March 19, 2005
Year three of Iraqi War begins.
Today is the second anniversary of the American invasion of Iraq, a good time for a thorough overview. Tom Englehardt's latest TomGram,
Deconstructing Iraq: Year Three Begins, does an excellent job. It's very lengthy, with many, many links to different stories covering nearly all aspects. Too much to quote, but here's the conclusion.
The most significant fact of our Iraq War and occupation (and war), which can't be repeated too many times, is that the Bush administration busted into the country without an exit strategy for a simple reason: They never planned to leave -- and they still don't. If you have a better reason for taking a withdrawal position and pressing for it, let me know by at least the beginning of Year Four of the Iraqi Deconstruction Era.
You might also want to see the TomGram from yesterday, with an essay by Dilop Hiro entitled
Playing the Democracy Card, which gives a good overview of so-called American attempts to promote democracy in the Middle East. Or rather of how it is using the excuse of democracy to steal oil and expand American (and British) hegemony.
I think both of these entries take the anti-Americanism and Bush-bashing a bit too far, with the result that they lose some objectivity. For one thing, their cup seems to be always empty. For another, in their attempt to blame Bush and the Republicans for everything they rather ignore the fact that it is the _Americans_ who are doing this, Democrats included. Their refusal to acknowledge that this is not Bush but the American military-industrial-financial-legal complex at work is, I think, the greatest failure of the war coverage by the so-called progressives.
And I don't think they give enough credit to the British (and by extension the rest of the European community) for their support and involvement. For this is, in the final analysis, basically part of an attempt by the world's white people to maintain their dominance over the rest of the people. The Europeans may object, but when it comes down to it, they're just as responsible. They certainly don't ever seem to do anything concrete to oppose it. Words don't count.
Army seeks to extends enlistments for two more years.
The US Army is getting so short of manpower for its various wars, that it has asked Congress for permission to arbitrarily extend the maximum enlistment time for soldiers from six years to eight years.
Article via
channelnewsasia.com.
Army Deputy Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Franklin Hagenbeck told a House subcommittee that yearly recruitment goals for the Army reserve and the National Guard were "at risk."
"In the manning area, we need Congress to change the maximum enlistment time from six years to eight years in order to help stabilize the force for longer periods of time," Hagenbeck went on to say.
The appeal coincided with the release of a new congressional report that showed that the intensifying anti-American insurgency in Iraq and continued violence in Afghanistan were followed by a distinct drop in the number of volunteers willing to serve in the branches of the military that see the most combat.
The Army reserve and Army National Guard respectively met only 87 percent and 80 percent of their overall recruiting goals in the first quarter of fiscal 2005, according to the study by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.
The Air Force Reserve attained 91 percent of its target, the Air National Guard 71 percent and the Navy Reserve 77 percent.
How would you feel if you'd signed up for a six year contract, and then at the end of the time, were told you had to do two more?
Add: Ann Scott Tyson reviews the personnel shortages facing the US military in
Two Years Later, Iraq War Drains Military. Via
Truthout and the
Washington Post.
In a sign of deeper problems, career citizen-soldiers frustrated by broken units and long, grueling war-zone duties are increasingly leaving the Guard. Attrition among career guardsmen is running at nearly 20 percent, said Schultz, who expects that as many as a third of the members of some units rotating back from Iraq will quit.
Recruitment is sluggish, reaching just 75 percent of the target for the first quarter of fiscal 2005 -- meaning that the Guard is unlikely to reach its desired strength of 350,000 soldiers this year.
The viability of the Army Guard and Reserve will prove decisive, senior Army leaders say, as they consider in 2006 whether to permanently increase the size of the active-duty Army, and if so by how much. It also marks a critical test of the military's ability to appeal to the civilian population, not only with bonuses and education benefits, but also with an ethos of self-sacrifice that it considers the bedrock of the all-volunteer force.
"For the all-volunteer force to work, it has to work all the time, not just in peacetime," Schultz said. "It's now time to answer the call to serve, to assemble on the village green."
Maybe so, but that's getting harder for many people to do. Another aspect of this problem is covered in this
article detailing the growing resistance to further service among veterans already in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the various ways they are trying to just get out.
Soldiers, their advocates and lawyers who specialize in military law say they have watched a few service members try ever more unlikely and desperate routes: taking drugs in the hope that they will be kept home after positive urine tests, for example; or seeking psychological or medical reasons to be declared nondeployable, including last-minute pregnancies. Specialist Marquise J. Roberts is accused of asking a relative in Philadelphia to shoot him in the leg so he would not have to return to war.
... These soldiers come from all different towns, all over the country, but their reasons for wanting out echo one another. Some described grisly scenes from their first deployments to Iraq. One soldier said he saw a wounded, weeping Iraqi child whom no one would help; another said he watched as another soldier set fire to wild dogs just to pass time. Others said they had simply realized that they did not believe in war, or at least not in this war.
Governments not delivering on promised tsunami aid.
The BBC
reports that over $4 billion in aid promised by various governments has yet to be delivered, and that the need remains very urgent. Note that this is aid promised by governments, not that donated by individuals, which has been received.
The Sri Lankan Foreign Minister, Lakshman Kadirgamar, has told the BBC that his country has not yet received any of the money promised by governments - although people all over the world had been generous in their contributions.
This is really shameful. Telling people that you're going to help, who are trying to make plans, and then not coming through is even worse than not donating at all. It's adding insult to injury.
Mass arrests at Saudi gay party.
Guardian
article. Saudi police raided an underground "gay" party, and arrested over a hundred men, although most were later released. Interesting in that it indicates not only a fairly substantial underground gay scene there, but an organized effort to suppress it.
The Saudi Arabian security forces have arrested 110 men at a "gay wedding" party in Jeddah, according to a Saudi online newspaper.
Al-Wifaq, which has connections with the interior ministry, said the authorities had raided a wedding hall on Monday night after a tip-off and found the men - all Saudis - dancing and "behaving like women".
Eighty men were later released, but 30 appeared in a Jeddah court on Wednesday to face charges, the paper said.
Homosexuality is illegal in Saudi Arabia and is punished by flogging, jail or death.
Naturally if this happened in China or Russia or Cuba it would be front-page news, and a big stink would be raised. But because it's an American ally with lots of oil, human rights or the rule of law don't matter, and no one will pay any attention.
One of these days though there's going to be a "Stonewall" there, a day on which people will just decide that they've had enough and start to fight back.
Afghanistan becoming one huge American prison camp.
The Guardian has published a long article,
'One huge US jail', describing conditions in Afghanistan over three years after the American invasion and conquest, how it is gradually descending into chaos, and becoming the hub of an enormous global gulag of American detention centers. It provides a good overview of current American practices and an outline of its future plans.
Afghanistan is the hub of a global network of detention centres, the frontline in America's 'war on terror', where arrest can be random and allegations of torture commonplace. Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark investigate on the ground and talk to former prisoners.
... Outside Kabul, Afghanistan is bleaker, its provinces more inaccessible and lawless, than it was under the Taliban. If anyone leaves town, they do so in convoys. Afghanistan is a place where it is easy for people to disappear and perilous for anyone to investigate their fate. Even a seasoned aid agency such as Médécins Sans Frontières was forced to quit after five staff members were murdered last June. Only the 17,000-strong US forces, with their all-terrain Humvees and Apache attack helicopters, have the run of the land, and they have used the haze of fear and uncertainty that has engulfed the country to advance a draconian phase in the war against terror. Afghanistan has become the new Guantánamo Bay.
Washington likes to hold up Afghanistan as an exemplar of how a rogue regime can be replaced by democracy. Meanwhile, human-rights activists and Afghan politicians have accused the US military of placing Afghanistan at the hub of a global system of detention centres where prisoners are held incommunicado and allegedly subjected to torture. The secrecy surrounding them prevents any real independent investigation of the allegations. "The detention system in Afghanistan exists entirely outside international norms, but it is only part of a far larger and more sinister jail network that we are only now beginning to understand," Michael Posner, director of the US legal watchdog Human Rights First, told us.
... There we met Dr Rafiullah Bidar, regional director of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, established in 2003 with funding from the US Congress to investigate abuses committed by local warlords and to ensure that women's and children's rights were protected. He was delighted to see foreigners in town. At his office in central Gardez, Bidar showed us a wall of files. "All I do nowadays is chart complaints against the US military," he said. "Many thousands of people have been rounded up and detained by them. Those who have been freed say that they were held alongside foreign detainees who've been brought to this country to be processed. No one is charged. No one is identified. No international monitors are allowed into the US jails." He pulled out a handful of files: "People who have been arrested say they've been brutalised - the tactics used are beyond belief." The jails are closed to outside observers, making it impossible to test the truth of the claims.
It can't be stressed enough: American forces are operating in complete secrecy, entirely outside the law, and without any sort of civilian or international oversight or control. Nobody has any idea of what is really going on since the Americans won't report on anything or cooperate with any investigations. They are deliberately and violently suppressing attempts to find out how many camps there are, whose being held there, what is happening there, the conditions of the prisoners, or any other information. What hints do emerge indicate widespread abuse, torture, beatings and such, often resulting in death. And, worst of all, the American people clearly couldn't care less.
What's worse, the Guardian states that what is going on is nothing short than a deliberate policy to attempt to make all of Afghanistan into the center of a global prison network that would replace Guantanamo Bay, and which could operate entirely in secret, and outside of American, European, or global law.
What has been glimpsed in Afghanistan is a radical plan to replace Guantánamo Bay. When that detention centre was set up in January 2002, it was essentially an offshore gulag - beyond the reach of the US constitution and even the Geneva conventions. That all changed in July 2004. The US supreme court ruled that the federal court in Washington had jurisdiction to hear a case that would decide if the Cuban detentions were in violation of the US constitution, its laws or treaties. The military commissions, which had been intended to dispense justice to the prisoners, were in disarray, too. No prosecution cases had been prepared and no defence cases would be readily offered as the US National Association of Criminal Defence Lawyers had described the commissions as unethical, a decision backed by a federal judge who ruled in January that they were "illegal". Guantánamo was suddenly bogged down in domestic lawsuits. It had lost its practicality. So a global prison network built up over the previous three years, beyond the reach of American and European judicial process, immediately began to pick up the slack. The process became explicit last week when the Pentagon announced that half of the 540 or so inmates at Guantánamo are to be transferred to prisons in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia.
Since September 11 2001, one of the US's chief strategies in its "war on terror" has been to imprison anyone considered a suspect on whatever grounds. To that end it commandeered foreign jails, built cellblocks at US military bases and established covert CIA facilities that can be located almost anywhere, from an apartment block to a shipping container. The network has no visible infrastructure - no prison rolls, visitor rosters, staff lists or complaints procedures. Terror suspects are being processed in Afghanistan and in dozens of facilities in Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Jordan, Egypt, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the British island of Diego Garcia in the southern Indian Ocean. Those detained are held incommunicado, without charge or trial, and frequently shuttled between jails in covert air transports, giving rise to the recently coined US military expression "ghost detainees".
I'm quoting too much. But it's a very long and detailed article. Well worth reading, especially for Americans who want to know where their tax dollars are going. A frightening, nightmare vision of the future for us all if this madness isn't stopped soon. (Which I think it will.)
March 18, 2005
Iraqi accounts of American war crimes at Falluja.
Americans seem to be very rapidly losing touch with reality. At least in the public sphere. Two recent columns by American women,
Bush Is a Loser at Logic but a Winner in D.C. by Arianna Huffington in the
LA Times, and
Americans just ignore the devil in the details by Marilou Johanek in the
Toledo Blade, discuss the degree to which the American people, or at least those in charge, have retreated into a fantasyland, a bubble into which no bad news or reality may penetrate, and which simply no longer has any connection to the real world.
And nothing illustrates the degree of the illusion than the complete absence of any coverage of the horrors Americans have perpetuated in Falluja over the past few months. This is a very major story, about as big as they get, which has been completely ignored. (Among other things, it was just about the biggest US armored operation since WWII, which alone should have made it important.)
Chris Floyd's latest
Global Eye column in the
Moscow Times gives a good overview of the major war crimes committed there, which include the cold-blooded murder of civilians including children, women, doctors and journalists, the delliberate bombing of hospitals and other civilian centers, and, especially, the apparently widespread use of chemical weapons, cluster bombs and other banned weapons, banned even against military forces much less civilian populations.
Floyd also notes what is perhaps the greatest horror of them all, which is the degradation of American society into something ugly, twisted and evil. This is the real story, and the one that the American media, and to an extent the global media as well, are not paying any attention to.
Here's the entire story, reprinted because articles in the Moscow Times go behind a paywall after a while, and it's too important to be forgotten. Very major crimes were committed here, and a level of savagery reached and hatred expressed that the world hasn't seen in quite a while. Also note the excellent list of links to documentation provided.
U.S. President George W. Bush often complains about the "media filter" that distorts the true picture of his administration's accomplishments in Iraq. And he's right. For regardless of where you stand on Bush's policies in the region, it's undeniable that the political and commercial biases of the American press have consistently misrepresented the reality of the situation.
Here's an excellent example. Earlier this month, the American media completely ignored an important announcement from an official of the Iraqi government concerning the oft-maligned U.S. operation to clear insurgents from the city of Fallujah last November. Although the press conference of Health Ministry investigator Dr. Khalid ash-Shaykhli was attended by representatives from The Washington Post, Knight-Ridder and more than 20 other international news outlets, nary a word of his team's thorough investigation into the truth about the battle made it through the filter's dense mesh. Once again, the American public was denied the full story of one of President Bush's remarkable triumphs.
Dr. ash-Shaykhli's findings provided confirmation of earlier reports by many other Iraqis -- reports that were also ignored by the arrogant filterers, who seem more interested in hearing from terrorists or anti-occupation extremists than ordinary Iraqis and those like Dr. ash-Shaykhli, who serve in the U.S.-backed interim government vetted and approved by President Bush. But while the media elite turn up their noses at such riffraff, the testimony of these common folk and diligent public servants gives ample evidence of Bush's innovative method of liberating innocent Iraqis from tyranny:
He burns them to death with chemical weapons.
Dr. ash-Shaykhli was sent by the pro-American Baghdad government to assess health conditions in Fallujah, a city of 300,000 that was razed to the ground by a U.S. assault on a few hundred insurgents, most of whom slipped away long before the attack. The ruin of the city was complete: Every single house was either destroyed (from 75 to 80 percent of the total) or heavily damaged. The city's entire infrastructure -- water, electricity, food, transport, medicine -- was obliterated. Indeed, the city's hospitals were among the first targets, in order to prevent medical workers from spreading "propaganda" about civilian casualties, U.S. officials said at the time.
Eyewitness accounts from the few survivors of the onslaught, which killed an estimated 1,200 noncombatants, have consistently reported the use of "burning chemicals" by American forces: horrible concoctions that roasted people alive with an unquenchable jellied fire, InterPress reported. They also tell of whole quadrants of the city in which nothing was left alive, not even dogs or goats -- quadrants that were sealed off by the victorious Americans for mysterious scouring operations after the battle. Others told of widespread use of cluster bombs in civilian areas -- a flagrant violation of the Geneva Conventions, but a standard practice throughout the war.
The few fragments of this information that made it through the ever-vigilant filter were instantly dismissed as anti-American propaganda, although they often came from civilians who had opposed the heavy-handed insurgent presence in the town. Rejected as well were the innumerable horror stories of those who had seen their whole families -- including women, children, the sick and the elderly -- slaughtered in the "liberal rules of engagement" established by Bush's top brass. Most of the city was declared "weapons-free": military jargon meaning that soldiers could shoot "whatever they see -- it's all considered hostile," The New York Times reported, in a story buried deep inside the paper.
Yet the ash-Shaykhli team -- again, appointed by the Bush-backed government -- confirmed the use of "mustard gas, nerve gas and other burning chemicals" by U.S. forces during the battle. Dr. ash-Shaykhli said that survivors -- still living in refugee camps, along with some 200,000 former Fallujah residents who fled before the assault -- are now showing the medical effects of attack by chemical agents and the use of depleted uranium shells. (American officials have admitted raining more than 250,000 pounds of toxin-tipped DU ammunition on Iraqis since the war began.)
The Pentagon has acknowledged using white phosphorus in Fallujah, but only for "illumination purposes." It denied using napalm in the attack -- but, in the course of that denial, it admitted that its earlier denials of using napalm elsewhere in Iraq were in fact false. And individual Marines filing "After Action Reports" on the Internet for military enthusiasts back home have detailed the routine use of white phosphorus shells, propane bombs and "jellied gasoline" (also known as napalm) during direct tactical assaults in Fallujah.
Dr. ash-Shaykhli's findings -- coming from a pro-American government, buttressed by reams of eyewitness testimony from ordinary Iraqi civilians -- appear to be substantial, credible and worthy of further investigation by the U.S. press. Certainly, the findings are more credible than the pre-war lies and fantasies about Saddam's phantom WMD, which the "media filter" lapped up from the Bush regime and amplified across the nation, rousing support for an unnecessary, illegal and immoral war. Yet these serious new atrocity charges have not even been mentioned, much less examined.
Behind the filter -- with its basic story template of "always moral U.S. policies occasionally marred by a few bad apples" -- a relentless degeneration of American society is taking place. Brutality and atrocity are becoming normalized, systemized and rewarded. The noble American ideal of transcendence -- overcoming the beast within, seeking to embrace an ever-broader, ever-deeper, ever-richer vision of universal communion and individual worth -- is dying at the hands of the resurgent barbarity championed and cultivated by the Bush regime. Old-fashioned citizens are being replaced by "Bush Americans": wilfully ignorant, bellicose zealots, cringingly servile toward the powerful, violently hostile to all "outsiders." Despite Bush's artful complaints, the media filter has served his degenerate purposes very well.
Annotations:
Napalm, Chemical Weapons Used at Fallujah: Iraqi Official, ILCA Online, March 7, 2005.
Stories From Fallujah, Iraq Dispatch, Feb. 8, 2005
.
Fallujah, Tent City, Awaits Compensation, Informed Comment, March 13, 2005.
Another Sad Day for Our Country, The American Independent, March 7, 2005.
Iraqi Health Ministry Confirms Use of Prohibited Weapons in Attacks on al-Fallujah, Mafkarat al-Islam (Iraq), March 2, 2005.
U.S. General From Abu Ghraib Scandal Promoted, Stars and Stripes, March 15, 2005.
Odd Happenings in Fallujah, Electronic Iraq, Jan. 18, 2005.
U.S. Denies Use of Napalm in Fallujah, U.S, International Information Programs Jan. 27, 2005.
The Eyewitnesses Must Be Crazy, Antiwar.com, March 15, 2005.
Life Under the Bombs in Iraq, TomDispatch, Feb. 2, 2005.
TV News Turns Myopic: Profits Come First, Houston Chronicle, March 16, 2005.
The Media Lobby, CorpWatch, March 11, 2005.
Journalism, Infotainment and the Bottom-Line Business of Broadcasting, Buzzflash, March 17, 2005.
Handmaiden of the State: The Role of Media in an Age of Empire, Antiwar.com, March 16, 2005.
Extreme Cinema Verite: Soldiers Make Music Videos of Death and Destruction, Los Angeles Times, March 14, 2005.
A War Crime in Real Time: Obliterating Fallujah, CounterPunch, Nov. 15, 2004.
Inside Fallujah: One Family's Diary of Terror, Scotland Sunday Herald, Nov. 14, 2004.
The Marine's Tale: 'I Felt We Were Committing Genocide, The Independent, May 23, 2004.
Smoke and Corpses, BBC, Nov. 11, 2004.
20 Doctors Killed in Strike on Clinic: Red Crescent, UN Integrated Regional Information Network, Nov. 10, 2004.
US Strikes Raze Fallujah Hospital, BBC, Nov. 6, 2004.
Ghost City Calls for Help, BBC, Nov. 13, 2004.
Let Them Drink Sand: War Crimes in Fallujah, CounterPunch, Nov. 13, 2004.
American Heroes, Baghdad Burning, Nov. 16, 2004.
Beyond Embattled City, Rebels Roam Free, Los Angeles Times, Nov. 12, 2004.
Administration Rejects Ruling on PR Videos, Washington Post, March 14, 2005.
$226 Million in Government Ads Helped Pave the Way to War, Antiwar.com, May 28, 2004.
Americans should inform themselves about what happened in Falluja not because it's the decent thing to do, although that wouldn't hurt, but rather because there will be very major repercussions to come from this and other actions. Military repercussions, financial repercussions, trials and suits of all sorts, economic sanctions, and more. It engendered a vicious hatred of Americans that will continue for decades. And not just by Iraqis, but by people all over the world. Because this has been reported elsewhere, just not in the US. America went way too far this time and it will come to back to haunt her. In the world's view it wasn't Bush or the Republicans who did this. It was all of America, and it's all Americans who are legally and morally responsible.
World bank nominee faces resistance.
There's an Asia Times
article by Sanjay Suri on the reaction of the other World Bank members to the nomination of Paul Wolfowitz as its new head. The article is about the possible European reaction to the nomination, and whether they will have the guts to stand up to the Americans about having someone so clearly unsuitable run such an important international legislation.
What's really disgusting is that while the US and Europe combined represent only 46% of the votes, they're the only ones discussed. And actually, it's just Britain, France and Germany that are mentioned. The other EU countries apparently don't even exist, not to mention the rest of the world.
This article at least briefly mentions other countries, who make up the majority, but it's clear that any so-called "democracy" is a justification for legitimizing white rule. Especially nauseating given that the overwhelming bulk of the World Bank's activities take place outside either the US or Europe.
The 25-member European Union has between its member states a larger percentage of the vote than the United States. Britain and France have, for example, 4.3% each, and Germany 4.49%. With about 30% of the vote, the EU has almost twice as many votes as the US's 16%. But the EU is not a single voting bloc on the World Bank board. And traditionally the appointment of the World Bank head has come by consensus, never having been put to the vote.
... EU countries seem to be preparing to challenge the appointment in debates within the World Bank governing body, if not put their opposition to the vote. Analysts believe that major EU countries will engage in active diplomatic talks ahead of the discussions in the World Bank on the appointment. They are expected also to engage in talks with leading developing countries. On their part, developing countries are said to be discussing among themselves the possibility of presenting their own nominee to oppose the tradition of an American heading the World Bank and a European the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Notice that the non-white nations are only briefly referred to as "developing countries." Not a single one of them is named, despite the fact that they are the majority, and not a single representative of them is quoted. But they talk about a vote on "ratifying" the American choice as being "democratic." It's not, they just use it to justify their elitism and contempt for true democracy. There's no way an American would be approved in this office if the organization ran on anything even vaguely resembling democratic processes.
It's so repulsive. Both the IMF and the World Bank at this point are just loan-sharking organizations which strong-arm helpless people into taking on debt they can't afford and then, once they get over their head, moving in to steal their collateral. The World Bank isn't a "bank"; it's a organized crime syndicate.
The World Bank is supposed to be about helping to end poverty. But it's not. It's about using the poverty of others as a way of making the rich richer. That's all it is. It's been in operation for fifty or so years now, and it's record is very, very clear on that.
But I wonder if the appointment of Wolfowitz, the main architect of the war in Iraq and of American militarism in general, may be just the straw that breaks the camel's back, and gets the rest of the world to say "enough." Maybe so. In any case, it's another brick in the wall around America.
Slowly but surely Bush and his cabal are pushing people too far. And this really is going rather far. Wolfowitz is not just a major international war criminal, he's also a known thief, who has actively participated in the theft of billions of dollars from both the Iraqis and from American funds allocated for the war and the reconstuction. He has a proven contempt for the law. Having someone like that in charge of a _bank_ could be a bit much to swallow.
I think it would also make it much more unlikely that people would choose to do business with the World Bank. Regardless of whether or not Wolfowitz is confirmed.
Add: also see Paul Krugman's comments on the World Bank and Wolfowitz in
The Ugly American Bank. And
Smedley Butler, Meet John Perkins, a review of Perkins book "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man", which tells the very ugly story of how the international financial institutions that are supposed to be "helping" people really operate.
Smedley Butler, by the way, was the very highly decorated American Marine general in the early part of the century who later turned into an anti-war activist and wrote
War Is A Racket. Essential reading for anyone interested in American history, once and future.
March 16, 2005
American efforts to suppress the truth about Iraq.
Truthout has a multi-part series by Steve Weissman on American attempts to target journalists in Iraq and elsewhere. It's in four parts:
Obviously you don't go so far as to deliberately murder reporters, including women, unless you really, really have something that you need to hide. The most frightening part is that they appear to have been relatively successful at hiding the truth so far. And the global media is certainly letting them get away with it. It's almost as if the world just doesn't want to know what kind of horrors are occurring under the banners of "freedom and democracy."
Reporters Without Borders has a lot more information on this.
US tries to sink forests plan.
Guardian
article. Further extending the pattern of opposing any sort of international agreements, the US is planning on fighting a British-led proposal to fight illegal logging in rainforests and other endagnered areas.
The US plans to wreck a British initiative to commit the G8 states to combatting illegal logging in the world's threatened rainforests, a leaked memorandum revealed last night.
The development secretary, Hilary Benn, wants G8 environment and development ministers meeting in Derby tomorrow and on Friday to insist that all timber bought by official bodies in rich nations comes from properly managed forests.
The British initiative was prompted by Indonesia, which said corruption there was so rampant that the authorities did not have the power to tackle the supply of timber by criminal gangs. Indonesian government ministers urged rich nations to reduce demand for illegal supplies by requiring proper certificates showing wood had come from properly managed forests.
But industry lobbyists in the US have resisted moves to certify timber. A US state department memo leaked to the BBC's Newsnight shows that the US will refuse to sign up to the Benn initiative.
The state department head of forest policy, Stephanie Caswell, drafted a strategy in January designed to scupper the Benn plan, an "Input to strategy paper for G8 environment and development ministerial". Under what she described as "watch out items" is timber procurement. She said that "new import regulations/restrictions are unacceptable. We do not support issuance of 'action plan' by ministers. It should not be highlighted." The paper adds that the "US will work with Canada to hold back procurement actions and with Russia and Japan to dissuade them from supporting UK".
Tom Waits' favorite records.
The Guardian Observer now has a
blog, and they went and asked Tom Waits to
list his favorite records. Some nice choices, including these three. I don't recall ever hearing about Sam Phillips. Have to check that out. Apparently he listed a lot, which they're running as a series.
Martinis & Bikinis
Sam Phillips
Virgin, 1994
Peculiar, innovative, soulful, and reasonably undiscovered, with a deeply expressive voice and challenging and unusual topics for songs. Kurt Weill with a revolver. Her cracked vocals and surreal lyrics make for an odd and familiar ride. She and producer T- Bone Burnett make her face yellow and her hair red, and give her a third eye, and together they make tough records. She's Dusty Springfield via Marianne Faithfull with a dash of Jackie De Shannon, but very much her own woman.
Shakin’ the Rafters
The Abyssinian Baptist Gospel Choir
Sony, 1960
Tony Bennett said this is the greatest rock and roll record ever recorded. You can feel why in these wild powerful performances, produced by John Hammond in the early 1960’s (John was, among other things, an avid fan of gospel). This choir is barely containable. This recording puts you in the choir with them. Astonishing, awesome. You will be saved.
Last Sessions
Leadbelly
Smithsonian Folkways, 1994
Leadbelly was a river, was a tree. His 12-string guitar rang like a piano in a church basement. The Rosetta stone for much of what was to follow, he died in 1949. Excellent to listen to when driving across Texas, contains all that is necessary to sustain life, a true force of nature. He died the day before I was born and I like to think I passed him in the hall and he banged into me and knocked me over.
Leadbelly sang of rivers even. "Sometimes I live in the country, sometimes I live in the town, sometimes I get a great notion, to jump in the river and drown," from "Goodnight Irene." So sad to think of someone like that spending so many years in prison.
The
Observer Blog is very good. Nice to see a major news site getting on the blog train so much. The Guardian also has a
news blog. Plus pointers to many blogs, British and otherwise.
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