On the second superpower

In March 2003, James Moore, in response to a newspaper article referring to world public opinion as another superpower, christened it "the second superpower." This was in the aftermath of anti-war protests that had drawn millions of people around the world.

Time has passed, events have changed reality, and I think it is time to call on the "second superpower" again. A fascist government bent on global domination has been re-elected in the US, and with the Rice for Powell trade, it has become that much more uniformly ideological. There are other institutions which can hopefully play a role in taming this rogue state, especially the UN and the European Union. However, the UN is not nearly as strong as it should be, and the EU does not have legitimacy as a global institution. I think the best hope that we have to stop US fanaticism is world public opinion. The vast majority of the people in the world continue to oppose the US war and occupation of Iraq.

The people of the world must let the Bush crowd know in no uncertain terms that pre-emption is not an acceptable foreign policy, and that the goal of global dominance is something that frightens us. There are many ways to do this besides marching in the streets and waving signs. You can lobby politicians in your own country to take a stand. You can network with other activists around the globe. You can talk to your friends about it, and encourage them to take action. You can participate in discussion sites on the web and become your own media. You can unite to implement targeted boycotts of companies that are complicit in the US occupation of Iraq. You can engage in civil disobedience to get your point across.

It's your world. You can change it.

On fascism and our response to it

In the 1930s and 40s, the greatest threat to humanity was Naziism. From the 1950s to the 1980s, it was nuclear annihilation from the US-USSR Cold War that threatened us with extinction. Now, there is a new threat. However, it is not the threat that the Bush junta would like us to believe. bin Laden is a monster to be sure, but the US created him. They armed and trained him. And, everytime the US threatens him, "stands up" to him, they make him more powerful. No, the biggest threat to world peace and security right now is the fascist Bush junta.


We are living in a time where the threat of fascism is real, and the largest such threat is from the United States. I have published articles on this blog that relate to the current threat of fascism. Make no mistake, it is real, and it is the greatest threat to the rights and freedoms we enjoy. One of the articles I published outlined 14 characteristics of fascism, and you may notice that a number of these characteristics apply to the Bush junta. For example, the suppression of civil liberties, creating a fervor of blind patriotism, the supremacy of the military within the workings of government, coporate control of the media, fear-based obsessing with national security, and fraudulent elections. Click here for more information on the rise of American fascism.

This is a time where we must take a stand for peace and security, for international law, for human rights, for justice, both in the Western world and abroad, before we lose it. When we are criticized for being traitors, or being anti-American, we must respond to that. We must not respond with hate of our own, but we must put the lie to such garbage by pointing out that it is out of our love and respect for American people that we criticize their government. Anti-Bush does not mean anti-American; we must emphasize that. Furthermore, we cannot be afraid to put the word "fascism" in reference to the Bush junta. That is exactly what it is, and driving the point home will hopefully wake people up.

The suffering of children in Iraq

Here is an article on how the children on Iraq have suffered for the US war and occupation of Iraq.

Children Pay Cost of Iraq's Chaos
Malnutrition Nearly Double What It Was Before Invasion

By Karl VickWashington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, November 21, 2004; Page A01
BAGHDAD -- Acute malnutrition among young children in Iraq has nearly doubled since the United States led an invasion of the country 20 months ago, according to surveys by the United Nations, aid agencies and the interim Iraqi government.

After the rate of acute malnutrition among children younger than 5 steadily declined to 4 percent two years ago, it shot up to 7.7 percent this year, according to a study conducted by Iraq's Health Ministry in cooperation with Norway's Institute for Applied International Studies and the U.N. Development Program. The new figure translates to roughly 400,000 Iraqi children suffering from "wasting," a condition characterized by chronic diarrhea and dangerous deficiencies of protein.

"These figures clearly indicate the downward trend," said Alexander Malyavin, a child health specialist with the UNICEF mission to Iraq.

The surveys suggest the silent human cost being paid across a country convulsed by instability and mismanagement. While attacks by insurgents have grown more violent and more frequent, deteriorating basic services take lives that many Iraqis said they had expected to improve under American stewardship.

Iraq's child malnutrition rate now roughly equals that of Burundi, a central African nation torn by more than a decade of war. It is far higher than rates in Uganda and Haiti.

"The people are astonished," said Khalil M. Mehdi, who directs the Nutrition Research Institute at the Health Ministry. The institute has been involved with nutrition surveys for more than a decade; the latest one was conducted in April and May but has not been publicly released.

Mehdi and other analysts attributed the increase in malnutrition to dirty water and to unreliable supplies of the electricity needed to make it safe by boiling. In poorer areas, where people rely on kerosene to fuel their stoves, high prices and an economy crippled by unemployment aggravate poor health.

"Things have been worse for me since the war," said Kasim Said, a day laborer who was at Baghdad's main children's hospital to visit his ailing year-old son, Abdullah. The child, lying on a pillow with a Winnie the Pooh washcloth to keep the flies off his head, weighs just 11 pounds.

"During the previous regime, I used to work on the government projects. Now there are no projects," his father said.

When he finds work, he added, he can bring home $10 to $14 a day. If his wife is fortunate enough to find a can of Isomil, the nutritional supplement that doctors recommend, she pays $7 for it.

"But the lady in the next bed said she just paid $10," said Suad Ahmed, who sat cross-legged on a bed in the same ward, trying to console her skeletal 4-month-old granddaughter, Hiba, who suffers from chronic diarrhea.

Iraqi health officials like to surprise visitors by pointing out that the nutrition issue facing young Iraqis a generation ago was obesity. Malnutrition, they say, appeared in the early 1990s with U.N. trade sanctions championed by Washington to punish the government led by President Saddam Hussein for invading Kuwait in 1990.

International aid efforts and the U.N. oil-for-food program helped reduce the ruinous impact of sanctions, and the rate of acute malnutrition among the youngest Iraqis gradually dropped from a peak of 11 percent in 1996 to 4 percent in 2002. But the invasion in March 2003 and the widespread looting in its aftermath severely damaged the basic structures of governance in Iraq, and persistent violence across the country slowed the pace of reconstruction almost to a halt.

In its most recent assessment of five sectors of Iraq's reconstruction, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington research group, said health care was worsening at the quickest pace.

"Believe me, we thought a magic thing would happen" with the fall of Hussein and the start of the U.S.-led occupation, said an administrator at Baghdad's Central Teaching Hospital for Pediatrics. "So we're surprised that nothing has been done. And people talk now about how the days of Saddam were very nice," the official said.

The administrator, who would not give his full name for publication, cited security concerns faced by Iraqi doctors, who are widely perceived as rich and well-connected and thus easy targets for thieves, extortionists and the merely envious or vengeful. So many have been assassinated, he said, that the Health Ministry recently mailed out offers to expedite weapon permits for doctors.

Violence has also driven away international aid agencies that brought expertise to Iraq following the U.S. invasion.

Since a truck bombing at the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad killed more than 20 people last year, U.N. programs for Iraq have operated from neighboring Jordan. Doctors Without Borders, a group known for its high tolerance for risk and one of several that helped revive Iraq's Health Ministry in the weeks after the invasion, evacuated this fall.

CARE International closed down in October after the director of its large Iraq operation, Margaret Hassan, was kidnapped. She is now presumed to be dead. The huge Atlanta-based charity had remained active in Iraq through three wars, providing hospitals with supplies and sponsoring scores of projects to offer Iraqis clean drinking water.

By one count, 60 percent of rural residents and 20 percent of urban dwellers have access only to contaminated water. The country's sewer systems are in disarray.

"Even myself, I suffer from the quality of water," said Zina Yahya, 22, a nurse in a Baghdad maternity hospital. "If you put it in a glass, you can see it's turbid. I've heard of typhoid cases."

The nutrition surveys indicated that conditions are worst in Iraq's largely poor, overwhelmingly Shiite Muslim south, an area alternately subject to neglect and persecution during Hussein's rule. But doctors say malnutrition occurs wherever water is dirty, parents are poor and mothers have not been taught how to avoid disease.

"I don't eat well," said Yusra Jabbar, 20, clutching her swollen abdomen in a fly-specked ward of Baghdad's maternity hospital. Her mother said the water in their part of Sadr City, a Shiite slum on the capital's east side, is often contaminated. Her brother contracted jaundice.

"They tell me I have anemia," Jabbar said. Doctors said almost all the pregnant women in the hospital do.

"This is not surprising because since the war, there is lots of unemployment," Yahya said. "And without work, they don't have the money to obtain proper food.''

Iraqis say such conditions carry political implications. Baghdad residents often point out to reporters that after the 1991 Persian Gulf War left much of the capital a shambles, Hussein's government restored electricity and kerosene supplies in two months.

"Yes, there is a price for every war," said the official at the teaching hospital. "Yes, there are victims. But after that?

"Oh God, help us build Iraq again. For our children, not for us. For our kids," the official said.

A Radical Vision for the Future of the UN

This is an optimistic article about UN reform I found in the Global Policy Forum newsletter, to which I subscribe

A Radical Vision for the Future of the UN

By Tasos PapadimitriouZNet October 24, 2004

The failure of the United Nations to ensure a peaceful resolution of the Iraq crisis has amplified the doubts about the organization’s ability to play a substantial and meaningful role in the 21st century. Amid mutual incrimination between the pro- and anti-war camps regarding the damage inflicted upon this role, its very relevance as warrantor of international peace and security was called into question. Some even made comparisons to the pre-WWII League of Nations, that had been reduced to debating European railway issues the day the German army marched into Poland.

Iraq was admittedly something of a catch-22 for the UN Security Council. The thinly disguised unilateralist intent of the US administration, enabled by an unrivalled military might, seemed to leave the other members with two options: either to confirm the Council’s irrelevance by obliging the US or ensure it by not doing so.

The UN, of course, as a whole has a brief that goes far beyond conflict resolution. Its various councils and commissions are dealing with refugees, development, humanitarian and disaster relief, cultural co-operation, the environment, human rights, health, education and a range of other issues. Proponents of the organization stress its indispensability in these areas, while critics point out that many of its stated objectives regarding peoples’ well being in the developing world (e.g. the Millennium Development Goals) represent little more than wishful thinking, due to inadequate resources, lack of political will, powerful (national) vested interests and the absence of mandatory implementation of decisions.

The focus here will be on the Security Council, whose effectiveness the war in Iraq highlighted as highly problematic. To put things into perspective, it is hardly the first time that the SC has fallen short of its role in safeguarding peace and security around the world. The tragic impotence in preventing or even mitigating the unimaginable violence that engulfed Rwanda and the atrocities in a supposedly safe haven in Bosnia are two of the most frequently cited examples. More recently, Russia’s threat to veto any resolution over Kosovo that would authorize the use of force against Yugoslavia resulted in NATO waging the war, while in Afghanistan the US did not even find it necessary to consult, claiming self-defense.

As a matter of fact, sanctioning and guiding the use of force through the UN, as it happened during the first Gulf War and the Korean war in the 1950s, has been the exception rather than the rule. On both occasions, incidentally, that was mainly providing cover for geopolitical undertakings dominated by the US. So the paralytic antagonism of a bi-polar world during the Cold War has been replaced by a situation in which a sole superpower can do as it pleases unchallenged. The optimism of the new world order of the early 1990s, if there ever was such a thing, has long melted into air.

It is rather commonplace to say that only a Security Council endorsement confers legitimacy to an action in the international arena. The suggestion, at best, implies the pragmatic acknowledgement of interest-guided foreign policies. At worst, is like not daring to say that the king is naked.

As the Guardian columnist Gary Younge put it, the Security Council “operates, by and large, according to the golden rule – those who have the gold make the rules”. Its structures are outmoded, its methods undemocratic and its record of defending, restoring or establishing democracy weak. The law of force regularly takes precedence over the force of law. The human rights records of certain members are extremely poor, while, rather ironically, the five permanent members also happen to be the world’s main arms traders. Its resolutions quite often have nothing much to do with principle or international law but everything to do with the balance of power within it, being results of intimidation, coercion, bribing and horse-trading (who has forgotten the “most expensive ‘no’ in history” – certainly not the Yemenis).

It can be argued, of course, that the Iraq crisis proved that not every country’s vote in the Security Council is for sale in any given circumstances or subject to irresistible arm-twisting. The US failed not only to turn the minds of other powerful veto-holders but also to secure the support of the six so-called ‘undecided’ countries that were doubtless in great need of all the financial and other help they could get. However, that simply resulted in a complete bypassing of the Security Council.

The main problems of the Security Council

First, the veto-holding permanent members have the power to block any decisions that go against their interests or those of their allies. The examples abound: the SC has not condemned, let alone acted upon, the US invasions of Grenada and Panama, the oppression in Tibet or Chechnya, Iraq’s invasion of Iran when Saddam was regarded an ally against Islamic fundamentalism, while nothing much has been done to control Israel’s aggression in Palestine.

Second, even when decisions are taken, they often account for little more than lip service. The lack of political will to commit the resources and provide the capabilities that are needed to enforce resolutions that are not vital to the main powers’ interests, makes decisions inconsequential, an argument that was used, albeit hypocritically, by the US and Britain in the Iraq case. There have been numerous cases where even the deployment of peacekeeping forces has been so inadequate that it represented all but an empty show (Somalia, Haiti).

Finally, when a country is powerful enough, if it can not manipulate the system, it just bypasses it. Could it really be otherwise? As a senior UN official argued, “the UN, at its best, is a mirror of the world”, adding that “it is far better to have a world organization anchored in geopolitical reality than one too detached from the verities of global power to be effective”. In the same vain, some maintain that the one nation – one vote system of decision making in the UN General Assembly bears no relationship to the actual distribution of power in the world, therefore it is hardly surprising that its decisions are only recommendatory rather than binding. At the end of the day, the argument goes, once we accept multilateralism as an imperative element for dealing with international affairs, the UN is the only existing instrument that effectively embodies that principle, and dismissing it is like Adam asking Eve whether there is someone else.

It is probably true that multilateralism is the only answer to a global Hobbesian nightmare. What matters, though, is not only the principles that underpin it, but also the fact that certain countries can afford to support multilateralism only when multilateralism supports them. The UN’s structure is by no means the only possible one. As with any of our social arrangements, it represents just one of the potential responses to the existing challenges, formulated through co-operation and contest. We created it, and we can replace it by ‘someone else’. If it mirrors the current state of our global community, that does not mean we should not look for alternatives.

We need an organization that addresses the problems mentioned earlier, that is able to deter and prevent aggression between states and effective in brokering and enforcing settlements. I would also argue that we need it to be able and willing to intervene – and that does not necessarily or primarily mean the use of armed force – when humanitarian principles are at stake. If we accept that gross and systematic infringement of citizens’ well-being can not be tolerated in the name of national sovereignty, the right to intervene is the logical consequence.

Proponents of cultural relativism have warned of a new imperialism based on a Western conception of human rights, while humanitarian considerations have all too often been used as a pretext for interventions with an altogether less innocent agenda. Nevertheless, the UN is the only international body that could conceivably develop an authoritative framework for specifying when intervention is justifiable. But the present structure of the SC makes it difficult to see it as having the necessary moral authority for this task. We need a body whose judgement, motives and intentions can be as trusted as possible. A body that is transparent and accountable and that embodies international laws that are collectively debated, democratically decided upon and retain their credibility by being applied fairly, complied to universally and implemented consistently.

What needs to be avoided at this point is an abstract conception of the UN as a entity somehow independent of its collective membership. It can only have the power and the resources assigned to it by its members. In the current situation, no nation has signed the "Article 43" agreements that were intended to provide the United Nations with a military capacity to execute Security Council decisions. In addition, we would have to be careful not to replicate what has happened with institutions such as the IMF and the WTO, which on top of everything else seem to have developed a self-referential, autonomous logic and agenda that is essentially detached from, if not against, the majority of its members.

‘Pragmatic’ reform proposals

The reform of the SC has been on the international agenda for quite some time. Even by conservative standards, there seems to be an agreement on the existence of certain problems with the SC structure. Based on who happened to be on the winning side of the war 60 years ago, it is not representative of UN membership and out of key with the UN charter’s requirement of ‘equitable geographical distribution’ of seats. It could even reasonably be argued that the original 1945 bargain, which conceded privileges to certain nations in return for commitment, has broken down and should be revisited.

By the end of the year, a committee set up by the UN secretary general will provide a blueprint for UN reform. Reportedly among its recommendations will be for Germany, Japan, India and Brazil to be added as permanent members of the SC, without, however, veto powers. Quite similar are the recommendations of the British government that suggest five new non-veto holding permanent members and a total of twenty-four seats. There have been numerous other proposals coming from all kinds of directions. With regard to SC membership, they range from a three-tiered system of scaling privileges based on current criteria of power and geography, to the allocation of permanent seats to nations or, interestingly, groups of nations that exceed a stipulated value threshold calculated according to a population based democratic/demographic principle combined with a capability principle (contributions), a scheme that encourages co-operation between nations and provide an ‘objective’, nuanced and flexible SC membership that can remain consistent with changing realities. With regard to veto power, suggestions include anything from the need of two members to block a decision, to a gradual phasing-out to an immediate termination that will allow, for example, a ¾ majority to reach decisions.

Democratize this!

The above proposals, even when they do away with the veto, do not address the problem of resolution enforcement, neither do they prevent a powerful aggressor to bypass the whole system. More importantly, they hardly represent a meaningful shift of the present global governance paradigm. What follows is an epigrammatic blueprint for a democratic and empowered UN that is able to fulfil the aspirations for a truly benign new world order. Its main points are:

Abolition of the Security Council

The General Assembly as the decision-making body.

Representatives directly elected by national constituencies for relatively short terms and subjected to recall provisions.

Voting system: From one country – one vote to a differential system based on criteria such as population, degree of democracy and contributions to the UN budget.

Majority decision-making that is completely transparent and open to public scrutiny.

A collectively agreed upon brief that could be limited to cases of aggression between states and systematic violation of citizens’ welfare within states.

Increased efficiency through some thematic and geographical division of labour within the body.

Once ratified by national constituencies, financial and other material contributions will be obligatory and open to revision.

Decisions will be binding for member states and enforced in a fashion similar to that of the EU or the WTO.

While states will retain some defense capacities, there will be a gradual shift of military power under UN command that will result into a sharp reduction of military spending.

Guaranteed protection of any nation that is under threat, although individual state capability for aggression will be greatly diminished.

Rapidity of reaction ensured through the geographical distribution of bases, equipment, infrastructure and personnel.

All that will amount to little less than the creation of a global monopoly of military power, but one that is democratically controlled and collectively owned.

The global civil society as agent of change

The obstacles to any change of the status quo, even the most moderate one, are all too obvious. Technically, any amendment of the UN Charter requires a 2/3 majority vote in the GA and unanimity in the SC. But, of course, the essence of the matter is not legal, but entirely political. Peacekeeping, for example, is a concept never mentioned in the UN Charter and being done in an ad-hoc fashion. It is clear that when political will exists, the implementation vehicles will eventually be found.

Realpolitik suggests that countries never readily surrender power. So, while the overwhelming majority of UN members would undoubtedly support a change, it seems unlikely that the five permanent members would voluntarily give up their privileges, and there does not seem to be a carrot big and juicy enough to compel them to do so. That is probably more true for the US, whose persistent default on its dues to the UN budget is just one expression of a rather deeply suspicious predisposition and lack of support towards the organization even in its current form. Unsurprisingly, any idea of collective decision-making could not be much more unpopular with a sole superpower. Even the promise of a more just, orderly and peaceful world does not seem to appeal to sort-sighted dominance-prone elites.

Could starting without the US, as has been the case with the International Criminal Court or the Kyoto agreement, be a way forward? A whole range of issues arise from this suggestion, but for the purposes of this article let us just say that such an initiative could act as a counter-balance to the current overwhelming concentration of power, while the US might eventually find isolation unsustainable.

What about a stick then? That might well have to be picked up by what has, if rather optimistically, been called ‘the second superpower’. This parallel global citizenry, still in its infancy, which the 3rd European Social Forum has been the latest celebration of. Reform prospects are dependent upon transnational, popular initiatives that coalesce as a movement. Without such a base, it is difficult to solve the agency problem of how to get from here to there. As conventional politics increasingly fails to respond to or resolve global concerns, and thereby destroys trust and confidence, this global society of peoples as opposed to governments poses a growing challenge to multilateral institutions. It is hard, of course, to envisage a transnational movement of sufficient potency to shake prevailing geopolitical structures and their corresponding ideological frames. However, a deterministic pessimism is not justified. History, even the recent one, is full of supposedly impossible things happening, at least partly due to the struggle of dedicated men and women. Circumstances change, opportunities arise. Let us keep on working on formulating, refining and championing alternatives and another world could be much more possible than we are led to believe.

Fallujah update

This is an update on Falluja from Al Jazeera

Falluja Facing Humanitarian Crisis Aljazeera November 11, 2004
Fighting in Falluja has created a humanitarian disaster in which innocent people are dying because medical help cannot reach them, aid workers in Iraq have said. In one case, a pregnant woman and her child died in a refugee camp west of the city after the mother unexpectedly aborted and no doctors were on hand, Firdus al-Ubadi, an official from the Iraqi Red Crescent Society, told Reuters on Wednesday. In another case, a young boy died from a snake bite that would normally have been easily treatable, she said. "From a humanitarian point of view it's a disaster, there's no other way to describe it. And if we don't do something about it soon, it's going to spread to other cities," she said. About 10,000 US soldiers and 2000 Iraqi troops are fighting to wrest control of Falluja, 50km west of Baghdad.
Families fleeing Falluja
At least 2200 families have fled Falluja in recent days and are struggling to survive without enough water, food or medicine in nearby towns and villages, she said. Some families have fled as far as Tikrit, about 150km north of Falluja. But the biggest concern is people in and around Falluja itself - they can't be reached because US and Iraqi forces have set up a wide cordon around the city to prevent anyone from entering and exiting the city.
It is unclear how many civilians are left in Falluja, but the Association of Muslim Scholars estimates about 60000 people are still there while the US military says 150,000 (half the entire population) had fled since October. Due to the chaos, however, no official numbers are available.
Trapped at home
Between a nightly curfew and the danger of venturing onto the streets, many Iraqis are effectively trapped at home. "We've asked for permission from the Americans to go into the city and help the people there but we haven't heard anything back from them," Ubadi said. "There's no medicine, no water, no electricity. They need our help." "Our first mission is to obtain permission from the multinational forces to enter the city and start evacuating the wounded, the elderly, the children and women," she explained.
The Red Crescent Society has teams of doctors and relief experts ready to go in to each of Falluja's districts with essential aid, but needs US approval first. The US military was not immediately available to comment on the aid agency's request, but has said its first priority is to defeat the fighters in Falluja.
'Horrific scenes'
Iraq's military spokesman for the assault, called Operation Dawn, admitted that conditions inside the city for the few residents still living there were grim. "This is not a joke, it is a full-scale battle," Major General Abd al-Qadir Mohan told reporters at Camp Falluja, outside the city. "The battleground is horrific even for US soldiers, so imagine how civilians feel," he said. An attack was launched late on Monday which has since turned into furious street-to-street fighting.
Young boy killed
On Tuesday, a 9-year-old boy died after being hit in the stomach by shrapnel. His parents were unable to get him to hospital because of the fighting and so resorted to wrapping a sheet around him to stem the blood flow. He died hours later of blood loss and was buried in the garden of the family home. "We buried him in the garden because it was too dangerous to go out," said his father, teacher Muhammad Abbud. "We did not know how long the fighting would last." The International Committee for the Red Cross says there are thousands of elderly and women and children who have had no food or water for days. At least 20,000 have gathered in the town of Saqlawiya, south of Falluja.
Desperate plea
"The Red Cross is very worried. We urge all combatants to guarantee passage to those who need medical care, regardless of whether they are friends or enemies," spokesman Ahmad al-Raoui said. "They must be allowed to return home as soon as possible." Aid workers say there are still hundreds of families left in the city, which has been pummelled by sustained aerial bombardment and artillery fire in recent days. "We know of at least 157 families inside Falluja who need our help," said Ubadi. For some it is already too late. One mother and her three daughters had intended to flee but their home was hit by a bombardment earlier this week and all died, neighbours who escaped told aid workers.

One hundred thousand civilians dead in Iraq

Below is a summary of the article from Les Roberts in Lancet estimating that 100,000 civilians have died during the war and occupation of Iraq. Click here for the full text.

Summary

Background In March, 2003, military forces, mainly from the USA and the UK, invaded Iraq. We did a survey to compare mortality during the period of 14·6 months before the invasion with the 17·8 months after it.

Methods A cluster sample survey was undertaken throughout Iraq during September, 2004. 33 clusters of 30 households each were interviewed about household composition, births, and deaths since January, 2002. In those households reporting deaths, the date, cause, and circumstances of violent deaths were recorded. We assessed the relative risk of death associated with the 2003 invasion and occupation by comparing mortality in the 17·8 months after the invasion with the 14·6-month period preceding it.

Findings The risk of death was estimated to be 2·5-fold (95% CI 1·6-4·2) higher after the invasion when compared with the preinvasion period. Two-thirds of all violent deaths were reported in one cluster in the city of Falluja. If we exclude the Falluja data, the risk of death is 1·5-fold (1·1-2·3) higher after the invasion. We estimate that 98000 more deaths than expected (8000-194000) happened after the invasion outside of Falluja and far more if the outlier Falluja cluster is included. The major causes of death before the invasion were myocardial infarction, cerebrovascular accidents, and other chronic disorders whereas after the invasion violence was the primary cause of death. Violent deaths were widespread, reported in 15 of 33 clusters, and were mainly attributed to coalition forces. Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were women and children. The risk of death from violence in the period after the invasion was 58 times higher (95% CI 8·1-419) than in the period before the war.

]
Interpretation Making conservative assumptions, we think that about 100000 excess deaths, or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Violence accounted for most of the excess deaths and air strikes from coalition forces accounted for most violent deaths. We have shown that collection of public-health information is possible even during periods of extreme violence. Our results need further verification and should lead to changes to reduce non-combatant deaths from air strikes.

the appeal of fascism

I found another article where the appeal of fascism is outlined. It is important for anti-fascists to know.

The fundamental appeal of fascism to the everyday person is threefold. It consists of:

The promise of security. Fascists typically posit threats, external and internal, that are easily identified but difficult to fight, and then promise to protect you from them - if only you will give them absolute power to do so.

Relief from uncertainty. It is no accident that Orwell had his dictator characterize himself as Big Brother. The fascist relieves you of the responsibility to make difficult decisions. You simply follow orders - given, of course, by Big Brother.

A share of strength. Most insidious, Big Brother will let you exercise power over others - as long as you exercise Big Brother's power Big Brother's way.

This last is the stroke of genius. The fascist enlists the sufferers of fascism themselves as petty dictators over those who have been designated as "below" them. And we the people are all too often eager to enlist.

more on Fascism

Here's another article on fascism: Fascism Anyone
Here's another one: Fascism and the American Polity

Fascism in the US

This is a story from South Africa Indymedia, from a colored person who lived under arpatheid, warning of fascism in North America.

From South African Apartheid to North American Fascism
Franz J. T. Lee, dimanche, 07/11/2004 - 09:23
Analyses Démocratie
For a quarter of a century, I spent ny whole youth in Apartheid South Africa, and have experienced what fascism is all about. My very birth was a "racial" scandal in "White" South Africa; my father, of British origin, was as "white" as snow, seen through "Boer" eyes, my mother, of indigenous descent, was as black as the night.

I was classified as "Colored", and was not accepted in any camp, across the "race" barrier. I suffered all the evils of Apartheid, even escaped attempts to assassinate me. The "Afrikaner" nazis who conquered political power in 1948, led by Malan's Nationalist Party, immediately applied what the architect of Apartheid, Verwoerd, had learned in "Duitsland".

They supported Hitler, and later launched fascist practices, ... segregationist institutions, racist laws, meted out brutal torture. In their "Vaterland", in their "Home Land", inspired with "race superiority" and legal, "civilized" impunity, the "white chosen people" at whim and caprice, left and right, in ecstasy murdered the "barbarian", godless "Kaffers", they decreed "concentration camps", "Bantustans", etc. ... and across South Africa, they disseminated nazi ideology, fabricated "Bantu Education", "Education for Barbarism", religious indoctrination, etc.

They warned the sonorous members of the white "superior race" that they should not mix with the "black" "carriers of water, and hewers of wood", else South Africa would become a coffee-brown inferior nation. This was the slogan against the "Kaffer Gevaar", against the "Kaffir Danger".

South Africa was armed to the teeth, even developed atomic weapons of mass destruction, produced arms for sale to the rest of Africa, and intervened in sovereign countries, like Angola, Botswana or Lesotho, at its borders, leaving bloody trails of heinous massacres behind.

At least then, in the 1960's, for decades, internationally, the whole world, groups in the USA, hundreds of thousands were protesting against fascism in South Africa. They saw, they knew that "White" South Africa was a fascist, nazi, totalitarian, police state.

Across Europe, Canada and the USA, I held lectures, gave interviews to the mass media, even addressed the United Nations Special Committee on Apartheid, spoke to the "Black Panthers", to followers of Malcolm X, to the Socialist Workers' Party, to Christians in Harlem and Watts, and met Jewish opponents of Apartheid, in the "Four Seasons", in New York; just about everywhere there was a deep concern, a preoccupation, "that it may happen again".

Hence, for sure, I know what is fascism, when I see it, sense it. I suffered under Apartheid, I lived in Nazism, I fought for over 40 years against this barbaric monstrosity, however, today I just cannot understand how millions of US citizens could elect their very own butchers themselves.

What happened to Lincoln's "government of, by and for the people"? With the "Bill of Rights"? With the democratic "Constitution"? With the minds and intelligence of millions?

Why protest en masse against Apartheid, against the Vietnam War? And now, why are most of you practically silent, while hundred thousands of "Arabs" and "Palestinians" are being tortured, murdered and massacred by the US military government and its local lackeys and coupsters? Why do you not protest against the "Plan Colombia", the construction of an "Israel" in Latin America?

Please, please, do not label me with "anti-semitism"!

Are the innocent, slaughtered women and children in Afghanistan and Iraq not "white", not "Aryan", not "civilized", not "American", not "Children of God"?

Will you try to stop the pending invasion of Iran? Will you destroy the stacks of piled-up WMD's in the USA and Israel, that could wipe out life on this planet? In your "elections", why always the "loser takes it all"? Why allow the Bush gang to hack the results, making democracy a total farce?

Have you never heard of "full spectrum dominance", as is being planned and realized by the "Project for a New American Century"?

When I was studying in Germany, most of my professors, Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse and Ernst Bloch, told us how they had fled from Nazi Europe, yet I did not exactly grasp the real fear that faced all these "enemies" of the Third Reich. I did not understand the "war of ideas" against them.

When I read the diatribal speeches of Hitler, Goering and Goebbels, and saw documentaries of the yelling, brain-washed masses, of the stacked-up piles of the Jewish victims in Dachau and Auschwitz, their gold teeth extracted, then, I remembered the transatlantic slave trade, the quartering of African slaves, the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the millions of starved exploited Russians, in Siberia, in Workuta, in the "gulags". Then I understood what is capitalism.

Yes, as long as capitalism, colonialism, imperialism and corporatism are alive, it can again happen anywhere, anytime.

Now, please, do not label me as a "Marxist", "communist" or "terrorist"!

At the moment, as Great Power, armed to the teeth, in crisis, in agony, the USA has its turn, is showing its fascist Draculian bloody grin. In its "foreign policy", since the days of the "Founding Fathers", as Simon Bolivar had warned, the USA had, and now, more than ever, has the historic destiny to sow the seven plagues across Latin America and the world.

We need not mention here how many millions have been massacred in the name of the US$, that trusts in God, and which blesses America, in each US presidential speech to the nation.

Wake up, Americans, from your opulent slumber! Many are already fleeing to Canada and Europe. America is not becoming fascist, it is fascist long ago already. Do not wait until they have fetched all of us, because when they come to fetch you, we will not be there anymore, to protest, to give you a helping hand.

latest on Fallujah

This is the latest on what is happening in Fallujah, from the Guardian.

U.S.: 42 Insurgents Killed in Fallujah
Monday November 8, 2004 3:16 PM
AP Photo BAG118
By JIM KRANE
Associated Press Writer
NEAR FALLUJAH, Iraq (AP) - Backed by a barrage from warplanes and artillery, American troops fought their way into the western outskirts of Fallujah on Monday, seizing a hospital and two bridges over the Euphrates River in the first stage of a major assault on the insurgent stronghold.
The U.S. military reported its first casualties of the offensive - two Marines killed when their bulldozer flipped over into the Euphrates. A military spokesman estimated that 42 insurgents were killed across Fallujah in the opening round of attacks.
Four foreigners, including two Moroccans and two unidentified people, were captured when U.S. and Iraqi forces swept into the first objective: Fallujah's main hospital, which the military and Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said was under insurgent control.
Iraqi soldiers stormed through the facility, blasting open doors and pulling handcuffed patients into the halls in search of gunmen.
Allawi said he had given the green light for international and Iraqi forces to launch the long-awaited offensive against Fallujah, considered the strongest bastion of Iraq's Sunni insurgents. ``We are determined to clean Fallujah of terrorists,'' he said.
Allawi initially said 38 people were killed in the hospital seizure, but the U.S. military said no one was killed in the hospital operation. A military spokesman later gave a figure of 42 dead across the city since the Fallujah assault began. The spokesman, 1st. Sgt. Steven Valley, said the situation was ``fluid'' and information on casualties was difficult to pin down.
Doctors in Fallujah reported 10 people killed and 11 wounded during the bombardment overnight.
Throughout the morning, artillery and mortars pounded targets in Fallujah and on its outskirts, and a U.S. jet swooped low to fire rockets at insurgent positions. An AC-130 gunship raked the city all night long with cannon fire, and and before dawn, four 500-pound bombs were dropped, raising orange fireballs over the city's rooftops.
Outside the city. U.S. troops set up mortar positions and filled sandbags in preparation for an anticipated assault. U.S. troops clashed with insurgents in several locations along the outskirts of the city, firing rifle shots as they took cover around corners and behind the doors of their Humvees.
Commanders said the toughest fight was yet to come: when American forces cross to the east bank of the Euphrates and enter the main part of Fallujah - including the Jolan neighborhood where insurgent defenses are believed the strongest.
U.S. commanders have avoided any public estimate on how long it may take to capture Fallujah, where insurgents fought the Marines to a standstill last April in a three-week siege.
Marine commanders have warned the new offensive could bring the heaviest urban fighting since the Vietnam war. Some 10,000 U.S. Marines, Army soldiers and Iraqi forces are around Fallujah, where commanders estimate around 3,000 insurgents are dug in. More than half the civilian population of some 300,000 people is believed to have fled already.
Much depends on whether the bulk of the defenders, believed to be Iraqis from the Fallujah area, decide to risk the destruction of the city or try to slip away in the face of overwhelming force. Foreign jihadis may choose to fight to the end, but it's clear how many of them are still in the city.
Another issue is the role of Iraqi forces fighting alongside the Americans. A National Public Radio correspondent embedded with the Marines outside Fallujah reported desertions among the Iraqis. One Iraqi battalion shrunk from over 500 men down to 170 over the past two week - with 255 members quitting over the weekend, the correspondent said.
Clerics in Fallujah denounced Iraqi troops participating in the assault, calling them the ``occupiers' lash on their fellow countrymen.''
``We swear by God that we will stand against you in the streets, we will enter your houses and we will slaughter you just like sheep,'' the clerics said in a statement.
A senior aide to firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr urged Iraqi forces not to fight alongside U.S. troops.
``We appeal to the Iraqi National Guard and Iraqi police not to help the occupation troops as they want to target the Iraqi people in Fallujah,'' said Sheikh Abdul-Hadi al-Daraji. The Iraqi troops should not be a tool in the hands of the occupation troops.''
In the first foray across the river into Fallujah proper, Marines on Monday morning secured an apartment building in the city's northwest corner, said Capt. Brian Heatherman, of the 3rd Battalion 1st Marine Regiment.
``The Marines have now gained a foothold in the city,'' said Heatherman, 32.
He said there were some Iraqi casualties as the troops seized the building, where Marines found an improvised bomb hanging above a doorway - one of the many variety of booby traps they expect to come across in the urban battle.
U.S. and Iraqi commanders have vowed to stamp out Sunni Muslim guerrillas controlling Fallujah and other cities north and west of Baghdad ahead of vital January elections.
Allawi said emergency measures would be imposed on Fallujah and Ramadi, another insurgent stronghold nearby, beginning at 6 p.m. Roads and government facilities in the two cities will be closed, all weapons will be banned, Iraq's borders with Syria and Jordan will be closed and Baghdad's international airport will be shut down for 48 hours.
Allawi's government announced Sunday that it was imposing a 60-day state of emergency across Iraq - except for the Kurdish-run north.
One key reason to take Fallujah hospital early was likely to control information: The facility was the main source of Iraqi death tolls during the first U.S. siege of Fallujah in April, and U.S. commanders accused doctors there of exaggerating numbers.
The U.S military said Monday that insurgents had been in control of Fallujah General Hospital - located on the west bank of the Euphrates - and were ``forcing the doctors there to release propaganda and false information.''
The reports of hundreds of civilians killed in the April siege - and scenes of soccer fields turned into mass graves for the dead - generated strong public outrage in Iraq and elsewhere in the Arab world, prompting the Bush administration to call off the offensive. U.S. officials insisted the numbers were overblown.
The new offensive, launched after sundown Sunday, came after government negotiators reported the failure of last-minute peace talks. ``We have no other option but to take the necessary measures to protect Iraqi people from these killers and liberate Fallujah,'' Allawi said.
The Association of Muslim Scholars, an influential Sunni clerics group that has threatened to boycott elections, condemned the assault on Fallujah, calling it ``an illegal and illegitimate action against civilian and innocent people.''
Over the weekend, insurgents launched a wave of attacks in central Iraq in an apparent attempt to divert attention away from Fallujah. About 60 people were killed - including two Americans soldiers - and 75 injured.
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Associated Press correspondents Tini Tran, Mariam Fam, Katarina Kratovac and Maggie Michael in Baghdad contributed to this report.

US election

Well, Bush has been re-elected, and the question I keep asking myself is "where do we go from here." Progressives cannot accept this. Keeping in mind the true hegeominc agenda of the Bush team, there is too much at stake. It is important to try to maintain a dialogue with the United States people, and Bush voters in particular, because they know not what they did. Beyond that, we must resits, and try to rebuild. We must take the streets ass a way of showing our extreme concern over the future. Civil disobedience in the spirit of Martin Luther King and Gandhi must be considered. More later.