Wednesday, September 29, 2004
Flip floppin' in America.
There are rumors of troop withdrawal after the election. Is this talk "cover talk" to deflect from their "real" aim, which is to increase troop level, and make one last push to defeat the insurgents? The rumors of drastic troop increase and drastic troop withdrawal seem to be swirling in the atmosphere for deliberate reasons: the two rumors have the potential to please everyone, to some extent, and mute the criticism of what is happening in Iraq now, today.
Who the hell knows, outside of inner Pentagon circles, of the true intention of this administration, because deception has been the modus operandi from the beginning. Remeber, this is a government in this White House of fanatics; and for fanatics, the ends justifies the means. So question everthing and believe little.
Regarding the debates, I find myself not falling for the hype this year, for two reasons. Number one is the belief pushed by the media, and to some extent by the candidates themselves, that the debates are make it or break it for each candidate. This belief is a tragic joke, given that the debates are being scripted, which is my number two reason for not falling for the hype. If the debates were staged in an open manner with few rules save that of civility, and the two men were able to question and engage each other, then I would have the belief that the debates could be a platform to demonstrate the abilities and the intellect of the men involved. As it is now, a scripted debate has every reason to favor the incumbent. He can answer scripted questions with scripted answers. This is no more a debate than two dead men conversing, which is an apt metaphor for American democracy right now. Unless one of the men has the balls to break the rules and directly challenge and question the other, it could make for a pretty boring night.
I'll probably skip it, and read about it later. Watching it live is like buying their product, even though the product sucks. What if Americans in large numbers boycotted the debates? Large numbers of Americans won't watch it anyway, which is a quiet form of boycott.
If you choose to watch it, at least turn off the spin afterwards. No matter who "wins" this debate (and how does one judge this "winning" in an environment that lacks spontaneity), the spinning will revolve around who the media wishes to win, and I think we have the answer to that question already.
Americans are led by the nose so easily. The people are like sheep, their leaders like stubborn goats constantly getting their horns tangled in the weeds and thicket. When will we take the initiative to create a political process that is free of monied influence? When will the media, once again, belong to the people? The only answer is to turn off your television, and reclaim yourselves.
Who the hell knows, outside of inner Pentagon circles, of the true intention of this administration, because deception has been the modus operandi from the beginning. Remeber, this is a government in this White House of fanatics; and for fanatics, the ends justifies the means. So question everthing and believe little.
Regarding the debates, I find myself not falling for the hype this year, for two reasons. Number one is the belief pushed by the media, and to some extent by the candidates themselves, that the debates are make it or break it for each candidate. This belief is a tragic joke, given that the debates are being scripted, which is my number two reason for not falling for the hype. If the debates were staged in an open manner with few rules save that of civility, and the two men were able to question and engage each other, then I would have the belief that the debates could be a platform to demonstrate the abilities and the intellect of the men involved. As it is now, a scripted debate has every reason to favor the incumbent. He can answer scripted questions with scripted answers. This is no more a debate than two dead men conversing, which is an apt metaphor for American democracy right now. Unless one of the men has the balls to break the rules and directly challenge and question the other, it could make for a pretty boring night.
I'll probably skip it, and read about it later. Watching it live is like buying their product, even though the product sucks. What if Americans in large numbers boycotted the debates? Large numbers of Americans won't watch it anyway, which is a quiet form of boycott.
If you choose to watch it, at least turn off the spin afterwards. No matter who "wins" this debate (and how does one judge this "winning" in an environment that lacks spontaneity), the spinning will revolve around who the media wishes to win, and I think we have the answer to that question already.
Americans are led by the nose so easily. The people are like sheep, their leaders like stubborn goats constantly getting their horns tangled in the weeds and thicket. When will we take the initiative to create a political process that is free of monied influence? When will the media, once again, belong to the people? The only answer is to turn off your television, and reclaim yourselves.
# posted by scorpiorising : 6:14 PM |
U.S. Decptive about Iraqi civilian casualty count.
Via Editor and Publisher:
http://editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000642386
Knight Ridder Scoop: Iraqi Civilian Casualties By E&P staff Published: September 25, 2004 1:00 PM EDT
NEW YORK An exclusive report from Knight Ridder's Washington office, which has gained much renown for this sort of thing in the past year, revealed Saturday that U.S. and multinational forces and Iraqi police are killing twice as many Iraqis, most of them civilians, as attacks by insurgents.The statistics were compiled by the Iraqi Health Ministry and obtained exclusively by Knight Ridder. Iraqi officials said about two-thirds of the Iraqi deaths were caused by the U.S. side and police; the remaining third died from insurgent attacks. Although most of the dead are believed to be civilians, the data include an unknown number of police and Iraqi national guardsmen. Many Iraqi deaths, however, are never reported. Charts show the number of casualties surging in August and September. According to the ministry, the interim Iraqi government recorded 3,487 Iraqi deaths in 15 of the country's 18 provinces from April 5 (when the ministry began compiling the data) until Sept. 19. Of those, 328 were women and children under 12. Another 13,720 Iraqis were injured, the ministry said. "Iraqi officials said the statistics proved that U.S. airstrikes intended for insurgents also were killing large numbers of innocent civilians," wrote KR's Nancy A. Youssef. "Some say these casualties are undermining popular acceptance of the American-backed interim government. "That suggests that more aggressive U.S. military operations, which the Bush administration has said are being planned to clear the way for nationwide elections scheduled for January, could backfire and strengthen the insurgency."American military officials told Knight Ridder that"damage will happen" in their effort to wrest control of some areas from insurgents. They blamed the insurgents for embedding themselves in communities, saying that's endangering innocent people. According to the statistics, 59 children were killed in Anbar province (which includes the cities of Ramadi and Fallujah) compared with 56 children in Baghdad. The ministry defines children as anyone younger than 12. The Health Ministry is the only organization that attempts to track deaths through government agencies. The U.S. military said it kept estimates, but it refused to release them. Iraqi health and hospital officials agreed that the statistics capture only part of the death toll. Other independent organizations have estimated that 7,000 to 12,000 Iraqis have been killed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush declared an end to major combat operations.
http://editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000642386
Knight Ridder Scoop: Iraqi Civilian Casualties By E&P staff Published: September 25, 2004 1:00 PM EDT
NEW YORK An exclusive report from Knight Ridder's Washington office, which has gained much renown for this sort of thing in the past year, revealed Saturday that U.S. and multinational forces and Iraqi police are killing twice as many Iraqis, most of them civilians, as attacks by insurgents.The statistics were compiled by the Iraqi Health Ministry and obtained exclusively by Knight Ridder. Iraqi officials said about two-thirds of the Iraqi deaths were caused by the U.S. side and police; the remaining third died from insurgent attacks. Although most of the dead are believed to be civilians, the data include an unknown number of police and Iraqi national guardsmen. Many Iraqi deaths, however, are never reported. Charts show the number of casualties surging in August and September. According to the ministry, the interim Iraqi government recorded 3,487 Iraqi deaths in 15 of the country's 18 provinces from April 5 (when the ministry began compiling the data) until Sept. 19. Of those, 328 were women and children under 12. Another 13,720 Iraqis were injured, the ministry said. "Iraqi officials said the statistics proved that U.S. airstrikes intended for insurgents also were killing large numbers of innocent civilians," wrote KR's Nancy A. Youssef. "Some say these casualties are undermining popular acceptance of the American-backed interim government. "That suggests that more aggressive U.S. military operations, which the Bush administration has said are being planned to clear the way for nationwide elections scheduled for January, could backfire and strengthen the insurgency."American military officials told Knight Ridder that"damage will happen" in their effort to wrest control of some areas from insurgents. They blamed the insurgents for embedding themselves in communities, saying that's endangering innocent people. According to the statistics, 59 children were killed in Anbar province (which includes the cities of Ramadi and Fallujah) compared with 56 children in Baghdad. The ministry defines children as anyone younger than 12. The Health Ministry is the only organization that attempts to track deaths through government agencies. The U.S. military said it kept estimates, but it refused to release them. Iraqi health and hospital officials agreed that the statistics capture only part of the death toll. Other independent organizations have estimated that 7,000 to 12,000 Iraqis have been killed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush declared an end to major combat operations.
# posted by scorpiorising : 3:29 PM |
Political Theater.
Mark Crispin in A Patriot Act. Coming soon on DVD.
# posted by scorpiorising : 3:26 PM |
Monday, September 27, 2004
Privatization produces poverty.
The three P's: Privatization produces poverty. This is a rule of thumb that ought not to be forgotten. This very excellent Guardian article on the subject reveals that like America, Britain holds the carrot stick of monetary aid, so that countries will agree to privatize their industries. The results are disastrous:
In Kyrgyzstan, Arthur Andersen acted as advisers and the electricity prices were increased to make the state company more attractive to potential foreign buyers. This led to more than half of the residents of the capital, Bishkek, being unable to pay their bills.
· In China, PricewaterhouseCoopers led a consortium of advisers to the Chengdu city government on its water supply service, the contract for which was eventually awarded to the French water giant Vivendi, and the Japanese Marubeni Corporation for $106.5m. PricewaterhouseCoopers then acted as adviser to Vivendi and Marubeni in their bid for a water treatment plant in Beijing.
· In Malaysia, PricewaterhouseCoopers advised the government on privatisation of the sewerage system, completed in 1993. After complaints over rising charges and falling services, the government took the system back into public ownership in 2001
· In South Africa, KwaZulu Natal department of health entered into a 15-year public private partnership for the Inkosi Albert Luthuli hospital in a deal worth $75m in 2001.
"There is now a substantial body of evidence to show that privatisation of public services threatens to expose millions of people in developing countries to increased poverty," concludes the report.
Riverbend of Baghdad Burning comments on the newly privatized electricity in her country, Iraq:
You know things are really going downhill in Iraq, when the Bush speech-writers have to recycle his old speeches. Listening to him yesterday, one might think he was simply copying and pasting bits and pieces from the older stuff. My favorite part was when he claimed, "Electricity has been restored above pre-war levels..." Even E. had to laugh at that one. A few days ago, most of Baghdad was in the dark for over 24 hours and lately, on our better days, we get about 12 hours of electricity. Bush got it wrong (or Allawi explained it to incorrectly)- the electricity is drastically less than pre-war levels, but the electricity BILL is way above pre-war levels. Congratulations Iraqis on THAT!! Our electricity bill was painful last month. Before the war, Iraqis might pay an average of around 5,000 Iraqi Dinars a month for electricity (the equivalent back then of $2.50) - summer or winter. Now, it's quite common to get bills above 70,000 Iraqi Dinars... for half-time electricity.
Then there is the very excellent Naomi Klein article recently published in Harper's, and reprinted on Common
Dreams.org: Klein's article is brilliant. She lays out the evidence regarding the privatization of Iraq. Indeed, she puts forth the argument that what Bremer did, on behalf of the U.S., was to introduce a radical, reactionary privatization agenda in Iraq, more radical than any ever seen in the history of civilization as we know it:
L. Paul Bremer, who led the U.S. occupation of Iraq from May 2, 2003, until he caught an early flight out of Baghdad on June 28, admits that when he arrived, “Baghdad was on fire, literally, as I drove in from the airport.” But before the fires from the “shock and awe” military onslaught were even extinguished, Bremer unleashed his shock therapy, pushing through more wrenching changes in one sweltering summer than the International Monetary Fund has managed to enact over three decades in Latin America. Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel laureate and former chief economist at the World Bank, describes Bremer’s reforms as “an even more radical form of shock therapy than pursued in the former Soviet world.”
The tone of Bremer’s tenure was set with his first major act on the job: he fired 500,000 state workers, most of them soldiers, but also doctors, nurses, teachers, publishers, and printers. Next, he flung open the country’s borders to absolutely unrestricted imports: no tariffs, no duties, no inspections, no taxes. Iraq, Bremer declared two weeks after he arrived, was “open for business.”
One month later, Bremer unveiled the centerpiece of his reforms. Before the invasion, Iraq’s non-oil-related economy had been dominated by 200 state-owned companies, which produced everything from cement to paper to washing machines. In June, Bremer flew to an economic summit in Jordan and announced that these firms would be privatized immediately. “Getting inefficient state enterprises into private hands,” he said, “is essential for Iraq’s economic recovery.” It would be the largest state liquidation sale since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
But Bremer’s economic engineering had only just begun. In September, to entice foreign investors to come to Iraq, he enacted a radical set of laws unprecedented in their generosity to multinational corporations. There was Order 37, which lowered Iraq’s corporate tax rate from roughly 40 percent to a flat 15 percent. There was Order 39, which allowed foreign companies to own 100 percent of Iraqi assets outside of the natural-resource sector. Even better, investors could take 100 percent of the profits they made in Iraq out of the country; they would not be required to reinvest and they would not be taxed. Under Order 39, they could sign leases and contracts that would last for forty years. Order 40 welcomed foreign banks to Iraq under the same favorable terms. All that remained of Saddam Hussein’s economic policies was a law restricting trade unions and collective bargaining.
If these policies sound familiar, it’s because they are the same ones multinationals around the world lobby for from national governments and in international trade agreements. But while these reforms are only ever enacted in part, or in fits and starts, Bremer delivered them all, all at once. Overnight, Iraq went from being the most isolated country in the world to being, on paper, its widest-open market.
In Kyrgyzstan, Arthur Andersen acted as advisers and the electricity prices were increased to make the state company more attractive to potential foreign buyers. This led to more than half of the residents of the capital, Bishkek, being unable to pay their bills.
· In China, PricewaterhouseCoopers led a consortium of advisers to the Chengdu city government on its water supply service, the contract for which was eventually awarded to the French water giant Vivendi, and the Japanese Marubeni Corporation for $106.5m. PricewaterhouseCoopers then acted as adviser to Vivendi and Marubeni in their bid for a water treatment plant in Beijing.
· In Malaysia, PricewaterhouseCoopers advised the government on privatisation of the sewerage system, completed in 1993. After complaints over rising charges and falling services, the government took the system back into public ownership in 2001
· In South Africa, KwaZulu Natal department of health entered into a 15-year public private partnership for the Inkosi Albert Luthuli hospital in a deal worth $75m in 2001.
"There is now a substantial body of evidence to show that privatisation of public services threatens to expose millions of people in developing countries to increased poverty," concludes the report.
Riverbend of Baghdad Burning comments on the newly privatized electricity in her country, Iraq:
You know things are really going downhill in Iraq, when the Bush speech-writers have to recycle his old speeches. Listening to him yesterday, one might think he was simply copying and pasting bits and pieces from the older stuff. My favorite part was when he claimed, "Electricity has been restored above pre-war levels..." Even E. had to laugh at that one. A few days ago, most of Baghdad was in the dark for over 24 hours and lately, on our better days, we get about 12 hours of electricity. Bush got it wrong (or Allawi explained it to incorrectly)- the electricity is drastically less than pre-war levels, but the electricity BILL is way above pre-war levels. Congratulations Iraqis on THAT!! Our electricity bill was painful last month. Before the war, Iraqis might pay an average of around 5,000 Iraqi Dinars a month for electricity (the equivalent back then of $2.50) - summer or winter. Now, it's quite common to get bills above 70,000 Iraqi Dinars... for half-time electricity.
Then there is the very excellent Naomi Klein article recently published in Harper's, and reprinted on Common
Dreams.org: Klein's article is brilliant. She lays out the evidence regarding the privatization of Iraq. Indeed, she puts forth the argument that what Bremer did, on behalf of the U.S., was to introduce a radical, reactionary privatization agenda in Iraq, more radical than any ever seen in the history of civilization as we know it:
L. Paul Bremer, who led the U.S. occupation of Iraq from May 2, 2003, until he caught an early flight out of Baghdad on June 28, admits that when he arrived, “Baghdad was on fire, literally, as I drove in from the airport.” But before the fires from the “shock and awe” military onslaught were even extinguished, Bremer unleashed his shock therapy, pushing through more wrenching changes in one sweltering summer than the International Monetary Fund has managed to enact over three decades in Latin America. Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel laureate and former chief economist at the World Bank, describes Bremer’s reforms as “an even more radical form of shock therapy than pursued in the former Soviet world.”
The tone of Bremer’s tenure was set with his first major act on the job: he fired 500,000 state workers, most of them soldiers, but also doctors, nurses, teachers, publishers, and printers. Next, he flung open the country’s borders to absolutely unrestricted imports: no tariffs, no duties, no inspections, no taxes. Iraq, Bremer declared two weeks after he arrived, was “open for business.”
One month later, Bremer unveiled the centerpiece of his reforms. Before the invasion, Iraq’s non-oil-related economy had been dominated by 200 state-owned companies, which produced everything from cement to paper to washing machines. In June, Bremer flew to an economic summit in Jordan and announced that these firms would be privatized immediately. “Getting inefficient state enterprises into private hands,” he said, “is essential for Iraq’s economic recovery.” It would be the largest state liquidation sale since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
But Bremer’s economic engineering had only just begun. In September, to entice foreign investors to come to Iraq, he enacted a radical set of laws unprecedented in their generosity to multinational corporations. There was Order 37, which lowered Iraq’s corporate tax rate from roughly 40 percent to a flat 15 percent. There was Order 39, which allowed foreign companies to own 100 percent of Iraqi assets outside of the natural-resource sector. Even better, investors could take 100 percent of the profits they made in Iraq out of the country; they would not be required to reinvest and they would not be taxed. Under Order 39, they could sign leases and contracts that would last for forty years. Order 40 welcomed foreign banks to Iraq under the same favorable terms. All that remained of Saddam Hussein’s economic policies was a law restricting trade unions and collective bargaining.
If these policies sound familiar, it’s because they are the same ones multinationals around the world lobby for from national governments and in international trade agreements. But while these reforms are only ever enacted in part, or in fits and starts, Bremer delivered them all, all at once. Overnight, Iraq went from being the most isolated country in the world to being, on paper, its widest-open market.
# posted by scorpiorising : 6:51 AM |
Oh boy. Long Hiatus.
I read Billmon's article on blogs today, and I love his taking a swipe at the world o' blogs at a time when the most popular of them, Atrios and Dailykos, are making a windfall. Does the advertising affect the message? I don't know, but I do remember Atrios becoming pretty complacent not long ago about this election, about the time that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth took a bite out of Kerry's lead in the polls. Was Atrios becoming just a bit too complacent with his own success perhaps? Blogging can be controversial, but perhaps what we now need it to be is revolutionary. More on this later. Here is a link to Billmon's article:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-op-billmon26sep26,1,7245002.story?coll=la-sunday-commentary
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-op-billmon26sep26,1,7245002.story?coll=la-sunday-commentary
# posted by scorpiorising : 5:52 AM |
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