Selves and Others

UFPJ Talking Points #38

• It remains unclear who was responsible for the attack on the golden-domed Askariya Shi’a mosque in Samarra. In the two days following the bombing over 200 Iraqis were killed, and the country was put under a day-and-night curfew.

• The spike in sectarian violence does not reflect a sudden danger of civil war. Rather, if it continues to escalate it may lead to a shift from the existing low-intensity political civil war between supporters (reluctant or not) of the U.S. occupation and opponents of that occupation, to a civil war identified largely along sectarian lines.

• The bombing and the spike in violence afterwards provides the latest proof of the failure of the U.S. military occupation to bring security, let alone "democracy," to the people of Iraq. The declared U.S. strategy of training an Iraqi counter-insurgency military force to replace U.S. and "coalition" troops (not to mention the U.S. effort to enforce "security" in Samarra by surrounding it with a huge earthen wall) is a failure. A Congressional decision to pass the administration’s latest supplemental spending bill authorizing about $62 billion for the Iraq war (especially for training Iraqi troops) would represent a complete acquiescence to this utterly failed policy.

• The presence of U.S. occupation troops in Iraq remains an aggravating provocation to all sides and continues to foment more violence. In recent polls 82% of all Iraqis want an end to the U.S. occupation; 47% of all Iraqis support attacks on U.S. troops. Much of the popular anger following the bombing of the Askariya shrine, among both Sunni and Shi’a, targeted the U.S. occupation. Shi’a cleric and militia leader Moqtada al Sadr, speaking on al Jazeera television, called on the new Iraqi parliament, which includes 32 of his followers, to vote on a request for "coalition" forces to leave Iraq.

• The undemocratic political process imposed by the U.S. occupation has exacerbated sectarian divisions in Iraq, a country with a long history (despite ethnic and sectarian tensions) of secularism and strong national identity. Negotiations over creation of a new Iraqi government have now collapsed, as has any potential interest in eliminating sectarian militias or bringing them under government control.

• U.S. military officials and the Bush administration are all eager to deny that this escalation heralds a "civil war" in Iraq because that would undermine their claim that only the presence of U.S. troops is preventing such a civil war. A top U.S. general said "we’re not seeing civil war igniting.... We’re seeing a capable Iraqi government using their capable forces...." President Bush said it was not a civil war, and claimed those responsible for the Samarra bombing were "not internal" to Iraq, but were those from outside who were "trying to stop the advance of freedom" in Iraq. Britain’s Tony Blair, similarly, denied this was a civil war, but rather "democracy versus extremism and terrorism." Congressman John Murtha, who has called for U.S. troops to be withdrawn from Iraq, said it is a civil war, and that "our troops are caught in between."

• While the Askariya bombing has engendered a serious escalation in sectarian divisions and violence, and some sectarian militias seem to be gaining renewed power, there have also been significant cross-sectoral, unitary and secular responses. Influential religious leaders have called for calm, while urging their followers into the streets to protest the violence. In largely Shi’a Basra, for example, a large joint Sunni-Shi’a protest called for defending Iraqi national unity, opposing sectarian violence, and an end to the U.S. occupation, chanting "No to America."

• This is a new moment. U.S. and global anti-war forces should respond to the latest escalation of violence in Iraq with renewed energy for demanding an end to the occupation and bringing all the troops home now. The deteriorating conditions in Iraq and escalation in Iraqi deaths, along with the approaching third year anniversary of the U.S. invasion and especially the current congressional debate over the new multi-billion dollar supplemental spending bill, require new urgency for mobilization, education and advocacy on local, national and international levels. While incremental U.S. troop withdrawals may be announced soon after the current spike in violence subsides, we must be very clear that partial withdrawals (even if large scale) are not sufficient. Rather, our priority demand must be for a complete end to the occupation including withdrawal of all U.S. and "coalition" troops as well as foreign mercenaries, plus the closing of all U.S. military bases in Iraq.

On his triumphalist tour of India and Pakistan, where he hopes to wave imperiously at people he considers potential subjects, President Bush has an itinerary that’s getting curiouser and curiouser.

For Bush’s March 2 pit stop in New Delhi, the Indian government tried very hard to have him address our parliament. A not inconsequential number of MPs threatened to heckle him, so Plan One was hastily shelved. Plan Two was to have Bush address the masses from the ramparts of the magnificent Red Fort, where the Indian prime minister traditionally delivers his Independence Day address. But the Red Fort, surrounded as it is by the predominantly Muslim population of Old Delhi, was considered a security nightmare. So now we’re into Plan Three: President George Bush speaks from Purana Qila, the Old Fort.

Ironic, isn’t it, that the only safe public space for a man who has recently been so enthusiastic about India’s modernity should be a crumbling medieval fort? (...)

[web only]

On February 24, at a press briefing, White House National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley announced that, when U.S. President George W. Bush travels to India, he will lay a wreath in honor of Mohandas Gandhi.

For those familiar with the cynical gestures of government officials, it might come as no surprise that an American President would attempt to derive whatever public relations benefits he can by linking himself to one of the most revered figures in Indian and world history.

But the level of hypocrisy is heightened when one recalls that Bush is currently one of the world’s leading warmakers and that Gandhi was one of the world’s leading advocates of nonviolence. Furthermore, the American President’s major purpose for traveling to India is to clinch a deal that will provide that nation with additional nuclear technology, thus enabling it to accelerate its development of nuclear weapons. (...)

Introduction to Publish it Not! a book of zionist manipulation and obstruction of media and political discourse in Britain from the 1950s until the 1970. This introduction by Tim Llewellyn ties the earlier history together with the contemporary propaganda and media scene.

Editor note: this is a preliminary version that is slightly different from the published version

Book summary and ordering information can be found here.

No alien polity has so successfully penetrated the British government and British institutions during the past ninety years as the Zionist movement and its manifestation as the state of Israel.

From the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917, in which the British Foreign Secretary said his government “view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish

people,” (before Britain had taken possession of Palestine from the Ottomans), through the twenty-six year history of Zionist exploitation of the British Mandate at Arab (and British) expense,

to Britain’s scuttle from Palestine in 1948 and the creation of Israel and the catastrophe for the Palestinians, and up to present-day connivance by the United Kingdom government with America’s

unremitting political and media support for Israel and its daily violation of international laws and conventions on Palestinian lands, the Zionists have manipulated British systems as expertly as

maestros, here a massive major chord, there a minor refrain, the audience, for the most part, spellbound. (...)

[February 2006]

The last-minute postponement of the execution of Michael Morales in California has given new hope to death penalty abolitionists as the world observes International Death Penalty Abolition Day on Wednesday, March 1.

Since 1973, 122 people in the USA sentenced to death by the unanimous verdict of a jury of their peers, have been exonerated. How many other innocent men and women languish on death row, or worse, have been executed for crimes they did not commit?

Executing the wrong man is nothing new in the United States. In 1828, Patrick Fitzpatrick of Detroit was hanged for the rape and murder of an innkeeper’s daughter. Seven years later, his roommate confessed to the crime. (...)

Patrick Elie is a former cabinet minister in the government of Haiti, a leading social justice activist in that country and a fierce opponent of the 2004 coup d’état against the democratically-elected government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a regime change which was supported by the United States, France, and Canada.

Elie is currently on a five-week speaking tour across Canada, visiting over twenty towns and cities. Derrick O’Keefe, co-editor of Seven Oaks, recently interviewed Elie by telephone.

Derrick O’Keefe: Patrick, your visit to Canada was delayed as a result of events in Haiti. And then when you did arrive here you were subjected to rough treatment. Could you explain what happened?

Patrick Elie: I was scheduled to come to Canada on February 14. But, what happened was, with the election and the attempted fraud that followed, the people of Haiti took to the streets and voted with their feet after having voted with their ballots. And, as a consequence, Air Canada cancelled its weekly flight to Port-au-Prince. So I had to start the tour one week late.

I left on February 21 and arrived in Montreal in time for an event at Concordia University. But when I got to Customs I was detained and searched. All my papers were examined - I’m talking about personal papers, and notes, agenda and everything. These were even taken away from me. I insisted on being present when they were going to examine these papers, but they refused. I had a TV camera and they insisted on viewing the film that was in it. They took my laptop. All kinds of stupidity. And of course they couldn’t have anything against me, so then the supervisor of Customs came and told me I was cleared but now CSIS wanted to talk to me.

(...)

The “Duh” in the title comes partly from my remembering that little child in the 50s who used to fold out a bed from a sofa in some tv ad which noted: “So easy, even a child can do it!” That child, as I recall, was about twice as old as Papi‘s morceau.

In red silk/satin brocade and mock Manchu queue, Marcel parades past deer-horns, in their velvet stage, dried lizards, neatly spread on thin bamboo sticks, dried toads, shark’s tails, smelly herbs, strangely colored liquids, and wafer-thin medicines. (...)

Given the Bush administration’s rhetoric regarding the Iranian government you wouldn’t think the two have much in common. In his 2002 State of the Union address President Bush referred to Iran as part of an “axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.” Last week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice testified before the Senate regarding the administration’s request for $75 million to help further democracy in Iran, in which she stated that Iran was under the control of a “radical regime.” Yet the Bush administration recently went out of its way to support an Iranian initiative to deny access to gay rights organizations within the United Nations. (...)