posted February 22, 2003 at 12:00 p.m. MDTYears ago (mid- and late-70s) I was working for our country's national broadcaster. I was also working with an NGO doing development education. At some point the tension became too much: I knew that what I was helping put on air was a washed out bawdlerized versions of what was actually happening in the world. As deniable as it was, after a previous experience with anti-democratic activity (in the military), I couldn't carry on, and chucked yet another good career. Nobody understood it then. Nearly 30 years have passed ... are you starting to get it?
At counterpunch.org, Dave Lindorff's "Iraq and the Failure of American Journalism" reads in part:
"Although there are clear and rational and compelling arguments being made against war both at home and abroad by professional soldiers, seasoned diplomats and millions of ordinary people, the American corporate media, both print and electronic, have become virtual parrots of the Administration line that war is necessary because Saddam Hussein is evil and a clear threat to America."
posted February 20, 2003 at 5:28 p.m. MDT[Tip of the hat to David Isenberg by way of David Weinberger for this.]
Report from Iraq
Submitted to portside by Charlie Clements
I am a public health physician and a human rights advocate. I have just returned from a 10-day emergency mission to Iraq with other public health experts to assess the vulnerability of the civilian population to another war. I'm also a distinguished graduate of the USAF Academy and a Vietnam veteran, so I have some sense of the potential consequences of the air war we are about to unleash on Iraq as a prelude to the introduction of American troops.
The population of Iraq has been reduced to the status of refugees. Nearly 60 percent of Iraqis, or almost 14 million people, depend entirely on a government- provided food ration that, by international standards, represents the minimum for human sustenance. Unemployment is greater than 50 percent, and the majority of those who are employed make between $4 and $8 a month. (The latter figure is the salary of a physician that works in a primary health center.) Most families are without economic resources, having sold off their possessions over the last decade to get by.
Hospital wards are filled with severely malnourished children, and much of the population has a marginal nutritional status. While visiting a children's hospital, we were told about newly emerging diseases that had previously been controlled when pesticides were available. (Current sanctions prohibit their importation.) Later I saw a mother who had traveled 200 km with her young daughter, who suffered from leschmaniais, or "kala azar" as it is known there. She came to the hospital because she heard it had a supply of Pentostam, the medicine needed to treat the disease. The pediatrician told her there was none. Then he turned to me and, in English, said, "It would be kinder to shoot her here rather than let her go home and die the lingering death that awaits her". Our interpreter, by instinct, translated the doctor's comments into Arabic for the mother, whose eyes instantly overflowed with tears.
The food distribution program funded by the U.N., Oil- for-Food, is the world's largest and is heavily dependent upon the transportation system, which will be one of the first targets of the war, as the U.S. will attempt to sever transport routes to prevent Iraqi troop movements and interrupt military supplies. Yet even before the transportation system is hit, U.S. aircraft will spread millions of graphite filaments in wind-dispersed munitions that will cause a complete paralysis of the nation's electrical grids. Already literally held together with bailing wire because the country has been unable to obtain spare parts due to sanctions, the poorly functioning electrical system is essential to the public health infrastructure.
The water treatment system, too, has been a victim of sanctions. Unable to import chlorine and aluminum sulfate (alum) to purify water, Iraq has already seen a 1000% increase in the incidence of some waterborne diseases. Typhoid cases, for instance, have increased from 2,200 in 1990 to more than 27,000 in 1999. In the aftermath of an air assault, Iraqis will not have potable water in their homes, and they will not have water to flush their toilets.
The sanitation system, which frequently backs up sewage ankle deep in Baghdad neighborhoods when the ailing pumps fail, will stop working entirely in the aftermath of the air attack. There will be epidemics as water treatment and water pumping will come to a halt. Even though it is against the Geneva Conventions to target infrastructure elements that primarily serve civilians, this prohibition did not give us pause in Gulf War I — and, based upon current Bush administration threats, will not this time. Pregnant women, malnourished children, and the elderly will be the first to succumb. UNICEF estimates that 500,000 more children died in Iraq in the decade following the Gulf War than died in the previous decade. These children are part of the "collateral damage" from the last war.
How many civilians will die in the next war? That is hard to say. One estimate for the last Gulf War was that 10,000 perished, mostly during the bombing campaign that led up to the invasion. That figure will surely climb because our government has promised that a cruise missile will strike Iraq every five minutes for the first 48 hours the war. These missiles will seek out military, intelligence, and security-force targets around highly populated areas like Baghdad, Basra, and Mosul, Iraq's largest cities, where "collateral damage" is unavoidable. Unable to meet the acute medical needs of the country's population now, the health care system of Iraq will be overwhelmed by such an assault.
This scenario is conservative. I have not taken into account any use of weapons of mass destruction, or the possibility that the war will set loose massive civil disorder and bloodshed, as various groups within the country battle for power or revenge. I have also ignored what would happen if we became bogged down in house-to-house fighting in Baghdad, which could easily become another Mogidishu or Jenin.
There was a lot that made me angry on that trip. I have worked in war zones before and I have been with civilians as they were bombed by U.S.-supplied aircraft, but I don't think I've experienced anything on the magnitude of the catastrophe that awaits our attack in Iraq. Still, as deeply troubling as this looming human disaster is, another issue troubles me far more. If the U.S. pursues this war without the backing of the U.N. Security Council, it will undermine a half-century of efforts by the world community to establish a foundation of humanitarian and human rights law. Such an act on our part would also violate the U.N. Charter and make a mockery of the very institution we have helped to fashion in the hopes it would help prevent crimes against humanity. Many might define the consequences of such an attack on the population of Iraq as just that.
Saddam is a monster, there is no doubt about that. He needs to be contained. Yet many former U.N. weapons inspectors feel he has been "defanged". His neighbors do not fear him any longer. There are many Iraqis who want him removed, but not by a war. Against the short- term gain of removing Saddam, we must take into account that idea that we may well unleash forces of hatred and resentment that will haunt us for decades to come in every corner of the world. I can just hear Osama Bin Laden saying now, "Please President Bush, attack Iraq. There's nothing better you could do to help the cause of Al Qaeda!"
Letter from Charlie Clements
Charlie Clements, a public health physician, has spent much of his professional experience dealing with issues of war, human rights, and the humanitarian needs of refugees. He is the co-founder of the International Medical Relief Fund (IMRF) and was president during the 16 years it functioned (1982-1998). From 1984-1986 he served as the Director of Human Rights Education of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC). He has served on the board of Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) from 1987 to the present and is currently its past president. PHR was one of the founders and leaders of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. Clements represented PHR at both the signing of the Treaty to Ban Landmines in Ottawa, Canada and the next week at the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo, Norway. He is also the founder of the International Commission on Medical Neutrality, which has focused attention on the need to extend the protections afforded military physicians and patients by the Geneva Conventions in times of war, to include both civilian health professionals and patients. Clements is the author of Witness to War published by Bantam in 1984 and subject of a 1985 Academy Award-winning documentary of the same title produced by the American Friends Service Committee. He is a distinguished graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy and a distinguished alumnus of the University of Washington School of Community Medicine and Public Health. He is the director of the Bartos Institute for the Constructive Engagement of Conflict at the United World College in Montezuma, New Mexico.
posted February 19, 2003 at 6:35 p.m. MDTI can imagine writing something like, ""there is nothing constructive about the Bush regime; it's a political and civilisational destroyer." Everytime I ponder the horific dumbing down and levelling of MacCulture ... globalization is extinguishing whole cultures just as corporatism is extinguishing species, such thoughts come to mind. In fact, I know a number of people who might utter that sort of phrase, and not always as part of a rant. But that isn't my sentence, and it wasn't written by one of my friends or collaborators. It's from the director of the
"CounterPunch February 18, 2003
Political Fundamentalism in DC
Will Bush Prevail or Listen and Think?
Political fundamentalism
The Bush regime is politically fundamentalist: we are right, they are wrong. It's based on the flawed assumption that policies can be based on: a) dictating to friends and foes alike that they are either with us/U.S. or against us/U.S., and b) ignoring every type of listening, consulting and consensus-building policies with rightfully concerned parties, including its closest friends.
So, regrettable as it is, it's the Bush regime's policies, not Saddam Hussein's, that have split the West and now shake institutions such as the United Nations, the EU and NATO".
News: Michael Albert, author of such as "Moving Forward: Program for a Participatory Economy" and "The Trajectory of Change: Activist Strategies for Social Transformation" has come out with another one: "Parecon: Life After Capitalism" ( it's at on the Amazon site in Canada).
posted February 17, 2003 at 5:17 p.m. MDTA glimpse of our history: On the Move April 2000: A16 DC from 9:02pm Apr 8 to 11:14AM Apr 12
with the help of folks in the IndyMedia sys-admin and tech groups, I just pulled off a lovely bit of historic recovery: from the files on my venerable auld Dell laptop [please don't let me fall into the gutter, friends] I dredged and re-activated the raw stock I was cutting from during the A16 anti-IMF/WB event in Washington DC ... 9 glorious pages of linked stories! Not bad for a global organization that had pulled itself together in a very few months!
*beaming smile*
posted February 16, 2003 at 12:21 p.m. MDTAiming to speak truth to power
A timely coincidence: today I realized that the historic beginnings of Indymedia are not online (the file archives I have on Zip from that period are not complete, but they show the terrific amount that's missing); yesterday I found out that I will be foreced offline by May 1 (when I can buy enough food to get through the month, my very next item will be a regular ISP account). And just now I discovered Electronic Intifada, which brought me to Voice in the Wilderness and to Electronic Iraq ... so I can rest assured that the struggle carries on!
Talking about history, I re-discovered my Halifax A16 page
