BAGHDAD (Reuters) – As if the daily struggle to dodge bullets and bombings is not enough, many Iraqis now face a freezing winter shivering by candlelight as persistent attacks keep the power out for more than 12 hours a day.

“Saddam Hussein used to cut off the electricity for a couple of hours a day and we’d complain,” said Fadia Karim, 33.

“Now there’s no power for hours and hours every day. There’s no fuel for the generators, no kerosene for the heaters. People are beyond complaining. Things are just getting worse.”

Sabotage attacks on power plants, transmission lines and the oil pipelines and fuel trucks that feed them, mean Iraqis face a cold, dark winter queuing at petrol pumps for fuel to run their generators — for those that have a generator.

Iraqi officials, wary of growing instability ahead of the Jan. 30 election, say shortages and outages have reached crisis proportions, especially in Baghdad, with no end in sight.

“I am a firefighter, I am not even an electricity minister,” said Iraqi Electricity Minister Ayham Sameraei.

“They hit the fuel pipelines everywhere around the power plants, they hit the trucks and scare my guys from keeping this fuel moving. These days, it’s getting worse.”

Most Iraqis now get up to 12 hours of electricity daily. A few days ago, they were getting no more than eight.

Earlier this week, saboteurs hit a power plant in the northern oil city of Baiji, knocking 500 megawatts off the grid and plunging the entire country into darkness for 10 hours.

Sameraei hopes to get power supplies back up to 18 hours a day by Dec. 25 but, he admits, it all depends on security.

Twenty-one months after Washington launched its war with the promise of a brighter future, Iraq produces 4,100 megawatts of electricity, a little below prewar levels and about half the country’s surging domestic demand.
Full Article: nytimes.com/reuters

ITHACA, N.Y. (AP) – Nearly half of all Americans believe the U.S. government should restrict the civil liberties of Muslim Americans, according to a nationwide poll.

The survey conducted by Cornell University also found that Republicans and people who described themselves as highly religious were more apt to support curtailing Muslims’ civil liberties than Democrats or people who are less religious.

Researchers also found that respondents who paid more attention to television news were more likely to fear terrorist attacks and support limiting the rights of Muslim Americans.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk

HAVANA (Reuters) – Cuba put up several huge billboards near the U.S. mission on Friday with pictures of abused Iraqi prisoners and American soldiers pointing a rifle at children, in response to a U.S. Christmas display in support of imprisoned Cuban dissident.

Two billboards with photos of hooded and bloodied inmates at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison, a swastika and the word “fascists” in bold red letters were erected across the street from the U.S. diplomatic mission, where the display of Christmas lights includes the number 75, in reference to 75 pro-democracy activists imprisoned for lengthy terms last year.

Another billboard faces the back of the building, with large photos of U.S. soldiers searching and pointing a rifle at children, presumably in Iraq.

A U.S. diplomat called the billboards fanatical.

“There couldn’t be a better contrast: the U.S. wishing Cubans happy holidays, Frosty waving at passers-by and an effort to prompt discussion on human rights on the one side, and screaming Cuban government billboards on the other,” he said.

Cuba had demanded this week that the U.S. display at the mission on Havana’s busy sea-side drive be taken down. The president of the National Assembly, Ricardo Alarcon, called it “rubbish” and “a provocation.”

In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said: “Any government that puts up swastikas ought to answer its own questions about why it does that. … We think that remembrance of the 75 people in jail is entirely appropriate to the season. And we intend to leave the lights up.”
Full Article: nytimes.com/reuters

LONDON (Reuters) – A U.S. bankruptcy court is likely to revoke its temporary ban on the sale of Russian oil group YUKOS’s main production unit, lawyers said on Friday.

A U.S. bankruptcy court issued an injunction on Thursday against prospective bidders and bankers involved in the planned auction of Yuganskneftegaz after YUKOS asked for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, but Russia said on Friday it would go ahead with Sunday’s sale anyway.

State-backed gas monopoly Gazprom is widely expected to win the auction, which YUKOS says undervalues its key asset.

Someone can apply to block the U.S. restraining order only if they are connected with YUKOS, lawyers said on Friday, but some of Gazprom’s financial backers, led by Deutsche Bank, fit this bill because they are also YUKOS creditors.

“I think Deutsche Bank and other banks will go to the U.S. court and say this restraining order isn’t going to work,” said a source close to YUKOS creditors.

“I suspect the U.S. court will find a graceful way of finding an order capable of working.”

Gazprom’s financial backers, which also include ABN Amro, BNP Paribas and J.P. Morgan, are affected by the U.S. restraining order because some are Securities and Exchange Commission-registered and all have U.S. places of business, which means they could be exposed to court action if they finance a bid for Yugansk in breach of the U.S. restraining order, lawyers say.

But a creditor request to lift the U.S. court’s restraining order on the Yugansk sale would probably be successful, lawyers said.
Full Article: nytimes.com/reuters

The Eskimos, or Inuit, about 155,000 seal-hunting peoples scattered around the Arctic, plan to seek a ruling from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights that the United States, by contributing substantially to global warming, is threatening their existence.

The Inuit plan is part of a broader shift in the debate over human-caused climate change evident among participants in the 10th round of international talks taking place in Buenos Aires aimed at averting dangerous human interference with the climate system.

Inuit leaders said they planned to announce the effort at the climate meeting today.

Representatives of poor countries and communities – from the Arctic fringes to the atolls of the tropics to the flanks of the Himalayas – say they are imperiled by rising temperatures and seas through no fault of their own. They are casting the issue as no longer simply an environmental problem but as an assault on their basic human rights.
Full Article: nytimes.com

By Dave Lindorff
A four-letter word has been strangely missing from the coverage of the scandal involving the arrest and handcuffing of a 10-year-old fourth-grade elementary schoolgirl in Philadelphia who had been found to have a pair of sharp scissors in her schoolbag.

That word is race.

None of the articles in the city’s news coverage of this story mentioned the fact that while little Porsche Brown, like 54 percent of her Philadelphia public school classmates, is African-American, the teacher, who rifled through her knapsack looking for some “good job” stickers missing from her desk and found and then reported the scissors, and the principal, who then authorized her arrest and incarceration by city police-before giving her mother a chance to intervene–are both white. (No stolen stickers were found in the girl’s bag.)

For some reason it’s important to tell the race of a crime suspect, but not the race of a teacher or a principal whose actions do injury to a child.

At this point, both Philadelphia Police Chief Sylvester Johnson and Paul Vallas, CEO of the city’s school system, have issued public and personal apologies to Brown’s mother, Rose Jackson–though both offices are still trying to blame the other for the outrageous and uncalled for criminal treatment of a ten-year-old who said she had merely brought the scissors to continue work on a class magazine clipping project.

A spokesman for the school district (which, bankrupt, was taken over by the state last year) claims that the decision to handcuff and arrest Brown, and to throw her unaccompanied into the back of a reportedly urine and blood-stained paddy wagon, was made by Philadelphia police called to the scene by the school’s security guard at the behest of the principal. “All we had done was bring her to the principal’s office,” says the school spokesman, Fernando Gallard.

But a spokesman for Mayor John Street’s office, speaking for the police, claimed police only took the girl to the station at the request of the principal, where they insist she was “already being detained.” Police insist that the decision to handcuff the girl was a matter of police policy. Under Philadelphia Police policy, all suspects in detention from the age of 10 must be handcuffed, the spokesperson said.

Even there, there was an apparent effort to cover up the extent of mistreatment of this unfortunate and terrified little girl. Police initially claimed that the two female officers who responded to the principal’s call, out of concern for the girl’s well-being, only handcuffed her in front of her body, and transported her in their patrol car to the detective station. In fact, it has now been confirmed by the mayor’s office, Brown was handcuffed behind her back, and was transported, unaccompanied, in the back of a wagon. (Last year, the local daily, the Philadelphia Inquirer, documented how many suspects arrested by police had been seriously injured-even paralyzed-during rides in police wagons, because of their not being secured to seats while cuffed in the van. It is not known whether Brown was belted in during her long ride.)
Full Article: counterpunch.org

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) — President Thabo Mbeki’s ruling party published a stinging attack Friday on top U.S. health officials, accusing them of treating Africans like “guinea pigs” and lying to promote a key AIDS drug.

The criticism reinforces fears of doctors and activists that new questions about the testing of nevirapine could halt use of the drug that’s credited with protecting thousands of African babies from catching HIV from their mothers.

The article, published in the online journal ANC Today, was responding to Associated Press reports this week that U.S. health officials withheld criticism of a nevirapine study before President Bush launched a 2002 plan to distribute the drug in Africa.

Documents obtained by AP show Dr. Edmund C. Tramont, chief of the National Institutes of Health’s AIDS division, rewrote an NIH report to omit negative conclusions about the way a U.S.-funded drug trial was conducted in Uganda, and later ordered the research to continue over the objections of his staff. Tramont’s staff worried about record-keeping problems, violations of federal patient safeguards and other issues at the Uganda research site.

“Dr. Tramont was happy that the peoples of Africa should be used as guinea pigs, given a drug he knew very well should not be prescribed,” the article said. “In other words, they entered into a conspiracy with a pharmaceutical company to tell lies to promote the sales of nevirapine in Africa, with absolutely no consideration of the health impact of those lies on the lives of millions of Africans.”
Full Article: nytimes.com

Cuban President Fidel Castro and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez have announced an alternative trade bloc to the one proposed by the US for a free-trade area of the Americas.

The alternative was conceived as “a battle fought with the same rules and regulations as those imposed by the [US] empire to divide the people”, Castro said on Tuesday. 

Naming the new pact the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), the presidents said it would eliminate trade barriers and tax obstacles, provide incentives for investment, increase banking relations and tourism cooperation.

Venezuela promised financing for Cuban industrial and infrastructure projects, while Cuba agreed to pay a minimum price of $27 per barrel of Venezuelan oil, as part of the accord “to apply the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas”.
Full Article: aljazeera.net

Hollywood has joined the war. Universal Pictures announced yesterday that it is to make The Battle for Falluja. To prove it is serious, it has enlisted Indiana Jones himself, actor Harrison Ford, to help defeat the insurgency.

The film – Hollywood’s first foray into the second Iraq conflict – is due to go into production next year and will be based on a yet-to-be-finished book, No True Glory: The Battle for Falluja by Bing West, a former marine, politician and now war correspondent.

The movie and book take as their starting point the killing of four civilian contractors in Falluja and the ensuing decision to order an assault on the city by US marines. That first assault, which was abruptly stopped by the White House, was led by General Jim Mattis, who will be played by Ford.

Six months later, shortly after the US presidential election, the marines attacked Falluja for a second time, successfully occupying the city. Almost 80 US marines were killed in the two assaults, while some sources have estimated that 800 Iraqis and insurgents died in the April assault on the city and a further 1,000 in November.

The film promises to depict the story from the point of view of US soldiers and politicians; it seems unlikely that the plight of the Iraqis will figure too prominently in Hollywood’s take on the subject.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk

Now the immense sufferings of the Iraqi people are to become another entertainment to be consumed like so much popcorn. Just as Edward Said said, Arabs and other non-white peoples are only real to the West as objects of manipulation and interpretation. Beyond vulgar.
Evil. Really.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – When the U.S. military looks at Iraq’s 40,000-strong National Guard, it sees an exit strategy. What Iraqis often see instead is an ill-disciplined rabble many regard as more foe than friend.

With Iraq’s police force widely considered ineffectual and the army only a few thousand strong, the U.S.-trained National Guard has become the frontline domestic security force in the fight against a determined guerrilla insurgency.

The sooner the National Guard, eventually due to expand to 60,000 men, is trained and backed up by a reliable police force, the sooner U.S. forces can withdraw, U.S. commanders have said.

That may be all well and good for U.S. forces, who have occupied Iraq for the past 21 months, losing nearly 1,300 troops in the process.

But many Iraqis have a low opinion of the Guard, a force half-way between a police and an army, rather along the lines of Italy’s Carabinieri or Spain’s Civil Guard.

The animosity stems in large part from the fact National Guard soldiers wear a camouflage uniform similar to the Americans and, being U.S.-trained, have picked up attitudes and habits many Iraqis associate with the disliked U.S. military.

“Are the National Guards wearing the same uniform as the occupiers?” Sheikh Ahmed Abdul Ghafoor al-Sammerai, a preacher at Baghdad’s Um al-Qura mosque, asked the faithful recently.

“They fire randomly at people,” said Sammerai, who also accused a National Guard trooper of shooting dead one of his bodyguards while he was queueing for petrol.

“Is the blood of Iraqis that cheap? Who is responsible for this bloodshed? Many children, young men, old men, and women have died from random shooting for no reason,” he said.
Full Article: nytimes.com/reuters