom? But why did Iraqi Judges try Saddam in Iraq? His defense was always under the Iraqi constitution he was the head law enforcement official in the country, which was true. But he was tried under the new Iraqi constitution written by Paul Bremer under that constitution Saddam did not have that right. I wonder if that’s why occupying powers are not allowed to change the occupied country’s laws under the Geneva Convention? But why not take him to The Hague then to be tried? Don’t we want to bring Iraq into the civilized family of nations? Isn’t that our stated goal du jour?

I think it might have gone something like this, “Mr. Hussein when you gassed the Kurds who supplied you with these horrible weapons?” “Mr. Donald Rumsfeld sir of the United States.” And Mr. Hussein how did you know where the Kurds were?” “The US CIA was supplying us with satellite photo’s but they were out of date.” “Out of date what do mean sir?” “We were trying to gas the Iranian military but we got bad intelligence in the form of out of date satellite photos that showed Iranian troops occupying the village.” “Mr. Hussein do you honestly expect the court to accept as your defense that because you’ve gotten bad intelligence the deaths of these people can be excused!”

“Mr. Prosecutor if you want me to plead guilty to gassing thousands of Iranians I will do that now!” “No, Mr. Hussein you can gas as many Iranians as you like we don’t care it is only when you gas people unintentionally that concerns us here. I want to get back to your defense of bad intelligence.”