BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) – A top U.S. military official raised fears Friday that insurgents may try to carry out “spectacular” attacks as the Iraqi election draws near, while Sunni religious leaders called for unity but persisted in their demands that the vote be delayed.

The comments by Air Force Brig. Gen. Erv Lessel echoed a warning by Iraq’s prime minister the day before that insurgent violence would only increase ahead of the Jan. 30 election for a National Assembly.

Hours after Prime Minister Ayad Allawi spoke, a roadside bomb killed seven U.S. soldiers in northwest Baghdad on Thursday, the deadliest attack on American forces since a suicide strike in Mosul 2 weeks ago. Two Marines also were killed in western Iraq.

A state of emergency, originally announced two months ago, also was extended Thursday for 30 days throughout the country except for the northern Kurdish-run areas. The decree includes a nighttime curfew and gives the government additional power to make arrests and launch military or police operations.

Lessel, deputy chief of staff for strategic communications, said the United States has no intelligence indicating specific plans for a major attack, but the insurgents’ biggest weapon was their ability to instill fear.

“I think a worst case is where they have a series of horrific attacks that cause mass casualties in some spectacular fashion in the days leading up to the elections,” Lessel told The Associated Press in an interview.

Full Article: guardian.co.uk

When Robert McNamara was president of the World Bank, he visited Dharavi, near Mumbai airport, then, as now, one of the largest slums in the world. Looking at the abject poverty in the shantytown, he broke down, possibly realising the enormity of the task ahead.
For anyone visiting Dharavi, where nearly 1 million people live, the sight isn’t pleasant at first glance. There is row upon row of ramshackle huts flanking pipelines and a railway line, all surrounded by an overpowering stench. Open drains, piles of uncleared rubbish, and shacks stretch as far as the eye can see. There is little by way of urban infrastructure.

But such a casual glance would miss the thousands of TV aerials sprouting from those homes, and the motorcycles, and increasingly cars, owned by the people who live there.

For too long, urban squalor and urban poverty have gone together. But there is a thriving economy in Dharavi (just as there is in Soweto, South Africa), consisting of small-scale industries, making plastic products, handicrafts, stationery, garments, tallow, watch strap buckles, WHO-certified surgical equipment, food products and a massive recycling industry.

In spite of municipal neglect, someone, somewhere, provides water, food, electricity, and other essentials. Such products and services are sold without any quality control, and usually at a steeply escalated price.

For example, a cubic metre of clean water costs $1.12 (59p) in Dharavi, but only $0.03 at Warden Road, a posh area of Mumbai. Diarrhoea medication costs $20 in Dharavi, ten times what it costs at Warden Road.

In The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits, C K Prahalad calls this situation the “poverty penalty”. But the University of Michigan management lecturer argues that if the poor are treated with dignity, empowered and seen as innovators, there’s a fortune to be made.

Dr Prahalad notes that huge potential profits can be made from serving the 4 billion to 5 billion people living on under $2 a day – an economic opportunity he values globally at $13 trillion a year. And making profit from such a market, he says, is not a bad thing.

The poor will gain when they are empowered with choice, as they will be freed from the poverty penalty. Bringing down these premiums can possibly make the market represented by the poor more profitable than the top end.

Take consumer finance in a country where the prevailing lending rate is 12%. Think, then, of a major international bank, lending money at 25% to the poorest sections of the society.

The idea might sound appalling, and contrary to all known examples like the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh and Sewa in India. But Grameen and Sewa do not operate everywhere, and increasingly, commercial banks are getting involved in such markets, trying to reach people untouched by the organised sector.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk

‘Usury age-old and age-thick/And liars in public places…’

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Congress on Thursday formally certified President Bush (news – web sites) as the victor of the November elections after two Democrats symbolically stalled the event in protest at alleged voting irregularities in Ohio.

California Sen. Barbara Boxer (news, bio, voting record) and Ohio Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (news, bio, voting record), formally lodged objections because of Ohio, although they said they recognized Bush had won and were not trying to overturn the results.

They said their goal was to force lawmakers to heed problems that had been particularly evident in Democratic-leaning minority and urban neighborhoods and to consider the need for more voting reforms including standard election rules in all states.

“This objection does not have at its root the hope or even the hint of overturning or challenging the victory of the president,” Tubbs Jones said. Boxer called it a matter of “electoral justice.”

The rare objection to vote certification, the first filed in decades, forced the House and Senate to halt their joint session, usually a routine and ceremonial affair. Each chamber then debated the objection, and rejected it, the Senate by a 74-1 vote, the House 267-31. The state-by-state certification was completed a few hours later.

Bush got 286 electoral votes, Massachusetts Democrat John Kerry (news – web sites) 251 and North Carolina Democrat John Edwards (news – web sites), Kerry’s running mate, got one electoral vote for president.

Kerry did not endorse Boxer’s bid to challenge the Ohio vote. Traveling overseas this week, Kerry released a statement on Wednesday noting that he had conceded to Bush but would continue to support “a close examination of voting irregularities in Ohio and elsewhere because it’s critical to our democracy.”

About 200 protesters near the White House, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson (news – web sites), beat drums and urged Congress not to certify the results because they said unreliable voting machines and partisan election officials had tilted the closely fought swing state of Ohio to Bush.

Tubbs-Jones and Boxer listed a number of problems in Ohio, including rejection of provisional ballots, long lines and inadequate numbers of voting machines in urban neighborhoods that tended to back Kerry.

But one of Ohio’s senators, Republican Mike DeWine, called the complaints “wild, incoherent and completely unsubstantiated.”
Full Article:yahoo.com/news

Well we all know how ‘wild’ and ‘incoherent’ blacks and females are….

WASHINGTON – Faced with lengthy and gruelling deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan , the US army reserve is rapidly turning into “a broken force” and may not be able to meet its operational requirements in the future, its commander acknowledged in a memorandum made public.

The comments by Lieutenant General James Helmly were expected to raise new questions about the sustainability of the war in Iraq without reintroducing the draft or other forms of compulsory military service.

The United States has boosted its force in Iraq to 153,000 ahead of the country’s general election scheduled for January 30.

Army reserve soldiers make up about 20 percent of the US contingent. Together with the National Guard, they constitute more than 40 percent of US ground force in the country.

Helmly’s memorandum, dated December 20 and addressed to Army Chief of Staff General Peter Schoomaker, includes several recommendations on ways to address the manpower problem.

But it also contains scathing criticism of current military personnel policies and warns of dire consequences for the US military, if they are maintained.

The purpose of the memorandum, Helmly writes, is to inform top commanders “of the army reserve’s inability” under current procedures “to meet mission requirements associated with Operation Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom and to reset and regenerate its forces for follow-on and future missions.”

The general goes on to say the danger troops would be unable to fulfill all their obligations was “grave,” stressing that the 200,000-member reserve “is rapidly degenerating into a ‘broken’ force.”
Full Article: commondreams.org

By Dave Lindorff
The outrage and dismay over devastation and human suffering seem to have much more to do with how such horrors were caused than the actual horrors themselves, it would seem.

At least, it seems that way when it comes to our outgoing Secretary of State Colin Powell, whose sense of horror seems to be remarkably selective.

Touring the wreckage of the recent tsunami in Banda Aceh, Indonesia yesterday, an obviously shaken Powell, a former top U.S. Army general, said, “I have been in war and I have been through a number of hurricanes, tornadoes and other relief operations, but I have never seen anything like this. The power of the wave to destroy bridges, to destroy factories, to destroy homes, to destroy crops, to destroy everything in its path is amazing.”

You have to wonder what this leading member of the American war machine thought of the power of the U.S. military to destroy bridges, factories, homes, crops, hospitals, dykes, schools, entire towns and cities, rice paddies and indeed “everything in its path” back in Indochina in the years he was there. Especially as he was busy covering up the massacre of women, children and old people at My Lai. What did he think as he toured burned down villages, mile after mile of defoliated jungle, whole barren moonscapes pockmarked with craters from American bombs, millions of dead and maimed men, women and children.

And you have to wonder what he thinks now about the U.S. Shock and Awe destruction of Baghdad, or more recently, of the leveling of the cities of Najaf, Samarah and especially Fallujah.

One would think that the carnage caused by man-indeed the carnage for which Colin Powell himself bears considerable responsibility-would be far more troubling than that caused by nature.

But then we are a selectively outraged people. Where is the mass public campaign to raise money for the hundreds of thousands of wounded and displaced in Iraq? Americans’ efforts when it comes to charity and fundraising related to the Iraq War is pretty much limited to providing cookies and body armor for our troops.
Full Article: counterpunch.org

NEW YORK – Even as the alleged ringleader of the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal faces court-martial Friday, human rights groups are questioning whether his case is really the ”aberration” the Pentagon claims.

”The trial of Charles Graner is a first step toward accountability, but no one should confuse it with the end of the process,” said Reed Brody, special counsel at Human Rights Watch. ”The issue isn’t only who was the local ringleader, but whether his superiors led him to believe he had permission to engage in such atrocities.”

The scope of U.S. mistreatment of prisoners, at home and abroad, has continued to widen in recent weeks, even as the government is reportedly considering building a 25-million-dollar, 200-bed prison to hold detainees who are unlikely to ever appear before a military tribunal for lack of evidence.

In December, a federal court ordered the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to turn over documents to human rights groups that it had previously refused to divulge regarding prisoner abuse by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan, under a law that allows citizens access to public records.
Full Article: commondreams.org

AccountingWEB.com – Jan-6-2005 – For the first time ever, the U.S. does not rank among the world’s 10 freest economies in the Index of Economic Freedom, published annually by The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal.
The U.S.’ score in the 2005 Index did not change from 2004. But improvements in the economies of Chile, Australia and Iceland enabled all three to surpass the U. S., leaving it in a tie for 12th with Switzerland and out of the top 10 for the first time in the 11-year history of the Index.

“The United States is resting on its laurels while innovative countries around the world are changing their approaches and reducing their roadblocks,” said Marc Miles, a co-editor of the book, along with Ed Feulner and Mary Anastasia O’Grady. “The U.S. is eating the dust of countries that have thrown off the 20th-century shackles of big government spending and massive federal programs.”
Full Article: accountingweb.com

Yeah. The look we’re going for this year is ‘lean and mean.’

WASHINGTON – A small group of Democrats agreed Thursday to force House and Senate debates on Election Day problems in Ohio before letting Congress certify President Bush (news – web sites)’s win over Sen. John Kerry (news – web sites) in November.

While Bush’s victory is not in jeopardy, the Democratic challenge would legally compel Congress to interrupt tallying the Electoral College (news – web sites) vote, which was scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. EST Thursday. It would be only the second time since 1877 that the House and Senate were forced into separate meetings to consider electoral votes.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., signed a challenge mounted by House Democrats to Ohio’s 20 electoral votes, which put Bush over the top. By law, a protest signed by members of the House and Senate requires both chambers to meet separately for up to two hours to consider it. Lawmakers are allowed to speak for no more than five minutes each.

“I have concluded that objecting to the electoral votes from Ohio is the only immediate way to bring these issues to light by allowing you to have a two-hour debate to let the American people know the facts surrounding Ohio’s election,” Boxer wrote in a letter to Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (news, bio, voting record), D-Ohio, a leader of the Democratic effort.

The action seems certain to leave Bush’s victory intact because both Republican-controlled chambers would have to uphold the objection for Ohio’s votes to be invalidated. Supporters of the drive said that rather than changing the election outcome, their hope was to shine a national spotlight on the Ohio voting problems.

“The goal is to debate the issue,” Tubbs Jones said in an interview. “And why not? We go across the world trying to ensure democracy, but there are some problems with the process in the United States.”
Full Article: yahoo.com/news

PORT BLAIR, India – Two days after a tsunami thrashed the island where his ancestors have lived for tens of thousands of years, a lone tribesman stood naked on the beach and looked up at a hovering coast guard helicopter.

He then took out his bow and shot an arrow toward the rescue chopper.

It was a signal the Sentinelese have sent out to the world for millennia: They want to be left alone. Isolated from the rest of the world, the tribesmen needed to learn nature’s sights, sounds and smells to survive.

Government officials and anthropologists believe that ancient knowledge of the movement of wind, sea and birds may have saved the five indigenous tribes on the Indian archipelago of Andaman and Nicobar islands from the tsunami that hit the Asian coastline Dec. 26.

“They can smell the wind. They can gauge the depth of the sea with the sound of their oars. They have a sixth sense which we don’t possess,” said Ashish Roy, a local environmentalist and lawyer who has called on the courts to protect the tribes by preventing their contact with the outside world.

The tribes live the most ancient, nomadic lifestyle known to man, frozen in their Paleolithic past. Many produce fire by rubbing stones, fish and hunt with bow and arrow and live in leaf and straw community huts. And they don’t take kindly to intrusions.
Full Article: kansascity.com

Well it’s good to know that our ancestors and these their inheritors possessed abilities most of us cannot begin to imagine. And no matter the catastrophe, natural or manmade, they will endure and prevail.

Where are the images of Iraq and Afghanistan?
by Bruce Jackson
Since the tsunami hit, the mainstream press and, to a lesser extent, the broadcast and cable network news programs, have been chockfull of images of the freshly dead. We’ve seen images of bodies of children and adults where the water left them; we’ve seen them arranged in neat rows; we’ve een them bagged and stacked.

Television broadcasts have, in the main, been more suggestive, less specific, more distant in their images than the print press: often you knew that lump was a dead body only because a chattering reporter told you it was. TV executives say that is because their images come into people’s homes where children might come upon them unawares, so they have to limit the reality on the airwaves. Hardly anyone believes they have the children in mind when they plan their programs.

What is perhaps more worthy of note than how many tsunami dead we’ve seen, however, is how many other recent dead we have not seen.

The mainstream media showed, for example, no blood and guts resulting from the 9/11 attacks. Most of the people murdered that day were pulverized or vaporized, but not all. Some of the most horrific images were the sidewalk remains of those who leapt from the World Trade Center’s upper stories before the structures collapsed. The New York Times published a photo of a man diving, his body almost tranquil in flight, the implications of the image horrific. But nothing at ground level. None of the print press and none of the mainstream electronic press published anything at ground level. You could find those images on some hard-to-find web sites: skin and heads with insides elsewhere, with bodies looking like punctured balloons.

Those images showed what every cop and combat soldier knows: violent death trivializes and shifts to someplace you do not want to go every single thing you ever thought about life. But the press-individually or in some collaborative council-decided those images were too much for you to bear, so (unless you roamed the web) you never saw them.

Likewise the carnage in the Holy Land. How many reports have you read of Palestinian bombers with explosives strapped to their bodies, perhaps with added layers of nails to provide extra shrapnel to maim and mutilate whoever wasn’t close enough to be killed outright? How many reports have you read of Israeli tanks blowing up inhabited buildings or nervous Israeli soldiers shooting down ordinary people on their way to work or children on their way to school? And how many Holy Land images of shattered bodies, of a hand, a jaw, an emptied skull, of guts draped over the hood of a car have you seen?

Likewise the carnage suffered by US troops in Iraq. You’ve read about the numbers of U.S. dead and mutilated, and perhaps (if you watch PBS “Newshour”) you’ve seen head and shoulders studio photographs of the most recently killed soldiers. But how many images how you seen of American soldiers dead on the road, their eyes and mouths open, if they still had eyes and mouths? How many images have you see of the limbs blown off the thousands of amputees now filling VA hospitals? How many images have you see of body parts blasted into the roofs and seats and floors of Humvees they hadn’t gotten around to armorplating?

And likewise the far greater carnage suffered by Iraqi civilians. A study published in the British medical journal The Lancet put the dead civilians resulting from the American war of choice in Iraq somewhere around 100,000. Critics say that is off by at least 100%: the US has killed only 50,000 Iraqi civilians, they say. The scholars who did The Lancet study say they were conservative in their numbers, that there are probably far more civilian dead who remain uncounted because there is no one responsible for counting them and no one interested in counting them. However you figure it, there are a huge number of Iraqis who died because of American violence, and a lot of Iraqis who died because of insurgent violence. For every dead Iraqi, how many mutilated Iraqis are there? Two? Five? Ten? Twenty?

Where are their pictures, those dead and mutilated Iraqis? How many images have you seen of Iraqi children blown to dripping pieces of flesh, puddles of blood, scattered white chunks of bone? How many images have you seen of Iraqis who have lost hands, feet, eyes, jaws when bombs when off, when machine guns fired, when mortars fell, when vehicles blew up?
Full Article: counterpunch.org