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July 31, 2005
Send the Poor to War, Go Play Golf (Every Other Day)....
I suppose First Sgt. Olympio Magofna is waiting for poverty to get even worse in his native land, so that he can go play golf every day:
The Army has found fertile ground in the poverty pockets of the Pacific. The per capita income is $8,000 in American Samoa, $12,500 in the Northern Marianas and $21,000 in Guam, all United States territories. In the Marshalls and Micronesia, former trust territories, per capita incomes are about $2,000.The Army minimum signing bonus is $5,000. Starting pay for a private first class is $17,472. Education benefits can be as much as $70,000.
"You can't beat recruiting here in the Marianas, in Micronesia," said First Sgt. Olympio Magofna, who grew up on Saipan and oversees Pacific recruiting for the Army from his base in Guam. "In the states, they are really hurting," he said. "But over here, I can afford go play golf every other day."
What is there to say?
Posted by zeynep at 11:21 PM | Comments (2)
July 28, 2005
Extortion! Torture! Videotapes! The Reality Show We Are Not Watching
I was leafing, well clicking, through some of the latest news coming out of Iraq when I noticed this story. In some ways, there isn't much remarkable about it, but, it just seems emblematic of how messed up things are there. It involves a California Army National Guard company, implicated in one portion of the torture scandal, an extortion scheme, an Iraqi police unit most famous for its brutality and televised "confessions" almost-certainly obtained under torture:
Members of a California Army National Guard company that was placed on restrictive duty in Iraq after being implicated in the latest detainee abuse scandal have trained and conducted joint operations with Iraqi police forces, including an elite unit accused of brutality.The Wolf Brigade of the Iraqi police is famous in Iraq for staging daring raids in Mosul and Baghdad and for its commander, known as Maj. Gen. Abu Walid, who became a national celebrity after he hosted televised "confessions" of alleged insurgents captured by the group. Critics of the forces say they use torture to coerce confessions from suspected insurgents.
...
The most egregious case of detainee abuse reported so far occurred after a June insurgent attack, when soldiers allegedly tortured Iraqi detainees with an electric stun gun. At least one instance of abuse was recorded on video, military sources said.
...
He downplayed allegations of an extortion scheme reported in Wednesday's edition of The Times. In that story, two military sources alleged that at least six soldiers were involved in a scheme that extorted $30,000 from Iraqi shopkeepers in exchange for protection from insurgents.
Kent called those allegations unfounded, though he said one soldier was disciplined in connection with that portion of the investigation.
Markert said the financial investigation concluded weeks ago and found only a "$4,000 discrepancy."
...
"1st Platoon has been integrated with the Iraqi Police in sector, and have trained them to do raids … and patrol," Haviland wrote. He said that he assigned one officer to lead the training of "the Iraqi Army's Special Forces Wolf Brigade."
"These soldiers have taken nearly 300 detainees in our area since they arrived in early May," Haviland said.
The brigade is both loved and feared in Iraq for its attacks on alleged insurgent hide-outs and the dramatic televised confessions those offensives produced.
But Sunni human rights advocates charged that the brigade elicited the confessions by beating their captives. A woman interviewed by The Times this year said brigade officers whipped her sister with telephone wires to force her to confess to terrorist acts and to accuse her male associates of raping her and of having homosexual relations.
The detainee, Khalida Mashhandani, was later released after it was determined that her confessions had been coerced.
Despite its controversial reputation, the Wolf Brigade is regarded by U.S. military officials as the gold standard for Iraqi security forces.
Unsurprisingly, a new study finds that thirty percent of U.S. soldiers returning from Iraq display mental health problems:
Thirty percent of U.S. troops surveyed have developed stress-related mental health problems three to four months after coming home from the Iraq war, the Army's surgeon general said Thursday.The survey of 1,000 troops found problems including anxiety, depression, nightmares, anger and an inability to concentrate, said Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley and other military medical officials.
Sometimes it gets hard to keep track of the latest rationales about what it is exactly we are supposed to be pretending to be doing in Iraq. I do, wonder, however, if the official policy simply became, "It's the Oil, Stupid," as Bob Herbert recently put it. Would we then stop, or would we shrug and say, oh well. Way of Life, you know.
Posted by zeynep at 11:33 AM | Comments (1)
July 26, 2005
You Know You Are in the Wrong Country When... They're All Insurgents
I hadn't noticed this headline in the Washington Times, but it was quite striking when pointed out to me: "50,000 Iraqi insurgents dead, caught."
U.S. and Iraqi forces have killed or arrested more than 50,000 Iraqi insurgents in the past seven months, a former top general who has headed repeated Pentagon assessment missions to Iraq said yesterday.....
Gen. Keane's remarks provided a rare insight into the extent of U.S.-led operations against an insurgency that has been responsible for hundreds of deaths in the past few weeks alone.
So, let me get this claim straight. This general is claiming that we have killed or captured 50,000 insurgents in the past seven months alone. Just to get a sense of the scale, consider that we have 130,000 to 140,000 troops in Iraq -- and the population of the country as a whole is about 22 million. If we killed and captured 50,000 in the last seven months, close to half the number of troops we have there, and the insurgency keeps growing, as it has been, it means the whole population must be composed mainly of insurgents.
Was this general trying to boast about or condemn the occupation?
Let me give you another point of reference. Claiming to have killed or captured 50,000 insurgents would scale to about 650,000 if we were talking about the United States. Imagine the conditions under which an occupying army would be claiming to have killed and captured that many Americans in the space of seven months.
Posted by zeynep at 09:49 PM | Comments (3)
July 24, 2005
Comment Problems
The site is having some problems processing comments. My apologies to all commenters. Part of the problem is the massive amount of comment spam... I'll keep you updated.
Posted by zeynep at 01:06 PM | Comments (1)
July 22, 2005
Yellowcakeistan is populated, it seems
Niger is in the news, again, except this time it is neither front page nor at the top of the news hour. It's just a few million people who face starvation.
More than three million people, including almost a million children, will face starvation if the world continues to ignore the worsening food crisis in Niger, said international aid agency Oxfam today."The situation is desperate. Even the limited food that is available has soared in price rendering it unaffordable for most families and there is no hope of any harvest for at least three months. Families are feeding their children grass and leaves from the trees to keep them alive," said Natasha Kafoworola Quist, Oxfam Great Britain’s Regional Director for West Africa, currently in Niger.
UN appeals remain dangerously under-funded with only one third of the money needed from international donors pledged. In many cases, even the pledges that have been made have not translated into money arriving. The failure to fund these appeals is putting lives at risk.
As usual, this had been coming for a while. And intervention earlier would have avoided much suffering, besides being much cheaper:
An estimated 3.6 million people are highly vulnerable and 2.5 million are in need of food aid. But over 150,000 children may now starve to death before they get access to emergency food and medication.Jan Egeland, the under-secretary general of the UN said yesterday that if the international community had responded to Niger's appeals for help last year, a child could have been saved from malnourishment for as little as US$1 ($1.46) a day. Now, it will cost eighty times as much to save each of the 150,000 children who are on the verge of starving to death.
He said: "We will get funding for Niger, images are coming out of children dying. But it is too late for those who are severely malnourished and dying."
Wait, I know! They should rename their country to Yellowcakeistan! Plameland! WhereWilsonWentia! That's the only thing that's newsworthy. Who cares about him?
Posted by zeynep at 09:14 AM | Comments (1)
July 19, 2005
Let's Match the Terrorists, Says our Elected Officials
Just imagine our outrage if an elected official in a Muslim country had said anything like this:
Talk show host Pat Campbell asked the Littleton Republican [Rep. Tom Tancredo] how the country should respond if terrorists struck several U.S. cities with nuclear weapons."Well, what if you said something like — if this happens in the United States, and we determine that it is the result of extremist, fundamentalist Muslims, you know, you could take out their holy sites," Tancredo answered.
"You're talking about bombing Mecca," Campbell said.
"Yeah," Tancredo responded.
And, when questioned, Rep. Tancredo stands by his statement:
Muslim groups earlier Monday called on Tancredo to apologize and said they want to meet with the Colorado Republican."I'm not suggesting we do it. I have nothing to apologize for in that respect," Tancredo said. "I'm simply saying to have a good discussion on this issue, a thorough discussion on what is perhaps the most serious kind of possible situation we could face as a civilization, that you cannot simply take things off the table because they are uncomfortable to talk about."
...
Tancredo is a member of the House International Relations Committee.
A fervent opponent of illegal immigration, he has begun an insurgent bid for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination that he says is designed to force a more serious candidate to take a hard-line stance on immigration.
Remember this is our elected official talking about responding to terrorists, who are not elected representatives of anyone...
Posted by zeynep at 09:56 PM | Comments (0)
July 17, 2005
A Minute of Silence versus Mostly Silence
The carnage in Iraq is getting worse by the week. Earlier, I had read reports that estimates for the number of people killed per month in various attacks was about 800. This Saturday, a single bomb killed at least 100:
The death toll in Saturday night's suicide bombing in the southern Iraqi town of Musayyib reached 100, a local physician said Sunday, as mourners wailed over the loss of their loved ones and anxious relatives of the missing sought signs that they were alive.Humam Saif, a physician at Musayyib General Hospital, said that with more than 150 wounded spread among area hospitals, the number of dead was likely to rise.
Witnesses to the bombing, which occurred about 8:30 p.m. Saturday in the center of Musayyib, a town 35 miles south of Baghdad, said the attacker had detonated his explosive belt in a crowded marketplace, where hundreds of people had come to shop and mingle after the day's stifling heat subsided. They said the explosion erupted just as a tanker containing cooking gas was passing, triggering an inferno that destroyed dozens of buildings, including a nearby Shiite mosque where worshipers were emerging from evening prayers.
That's more than twice the number killed in London bombings last week. Can we have a minute of silence for them too? Can we see their pictures on our television screens, read about their lives, listen to interviews with their loved ones? Even of one of the victims? Once?
My guess is the story will drop from the news by early tomorrow morning. It would have already been gone, probably, if the number murdered were merely 50, only as much as the London killings.
Posted by zeynep at 09:50 PM | Comments (0)
July 13, 2005
Container Deaths
Remember our outrage over container deaths in Afghanistan perpetrated by the Taliban? I suppose these won't be getting anywhere near the same coverage; after all, these are "our boys" doing it now.
Iraq's leading Sunni Muslim groups reacted angrily yesterday to reports that 10 Sunni Arab men suffocated to death in the back of a police lorry in Baghdad's sweltering summer heat. The men are alleged to have died after being arrested by Iraqi anti-terrorist special forces on Sunday as they visited relatives at a hospital in the mainly Shia neighbourhood of Shula in north-western Baghdad.A spokesman for the conservative Association of Muslim Clerics said yesterday that 11 men had been rounded up after an incident in which US troops fired at a group of construction workers.
The men, aged between 20 and 30, were taken to a detention centre where they were tortured, he alleged.
They were then herded into a police truck for up to 14 hours, where they lost consciousness and and all but one died. The temperature outside was above 40C (104F).
When will we stop with all this democracy spreading? And how long before the current Iraqi security apparatus --set up with our help, encouragement and weapons-- make people wish for Saddam's?
That's quite an idea, even to imagine, but that's where we seem to be headed.
Posted by zeynep at 04:15 PM | Comments (0)
July 11, 2005
You Can't Sink a Rainbow
Today marks the 20th anniversary of the sinking of Rainbow Warrior, the Greenpeace ship that was bombed by the French intelligence service, with the personal authorization of French president Francois Mitterand -- according to latest revelations:
In its Sunday-Monday edition, daily Le Monde published extracts of a 23-page, handwritten account by Adm. Pierre Lacoste, the former head of DGSE spy agency, in which he says that Mitterrand authorized the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland's port.The ship was preparing for a protest at sea against French nuclear bomb tests in the South Pacific when the explosion ripped open its hull and the vessel sank. Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira died.
The account was published for Sunday's 20-year anniversary of the July 10, 1985, sinking of the ship. Hundreds of people gathered across France to commemorate the sinking and pay tribute to Pereira.
The ship was mined in an Auckland port -- incidentally, the government of New Zealand called the attack the first terrorist incident in the country. (I really would like to know if the indigenous people of New Zealand believe that to be the first...)
Many people gathered in Paris to commemorate the anniversary, dressed in colors of the rainbow. The commemorators formed a peace sign in front of the Eiffel Tower and unfurled a banner expressing their determination:
The most telling sign of nature's own determination, perhaps the only hope we have against our incredible, growing destructive capacity, however, was Rainbow Warrior herself, now an "artificial" reef, and a home to many at the bottom of the sea:
So maybe there is hope, if not for necessarily for us. But today is a day of many anniversaries, and hope is not the word that comes to mind when I think of Fatima Budic, whose 14 year old son was killed ten years ago in Srebrenica, and whose 16 year old son and husband have never been found.
How long before "never again" becomes nothing more than an ad slogan for this or that product?
Posted by zeynep at 08:21 PM | Comments (0)
July 07, 2005
London to Africa: Culture of Life vs. Culture of Death
Placing bombs in mass transit systems, at rush hour at that, is so beyond reprehensible that little needs to be said. Early indications are 40 dead, thousands injured -- perhaps hundreds seriously.
Will this now take the pressure of the G8 leaders to stop pushing the cruel policies that kill hundreds of children each hour in Africa? Will we now become even more callous to the situation in Iraq where what happened today in London happens once or twice every week?
Given the existing political arithmetic about the value of different lives in today's world, that's a likely possibility. What a shame, and what a dishonorable response to the lost lives, that would be. That, however, is not necessarily the only way the people of London, and England, and Europe, and the U.S., and the world could react. Perhaps, seeing so much blood, misery, pain, loss and death can shake us out of our increasinly insular, anti-empathic culture.
Perhaps it is time to bring over a Zapatista slogan to the anti-war movement: Ya Basta! -- or Enough! Perhaps it is also time to bring over another slogan from the global justice movement: Another world is possible -- if we so choose, with the courage of our convictions.
Posted by zeynep at 06:14 PM | Comments (0)
July 06, 2005
Journalists on the Job
I had earlier written about the press interest in the World Tribunal on Iraq. To illustrate the point, here are some pictures from the final press conference of the Jury of Conscience:
Posted by zeynep at 05:42 PM | Comments (0)
July 04, 2005
Fourth of July
So, we blow up a comet on Fourth of July. (Fireworks, get it?)
You couldn't make this stuff up.
Posted by zeynep at 09:43 PM | Comments (0)
July 03, 2005
"Is That Loud Enough For You"
"Is That Loud Enough For You" was the headline from Sunday Times about the global Live8 concert, organized along with the Make Poverty History campaign to put pressure on the G8 leadership to offer a modicum of decency in their policies towards Africa.
While I'm on the road, I recommend two articles about the whole process. One, Where is the Jubilee, is from Mark Engler, who has great many other articles in his much-worth exploring site:
Certainly, there is reason to be skeptical: You don't have to be a hardened cynic to wonder about the true scope of Bush and Blair's compassion. Yet ultimately, the debt deal, while far from perfect, is a genuine advance—the product of a decade of increasing social movement pressure. No doubt, those of us who have campaigned for debt cancellation or sympathized with the cause should publicize the limits of the agreement and push for greater change. But we should do this while also celebrating the progress we have made. Rather than letting the leaders pretend that the debt cancellation sprang from the goodness of their hearts, we should insist on giving credit where credit is due—highlighting the dedication of activists throughout the world who have moved the injustice of debt to the fore of international discussion.
Engler also explains some of the terms and mechanisms, like the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative, or HIPC, that dominate the discussion and may be a bit confusing to someone who is not following the issue day to day.
(But, then again, heard of the problem is kind of simple, no? We colonized, raped, pillaged and plundered their continent. Corrupt dictators supported by us "burrowed" huge sums which just ended right back in our banks. Now their children are dying, of disease and hunger, while we make them pay back every penny ten times over with interest. Hmmm. What's the right thing to do? I don't know, it's complicated.)
The other is Spin, Lies and Corruption by George Monbiot, always worth reading:
You are waiting for me to say but, and I will not disappoint you. The but comes in paragraph 2 of the finance ministers’ statement. To qualify for debt relief, developing countries must “tackle corruption, boost private sector development” and eliminate “impediments to private investment, both domestic and foreign.”(2)These are called conditionalities. Conditionalities are the policies governments must follow before they receive aid and loans and debt relief. At first sight they look like a good idea. Corruption cripples poor nations, especially in Africa. The money which could have given everyone a reasonable standard of living has instead made a handful unbelievably rich. The powerful nations are justified in seeking to discourage it.
That’s the theory. In truth, corruption has seldom been a barrier to foreign aid and loans: look at the money we have given, directly and through the World Bank and IMF, to Mobutu, Suharto, Marcos, Moi and every other premier-league crook. Robert Mugabe, the west’s demon king, has deservedly been frozen out by the rich nations. But he has caused less suffering and is responsible for less corruption than Rwanda’s Paul Kagame or Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, both of whom are repeatedly cited by the G8 countries as practitioners of “good governance”. Their armies, as the UN has documented, are largely responsible for the meltdown in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which has so far claimed four million lives, and have walked off with billions of dollars’ worth of natural resources.(3) Yet the United Kingdom, which is hosting the G8 summit, remains their main bilateral funder. It has so far refused to make their withdrawal from the DRC a conditionality for foreign aid.
The difference, of course, is that Mugabe has not confined his attacks to black people; he has also dispossessed white farmers and confiscated foreign assets. Kagame, on the other hand, has eagerly supplied us with the materials we need for our mobile phones and computers: materials which his troops have stolen from the DRC. “Corrupt” is often used by our governments and newspapers to mean regimes that won’t do what they’re told.
Genuine corruption, on the other hand, is tolerated and even encouraged. Twenty-five countries have so far ratified the UN Convention Against Corruption, but none of them are members of the G8.(4) Why? Because our own corporations do very nicely out of it. In the UK companies can legally bribe the governments of Africa if they operate through our (profoundly corrupt) tax haven of Jersey.(5) Lord Falconer, the minister responsible for sorting this out, refuses to act. When you see the list of the island’s clients, many of which sit in the FTSE-100 index, you begin to understand.
The idea swallowed by most commentators – that the conditions our governments impose help to prevent corruption – is laughable. To qualify for World Bank funding, our model client Uganda was forced to privatise most of its state-owned companies, before it had any means of regulating their sale. A sell-off which should have raised $500m for the Ugandan exchequer instead raised $2m.(6) The rest was nicked by government officials. Unchastened, the World Bank insisted that – to qualify for the debt relief programme the G8 has now extended – the Ugandan government sell off its water supplies, agricultural services and commercial bank, again with minimal regulation.(7)
And here we meet the real problem with the G8’s conditionalities. They do not stop at pretending to prevent corruption, but intrude into every aspect of sovereign government. When the finance ministers say “good governance” and “eliminating impediments to private investment”, what they mean is commercialisation, privatisation and the liberalisation of trade and capital flows. And what this means is new opportunities for western money.
Let’s stick for a moment with Uganda. In the late 1980s, the IMF and World Bank forced it to impose “user fees” for basic healthcare and primary eduction. The purpose appears to have been to create new markets for private capital. School attendance, especially for girls, collapsed. So did health services, particularly for the rural poor. To stave off a possible revolution, Museveni reinstated free primary education in 1997 and free basic healthcare in 2001. Enrolment in primary school leapt from 2.5 million to 6 million, and the number of outpatients almost doubled. The World Bank and the IMF - which the G8 nations control – were furious. At the donors’ meeting in April 2001, the head of the Bank’s delegation made it clear that, as a result of the change in policy, he now saw the health ministry as a “bad investment”.(8)
There is an obvious conflict of interest in this relationship. The G8 governments claim they want to help poor countries to develop and compete successfully. But they have a powerful commercial incentive to ensure that they compete unsuccessfully, and that our companies can grab their public services and obtain their commodities at rock bottom prices. The conditionalities we impose on the poor nations keep them on a short leash.
Posted by zeynep at 04:35 PM | Comments (0)
July 01, 2005
On Fire, in Prison
I will post one or two more posts about the World Tribunal, which has wrapped up, especially about the legal and political theory underpinning this endeavor -- which I think is very important in this day and age when institutions crumble around us, failing even to pretend to be performing even their minimal duties.
For now, though, I want to highlight a few pieces from the art that was on display. The Korean contingent had many large posters and murals and here is one:
There was also art by artists from Iraq on display. The collection was named "Iraqi Artists Respond to Abu Ghraib."
I took pictures, and meant to go back and jot down names. Alas, never happened, so here it is, as anonymous work. I had mentally named the first one "red white and prison," and the second one "on fire." I will see if I can find the names suggested by the artists -- that is if I can learn the names of artists.
P.S. I have high resolution versions of all the pictures I have posted -- I compressed them here for sake of ease of downloading. If anyone wants the bigger, high-res versions, please email me at z at underthesamesun.org.
Posted by zeynep at 04:55 AM | Comments (0)