Friday, January 28, 2005
We Stand for Peace and Justice
Join Michael Albert, Tariq Ali, Leslie Cagan, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Subcomandante Marcos, Rahul Mahajan, Hector Mondragon, Arundhati Roy, Lydia Sargent, Howard Zinn and me in signing a statement for peace and justice. It's not a petition, but more a statement of values and a pledge to work to achieve those values. It starts:
I stand for peace and justice.
I stand for democracy and autonomy. I don’t think the U.S. or any other country should ignore the popular will and violate and weaken international law, seeking to bully and bribe votes in the Security Council.
I stand for internationalism. I oppose any nation spreading an ever expanding network of military bases around the world and producing an arsenal unparalleled in the world.
I stand for equity. I don’t think the U.S. or any other country should seek empire. I don’t think the U.S. ought to control Middle Eastern oil on behalf of U.S. corporations and as a wedge to gain political control over other countries.
I stand for freedom. I oppose brutal regimes in Iraq and elsewhere but I also oppose the new doctrine of "preventive war," which guarantees permanent and very dangerous conflict, and is the reason why the U.S. is now regarded as the major threat to peace in much of the world. I stand for a democratic foreign policy that supports popular opposition to imperialism, dictatorship, and political fundamentalism in all its forms.
There's more. You can sign the statement here. Spread the word.
posted by chris at 1:58 PM
World Social Forum 2005 opens in Brazil
The fifth World Social Forum has opened in the southern Brazilian city of Port Alegre. Over 120,000 participants are gearing up for five days of conferences workshops and panel discussions tackling a vast spectrum of issues ranging from environmental conservation to reparations for victims of Latin America's right-wing dictatorships to the war in Iraq.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva spoke at a mass rally to launch an initiative by the Global Call to Action Against Poverty. Calling it a matter of international security, Lula called on poor countries to put pressure on rich nations to eradicate global poverty, reduce foreign debt and establish fair trade agreements. He said, "The rich must understand that we will never have a peaceful world unless we tackle poverty."
The World Social Forum was created specifically as a counterweight to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Democracy Now interviews Njoki Njehu, head of 50 Years is Enough network, on the ground in Porto Alegre.
The website for the World Social Forum is here. Another story about it's opening is here. And here.
posted by chris at 1:40 PM
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Wednesday, January 26, 2005
Serious voter intimidation
The black sedan made its way down Madaris Street, the young men inside tossing leaflets out the window.
"This is a final warning to all of those who plan to participate in the election," the leaflets said. "We vow to wash the streets of Baghdad with the voters' blood."
Thus was the war over Sunday's nationwide elections crystallized in a single incident on Tuesday in Mashtal, an ethnically mixed neighborhood on the eastern edge of Baghdad, where many Iraqis say they would like to vote, and where a small, determined group of people are doing everything they can to stop them.
The leaflets, like many turning up on sidewalks and doorsteps across the capital, were chilling in their detail: they warned Iraqis to stay at least 500 yards away from voting booths, for each would be the potential target of a rocket, mortar shell or car bomb. The leaflet suggested that Iraqis stay away from their windows, too, in case of blasts.
"To those of you who think you can vote and then run away," the leaflet warned, "we will shadow you and catch you, and we will cut off your heads and the heads of your children."
Story.
posted by chris at 3:35 PM
The death toll mounts
Thirty-one Marines were killed in a helicopter crash near Iraq's border with Jordan, bringing the number of U.S. troops killed Wednesday to 36 -- the deadliest day for U.S. forces since the start of the war in Iraq.
What a mess. The casualty count is now up to 1,578 with no end in sight.
(via Kos.)
posted by chris at 1:25 PM
Didn't he say something about "cutting the deficit in half"?
The White House announced on Tuesday that the federal budget deficit was expected to rise this year to $427 billion, a figure that includes a new request from President Bush to help pay for the war in Iraq.
The White House's announcement makes it the fourth straight year in which the budget deficit was expected to grow; as recently as last July the administration had predicted that the deficit, which was $412 billion last year, would fall this year to $331 billion.
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Neither estimate includes the cost of privatizing part of the Social Security program, the leading element of Mr. Bush's domestic agenda. Estimates of the cost of creating those accounts range from $1 trillion to $2 trillion over the next two decades.
The Congressional Budget Office noted that if Mr. Bush wins Congressional approval to make his tax cuts permanent, a top priority for the administration, the deficit would grow by $2 trillion over the next 10 years. If war costs in Iraq and Afghanistan taper off gradually, the agency estimated that price tag over the next 10 years could total nearly $600 billion.
In a briefing for reporters on Tuesday, senior administration officials insisted they were still on track to fulfill Mr. Bush's campaign promise of reducing the federal budget deficit by half by 2009.
hahahahahaha....hohohohoho....heheheheheh....hahahahaha....*whew* oooh boy. These guys are hilarious.
UPDATE: How to send a nation into debt.
posted by chris at 1:19 PM
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Tuesday, January 25, 2005
Iraq's "free" elections
U.S.-appointed prime minister Iyad Allawi acknowledged last week that full security will be impossible. This despite the rather draconian measures his interim government will have in place.
The government has announced plans to close borders Jan. 29-31. It will cut mobile and satellite phone services, ban travel between Iraq's 18 provinces, lengthen curfew hours and restrict use of vehicles.
Security at polling stations will be heavy. The government plans to set up three security rings around each of the 9,000 polling stations.
But the government is preparing for a bloody day despite such measures. The health ministry has announced it will provide more hospital beds, medical supplies and staff for the day. The U.S. military will run extra patrols to respond faster to attacks.
With at least eight candidates killed, and many others receiving daily death threats, campaigning has mostly consisted of parties employing staff to post leaflets and set up posters. Many of the posters are torn down the same day, while others are burned.
The polling process itself is confusing many people. With 7,785 mostly unnamed candidates on the lists of 83 coalitions of political parties, voters have little idea who they will be voting for. Each list contains between 83 and 275 candidates, running on platforms championing all sorts of causes.
Story.
posted by chris at 1:39 PM
An affordable endeavor
The Bush administration plans to announce Tuesday that it will seek about $80 billion in new funding for military operations this year in Iraq and Afghanistan, administration and congressional sources said Monday.
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The new supplemental budget request, which would come on top of the $25 billion in emergency spending that had already been approved for the current fiscal year, would push total 2005 funding for military operations and equipment close to a record $105 billion. Since the first money was provided shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the total provided so far for the U.S. efforts against terrorism would reach more than $280 billion.
When it requested the original $25 billion in May, the administration said it would need another $25 billion later for 2005. The $80 billion request is more than triple that amount.
Damn, that's a lot of money. For some reason, I don't remember the Administration saying it was going to be this expensive. What was it they were saying back then?
Before the invasion, Mitch Daniels, then the White House budget director, predicted Iraq would be “an affordable endeavor,” and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz reassured Congress: “We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon.”
Is this what they mean by "catastrophic success"? Success for the military-industrial complex, catastrophe for the Iraqis.
posted by chris at 9:38 AM
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Monday, January 24, 2005
These people sure do love their secrecy
The Pentagon, expanding into the CIA's historic bailiwick, has created a new espionage arm and is reinterpreting U.S. law to give Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld broad authority over clandestine operations abroad, according to interviews with participants and documents obtained by The Washington Post.
The previously undisclosed organization, called the Strategic Support Branch, arose from Rumsfeld's written order to end his "near total dependence on CIA" for what is known as human intelligence. Designed to operate without detection and under the defense secretary's direct control, the Strategic Support Branch deploys small teams of case officers, linguists, interrogators and technical specialists alongside newly empowered special operations forces.
Military and civilian participants said in interviews that the new unit has been operating in secret for two years -- in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places they declined to name. According to an early planning memorandum to Rumsfeld from Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the focus of the intelligence initiative is on "emerging target countries such as Somalia, Yemen, Indonesia, Philippines and Georgia." Myers and his staff declined to be interviewed.
The Strategic Support Branch was created to provide Rumsfeld with independent tools for the "full spectrum of humint operations," according to an internal account of its origin and mission. Human intelligence operations, a term used in counterpoint to technical means such as satellite photography, range from interrogation of prisoners and scouting of targets in wartime to the peacetime recruitment of foreign spies. A recent Pentagon memo states that recruited agents may include "notorious figures" whose links to the U.S. government would be embarrassing if disclosed.
Perhaps the most significant shift is the Defense Department's bid to conduct surreptitious missions, in friendly and unfriendly states, when conventional war is a distant or unlikely prospect -- activities that have traditionally been the province of the CIA's Directorate of Operations. Senior Rumsfeld advisers said those missions are central to what they called the department's predominant role in combating terrorist threats.
Story.
posted by chris at 1:55 PM
The Coalition of the No Longer Willing
The White House has scrapped its list of Iraq allies known as the 45-member "coalition of the willing," which Washington used to back its argument that the 2003 invasion was a multilateral action, an official said on Friday.
The senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the White House replaced the coalition list with a smaller roster of 28 countries with troops in Iraq sometime after the June transfer of power to an interim Iraqi government.
Mostly they just transferred the list from a full sheet of paper to a 3x5 notecard. It's just easier to carry around that way.
posted by chris at 1:52 PM
Name dropping
Bush is trying to use Clinton and Moynihan's names to convince people that Social Security is in trouble. But it's not the same thing:
But the gambit carries some risk, Bush supporters say. Clinton's repeated calls during his second term to "save Social Security first" were specifically to thwart what President Bush ultimately did: cut taxes based on federal budget surplus projections. Likewise, internal Treasury Department documents indicate that Moynihan, a New York Democrat who was co-chairman of Bush's 2001 Social Security Commission, expressed misgivings about the president's push to partially privatize Social Security.
posted by chris at 1:07 PM
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