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iraq — vietnam on internet time
Only one post today on this anniversary of one of the darkest moments of American history. This is from Baghdad Burning. I'm including Riverbend's entire post. Go read everything else that she has written. If there is one blog about Iraq that you going to read, this should be it. For those that are not familiar with Riverbend, she is a 24 year old woman living in Baghdad. Happy anniversary.
The War on Terror...
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I'm feeling irritable and angry today. It's exactly a year since the war on Iraq began and it seems to be weighing heavily on everyone.
Last year, on this day, the war started during the early hours of the morning. I wasn't asleep… I hadn't slept since Bush's ultimatum a couple of days before. It wasn't because I was scared but because I didn't want to be asleep when the bombs started falling. The tears started falling with the first few thuds. I'm not very prone to tears, but that moment, a year ago today, I felt such sorrow at the sound of those bombs. It was a familiar feeling because it wasn't, after all, the first time America was bombing us. It didn’t seem fair that it was such a familiar feeling.
I felt horrible that Baghdad was being reduced to rubble. With every explosion, I knew that some vital part of it was going up in flames. It was terrible and I don't think I'd wish it on my worst enemy. That was the beginning of the 'liberation'… a liberation from sovereignty, a certain sort of peace, a certain measure of dignity. We've been liberated from our jobs, and our streets and the sanctity of our homes… some of us have even been liberated from the members of our family and friends.
A year later and our electricity is intermittent, at best, there constantly seems to be a fuel shortage and the streets aren't safe. When we walk down those streets, on rare occasions, the faces are haggard and creased with concern… concern over family members under detention, homes raided by Americans, hungry mouths to feed, and family members to keep safe from abduction, rape and death.
And where are we now, a year from the war? Sure- we own satellite dishes and the more prosperous own mobile phones… but where are we *really*? Where are the majority?
We're trying to fight against the extremism that seems to be upon us like a black wave; we're wondering, on an hourly basis, how long it will take for some semblance of normality to creep back into our lives; we're hoping and praying against civil war…
We're watching with disbelief as American troops roam the streets of our towns and cities and break violently into our homes... we're watching with anger as the completely useless Puppet Council sits giving out fat contracts to foreigners and getting richer by the day- the same people who cared so little for their country, that they begged Bush and his cronies to wage a war that cost thousands of lives and is certain to cost thousands more.
We're watching sardonically as an Iranian cleric in the south turns a once secular country into America's worst nightmare- a carbon copy of Iran. We're watching as the lies unravel slowly in front of the world- the WMD farce and the Al-Qaeda mockery.
And where are we now? Well, our governmental facilities have been burned to the ground by a combination of 'liberators' and 'Free Iraqi Fighters'; 50% of the working population is jobless and hungry; summer is looming close and our electrical situation is a joke; the streets are dirty and overflowing with sewage; our jails are fuller than ever with thousands of innocent people; we've seen more explosions, tanks, fighter planes and troops in the last year than almost a decade of war with Iran brought; our homes are being raided and our cars are stopped in the streets for inspections… journalists are being killed 'accidentally' and the seeds of a civil war are being sown by those who find it most useful; the hospitals overflow with patients but are short on just about everything else- medical supplies, medicine and doctors; and all the while, the oil is flowing.
But we've learned a lot. We've learned that terrorism isn't actually the act of creating terror. It isn't the act of killing innocent people and frightening others… no, you see, that's called a 'liberation'. It doesn't matter what you burn or who you kill- if you wear khaki, ride a tank or Apache or fighter plane and drop missiles and bombs, then you're not a terrorist- you're a liberator.
The war on terror is a joke… Madrid was proof of that last week… Iraq is proof of that everyday.
I hope someone feels safer, because we certainly don't.
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iraq — vietnam on internet time
Pilger on the US and terrorism
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TONY JONES: John Pilger, do you still maintain that the world depends on what you call "the Iraqi resistance" to inflict a military defeat on the coalition forces?
JOHN PILGER: Well, certainly, historically, we've always depended on resistances to get rid of occupiers, to get rid of invaders.
And what we have in Iraq now is I suppose the equivalent of a kind of Vichy Government being set up.
And a resistance is always atrocious, it's always bloody.
It always involves terrorism.
You can imagine if Australia was occupied by the Japanese during the Second World War the kind of resistance there would have been, and so on.
We've seen that all over the world.
Now, I think the situation in Iraq is so dire that unless the United States is defeated there that we're likely to see an attack on Iran, we're likely to see an attack on North Korea and all the way down the road it could be even an attack on China within a decade, so I think what happens in Iraq now is incredibly important.
TONY JONES: You mean defeated militarily?
JOHN PILGER: Yes.
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thanks to also not found in nature
color
My theory. Theory #1, that is mine.
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When I was about nine, I developed a theory. What if everybody actually sees very different colors but calls them by the same names. Like, I look at a tree and see its leaves as a color I call 'green'. When you look at the tree, you see a color that I would call 'red' but you call that color 'green'. The only way to prove the difference would be if I could climb into your body and see through your eyes and say 'hold on, you've got the colors all backwards."
It wasn't a terribly useful theory. Still, I've thought about it again quite often since starting my color class. What I've become increasingly aware of is how inaccurate my observations of color really are. I'm not colorblind and I have 20/20 vision but I rarely see what's really in front of me. The root cause seems to be the same thing that blocked me from drawing all those years: converting reality into symbols. I've discussed before my discovery that when we reduce our observations to symbolic shorthand (that's a car, that's a building, that's a person) we are forced to draw only symbols instead of accurate representations of the very specific reality that lies before us. If we are fairly well-versed in creating drawn symbols we can communicate the general ideas we perceive but can never capture the specific essence of what is there, in other words, draw accurately.
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thanks to rachael's latest
Cataloging Colors
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What does it take to name a color? Manufacturers do it every day for their own convenience. It helps them keep track of what they're making and how it's selling and distinguishes one season from another. Apparently, it also makes colors more desirable, forming associations between random hues and exotic places and objects and values and flavors and anything else that might help sell.
Still, there's something presumptuous about assigning a title to a particular color, like naming a star or a species or a mountain. Who gave Old Navy that right? And what a sloppy job they do too, giving very different colors the same name or vice versa. Crayola and Pantone are a lot better at it.
All this cavalier designation helps to compromise what we see. The names are meaningless because the relationship between the names and the colors are so inconsistent. These blues aren't the same when they are printed in our catalogs, or on our computers screens, or dyed into yarn, or worn in sunlight, or washed ten times.
What matters in the end is not these ill-fitted names but the fact that we recognize and appreciate the many hues we see all around us, that we don't become desensitized through commerce's clumsiness and yen to market everything under the sun, and start to mistrust the incredible abilities of our eyes and brains. When we try to shoehorn colors into chip and swatches, we diminish our environment and blind ourselves, just a little bit more, to the infinite subtlety and wonder of the universe.
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By any means necessary
It is not simply Israel's current hardline government that is to blame for the subjugation of Palestinians, but Zionism itself
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Israel's deputy defence minister, Ze'ev Boim, recently wondered whether there was a genetic defect that made Arabs terrorists. "What is it with Islam in general and the Palestinians in particular?" he asked on Israel army radio. "Is it some sort of cultural deficiency? Is it a genetic defect?"
The dismay this arouses will be discounted by some of Israel's friends simply as evidence of the extreme nature of its present government, with its barrier wall and its "transfer" enthusiasts. If only Sharon and his hardliners were replaced by moderates, they say, we could return to a halcyon pre-Likud past that promised peace and coexistence. But to believe this is to misunderstand the nature of Israel's dominant ideology - of which Ariel Sharon and his minister are nothing more than devoted servants. It is not he that is the problem, but the Zionism he espouses.
For those who have forgotten or never understood what Zionism meant in practice, the Israeli historian, Benny Morris's latest revelations and comments - published first in the Israeli daily Haaretz and then in the Guardian - make salutary reading. They have raised a storm of controversy that is still raging two months later, perhaps because they were too honest about an ideology that some would rather keep hidden. Morris, who first exposed the dark circumstances of Israel's creation in his groundbreaking 1988 book on the birth of the Palestinian refugee problem, explains the Israeli project with a brutal candour few Zionists have been prepared to display.
Using Israeli state archives for his recently revised study, he reminds us that Israel was set up by expulsion, rape and massacre. The Jewish state could not have come into being without ethnic cleansing and, he asserts, more may be necessary in future to ensure its survival. This bald assertion should shock no one, for it is entirely consistent with the basic Zionist proposition of an ethnically pure state. Palestine's indigenous population was a clear impediment to this aim; which is why the concept of transfer was so central to Zionist thinking long before 1948 - advocated by Zionism's leaders and expressed through a series of specific expulsion plans from the mid-1930s onwards. These led inexorably to the 1948 Palestinian exodus and the refugee tragedy that persists today.
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A grotesque choice
Israel's repression of the Palestinian people is fuelling a resurgence of anti-semitism
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I feel a commitment to the Jewish people, founded on awareness partly of their history, partly of their genius. Yet I see no reason why this should prevent me from asserting that the policies of Sharon and Netanyahu bring shame upon Israel.
It is ironic that Israel's domestic critics - former intelligence chiefs and serving fighter pilots - have shown themselves much braver than overseas Jews. If Israel persists with its current policies, and Jewish lobbies around the world continue to express solidarity with repression of the Palestinians, then genuine anti-semitism is bound to increase. Herein lies the lobbyists' recklessness. By insisting that those who denounce the Israeli state's behaviour are enemies of the Jewish people, they seek to impose a grotesque choice.
The Israeli government's behaviour to the Palestinians breeds a despair that finds its only outlet in terrorism. No one can ever criticise the Jewish diaspora for asserting Israel's right to exist. But the most important service the world's Jews can render to Israel today is to persuade its people that the only plausible result of their government's behaviour is a terrible loneliness in the world.
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comics
My Mom Was A Schizophrenic
 
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thanks to Spitting Image
Two-Handed Man Interviews Cartoonist Chester Brown
spain
Three Days in Spain
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The winds of change are blowing furiously through Spain today, as terrorism and war take center stage for the first time since September 11 as the determining factors in a democratic election.
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Arrogance to the Tenth Power
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I was watching TV this afternoon and there was footage showing how the railway service affected by the attack is working as usual since early this morning. It showed a trainful of commuters, some of them with tears in their eyes, some of them with an openly defiant expression on their faces. Some recognised they had felt a tingle in their stomach when boarding the train, but all said they were not going to change their life because of, and give in to, the assassins who had committed the atrocity.
I can assure you that appeasement doesn't come into the equation. Those who think otherwise forget that we have thousands of PP and PSOE councillors, old and young, who are risking their lives on a daily basis in the Basque country, sometimes getting killed for it, precisely because they refuse to appease the ETA thugs.
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thanks to Body and Soul
Spain in perspective
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As you will know well, Islamic terrorists blew four commuter trains in Madrid in the morning of March 11th, 2004, three days before general elections. This trains were packed with workers and students going to their jobs and classrooms, and covered the route known as "Corredor del Henares", a collection of working-class suburbs. They killed 201 people (up to today). There were 1,500 wounded. There're still dozens of people in critical or very grave state, and some of them could die. When the bombs exploded, two of the trains were very near to Atocha central station, one was stopped in El Pozo del Tío Raimundo station (a very combative, traditionally leftist, working-class district) where many people was killed in the platforms, and the last one was very near to Santa Eugenia station, another working-class area. The explosive was a kind of industrial dynamite made in Spain used in mining and widely exported known as Goma-2, trademark Eco. The bombs were hidden in handbags with ten to twelve kilos of Goma-2 each one, and they were triggered using inexpensive cell phones. Given the trains and platforms were packed with people (it was about 7.40 in the morning), they caused an immediate and pavorous carnage. It is said that the terrorists attempted to sweep the Atocha station where the four trains ended their route, going for an 11S-sized massacre (ed. note: 11 September, i.e. 9/11) by killing several thousand people in this main station of Madrid. Only the traditional lack of punctuality in Spanish commuter services avoided this barbarous result.
The behavior of the people was of utter heroism. I must say it, I didn't expect it and I'm very proud of my people now. When the victims in the trains started shouting "neighbours, neighbours, please help us!" to the surrounding buildings, hundreds of every age and sex rushed downstairs to help, even understanding that there were bombs and could be more. Commuter drivers in nearby roads stopped their cars and took the horribly mutilated and burnt woundeds to area hospitals even before the first ambulances arrived. Even some people who were inside the trains stayed to help others instead of fleeing! Please believe me when I tell you that the people of Madrid behave EXCEPTIONALLY and with rare bravery and solidarity in these very hard minutes. I use to be quite cynic, but this defies any cynicism. It was epic, heroic, I don't have words. Those thinking that the Spanish people is being coward should reconsider their opinion in the light of this.
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music
New Renaissance Music Found in Painting
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A Renaissance masterpiece has unveiled startling evidence of what may have been one of the first forms of a multimedia representation, it emerged recently at an art exhibit in Florence.
Running until July 11 at Palazzo Strozzi in central Florence, Italy, the show "Botticelli and Filippino: grace and passion in 15th century Florentine painting" displays a little-seen work by Filippino Lippi: "Madonna and Child with Singing Angels."
Scholars had long thought that the angels were holding a scroll on which the notes were painted randomly, with no relation to any music. Yet, while scrutinizing the score, Timothy McGee, professor emeritus in music at the University of Toronto, Canada, discovered that the painted score indeed contains unknown music.
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thanks to DANGEROUSMETA!
militarism and empire
This is a must read.
The Disquieted American
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With that, Johnson launched into a critique of the Bush administration and U.S. foreign policy: How could President Bush have asked Congress after the Sept. 11 attacks, "Why do they hate us?" He needed only to look at members of his own administration, Johnson said, who had served in previous administrations that supported the likes of Manuel Noriega, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. "It's a remarkable litany of characters we have decided have worn out their usefulness for us," he said.
Johnson spoke of the many military bases the U.S. maintains around the globe and the animosity the bases engender in so many countries. He could understand such a strong global military presence during the Cold War, when the U.S. needed to contain the spread of communism. But why did the U.S. continue to maintain such a vast military presence at such a high cost? There was only one answer, he said: empire.
How would Americans feel, he wondered, if they found themselves in the position so many citizens of other countries are now? "If we had a division of Turkish troops in San Diego," Johnson said, "we'd have a few patriotic young [American] men who would kill a couple [of Turks] every weekend."
Johnson said he fears America's aggression will come back to haunt the country. He spoke of the rise of China and the costs of the U.S. military bases. He invoked the fall of the Roman Empire and recalled how rapidly the empires of Japan, Germany and the Soviet Union had fallen in his own lifetime. He worried about the military industrial complex, which he fears will only grow stronger and more dominant in guiding U.S. policies abroad in the years to come. "I'm 72 years old," he said. "Given the pace of events, I think there's a good chance I'll live to see the end of the American empire."
When Johnson asked for questions, one woman wondered how he could offer such a grim forecast with so little hope. Johnson nodded. He had heard the complaint before. "My wife keeps saying to me, 'You cannot go on without ever having a hopeful message,'" he said. The truth is, Johnson isn't too optimistic, but he maintains a sense of humor.
"Plan your escape route," he has joked. "Think about Vancouver."
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I just finished reading Johnson's book The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy and the End of the Republic. It should be read by everyone. We need to understand how much the military and militarism has taken over this country. It's not sustainable. Buy the book now. Pass it around.
peat nectar
Taste Whisky With Slate
And discover the wonders of peat.
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Last Sunday, I sat down on the living-room sofa to watch the first episode of The Sopranos and poured myself a shot of one of the most glorious Scotch whiskies—Talisker, from the ruggedly sublime Isle of Skye. "Ewww, do you have to drink that right next to me?" said my wife, firmly planting herself at the far end of the couch. I eyeballed the glass—a bulb-shaped snifter ideal for focusing the whisky's aroma, or "nose." The liquid was a lustrous amber, but I had to concede that it smelled like a slab of smoked herring left overnight on the counter of a warm kitchen. And yet it's almost mild compared to a Laphroaig, from the Scottish island of Islay. The nose of Laphroaig has smoke and seaweed and something overpoweringly medicinal, like hospital bandages. It smells like someone being treated for burns beside a smoldering building. Next to a bog. Across from an open-air fish market. It smells like ... heaven.
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thanks to follow me here...
scaring the shit out of your neighbors
In Kaiser Wilhelm's Shadow
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I've been reading the right-wing media's take on the Spanish election, and I have to say it's left me with a stronge sense of disconnect -- what the psychologists call cognitive dissonance.
On the one hand, I agree with much of the strategic analysis -- like, for example, Robert Kagen's anxious piece in the Washington Post. On the other hand, I'm amazed, and more than a little impressed, by the ability of so many conservative pundits to evade the inescapable conclusion: That the Bush administration's decision to go to war in Iraq has been a complete disaster for the United States -- a disaster enormously magnified by Bush's willfully destructive attitude towards our former European allies.
In the past, I've called it the worst strategic blunder since the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. But at this point I'd go further. It may have been the worse strategic blunder since Wilhelm II dragged Germany into a two-front war in 1914. And while the outcome ultimately may not be as catastrophic (we can only hope), the causes of the fiasco are quite similar. Like Kaiser Willy's Germany, Bush's America has gone out of its way to turn friends into enemies. And in this, at least, it has succeeded.
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photography
Witness
Photography by James Nachtwey
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"I have been a witness, and these pictures are
my testimony. The events I have recorded should
not be forgotten and must not be repeated."
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Afghanistan, 1996 - Mourning a brother killed by a Taliban rocket.
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thanks to flux+mutability
bastards
LGBT Federal Workers Lose Job Protections
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Gay and lesbians in the entire federal workforce have had their job protections officially removed by the office of Special Counsel. The new Special Counsel, Scott Bloch, says his interpretation of a 1978 law intended to protect employees and job applicants from adverse personnel actions is that gay and lesbian workers are not covered.
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thanks to Eschaton
Tenn. County Wants to Charge Homosexuals
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The county that was the site of the Scopes "Monkey Trial" over the teaching of evolution is asking lawmakers to amend state law so the county can charge homosexuals with crimes against nature.
The Rhea County commissioners approved the request 8-0 Tuesday.
Commissioner J.C. Fugate, who introduced the measure, also asked the county attorney to find a way to enact an ordinance banning homosexuals from living in the county.
"We need to keep them out of here," Fugate said.
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thanks to Eschaton
prints
TSUKIOKA YOSHITOSHI / TAISO (Owariya Yonejiro): 1839 - 1892
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Yoshitoshi Tsukioka was the last and greatest genius of traditional ukiyo-é. Born in the last years of the Tokogawa Shogunate, he lived most of his adult life in the Meiji era of modernisation. Influenced by Western art, he strove against the loss of traditional Japanese values, devoting most of his work to reminding the Japanese who he felt they were, and should be. His innovations in composition and line, his ability to capture a personality or a moment, are unique in ukiyo-é, and rare in the history of art.
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thanks to plep
criminalizing childbirth
Body & Soul weighs in on this one. Check out her links.
Charges
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I am angry, to begin with, that a woman in Utah has been charged with murder because one of the twins she was carrying was stillborn after she ignored doctors who advised a Caesarian section. This is just a further escalation of what is already a war on women who need and deserve compassion.
[...]
Another detail that might have been worth mentioning appears in the Salt Lake Tribune: Melissa Rowland has a long history of mental illness. She was first committed to a mental hospital when she was twelve years old.
Suddenly the narrative shifts a bit. A frightened, mentally ill, pregnant woman, living on Social Security disability benefits, facing eviction, the father of her children gone, went from hospital to hospital looking for help, and no one knew what to do for her or how to reach her. And because of that, she has been in jail for nearly two months and faces murder charges:
But Kent Morgan, deputy Salt Lake County prosecutor and a spokesman for District Attorney David Yocom, said Rowland's crime stems from the depraved indifference and utter callousness she showed toward her unborn twins.
There is indeed depraved indifference and utter callousness at the heart of this story, but it's not Melissa Rowland's.
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panos
MOSCOW METRO STATIONS - UNDERGROUND PALACE PANORAMAS
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There are 150 metro, or subway systems, in the world and the Moscow Metro is almost without doubt the grandest. Beautiful, ornate and grand, decked out with stunning examples of socialist realist art, the Moscow Metro is the world’s largest subway system in terms of passenger rides, carrying eight to nine million passengers on an average weekday. It also boasts 265 km of track, eleven lines and 165 stations, an average distance between stations of 1800 m (resulting in commercial speeds of 42 km/h) and is almost entirely built underground.
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Here are two examples of young people fighting for justice. One gave her life. The other gave up his country.
One Year Later: Rachel Corrie's Critics Fire Blanks
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A year has passed since Rachel Corrie, a 23 year-old American peace activist from Olympia, Washington, was killed by an Israel army bulldozer while nonviolently trying to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian house in the city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip.
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Rachel Corrie fought for world she believed in
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Last year on the afternoon of March 16, an Israeli soldier -- intentionally, I believe -- ran over 23-year-old Rachel Corrie in the occupied territories of Palestine with an armored Caterpillar bulldozer. Rachel was trying to prevent the soldier from crashing that bulldozer into the house of a Palestinian family in Rafah. There was good reason to believe the soldier was going to demolish the house, as the Israeli army has destroyed more than 1,000 homes and misplaced nearly 15,000 people in that small town in the past two years.
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AWOL in New York
From Israeli Refusenik to Organizer
By ASAF SHTULL-TRAURING
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"A car approached the checkpoint. Probably out of boredom, one of the soldiers on duty ordered the person in the car to start driving around in circles. The Palestinian driver played along with the armed soldier's game and laughed anxiously, unsuccessfully trying to hide his humiliation. What amazed me most about this event wasn't what the soldier did but what I didn't do: I didn't stop him from humiliating the helpless driver." My philosophy teacher, an extraordinary, poetic and gentle man, told me this story a few years ago. This event motivated him to declare his refusal to serve in the Israeli Defense Forces.
Two weeks before my eighteenth birthday, and two weeks and two days before my draft date, I was on a plane leaving Israel to New York, running from what was supposed to be the next step in the natural pattern of my life, predetermined by law before I was born. Israel has a mandatory army service of three years for most eighteen-year-old Israeli citizens; I was defying it by leaving the country. When I was fifteen years old I had decided to refuse to take part in the army's violence, war crimes, self-destruction, hatred and stupidity. And so I did, and three years later I was on my way out.
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griff's story
I have another section up of my grandfather's journey around the world during WWII: REPORT NO. 8. If you haven't read any of Griff's stuff, you might want to start at the beginning: Griff'sStory.
photography
Joan Myers
Penalba de Santiago, Spain--image size 15"x19"
platinum-palladium print with pastel.
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thanks to rachael's latest
iraq — vietnam on internet time
David Horsey
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Shiite Account of Visitation ('pilgrimage') to Holy Shrines of Iraq
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I left Iraq with a feeling of sadness, but not the same sadness that I felt entering it. That was the sadness at the approach of the month of Muharram, but I left with the sadness that in this day and age, in the land of the Imams , still there are those who seek to extinguish the fire from the Revolution of Al-Hussain (S). They fear its rememberance, for it teaches all that blood shall always defeat the swords. And these swords are the same ones that belonged to the army of Yazeed, only their wielders now seek to mask their identity. The Shia have always been opressed, be it by the poisoned pens or by the tyrant rulers, but under the wings of the imperial vulture seeking to overshadow Iraq, a false hope of respite and sanctuary had risen.
I arrived in Damascus International Airport at about 12.30am local time, but it took an hour to get through the bribe-prone officials manning the various 'security' controls. I was immediately greeted with bad news by my driver, who informed me that the border was closed, but a few people had managed to get through one way or another. He said that our best hope was to be there before sunrise, when there were fewer police and it is easier to negotiate a path into Iraq. On this information, I left immediately from the airport to the Iraqi border, without stopping. The Syrian roads are awful, their main highway is a single lane pot-holed road carved through never-ending hills and mountains. Needless to say there is no streetlighting and only the most-experienced of drivers will do speeds over 120 km/h. We arrived at the Syrian control about 4.30am and I made my way to the passport control desk. A rather grumpy-looking man took a look at my passport, but threw it back rather roughly and said 'I'm off to sleep now, you will have to wait'. My initial disbelief was quickly set aside by anger and despite my pleading with him that only a small exit stamp that would take 10 seconds of his time was needed, he went into his room and locked the door. A two-hour wait inside this shoddy building surrounded by featureless desert with temperatures in the sub-zero range was not the best start to my trip. Needless to say there was no hospitality area, restaurants and cafes, but there were something resembling toilets. Thankfully, sleeping beauty awoke and duly smashed the stamp down on a new page in my passport (despite my telling him to do it on a partially filled one) and we were off. We paid the 'ikramiyah' (an almost official bribe) to one of the border guards to not search our car and hinder us any further and that was the last of the Syrian border. And that was the easy bit.
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thanks to Juan Cole
Spring...
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Discussions around the dinner table mainly focus on the Transitional Law these days. I asked a friend to print out the whole thing for me and have been looking it over these last two days. I watched only a part of the ceremony because the electricity went out in the middle of it and I didn't bother watching a recap of it later on.
The words look good on paper- as words often do. Some parts of it sound hauntingly like our last constitution. The discussions about the Transitional Law all focus on the legitimacy of this document. Basically, an occupying power brought in a group of exiles, declared Iraq 'liberated', declared the constitution we've been using since the monarchy annulled and set up a group of puppets as a Governing Council. Can these laws be considered legitimate?
Furthermore, just how sincere are these puppets about this new Transitional Law? For example, there's a lovely clause that reads, "No one may be unlawfully arrested or detained, and no one may be detained by reason of political or religious beliefs." Will the American troops discontinue the raids and arbitrary detentions (which are still quite common) come June 30? Or is the Transitional Law binding only to Iraqis?
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Why US Occupation Continues after June
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Bush wants to claim that with the new Constitution passed, power will be turned over to Iraqis after June of this year.
It's a lie.
The new government under the new constitution will be barred from overturning any laws that the US has imposed on the country since the Occupation.
Why can't they change them?
cause of this provision in the Constitution, Article 26:
)"A) Except as otherwise provided in this Law, the laws in force in Iraq on 30 June 2004 shall remain in effect unless and until rescinded or amended by the Iraqi Transitional Government in accordance with this Law."
Note that the "Iraqi Transitional Government" doesn't come into existence until new elections occur, which can be as late as December 2005-- a long period to be governed by Paul Bremer's recently enacted pro-corporate laws.
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thanks to Eschaton
Let the looting begin. Somehow I don't think the Iraqis will go along quietly with this.
An Insult to Our Soldiers
by Bob Herbert
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Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican, is chairman of the House Committee on Government Reform. He tells a story about Sgt. Daniel Romero of the Colorado Army National Guard, who was sent to fight in Afghanistan.
In a letter dated March 23, 2002, Sergeant Romero asked a fellow sergeant: "Are they really fixing pay issues [or] are they putting them off until we return? If they are waiting, then what happens to those who (God forbid) don't make it back?"
As Mr. Davis said at a hearing this past January, "Sergeant Romero was killed in action in Afghanistan in April 2002." The congressman added, "I would really like to hear today that his family isn't wasting their time and energy fixing errors in his pay."
As we mobilize troops from around the country and send them off to fight and possibly die in that crucible of terror known as combat, is it too much to ask that they be paid in a timely way?
Researchers from the General Accounting Office, a nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, studied the payroll processes of six Army National Guard units that were called up to active duty. What they found wasn't pretty.
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We send the Nation Guard into a war zone where they have to buy their own boots and flak jackets and then we can't even pay them.
Spanish leader accuses Bush and Blair
Threat to pull troops out of Iraq as row over election result escalates
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Spain's new prime minister, the Socialist José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, yesterday followed his dramatic election triumph with a pledge to bring troops home from Iraq and accusations that Tony Blair and George Bush lied about the war.
"Mr Blair and Mr Bush must do some reflection ... you can't organise a war with lies," he said in his first radio interview after ousting the ruling conservative People's party in a Sunday election dominated by the terror attacks on trains that killed 200 Madrid commuters last week.
"The Spanish troops will come back," he added.
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[more]
photography
So Hing Keung
[more]
thanks to Cipango
does anyone feel a draft?
'Special skills draft' on drawing board
Computer experts, foreign language specialists lead list of military's needs
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The government is taking the first steps toward a targeted military draft of Americans with special skills in computers and foreign languages.
The Selective Service System has begun the process of creating the procedures and policies to conduct such a targeted draft in case military officials ask Congress to authorize it and the lawmakers agree to such a request.
Richard Flahavan, a spokesman for the Selective Service System, said planning for a possible draft of linguists and computer experts had begun last fall after Pentagon personnel officials said the military needed more people with skills in those areas.
"Talking to the manpower folks at the Department of Defense and others, what came up was that nobody foresees a need for a large conventional draft such as we had in Vietnam," Flahavan said. "But they thought that if we have any kind of a draft, it will probably be a special skills draft."
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[more]
thanks to Liberal Arts Mafia
aviation art
WWI and Early Aviation Archive
[more]
thanks to life in the present
guantanamo
Scandal of the detainees
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Serious questions were asked today over how four Britons could be held for two years in Guantanamo Bay - but completely cleared by British police in just 24 hours.
The four detainees flown home from the notorious American prison camp were freed late last night, while one other Briton, Jamal al-Harith, had walked free almost as soon as landing in Britain the previous evening. Today the American government faced the prospect of huge embarrassment as the men prepared to tell their stories and lift the lid on the secretive camp.
Despite being branded "the worst of the worst" by US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the four - Tarek Dergoul, Asif Iqbal, Shafiq Rasul and Ruhal Ahmed - are now free without a stain on their character.
It took only eight hours of "perfunctory" police questioning by anti-terrorist squad officersand brief consideration by the Crown Prosecution Service to conclude there was no reason to put them on trial.
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[more]
MY HELL IN CAMP X-RAY
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A BRITISH captive freed from Guantanamo Bay today tells the world of its full horror - and reveals how prostitutes were taken into the camp to degrade Muslim inmates.
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[more]
thanks to plep
Second Guantanamo Briton Tells of Beatings
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Concerns were mounting over human rights abuses at Guantanamo Bay today as another British former detainee claimed he suffered beatings and inhuman treatment during his incarceration.
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[more]
thanks to Information Clearing House
Revealed: the full story of the Guantanamo Britons
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Three British prisoners released last week from Guantanamo Bay have revealed the full extent of British government involvement in the American detention camp condemned by law lords and the Court of Appeal as a 'legal black hole'.
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[more]
photography
This is a cool visual recipe.
Gyoza - Japanese Dumplings
[more]
thanks to WitoldRiedel.com
haiti
Return Aristide to Haiti
Try Bush as a Global Pirate
Dismantle Structures of Subversion
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The Bush men have the Madness Touch. Their very presence warps conventional notions of reality.
Thus, the new “prime minister” of Haiti appears as surprised as the rest of his countrymen when conveyed the title by an “eminent” rump of persons chosen by the occupying power. The man picked for the job on Tuesday, business consultant Gérard Latortue, doesn’t even arrive in Haiti from his home in Boca Raton, Florida, until Wednesday. U.S. Marines believe they have killed Haitian gunmen in battle, but seem unconcerned as to their identities. Half a world away, the constitutional head of state, elected with overwhelming popular support in a process deemed free and fair by the entire international community, is held captive by an African military dictator after being kidnapped by the world’s superpower in cahoots with the former colonial master of his country.
The world searches for terminology to describe the high crimes of the Bush regime in Haiti and the Central African Republic, and of course, Iraq – even as endless additional criminal contingencies take shape in the planning rooms of the Pentagon. The Bush men seem determined to methodically teach the planet that Washington is a threat to the very concept of international order – that they are Pirates.
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[more]
Through These Trees, I See Haiti's Murderous Army Reborn
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I am the mayor of Milo, a district of about 50,000 people near Cap Haitian. When I was elected nine years ago, at the age of 28, I was the youngest to serve in that office in Haiti's modern history. I've traveled in the United States on speaking tours, telling Americans about how we were building democracy in Haiti under the Aristide government. In late February my district came under attack by anti-Aristide forces and I fled for my life. From where I am now -- hiding in the woods -- I see the old Haitian army is back.
Those they don't kill, they lock up in containers, because they burned down the jails. The kind of containers you put on ships.
The situation is different here from what I hear about in Port-au-Prince, where you have the multinational force of American, Canadian, Chilean soldiers. In Cap Haitian you have the former Haitian military. There are no police any more, so they are the ones who are law. They come into your home. They take you, they beat you up, they kill you. They burn down homes. They do anything they want, because they are the only law in town.
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[more]
Role in Haiti Events Backfiring on Washington
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Last week's U.S.-backed ''regime change'' in Haiti could yet backfire against the administration of President George W Bush, according to independent analysts and Democrats who are describing the U.S. role as another major foreign-policy blunder -- or worse.
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[more]
japan
Warning: the text is all graphics. However, it is very much worth reading.
Black Ships & Samurai
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thanks to DANGEROUSMETA!
Locked out of Gaza - but not lunch with Arafat
By Helena Cobban
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One day in mid-February, a Palestinian friend got me invited to a lunch party here - hosted by Yasser Arafat. It was a genial gathering. Some of the guests were longtime African National Congress activists from South Africa who'd known Mr. Arafat from the days when they, too, were still struggling for justice in their country.
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[more]
"You Will Not Live on This Land for Long"
Demographic Wars
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On the southern tip of the West Bank, situated on the slope of a mountain, there is a small village of Palestinian cave-dwellers. Its name is Jinba, and it is home to roughly three hundred inhabitants. A visitor might see the sheep grazing on a nearby hill and a tractor plowing the fields. An idyllic scene, especially following the rainy season, when the desert has turned green.
But here too, the ostensible tranquility is little more than an illusion. Not unlike other cave-dweller villages in the Mount Hebron region, life in Jinba has become unbearable, and the small rural community is now on the verge of being annihilated.
A few hundred meters south of Jinba the Israeli military set up a training camp and confiscated acres and acres of agricultural land which had previously belonged to the inhabitants. Armored vehicles and jeeps travel unrestricted even on fields adjacent to the village which the military has not expropriated, and thus destroy crops and frighten young children.
A few hundred meters to the north, along the mountain ridge, a series of Jewish settlements and outposts have been constructed. The settlers threaten any Palestinian who climbs the mountain slope, thus preventing the residents of Jinba from plowing their northern fields and grazing their sheep. In addition, these settlers have also blocked the path between Jinba and Yatta, the major town in the region where the cave-dwellers buy basic foods and obtain medical services.
Hence, the military and settlers have successfully restricted Jinba's residents to a miniscule piece of land which barely suffices to sustain the population. The inhabitants have been confined to a desert island of sorts, and in many ways their lives are now similar to the lives of thousands of Palestinians who are trapped between the separation barrier -- a complex series of trenches, roads, and fences -- and the Green Line, the pre-1967 border; it is extremely difficult for them to travel into the West Bank and impossible to enter Israel. Their movement has been severely restricted, and they have, in a sense, been imprisoned.
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[more]
Why seeking justice for the Palestinians is the Jewish cause
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I was recently asked a question I've been asked many times before, mostly by fellow Jews: Why do I spend so much time seeking justice for the Palestinians instead of directing my efforts and passions toward fighting for some noble "Jewish" cause. Surely, my questioner said, and I fully agree, there are Jewish causes worth fighting for. By the same token, I agree that anyone can easily draw up a virtually endless list of worthy humanitarian causes that everyone, Jewish or not, should devote time and energies to assisting, such as finding a cure for AIDS, halting the repression of women throughout the world, and ending the wretched poverty that afflicts so much of the Third World.
Since it is impossible to be involved in every humanitarian cause, I choose to channel my efforts into fighting for a just solution of the Israel/Palestine conflict because I think that is where I can be the most useful. As a Jew, my opposition to Israeli policies carries more weight, for better or worse, simply because I am Jewish, just like the reportage of Gideon Levy or Amira Hass in Israel's daily Ha'aretz again, for better or worse, carries more weight than the dispatches and analysis of non-Jewish reporters writing for Britain's The Guardian. So both as a Jew and as an American whose tax dollars finance Israel's illegal and brutal occupation, I bear greater moral responsibility in the Israel-Palestine conflict. Furthermore, given my own personal and family background, I cannot but be deeply concerned by and opposed to Israeli policies.
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[more]
The Wall
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I promised Jusuf Ramzi that I would write down the one question that he keeps asking himself over and over, "Why don't we have international protection?" Where are the Western powers, where is France, where is Germany, where are Italy and Spain...is there only America to protect Israel? Shouldn't civilians be protected in a war?, he asks. "The world is blind...they don't see the tyranny." The old Palestinian turned his back on me...he had already seen plenty of western journalists and aid organizations...but nothing has changed the relentless course of Israels' building of the "security wall" which has just reached completion of it's first phase. Once completed, the "apartheid wall" as the Palestinians call it, will total 600km, encircling their territories on the West Bank. Originally an idea of the Labor government, construction of the wall began in June 2002 as a means of disengaging the two populations and protecting Israel from the infiltration of Palestinian suicide bombers. It would seem that anything in Israel today is justified as long as it is labled a "security matter".
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[more]
Victory of brutality
By Gideon Levy
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A new species of officer is achieving greatness in the Israel Defense Forces. These people did most of their service as occupation officers, and their excellence is a function of the degree of violence and brutality they exercise against the Palestinians. The most striking example of this trend is Brigadier General Gadi Shamni, a graduate of Lebanon and Hebron, who last week concluded his tour of duty as commander of the Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip and was promoted to head of the Operations Division in the General Staff, a post which is a major step on the way to becoming a major general. The promotion of an officer of this type speaks volumes about the IDF's value system and its order of priorities, far more than what it says about Shamni himself.
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[more]
bicycle art
Bicycles are pieces of metal sculpture. The parts of bicycles also have there own beauty.
Bicycle Frame Fittings
[more]
venezuela
US revealed to be secretly funding opponents of Chavez
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Washington has been channelling hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund the political opponents of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez - including those who briefly overthrew the democratically elected leader in a coup two years ago.
Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that, in 2002, America paid more than a million dollars to those political groups in what it claims is an ongoing effort to build democracy and "strengthen political parties". Mr Chavez has seized on the information, telling Washington to "get its hands off Venezuela".
The revelation about America's funding of Mr Chavez's opponents comes as the president is facing a possible recall referendum and has been rocked by a series of violent street demonstrations in which at least eight people have died. His opponents, who include politicians, some labour leaders, media executives and former managers at the state oil company, are trying to collect sufficient signatures to force a national vote. The documents reveal that one of the group's organising the collection of signatures - Sumate - received $53,400 (£30,000) from the US last September.
Jeremy Bigwood, a Washington-based freelance journalist who obtained the documents, yesterday told The Independent: "This repeats a pattern started in Nicaragua in the election of 1990 when [the US] spent $20 per voter to get rid of [the Sandinista President Daniel] Ortega. It's done in the name of democracy but it's rather hypocritical. Venezuela does have a democratically elected President who won the popular vote which is not the case with the US."
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[more]
hours art
The Da Costa Hours
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I browsed my way to the Pierpoint Morgan library’s website earlier today, and found my eye drawn to the pages on display there from an illuminated manuscript known as the Da Costa Hours, after the book’s second owner, one Álvaro Da Costa, armourer to King Manuel the Fortunate of Portugal. Details from each of the twelve calendar images in this manuscript follow below.
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[more]
there is no such thing as a free market
Democracy - Not "The Free Market" - Will Save America's Middle Class
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Here are a couple of headlines for those who haven't had the time to study both economics and history:
1. There is no such thing as a "free market."
2. The "middle class" is the creation of government intervention in the marketplace, and won't exist without it (as millions of Americans and Europeans are discovering).
The conservative belief in "free markets" is a bit like the Catholic Church's insistence that the Earth was at the center of the Solar System in the Twelfth Century. It's widely believed by those in power, those who challenge it are branded heretics and ridiculed, and it is wrong.
In actual fact, there is no such thing as a "free market." Markets are the creation of government.
Governments provide a stable currency to make markets possible. They provide a legal infrastructure and court systems to enforce the contracts that make markets possible. They provide educated workforces through public education, and those workers show up at their places of business after traveling on public roads, rails, or airways provided by government. Businesses that use the "free market" are protected by police and fire departments provided by government, and send their communications - from phone to fax to internet - over lines that follow public rights-of-way maintained and protected by government.
And, most important, the rules of the game of business are defined by government. Any sports fan can tell you that football, baseball, or hockey without rules and referees would be a mess. Similarly, business without rules won't work.
Which explains why conservative economics wiped out the middle class during the period from 1880 to 1932, and why, when Reagan again began applying conservative economics, the middle class again began to vanish in America in the 1980s - a process that has dramatically picked up steam under George W. Bush.
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photography
There is something surreal about disentegrating cars. Since these disengrating cars are french, and french cars are surreal to begin with, they are doubly surreal. [Disclosure: I once owned a Citroen station wagon. I loved it.]
Index Photographies
[more]
thanks to Junior Bonner
voting
Body and Soul has some good observations and links that should be read...
Machiavelli's Prints
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Has anyone noticed that the defense of electronic voting machines seems to have moved in a new direction? We started with the "don't worry your pretty little heads" argument, implying that only paranoids and conspiracy nuts worried about twenty percent of Americans -- and more in a few key states -- voting in this year's presidential election on machines that offered no hard evidence that the votes cast were the ones counted, and that denied voters the possibility of a recount in a close election (which this one almost certainly will be). Unfortunately for the makers of electronic voting machines, a lot of the critics were disappointingly sane, downright reliable, in fact. And after big problems with the machines in recent primary elections in both California and Florida, even people who don't really care that much about this kind of stuff are starting to notice.
Even though the media source most Americans get their news from isn't covering the story.
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[more]
Waking Up the Vote
By Doris "Granny D" Haddock
Doris "Granny D" Haddock, 94, is on a 15,000-mile voter registration trek through the swing states. The following is a speech she gave in Gainesville, Florida on March 7.
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I am on a long trek across our beautiful country to see what one person and a few friends might do to engage more citizens in this democracy and to have them participate in the coming election in a way that will provide us with leadership that we will all have had a hand in selecting. That may seem like boring old politics, but it is much more than that, at least to me. And my journey is a great joy.
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If any of my Washington State readers are not registered to vote, here is how to redeem yourself. You can download the form and mail it in. Register. You know who to vote for, or you wouldn't be here.
Register to Vote
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To register to vote in the state of Washington, you must be:
A citizen of the United States
A legal resident of Washington state
At least 18 years old by election day
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photography
Portrait of a Photographer: Wendy Ewald
Teaching children to express themselves through photographic images.
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Photographs by children the world over, of their lives, of their families, of their sometimes-painful dreams. They're from a 30-year project in art and education by Wendy Ewald. The exhibition, called "Secret Games," was organized by the Addison Gallery of American Art in Massachusetts, and is now at Washington's Corcoran Gallery. A mix of her own photos and those of children she's taught, Ewald calls it "Collaborative Works With Children," an idea that began when she herself was just 18, starting out as a photographer.
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Here is my cousin, Miry, with her skulls and the fruit for the Day of the Dead." - by Juan Jesus Murillo, from the book Secret Games
[more]
thanks to rachael's latest
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