…In this constitution, Iraqi Kurds don’t get the state that 98% of them want, according to a recent referendum, but they do get gains – vast legislative powers, control of their own militia and authority over discoveries of oil – which in effect consecrate the quasi-independence they have enjoyed since western “humanitarian” intervention on their behalf in the 1991 Gulf war and which Kurds regard as a way station towards the real thing. The Iraqi republic is to be “independent, sovereign, federal, democratic and parliamentary”; but one thing, explicitly, it is no longer, is “Arab”. For that, says its Kurdish president, Jalal Talabani, would be to deny the right of Kurdish citizens to look to membership of a greater Kurdish nation, just as its Arab citizens look to the greater Arab one. Yet more shocking, and potentially rending, to Sunni Arabs everywhere, than this ethnic separatism is the new, intra-Arab, sectarian one. Not only have the Shia established political ascendancy in a single Arab country for the first time in centuries but they are doing so, like the Kurds, in the context of a constitutionally prescribed autonomy which, if Shia leaders such as Abdul Aziz Hakim mean what they say, will incorporate central and southern Iraq, more than half the country’s population and the bulk of its natural assets.

The adoption of a federal formula is seen by the Arab world not as a remedy for Iraq’s inherent divisiveness, but, in conditions of rising intercommunal tensions and violence, as a stimulus to it. Prince Saud al-Faisal, the veteran Saudi foreign minister and voice of the Sunni Arab establishment, told Americans that it is “part of a dynamic pushing the Iraqi people away from each other. If you allow for this – for a civil war to happen between Shias and Sunnis – Iraq is finished forever. It will be dismembered.” What makes it more alarming is that, unlike the Kurds, Iraqi Shias, however ambivalently they feel about it, enjoy the strong support of a powerful neighbour. Now, under its new president, in something of a neo-Khomeinist revivalist mode, Iran is clearly accumulating all the Shia-based geopolitical assets it can, from Iraq to south Lebanon, in preparation for the grand showdown that threatens between it and the US.

Arabs have long warned of the “Lebanonisation” of Iraq, automatically mindful of the fact that virtually every western-created state in the eastern Arab world contains the latent ethnic or sectarian tensions that produced that archetype of Arab civil war. But whereas, in concert with the US, the Arabs finally managed to put out the Lebanese fire before it spread, their prospects of achieving the same amid the violence in Iraq are slight indeed. The inter-Arab state system – and its chief institution, the Arab League – has long been incapable of concerted action against what, like Iraq, are perceived as threats to the Arab “nation”. Now the system itself is threatened by the growth of non-state activities, the cross-border traffic in extreme Islamist ideology – along with the jihadists and suicide bombers who act on it – or ethnic and sectarian solidarities of the kind that threaten to tear Iraq apart.
guardian.co.uk

Nine-Second Coverage For Dozens of Dead Iraqi Women and Children
Last night’s BBC Newsnight programme reported the deaths of 70 “Iraqi militants” in US air raids on the western Iraqi city of Ramadi. The item lasted just nine seconds. This included three seconds of scepticism from an Iraqi doctor who reported that in fact civilians were amongst the dead. Viewers’ attention was then rapidly diverted elsewhere; a familiar pattern of mainstream news coverage.
A BBC news online report titled “US strikes kill ’70 Iraq rebels'”, also led with the US military version of events. Perhaps by way of a nod to increasing levels of public frustration with ’embedded’ journalism, the phrase “Iraq rebels” at least appeared in quotes. The report also added a cursory note of caution in the second paragraph: “eyewitnesses are quoted saying that many [of the dead] were civilians”. (BBC news online, October 17, 2005; http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4349032.stm)

A Media Lens reader wrote to Pete Clifton, the BBC’s news online editor:
“Regarding the BBC article ‘US strikes kill “70 Iraq rebels”‘, isn’t it biased to include the US quote in the headline?

“I’m sure you’d agree an alternative such as ‘Iraqis: many civilians die in US attack’ is biased and would be avoided.

“Why not choose a neutral headline to avoid contentious claims, such as ‘Dozens killed in US strikes’?” (Darren Smith, message board, www.medialens.org, October 17, 2005)

Compare the emphasis and extent of the Newsnight and BBC online reports with today’s press release from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs – Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN):
“Two days of US air attacks against insurgents in the western Iraqi city of Ramadi have caused heavy casualties among the city’s civilian population, a doctor and a senior Iraqi government official in Ramadi said.”

IRIN go on to quote Ahmed al-Kubaissy, a senior doctor at Ramadi hospital:
“We have received the bodies of 38 people in our hospital and among them were four children and five women. The relatives said they had been killed by air attacks in their homes and in the street.”
IRIN also quote a senior Iraqi government official in the city, who reported: “three houses had been totally destroyed in the air attacks on Sunday and Monday and 14 dead civilians had been found inside them. A further 12 civilians had been critically injured in the same air strikes.”

The official described the US attack as “a cowardly action… [adding] that if any insurgents have been killed, many more civilians have been buried with them over the past two days”. (IRIN, ‘Iraq: Women and children killed in US air strikes on Ramadi, doctor says,’ October 18, 2005)
medialens.org

BEIJING (Reuters) – World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz prodded China on Tuesday to give more power to the people for the sake of sustaining strong economic growth.

Wolfowitz, a staunch conservative who served as deputy U.S. secretary of defense before joining the bank, said China had made progress in giving a voice to ordinary citizens but needed to do much more.

Skip to next paragraph “Such issues as the rule of law and the role of civil society are important non-economic factors in development — as important or perhaps more important than the traditional inputs of labor and capital,” Wolfowitz said.
nytimes.com
Ah irony of ironies…

NAIROBI (Reuters) – Africa is the most corrupt continent in the world, with Chad the worst offender and Botswana its cleanest nation, a survey said on Tuesday.

The Transparency International watchdog said that out of 44 African nations covered in its 2005 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), 31 scored less than three — “a sign of rampant corruption” — on a scale of zero to ten.

Skip to next paragraph “Africa is the continent with the lowest average in the CPI,” it added, confirming widespread perceptions that the world’s poorest continent is also its most graft-ridden.

Topping an expanded list on Africa this year as the most corrupt nation in the continent — and the world — was Chad.

It was followed by Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea and Ivory Coast, all with scores of under two.

The continent’s least corrupt nation was Botswana, with a score of 5.9, followed by Tunisia, South Africa, Namibia and Mauritius.

The list is closely watched by an international community that is increasingly impatient for improved governance and less corruption in Africa in return for aid and debt relief.

Regional expert Richard Dowden noted that three of the four African countries scoring worst were oil producers, meaning it was not only locals involved in the kickback trade.

“We shouldn’t just shrug our shoulders at this. Western oil companies should be held to account as well,” Dowden, director of the British-based Royal African Society, told Reuters.

But the main responsibility was among Africa’s ruling elites, he added. “The prime changes have to happen in Africa itself but it does seem to be getting worse.”
nytimes.com

The Royal Africa Society, architects of centuries of genocide. The WORST offenders on the world corruption list…hmmm

Britain expressed outrage yesterday after Robert Mugabe took advantage of a United Nations ceremony in Rome to compare Tony Blair to Italy’s wartime dictator, Benito Mussolini. Departing from his prepared text at the 60th anniversary celebrations of the UN’s biggest agency, the Food and Agriculture Organisation, the Zimbabwean leader described the prime minister and the US president, George Bush, as “international terrorists”.

He also denounced their invasion of Iraq, saying they were “the two unholy men of our millennium who, in the same way as Hitler and Mussolini formed [an] unholy alliance, formed an alliance to attack an innocent country”.
guardian.co.uk

At the northern edge of Jerusalem, on the main road to the Palestinian city of Ramallah, three towering concrete walls are converging around a rapidly built maze of cages, turnstiles and bomb-proof rooms.
When construction at Qalandiya is completed in the coming weeks, the remaining gaps in the 8m (26ft)-high walls will close and those still permitted to travel between the two cities will be channelled through a warren of identity and security checks reminiscent of an international frontier.

The Israeli military built the crossing without fanfare over recent months, along with other similar posts along the length of the vast new “security barrier” that is enveloping Jerusalem, while the world’s attention was focussed on the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon’s removal of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip.

But these de facto border posts are just one element in a web of construction evidently intended to redraw Israel’s borders deep inside the Palestinian territories and secure all of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and to do it fast so as to put the whole issue beyond negotiation. As foreign leaders, including Tony Blair, praised Mr Sharon for his “courage” in pulling out of Gaza last month, Israel was accelerating construction of the West Bank barrier, expropriating more land in the West Bank than it was surrendering in Gaza, and building thousands of new homes in Jewish settlements.

“It’s a trade off: the Gaza Strip for the settlement blocks; the Gaza Strip for Palestinian land; the Gaza Strip for unilaterally imposing borders,” said Dror Etkes, director of the Israeli organisation Settlement Watch. “They don’t know how long they’ve got. That’s why they’re building like maniacs.”

At the core of the strategy is the 420-mile West Bank barrier which many Israeli politicians regard as marking out a future border. Its route carves out large areas for expansion of the main Jewish settlements of Ariel, Maale Adumim and Gush Etzion, and expropriates swaths of Palestinian land by separating it from its owners.

In parallel, new building on Jewish settlements during the first quarter of this year rose by 83% on the same period in 2004. About 4,000 homes are under construction in Israel’s West Bank colonies, with thousands more homes approved in the Ariel and Maale Adumim blocks that penetrate deep into the occupied territories.
guardian.co.uk

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) – Saddam Hussein and seven senior members of his 23-year regime will go on trial Wednesday to face charges they ordered the 1982 killings of nearly 150 people from the mainly Shiite town of Dujail following a failed attempt on Saddam’s life.

Court officials have said they are trying Saddam on the Dujail massacre first because it was the easiest and quickest case to put together. Other cases they are investigating – including a crackdown on the Kurds that killed an estimated 180,000 people – involve much larger numbers of victims, more witnesses and more documentation.

If convicted, Saddam and his co-defendants could face the death penalty, but they could appeal before another chamber of the Iraqi Special tribunal.

Saddam and his co-defendants are expected to hear the charges against them during Wednesday’s hearing, and the court will address procedural matters. The trial is then expected to be adjourned for several weeks.

Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari complained Monday that the Iraqi court took an unjustifiably long time to prepare its case and brushed aside concerns that the court could be biased against the former dictator.
guardian.co.uk

…For an embattled President Bush, combating the mullahs of Tehran may be a useful means of diverting attention from Iraq and reestablishing control of the Republican party prior to next year’s congressional elections. From this perspective, even an escalating conflict would rally the nation behind a war president. As for the succession to President Bush, Bob Woodward has named Mr Cheney as a likely candidate, a step that would be easier in a wartime atmosphere. Mr Cheney would doubtless point out that US military spending, while huge compared to other nations, is at a far lower percentage of gross domestic product than during the Reagan years. With regard to Mr Blair’s position, it would be helpful to know whether he has committed Britain to preventing an Iranian bomb “come what may” as he did with Iraq.
guardian.co.uk

Iraq’s election commission announced Monday that officials were investigating “unusually high” numbers of “yes” votes in about a dozen provinces during Iraq’s landmark referendum on a new constitution, raising questions about irregularities in the balloting.

Word of the review came as Sunni Arab leaders repeated accusations of fraud after initial reports from the provinces suggested the constitution had passed. Among the Sunni allegations are that police took ballot boxes from heavily “no” districts, and that some “yes” areas had more votes than registered voters.

The Electoral Commission made no mention of fraud, and an official with knowledge of the election process cautioned that it was too early to say whether the unusual numbers were incorrect or if they would affect the outcome.

But questions about the numbers raised tensions over Saturday’s referendum, which has already sharply divided Iraqis. Most of the Shiite majority and the Kurds _ the coalition which controls the government _ support the charter, while most Sunni Arabs sharply opposed a document they fear will tear Iraq to pieces and leave them weak and out of power.

Irregularities in Shiite and Kurdish areas, expected to vote strongly “yes,” may not affect the outcome. The main electoral battlegrounds were provinces with mixed populations, two of which went strongly “yes.” There were conflicting reports whether those two provinces were among those with questionable figures.
breitbart.com

…Q: Moving on to the subject you’ve been most closely associated with in the last few years: reparations for slavery. Why do you think that’s necessary?

Robinson: Let me give you some conditions that don’t get talked about. The U.S. has the largest prison population in the world: two million people. The country with one-twentieth of the world’s population has one-fourth of those in prison. One out of every eight prisoners in the world is an African American. We are warehousing people as a profit to shareholders or for benefits to communities that get to host federal prisons. It is modern slavery. The whole future of America’s black community is at risk. One out of every three young black men in Washington, D.C., is under one arm or the other of the criminal justice system. These are the continuing consequences of slavery.

We have sustained so much psychic damage and so much loss of memory. Every people, in order to remain healthy and strong, has to have a grasp of its foundation story. Culture is a chrysalis—it is protective, it takes care of you. That’s what cultures are for. You cannot rob a people of language, culture, mother, father, the value of their labor—all of that—without doing vast damage to those people. People need their history like they need air and food. You deprive them of that for 246 years and follow that by 100 years of de jure discrimination, and then you say with the Voting Rights Act: It’s over, you just go take care of yourself!

Average people do not survive that. You plant twenty coconut trees over here, and twenty coconut trees over there, and you water this batch and don’t water that batch. Of the batch you water, nineteen will survive and one will die. Of the batch you don’t water, nineteen will die and one will survive. And then we have somebody like George Bush. I can’t think of a more mediocre human talent than George Bush. He obviously is a product of family advantage, and he’s the worst American President of all time.

Anyway, in my arguments for reparations, I’m not talking about writing checks to people. The word reparations means to repair. We’ve opened this gap in society between the two races. Whites have more than eleven times the net worth or wealth of African Americans. They make greater salaries. Our unemployment rate is twice theirs. You look at the prison system and who that’s chewing up. Now we’ve got the advent of AIDS. Fifty-four percent of new infections are inAfrican Americans. Many infected men are coming out of prison and infecting their women. So when I talk about reparations, I say there has to be a material component. It has to have a component of education that is compensatory. It has to have a component of economic development that’s compensatory. But in the last analysis the greater damage is here [points to his head]. So I’m not really talking about money. And I’m not really talking about the concerns of people who say, “I didn’t benefit from slavery.” Nobody said you did.

It’s important for white America to be able to face up. Far beyond its relations with the black community, it is important for white Americans. It’s important in helping us in our approaches to the rest of the world, and in being sensitive to Islam, and to look at the way other cultures handle their management of themselves, and to look at it with respect, with the possibility that you even might learn something. We’ve got a country that never takes any responsibility for anything. It forgets its role and makes everybody else forget what happened, too. And that it is not just dangerous for the victim, but also for the perpetrator.
progressive.org