Marian's Blog

"Embedded" in Iraq

Recently GOP "maverick"(?) Colin Powell labelled the reality in Iraq a civil war. Knowledgeable journalists and others say what we see in the press does not begin to convey how bad it is. It's almost two years since my Jan 19, 2005 entry when I wrote about what to some of us already looked like a tragic, inexorable descent into hell. I contrasted it with George Bush's grand, lavish and self-congratulatory 2005 re-entry into the White House on the same day. Two years on I'm still trying to comprehend the U.S. media's "approach" to reporting Iraq and the kind of place it has become since Bush & Co.'s 2003 unilateral invasion.

This led me to search for the meaning of the term 'embedded' via Merriam Webster's dictionary online. As in "to have embedded virtually all journalistic coverage of Iraq inside the military". Here's what I found: "... to enclose closely in or as if in a matrix"; "to make something an integral part of"; "to prepare [a specimen] for sectioning by infiltrating with and enclosing in a supporting substance"; "to surround closely"; and the use of the intransitive verb: "to become embedded". How will journalists and historians chronicle this still-unfolding story of the way so many are covering Iraq?

Bush, Inc: GOPgate - Haven't We Had Enough Already??

Mr. Bush - there's a lot more than 'background noise' going on over your head! Those two words are from yet another "brilliant" (...snicker...) George Bush performance to stonewall a journalist. This one occurred just yesterday in DC. I don't have the original question but Bush replied: "There's some background noise here, a lot of chatter, a lot of speculation and opining. But the American people expect me to do my job, and I'm going to." Maybe there really are still one or two Americans out there actually waiting for Mr. Bush to start. His job that is. Bush may be meeting certain expectations of his self-described "base" - the "haves and have mores" - but alot of us are sure he is not working on behalf of "the American people." If you happen to be an American - do you consider yourself better off today than you were five years ago? Yesterday I was reading a blog which alleges George and Jeb (Bush) are waiting for Wilma - the latest mega-storm bearing down on the southern US - to strike, presumably in Florida, in order to further distract the American public from the (constitutional?) crisis metastasizing in Washington. I was calling this Whitehousegate but it goes deeper so I'll call it GOP-gate. Much of the so-called 'Republican revolution' was engineered over the past three, even four decades, but it ramped up big time once Newt Gingrich jumped into the saddle with the 1994 Republican Contract with On America. The Grand Old Party doesn't seem to need to speak of that one anymore. Today's citizen anger inside the US is not only about Iraq nor just about the leak of classified information - i.e., the name of a US intelligence agent - and evidently by sources right there inside the White House, no less. This is not just about government-sponsored perversity at Gitmo or Abu Ghraib nor just Commander in Chief Bush's time-delayed response to a storm called Katrina. It's also not just war-making so elegantly combined with massive contracts gifted to political cronies, nor is it just the related hemorraging of the United States budget. It's not even just those fishy outcomes of two - count 'em 1, 2 - US elections. The problem is all these and more. Haven't Americans had enough of the dullard 'press conferences' combined with the lying, smirking, self-serving arrogance? And why has the outrage about this - overall - been far stronger in societies and countries other than our own??? Answer me that one. I'm checking a site, After Downing Street, where someone posted Bernard Weiner's fascinating piece, "Arguments for an Impeachment Resolution." Weiner has a site called The Crisis Papers. And I particularly like Jane Hamsher's quote at Huffington Post from one of her recent articles on investigator Patrick Fitzgerald where she remarks that Fitzgerald "... sees into the ugly, greedy, oozing heart of the NeoCon kleptocracy, its mafia-like structure and the all-too-cozy overlap between the war party and the profiteers..." Like I asked, haven't enough of us had quite enough of all this yet??

Congressman Major Owens warns Democrats; Fred. K.C. Price & Republicans target some Issues + Black Conservative Churches.

"I am frightened by what is happening," said Rep. Major R. Owens, an 11-term Democratic congressman from New York who has been conferring with colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus [of the U.S. Congress]. "Our party is in grave danger. This Republican movement is going to expand exponentially unless we do something." Major - Congressman Owens - (photo here) is talking about what I am now naming the BCCA - "Black Conservative Contract on America."

Democrat Major Owens, Brooklyn, New York

"The "Black Contract With America on Moral Values," "...unveiled... in Los Angeles... designed to help African American churches gain influence in the Republican Party and promote socially conservative legislation." "... In addition to such conservative GOP priorities as allowing workers to create private Social Security accounts and banning same-sex marriage, the Jackson contract deals with some potentially dicey issues for Republicans — such as restoring rights to former felons. The contract, Jackson said, combines the Bible-based elements of the traditionally Republican and Democratic platforms.

"... Even if it rises 5 percentage points, [Democrat Major] Owens said, "the Democratic Party will be paralyzed."

"Highlights" of what I, Marian, shall call the Black Conservative Contract On America include (according to L.A. Times):

"Marriage: Focus on prohibiting same-sex marriage; Wealth creation: private Social Security investment accounts and encouraging homeownership; Education: School vouchers, charter schools and boosting black enrollment in higher education; Prison reform: a "Second Chance Act," reentry programs and laws restoring the rights of felons; Africa: Intervention in Sudan and penalties against corporations that explore for oil in the region; Healthcare: Including programs to cover the poor." Read the entire article: "GOP Sees A Future in Black Churches" by Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten in the L.A. Times.

The TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/1782129

BBC: Global poll slams Bush leadership; people in 21 countries

According to the British Broadcasting Corporation - BBC - "a survey of people in 21 nations finds most believe the world is less safe with the re-election of US President Bush." Are so many people in the rest of the world clueless compared to Americans who supported Bush? Do Americans feel like we're part of the world?

By the way, nearly half the money for the official inauguration comes from corporations and other firms. That doesn't even count the scores of private Bush inaugural events this week. So who's working for whom?

Iraq: 'Election', possible Civil war as Bush's inaugural Washington Gloats

I have worked with elections and election preparations from Srebrenica to Kosovo to the Andes. As God is my witness I have never seen anything like what we are orchestrating in and for Iraq. Kosovo was bad, but Iraq scares me, and I am no "wimp". Working with international organisations as a civilian election and human rights professional, I also am not a militarist.

In Bosnia - where I've worked - and elsewhere, bombing people was not our "strategy" to encourage them to vote.

One terrible scenario of what is happening in Iraq reads the U.S. military/Shia militia attack on the mostly ethnic Sunni city of Fallujah as a turning point. If - as expected - the 30 January elections are dominated by the numerically dominant (but formerly marginalised) ethnic Shia population -- and if the (formerly dominant) minority ethnic Sunni (Saddam Hussein's ethnic group) largely do not vote, there will be an even greater possibility of civil war.

I'm sure thousands like me -- accustomed to working as international civilian election professionals (whose existence so many know so little about, especially Americans) -- dearly hope this assessment of the Iraq "election" situation is wrong. But we see certain things coming. The following quote is from an article titled City of Ghosts, published in the Guardian (UK). On the website I couldn't seem to find the author's name. The Guardian article ends:

"...The US military destroyed Falluja, but simply spread the fighters out around the country. They also increased the chance of civil war in Iraq by using their new national guard of Shias to suppress Sunnis. Once, when a foreign journalist, an Irish guy, asked me whether I was Shia or Sunni - the way the Irish do because they have that thing about the IRA - I said I was Sushi. My father is Sunni and my mother is Shia. I never cared about these things. Now, after Falluja, it matters."

What Tiiiime is It? Counter-Inaugural Week USA

There's an online calender full of things going on right now to mark the Bush re-coronation on Wednesday, 20 Jan. Activities have been going on every day since 2 January. A Progressive Democratic Summit will happen Jan. 21-23.

Some activities starting Wednesday morning the 20th include: 

Student Walkouts, anarchist mobilisation, a protest on the inaugural parade route... and other events like "Blue Flu Day", "Cost of the War", "Turn Your Back on Bush", people's Town Hall meeting, the Anti-Inaugural, and "Billionaires for Bush" morning & evening. There's much much more so check the calendar.