[casi-analysis] casi-news digest, Vol 1 #56 - 5 msgs

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Today's Topics:

   1. From Riverbend / Riots, Star Gazing and Cricket Choirs... (Hassan)
   2. US-Sponsored chaos in Iraq? (ppg)
   3. Iraqi polls bring secular success (Muhamed Ali)
   4. The Iraqi democratic movement (=?iso-8859-1?q?The=20Iraq=20Solidarity=20Campaign?=)
   5. Let's Make Enemies/ NAOMI KLEIN (Hassan)

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Message: 1
Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2004 04:04:45 -0700 (PDT)
From: Hassan <hasseini@DELETETHISyahoo.com>
Subject: From Riverbend / Riots, Star Gazing and Cricket Choirs...
To: CASI newsclippings <newsclippings@casi.org.uk>,
  IAC discussion <iac-discussion@yahoogroups.com>


http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

Sunday, April 04, 2004

Riots, Star Gazing and Cricket Choirs...

There have been demonstrations by Al-Sadr's followers
in Baghdad and Najaf. In Baghdad they are gathered
near the Green Zone and the Sheraton hotel by the
thousands- a huge angry mob, mostly in black. In
Najaf,, they were just outside of the Spanish troops'
camp. The demonstration in Najaf was shot at by the
soldiers and they say that at least 14 are dead and
dozens are wounded=85 An Iraqi friend in Diwaniya was
telling me that they had to evacuate the CPA building
in Najaf because it was under attack. He says there=92s
talk of Jihad amongst the Shi=92a.

Let me make it very clear right now that I am *not* a
supporter of Al-Sadr. I do not like clerics who want
to turn Iraq into the next Iran or Saudi Arabia or
Kuwait=85 but it makes me really, really angry to see
these demonstrations greeted with bullets and tanks by
the troops. Why allow demonstrations if you're going
to shoot at the people? The demonstrators were unarmed
but angry- Al-Sadr's newspaper was shut down recently
by Bremer and Co. and his deputy is said to have been
detained by the Spaniards down south (although the
Spanish troops are denying it). His followers are
outraged, and believe me- he has a healthy number of
followers. His father was practically revered by some
of the Shi'a and he apparently has inherited their
respect.

Today Bremer also announced the fact that we now have
an official 'Ministry of Defense'. The irony of the
situation wasn't lost on Iraqis- the head of the
occupation announcing a "Ministry of Defense". To
defend against what? Occupation? Ha, ha=85 or maybe it's
to secure the borders from unwelcome foreigners
carrying guns and riding tanks? Or perhaps the
Ministry of Defense should be more concerned with the
extremists coming in from neighboring countries and
taking over (but no- Bremer deals with them on the
Puppet Council)=85 so many things to do for a Ministry
of Defense.

There's also a new 'Mukhaberat' or "National Iraqi
Intelligence Organization" (or something to that
effect). The irony is that while the name is new and
the head is Ali Abd Ul Ameer Allawi (a relative of the
Puppet Council President Ayad Allawi), the faces of
the new Mukhaberat promise to be some of the same as
the old. They've been contacting the old members of
the Iraqi Mukhaberat for months and promising them
lucrative jobs should they decide to join the new
Iraqi intelligence (which, we hope, will be an
improvement on American intelligence- I=92d hate to have
us invade a country on false pretenses).

The weather is quite nice lately (with the exception
of dust every once in a while). We spend the
electricity-less evenings out in the little garden. We
pull out plastic chairs and a little plastic table and
sit around gazing at the sky, which is marvelously
clear on many nights. E. is thinking of starting a
=91count the stars=92 project. He=92s going to allot a
section of the sky to each member of the family and
have them count the number of stars in their
designated astral plot. I=92m thinking of starting a
=91cricket choir=92 with some very talented six-legged
pests located under a dried-out rose bush...

In a few days, I=92ll have to go up and wash out the
roof or =91sattih=92. Last year, we=92d sleep on top of the
roof on the hot nights without electricity. We lay out
thin mattresses on the clean ground and wet some
sheets to cover ourselves with. It=92s not too bad until
around 6 a.m. when the sun rises high in the sky and
the flies descend upon the sleepers like... well, like
flies.

These last couple of weeks have been somewhat
depressing for most people. You know how sometimes you
look back at the past year and think to yourself,
=93What was I doing last year, on this same day?=94 Well
we=92ve been playing that game constantly lately. What
was I doing last year, this very moment? I was
listening for the sirens, listening for the planes and
listening to the bombs fall. Now we just listen for
the explosions- it=92s not the same thing.

I haven=92t been sleeping very well either. I=92ve been
having disturbing dreams lately... Dreams of being
stuck under rubble or feeling the earth shudder
beneath me as the windows rattle ominously. I know it
has to do with the fact that every day we relive a
little bit of the war- on television, on the radio, on
the internet. I=92m seeing some of the images for the
very first time because we didn=92t have electricity
last year during the war and it really is painful.
It=92s hard to believe that we lived through so much...

- posted by river @ 9:35 PM


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Message: 2
From: "ppg" <ppg@DELETETHISnyc.rr.com>
To: <newsclippings@casi.org.uk>
Subject: US-Sponsored chaos in Iraq?
Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2004 11:29:45 -0400


The chaos theory in action
By Mark LeVine
http://tinyurl.com/3394u   (AsiaTimes on line, Apr 6, 2004 )

It is perhaps hard for Americans to understand their occupation of Iraq in
the context of globalization. But Iraq today is clearly the epicenter of
that trend, and in this context chaos is king. Here, military force was used
to seize control of the world's most important commodity, oil. While
corporate prospectors allied with the US search the country like safari
hunters on elephants for any opportunity to profit from Iraq's misery -
that's how conspicuous they are - inside the Green Zone their
innocuous-looking counterparts draft regulations for privatizing everything
from health care to prisons.

**** It is chaos that makes this whole system possible. Without the chaos,
Iraqis would not allow the country to be sold off wholesale, or allow the US
troops to remain after the June 30 "transfer" of sovereignty. Without chaos,
there is little reason to assume that the imposition of neo-liberal
globalization, which has wreaked such havoc in so many other countries of
the developing world, would be in the process of entrenchment in Iraq.
Without the chaos, there would be more reporting on the appalling conditions
in the hospitals and schools, which are violations of the US obligations as
occupying power under the Geneva and Hague Conventions.

Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) contractors would have to budget more
than US$10,000 to "rehabilitate" each school, and certainly couldn't get a
way with a $1,000 paint job, pocketing the rest. Anesthesiologists wouldn't
be stuck with surplus needles that are so long they can't be used on
children and shorter people, who have to get the more dangerous c-line
procedure for lack of the correct $1 instrument.

It is also chaos that allows the mainstream press to focus on the overt
violence without addressing what an unmitigated disaster the occupation is
viewed holistically. As I was writing this article, I received a call from a
major TV news program to join a panel on Falluja. After a 40 minute
pre-interview, the producer decided that I "didn't fit into the mix" of the
guests he was putting together, which wound up being three middle-aged men:
a retired general, colonel and a professor, none of whom had driven on the
road to Falluja, and none of whom dared discuss the roots of the deepening
quagmire in Iraq.

***** If Iraq is sliding toward chaos, this is exactly where most Iraqis
believe the US wants them to be. A prominent Iraqi psychiatrist who has
worked with the CPA and US military explained to me that "there is no way
the United States can be this incompetent. The chaos here has to be at least
partly deliberate." The main question on most people's minds is not if his
assertion is true, but why. In this context, the sending of foreign
contractors into Falluja in late-model SUVs with armed escorts - down a
street clogged with traffic where they would literally be sitting ducks -
only feeds suspicion that the US is deliberately instigating more violence
as a pretext for "punishment" and further chaos courtesy of the US military.

**** Not surprisingly, the angry mob dragging the mutilated American corpses
down those streets carried posters of Sheikh Yassin, the slain Hamas leader.
In the minds of most Iraqis, America greenlighted his assassination by the
Israelis.

If we realize that companies like Blackwater Security services (whose
personnel were killed in Falluja) constitute a $100 billion a year business,
it's hard to imagine how the people in charge - all well-trained military
personnel with lots of combat experience - couldn't foresee they were
sending their people into a death trap. Or is it possible that they are that
arrogant and that ignorant? I'm not sure which is worse.

Colgate University professor Nancy Ries describes the chaos in Iraq as
"sponsored chaos", which fits into the broad definition of chaos theory as
an ordered system or purpose underlying seemingly random events. That is,
war and occupation are wonderful opportunities for corporations to make
billions of dollars in profits, unchecked by the laws and regulations that
hamper their profitability in peace time.

Because of this, in the postmodern global era, global corporations and the
government elites with whom they work have great incentive to sponsor global
chaos and the violence it generates. Several recent books, such as Joma
Nazpary's Post-Soviet Chaos or Vadim Volkov's Violent Entrepreneurs, explore
how the chaos of the post-Soviet era enabled a "counter-revolution" in
Russia and countries like Kazakhstan, where competing networks of groups,
from criminal gangs and political parties to families and friends, all
compete for resources in the decidedly one-sided contest for power and
wealth that is the globalized market economy. Iraq is sadly following this
trend.

Yet if Jonathan Steele argued in the Guardian that the US is "creating its
own Gaza" through the chaos in Iraq, for me the application of the chaos
theory there has created a strange mix of Gaza and Tel Aviv: on the one hand
there's the violence of the resistance against the occupation, which feels
like Gaza or Nablus - at least you know who your enemy is and who's shooting
at whom. But on top of it is the violence of Iraqis against Iraqis - the
suicide bombings and assassinations whose randomness gives one the feeling
of living in Tel Aviv. Put the two together and the tenseness and violence
of daily life in the main cities of Iraq is hard to bear, and it's only
going to get worse. Worst of all, the chaos and insecurity make it
impossible for civil society to produce an alternative political discourse
either for collaboration with or violent religious opposition to the
occupation.

**** The day I returned home I spoke to a leading scholar of Iraqi Shi'ism,
who firmly argued against the notion that the US was deliberately stoking
the flames of chaos: "Believe me," he said, "they are that incompetent." And
perhaps he's right - at least from 10,000 miles away a lot of the mess that
is Iraq can be explained by the combination of arrogance, ignorance and
ideological bolshevism of the political and military leadership in the Bush
administration, coupled with the greed of their corporate sponsors.

But when you're on the ground and you experience the daily impact and scale
of the chaos, it's much harder not to understand the situation at least as a
combination of what one activist described as "the chaos that is the
occupation, plus the chaos the US is specifically creating to further the
occupation". Whatever the cause, a lot of Iraqis and Americans are dying
needlessly - unless you consider that the billions being made off the
occupation, and the larger war on terror, is worth the price in blood and
hatred.

Mark LeVine is assistant professor of history at the University of
California, Irvine. He is the co-editor, with Pilar Perez and Viggo
Mortensen, of Twilight of Empire: Responses to Occupation (Perceval Press,
2003) and author of the forthcoming tentatively titled Why They Don't Hate
Us: Islam and the World in the Age of Globalization (Oneworld Publications,
2004).




--__--__--

Message: 3
Subject: Iraqi polls bring secular success
Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2004 17:20:10 +0100
From: "Muhamed Ali" <Muhamed.Ali@DELETETHISHackney.gov.uk>
To: <newsclippings@casi.org.uk>


[ Presenting plain-text part of multi-format email ]

Dear colleagues,



Jonathan Steele in Nassiriya
Monday April 5, 2004
The Guardian <http://www.guardian.co.uk>

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1185644,00.html



"Neither of the two Islamist candidates was among the 10 elected. A
woman teacher got in,.. In Shatra, a town of 250,000, the Communist
party won four seats and independents seven. Partly because of.."

2. "Israeli envoy lashes out at British Left."

"Former peace negotiator accuses politicians and media of anti-Semitism
Jason Burke, chief reporter
Sunday April 4, 2004
The Observer <http://www.observer.co.uk> "

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,6903,1185351,00.html



Regards,

              Muhamad



London Borough of Hackney may exercise its right to intercept any communication on its networks - 
for more information see http://www.hackney.gov.uk/council/data/email_disclaimer.htm



--__--__--

Message: 4
Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2004 16:59:47 +0100 (BST)
From: =?iso-8859-1?q?The=20Iraq=20Solidarity=20Campaign?= <mcr_coalition@DELETETHISyahoo.co.uk>
Reply-To: MCR_Coalition@yahoo.co.uk
Subject: The Iraqi democratic movement
To: MCR_Coalition@yahoo.co.uk, mcr_coalition@yahoo.co.uk


Here is an article spelling out the differences
between the Iraqi Communist Party, which is part of
the recently established governing council, and the
Worker-Communist party of Iraq.

I hope that you find it of interest.

OUR DIFFERENCES *

Which are the differences between the Working
Communist Party of Iraq and the Communist Party Iraki
'?  By Ahmad Rebwar, leader of the Working Communist
Party of Iraq.

With the expansion of the activity of the Working
Communist Party of Iraq in the center and the south of
Iraq, the emergency of the party as an influential and
radical Marxist force in the Iraqian political life,
and our capacity to attract the Arab attention of
ample sectors of the iraqi masses and other countries
and Arab mass media towards our policies and points of
view, a question arises:  Which are the differences
between the Working Communist Party of Iraq and the
Communist Party Iraqi '?

Here, I will be centered in the central differences.
In order to respond this question, I must say in
advance that these two parties are different in
everything.  Nevertheless, in this article, I will
only mention the main aspects of the differences, some
political, historical and practical examples of the
roll and the activity of both.  In spite of
everything, the differences are much more extensive
and all in this article cannot be mentioned.  Two
different movements the most substantial difference
between these two parties is that they belong to two
different movements.  The Iraqian Communist Party
(PCI) is the party of the movement
reformist-nationalist (here, nationalism is used like
an ample term or in the way in which nationalism is
used in English and not in the way in which it is used
in Arab political Literature).

The PCI, like any
other nationalistic party, as its main motto (Free
Nation and Happy Town) is centered in releasing to the
nation.  The Iraqian Communist Party in its program
and Literature clarify that by?felicidad of the town?
they mean to develop to the industry and national
economy and to prescribe the Capitalism of state like
economic alternative.  In agreement with the point of
view of the PCI, the town, constituted by pressed the
opresora capitalist class and the working class and
town deprived of everything, will live happily in a
nation released with a developed capitalist economy.
The PCI was founded at the beginning of years 30 of
the last century to reach this objective following the
bourgeois model, that prevailed in the Soviet Union
after the failure of the Revolution of October at the
end of years 20 of the last century.  In other words,
the Iraqian Communist Party is one of the parties of
the bourgeois communist currents, and was founded to
obtain a bourgeois objective in a certain period of
time, using the prestige of the marxism.  On the other
hand, the Working Communist Party of Iraq is part of
the socialist movement of the working class against
the capitalist system.  This movement fights by a free
world of oppression, division of classes, deprivations
and penalties, that accompany the capitalist system.
This objective is one of the principles of the Working
Communist Party of Iraq.  This party was founded the
21 of 1993 July, based on the lessons of Marx.  It is
a Marxist current whose theoretical and political
principles were outlined by Hekmat Mansur.  It is the
continuation of the traditions of the Commune of Paris
and the Revolution of October.  Before the foundation
of the PCOI, the Communist Labor movement it appeared
for the first time like a movement socially different
in the Iraqian Kurdist=B7n in the context from the
movement of the advice of March of 1991.  Since then
until the foundation of the party, the Working
Comunism was represented by few organizations and
political groups, who directed to the fight of the
workers and another people destitute in the society.
Hekmat Mansur, the leader of the Working Communist
movement, that analyzed the today world from the
Marxist point of view and wrote the program it working
revolution and to organize the socialist society,
emphasized that he used the word working Comunism in
the same way that Marx used the word Comunism, to
differentiate his movement from the prevalecientes
bourgeois Comunisms.  The objective by which the PCOI
only fights will do reality through a socialist
revolution by the working-class, overthrowing to the
capitalist system, abolishing the private property and
the wage-earning work, and constructing a society
based on the base of the common property.  Reality
through constructing a society will become where there
will be no social classes and where people will work
does not stop to gain the life but for the prosperity
of the society in the measurement that all the
necessities of the town will be assured by the
society.  Two visions different from the freedom and
the socialism the Iraqian Communist Party, like any
other nationalistic party, thinks that freedom means
to release the nation of the forces that (in agreement
with the PCI) occupy it, and that the happiness of the
town will be reached obtaining that objective.  Let us
think that this point of view is very ingenuous, in
the measurement that so many nations have gotten rid
of all class of foreign occupation and even so the
vast majority of its citizens is private of freedom
and happiness and undergoes many forms of oppression
and operation.  The vision of the freedom of the
Working Communist Party of Iraq is quite different
from this.  According to the PCOI, freedom means
emancipation of the kingdom of the capital and the
relations of wage-earning work in our society, of the
suppression of all the forms of discrimination,
including nun, ethnic and sexual.  This freedom cannot
be reached without abolishing the private property and
the wage-earning work.  For the Iraqian Communist
Party, like for other bourgeois parties, the
socialism, without considering which means for them,
is ut=DBpico or is something who will happen
spontaneously with time in the process of the
development of the society.  They only use socialism
to extend the illusions between the pressed classes.
The real objective of the Iraqian Communist Party or
more indeed, its socialism, in the model mentioned in
its program and press, is in fact one capitalist
society outpost, where a patriotic bourgeois
democratic state is the superstructure.  Nevertheless,
the socialism from the point of view of the PCOI, is a
real and crucial objective, to himself can be and must
today be reached in the present society, in the
measurement that all the objective requirements to
construct such society are available.  To reach this
objective rests in the volundad and real practice of
the human beings.  If the working-class and the masses
seeking destitutes of the equality are able to
organize they themselves around their party of
vanguard, and to put themselves today in the center of
the scene, they will be able to reach this historical
task and thus they will be able to reach the happiness
and the prosperity after all the members of the
society.  The advance in the productive industry and
capacities, that is the result of the human efforts,
has reached a level that to obtain the socialism, that
is to say, a free society of operation, division of
classes and wage-earning work, is possible in the
slowst countries of the world.  It is possible to
construct a society based on the principle of which?de
everyone according to its capacity, to everyone
according to its necessities.  The political power of
this system is a working government, that is to say, a
socialist republic.  In other words, it is a state
based on the advice or soviets.  Two different points
of view on the reforms the reforms that the Iraqian
Communist Party requests very are limited and trivial.
 It looks for to make some inadequate improvements in
the standards of life of the masses.  On the other
hand, the Working Communist Party of Iraq fights to
organize a socialist revolution and meanwhile, fights
by economic, political, social and cultural the
reforms deeper and of more long reach in the lives of
all the citizens.  The PCOI thinks that during as much
time as Capitalism prevails, to obtain these reforms
will help the workers to organize its revolution and
to construct a socialist society.  The reforms that
the Iraqian Communist Party has requested always have
been without base;  therefore, he has not been able to
practically make them during his whole life and thus
it has failed in making the lightest improvement in
the society.  We say without base, because in a
country like Iraq, like one of the call Third World,
there is base no to obtain such bourgeois reforms.
The reason is simple;  in these countries, the
bourgeois dominion, in agreement with the capitalist
economy, must be dictatorial and opresivo, and this is
contradicted with the bourgeois reforming policy.
This very little makes the possibility probable of
finding bases to implement bourgeois reforms similar
to those of Europe.  The only reforms that have real
base are those that are imposed to the bourgeoisie by
the left of the society and the labor movement.
Therefore, we say that the fight of the Working
Comunism by the reform and to improve the conditions
of life has a real base, because the Working Communist
Party of Iraq makes an effort to impose them to the
bourgeoisie intensifying the political and social
pressure of the working class, the masses destitutes
and the left to it in general.  Different traditions
and political and practical norms the Iraqian
Communist Party makes an effort to obtain its
bourgeois objectives by means of the formation of
several coalitions and alliances.  For this intention,
the PCI is not checked to make alliances with all the
bourgeois forces more reactionaries and enemies of the
freedom.  After the collapse of the monarchy, when the
working-class in Iraq well was organized and had an
enormous potential, and whereas the PCI enjoyed an
enormous influence and was able to take the power,
simply it was grouped behind the bourgeois government
of Abdul Karim Quasim and thus it prevented the
workers to take the power.  After the blow of the Baaz
in 1963, the bloody regime sent to a fierce attack
against the workers and the movement of the left;
killing to hundreds of them, including members of the
same PCI.  Instead of remaining next to the workers
and the left against these attacks, the PCI fought to
justify them with several excuses.  Later, the PCI was
united to a long term alliance with the baazistas and
portrayed their bloody regime like a force that fought
by the socialism, and when doing it thus, they
contributed to stabilize its regime.  When the regime
of the Baath began to assault to the PCI and to
tighten its claw around its neck, the PCI escaped to
the Kurdist=B7n and began to make alliances with the
Kurd etnoc=C8ntricos parties against which it had fought
while it was allied to the regime of the Baaz.  During
last the 12 years, all the bourgeois forces tried to
obtain to the power aligning themselves they
themselves with the United States and supporting their
cruel policies.  The Iraqian Communist Party worked
with all these forces, including the etnoc=C8ntricos
parties and the Islamic bands.  It was united to
alliances with them and it attended congresses and
meetings organized by the department of North American
state and its agencies of espionage.  In the
Kurdist=B7n, the PCI participated in the authority of
the military service armed of the tribal parties and
etnoc=C8ntricos Kurds with object to obtain some
privileges.  Continuous supporting its dominion, to
which it needs any legitimacy.  In the course of their
blind support to the reactionary policies of those
parties, the PCI him has returned the back to desires,
exigencies and protests of several social movements,
that have emerged against these parties and their
cruel and opresivas practices.  This way, the PCI has
participated in the penalties, destruction and carried
out calamities by those parties against the town in
the Kurdist=B7n.  Still more, it was united in alliance
with the reactionaries and terrorists Islamic forces.
With object to prepare the land for such alliances,
the PCI did not not only unmask the policies and
behavior of the reactionary bourgeois forces, but that
also was arranged to conceal political the reactionary
essence and of class of its crimes.  Nevertheless, the
PCOI always has insisted on the independence of the
base of workers and workers and fought to separate
their rows in the fronts political and organizational
of the bourgeois forces, and to organize them around
communist and objective policies of class
independence.  It has always criticized the policies
and practices of all the bourgeois forces and unmasked
his reactionary and cruel essence raising to the
conscience of the workers and workers.  It has fought
to prevent that these forces implemented their
policies.  Still more,el PCOI has been in continuous
confrontation with these forces on the rights and
exigencies of the workers and the masses destitutes,
and has sacrificed and faced many penalties in this
way.  The Iraqian Communist Party is an opportunistic
party.  He is lay when it is between lay, democratic
when it is between democrats, nationalist when it is
between nationalists, and even Islamic when it is
between Islamic.  In agreement with their program, the
PCI is lay, nevertheless, at a political level and
practical, it does not represent the lay forces of any
way.  It hides information to the masses.  It fulfills
the norms and reactionary religious traditions and it
defends them.  In acute resistance with Marx who said
that the religion was the opium of the town, the PCI
declares that the Islam is a revolutionary and
liberating religion, and portrays to the opresivos
leaders of the Islamic movements like egalitarian
lovers of the freedom.  The idiot USA excuses like
respecting the?tab=B7es of the town?  in order to
justify its enthusiastic participation in the
religious ceremonies.  In acute resistance with Marx
who said that the workers do not have nation, the
Communist Party Iraqian flame to the workers to
sacrifice itself in name of the ground of the nation.
He glorifies the false national organization, and thus
he turns to the workers and workers a reserve army
reserves for the nationalistic movement.  He supports
the concept of pardon of class between workers and the
bourgeoisie, and therefore, asks to him the workers
who jeopardize and leave their interests in name of
their citizen companions, the bourgeoisie, and fights
against the workers of other nationalities and forget
the common interests of class the workers of all the
nationalities.  On the other hand, based on the
lessons of Marx, the PCOI is the party of the extreme
left (maximalista) and is extremely radical.  It
criticizes the religion and he is strongly against
racism and the patriarcado one.  It is an extremist
party in his humanismo and igualitarismo.  It bravely
confronts any class of reaction and inequality.  It
reveals all the information to the masses and frankly
it announces the position of the Comunism on the
religion.  It unmasks the religious superstition as a
tool for the deceit, that divides to the town and
imposes the deprivations and the inequality on the
society.  One is against to divide to the human beings
on the base of the nationality, religion, sex or race.
 All these characteristics are not only political
positions for the PCOI but also organizational
principles around which it fights daily.  Two
different social tendencies?la right and the left?
The Iraqian Communist Party, that once it affirmed to
be a left force and it had been associated to itself
somehow with the Comunism, now is unequivocally in the
right of the society and has left its previous
pretensions.  It changed his whole political program
at the end of the eighty and principles of the ninety,
when international events took place enormous.  As it
were mentioned before, this party was a party
reformist-nationalist who belonged to one of the
blocks of the bipolar world.  When the state
Capitalism reached an impasse and with the collapse of
the Soviet field, the PCI, like other similar parties
of East Europe and Third World Countries, it reached
an impasse.  Many of these parties or have dissolved
they themselves, or changed their names and followed
the wave of?democracia.  The PCI had to follow the
same way and it did it but of a different way.  In
1991 the PCI leagued together to itself to the North
American policies and their plans for Iraq.  To the
PCI an abject position in the periphery of the North
American plans for Iraq and in its conflict with then
the governing regime of the Baaz occurred him.
Therefore, the PCI more does not have the slightest
relation with the workers, the left or the Comunism,
even if it raises thousands of flags decorated with
the sickle and the hammer.  To the PCI it needs the
basic characteristics of the left and is intrenched in
the front of the right.  In fact, the patriotism of
the PCI is totally without poor base and, and
therefore their nationalistic and patriotic policies
contradictory and are dominated by hipocres=CCa and the
evasividad.  On the one hand, it shares positions with
the Arab nationalism and it has been united by a time
in coalitions with the Arab nationalistic parties more
extremely chovinistas.  On the other hand, it shares
positions with the Kurd nationalistic movement and it
is united in coalitions with his tribal parties.  This
happens while these two movements (the nationalistic
movements Arab and Kurd) have been in continuous fight
one against the other in the last decades.  Therefore,
the PCI has been incapable to even make sure a simple
strongpoint in those equations, and is lost even the
weak influence that once it had.  In resistance, the
Working Communist Party of Iraq represents the
tendency of left in the society in all the fronts.  It
maintains in stop the flag of the left, the workers
and the Comunism and creates a pole Marxist
(maximalista) radical brave and ambitious in the
society.  It directs to the left in the dominions
theoretical, political and practical.  Facing the pole
of rights, the PCOI defends to the left and their
exigencies.  Some examples of the political and
practical positions of both divided mentioned-above
are the main social and political differentiating
characteristics of both divided.  On the base of these
fundamental differences, each one of both started off
took different positions on different subjects and
events.  I will mention some of them here._The PCI,
like other bourgeois parties, supported the second
Gulf War (the first war of the United States against
Iraq) by the United States, with object to impose
their hegemony on the world with the excuse to give
back to the Kuwaiti sheik to the power.  It supported
the war, that was in a massacre against the town of
Iraq, and seated the arrogance of the United States on
the world.  On the other hand, the working communist
movement stayed with all its forces against this war.
While the working Comunism was fighting to overthrow
to the regime of the Baaz, it emphasized that the
liberation of the Iraqian society could not be a
result of the bloody North American war._The PCI
openly and from the beginning supported the cruel
policy of the economic embargo against the irak=CCes
masses, once again under the excuse of which this
policy, that was in the genocide and the starvation
for the masses of irak=CCes, would debilitate to the
regime.  Nevertheless, with the increasing pressure of
the public opinion against the consequences of the
economic sanctions, the PCI made a retirement partial
and took an opportunistic central position demanding a
conditional rise from the economic sanctions.  It
demanded to?levantar the sanctions on the Iraqian town
and to increase the pressure on the dictatorship.  On
the one hand, this exigency reflected a hope in which
the United States would debilitate to the regime and
finally they would establish a democratic regime and
on the other hand, in practical terms, this exigency
did not have meaning._In a third step, when the deadly
consequences of the economic sanctions became clear
and after the western United States and their allies
fell under the enormous pressure of international the
public opinion, the PCI made another opportunistic
change in their position and demanded the
unconditional rise of the economic sanctions on?pueblo
iraki '.  The opposition of rights including a the PCI
affirmed that resolution 986 raised to the sanctions
on?pueblo iraki '?  and it maintained them on the
regime.  The PCI affirmed that its position was in
support of the masses, but in fact was an evasive and
deceptive position, that it avoided to take a clear
position towards a specific subject, the imposed
economic penalties on Iraq._On the other hand, the
working Comunism and the Working Communist Party of
Iraq condemned this policy from the same first day as
a cruel policy and remained firmly against her.
Throughout 12 years, the Working Communist Party of
Iraq fought in different dominions from world-wide
scale to mobilize to world-wide the public opinion to
raise the sanctions._While the United States was being
prepared to send the Third Gulf War against Iraq, the
Iraqian Communist Party, took an opportunistic
position again.  It remained behind the divided otrros
bourgeois, that supported the policy of the United
States and they were prepared very well to distribute
the fruits of this war.  At the same time, the PCI
announced to the Iraqian public opinion that was
against the war.  Abroad, it tried to try that it was
with the movement antiwar and that had a position
antiwar, but practically did not do anything against
her.  At the same time, the Kurd branch of the PCI
participated through its direction, including its
secretary, in the Congress of London of the
self-appointed forces of Iraqian opposition.  In this
congress, the etnoc=C8ntricos groups, the Islamic forces
and the mercenarios of the company were united with
the departments of state and defense of the United
States and the Government of the United Kingdom.  The
PCI signed the declaration of closing of this
congress.  This extremely reactionary declaration
(religious, nationalistic, tribal and patriarcal) is a
document of support of these nationalistic and Islamic
forces to the war of the United States.  On the other
hand, the PCOI strongly condemned the warmongering
policy of the United States and its war and
permaneci=DBn against her.  The Working Communist Party
of Iraq was the only Iraqian force that remained
against the war and was active between the masses
within Iraq.  It was also an effective force in the
movement antiwar abroad._After the collapse of the
regime of the Baaz and the beginning of the North
American and British occupation of Iraq, the Iraqian
Communist Party, like other bourgeois parties,
supported the North American occupation of the?naci=DBn?
 under the pretext to overthrow to the regime of the
Baaz.  Now, it supports the idea that the North
American forces remain in Iraq.  In relation to the
nature of the political regime in Iraq, looks for to
make sure a position in the?democr=B7tica
administration?  North American.  The PCI has been
united to other reactionary, Islamic, etnoc=C8ntricos
and tribal parties, and supports their plan to
establish an ethnic federation and to introduce a
constitution based on the religion, the etnicidad and
tribalismo..  The PCOI on the other hand fights by the
immediate retirement of the North American and British
forces and to establish a direct regime of the masses.
 Fight to establish a nonreligious nor nationalistic
but civil and civilized authority, that treats to all
the citizens without considering its nationality,
religion, sex or race, and is able to provide food,
security and freedom for all.  The best government,
than can assure all these exigencies, is the socialist
republic, that can end all the obstacles that the
humanity faces and also end all class of oppression
and operation.  This clear one of the differences
above-mentioned and the political positions taken by
both divided, no that similarity or no relation among
them are.  Still more, there is greater political
similarity and practically between the bourgeois PCI
and other parties.  Therefore, instead of asking to us
which are your differences with the PCI?  The question
would have to be directed to the PCI;  which are your
differences with the other bourgeois parties, that
support to the North American and British troops in
Iraq, the federal provisional government and the
integration of the religion in the state and the
education?  Conclusions:  Finally, I would like to say
to him to the left in the society that Iraq has
entered a new stage and that the Iraqian political
sand is open before all the social movements,
including naturally, the communist movement, working
and of lefts.  In this new stage, the PCI has taken
their clear one and opened position next to the forces
from right in the society, next to the United States
and of the Islamic and etnoc=C8ntricas forces.  It does
not have leftist or communist characteristics.  The
Working Communist Party of Iraq at the moment raises
the flag of the left and the Comunism.  This party
directs the fight by the working revolution, the
freedom, the equality and the realistic reforming
policy.  Ten years ago this party gave form to its
political and social principles and formulated all the
objectives and aspirations of the left in its written
program and political.  With organized bases, the PCOI
permanee firmly jeopardizes with their program, facing
the rightist forces.  Therefore, it is necessary for
all those that are considered to themselves like part
of the left which they share the objectives of the
working class and their hope to see a better world, to
rethink the present situation of the PCI. Necesitan to
reexaminar its political and social position, without
considering their historical relations with that
party, and leaving their rows and to be united to the
PCOI as so many Communists and activists of left have
done during last the ten years.  During this period
many of which they were considered to themselves as it
leaves from the left of the society arrived at us lead
by objective humanists and egalitarian and they were
united to the PCOI and thus they began the new history
for they themselves.  The comrade Hekmat Kotani, the
good well-known figure of Iraqian the labor movement
and communist was an example of this tendency, and
very quickly she took a position leader in our party.
In the present atmosphere in Iraq, the position that
one adopts is obvious for all.  The PCI is part of the
right and the front in favor of the United States and
other reactionary forces, even although outside able
to put like a left force or to realcionar to itself
with the left and the Comunism until 1991.  The PCI is
not the continuation of their last history because
there are lost all the leftist characteristics and it
has become part from the right.  Now it is being
revolviendo in the orbit of the United States and has
assumed political rightists in all the fields.  The
leftists and Communists have their own direction now,
and therefore they do not need more to resort to the
PCI.  The special importance of the PCOI is that it
has differentiated and separated the rows of the left
of the rightist forces.  This party is part of a
working and egalitarian front;  it is directing to the
fight by a better world and a socialist society.  I
call to all the Communists and leftists to be united
to this party and to use it as a tool of fight and
fortification of the movement until the victory.  The
victory of the workers, the Comunism of lefts and the
human aspirations, rest in the victory of this party.
____________________________________________________
__________________________ * This article was
published first in the newspaper in Arab of the
PCOI?El Working Communist.  Later, it was translated
and printed in two parts in the newspaper in English
of the PCOI?Adelante.


http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Iraqisolidarity


=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
The Iraq Solidarity Campaign





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Message: 5
Date: Sun, 4 Apr 2004 23:33:27 -0700 (PDT)
From: Hassan <hasseini@DELETETHISyahoo.com>
Subject: Let's Make Enemies/ NAOMI KLEIN
To: CASI newsclippings <newsclippings@casi.org.uk>


http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=3D20040419&s=3Dklein

column | Posted April 1, 2004
LOOKOUT by NAOMI KLEIN
Let's Make Enemies

Baghdad

=93Do you have any rooms?" we ask the hotelier.

She looks us over, dwelling on my travel partner's
bald, white head.

"No," she replies.

We try not to notice that there are sixty room keys in
pigeonholes behind her desk--the place is empty.
"Will you have a room soon? Maybe next week?"
She hesitates. "Ahh... No."

We return to our current hotel--the one we want to
leave because there are bets on when it is going to
get hit--and flick on the TV: The BBC is showing
footage of Richard Clarke's testimony before the
September 11 Commission, and a couple of pundits are
arguing about whether invading Iraq has made America
safer.

They should try finding a hotel room in this city,
where the US occupation has unleashed a wave of
anti-American rage so intense that it now extends not
only to US troops, occupation officials and their
contractors but also to foreign journalists, aid
workers, their translators and pretty much anyone else
associated with the Americans. Which is why we
couldn't begrudge the hotelier her decision: If you
want to survive in Iraq, it's wise to stay the hell
away from people who look like us. (We thought about
explaining that we were Canadians, but all the
American reporters are sporting the maple leaf--that
is, when they aren't trying to disappear behind their
newly purchased headscarves.)

US occupation chief Paul Bremer hasn't started wearing
a hijab yet, and is instead tackling the rise of
anti-Americanism with his usual foresight. Baghdad is
blanketed with inept psy-ops organs like Baghdad Now,
filled with fawning articles about how Americans are
teaching Iraqis about press freedom. "I never thought
before that the Coalition could do a great thing for
the Iraqi people," one trainee is quoted saying. "Now
I can see it on my eyes what they are doing good
things for my country and the accomplishment they
made. I wish my people can see that, the way I see
it."

Unfortunately, the Iraqi people recently saw another
version of press freedom when Bremer ordered US troops
to shut down a newspaper run by supporters of Muqtada
al-Sadr. The militant Shiite cleric has been preaching
that Americans are behind the attacks on Iraqi
civilians and condemning the interim constitution as a
"terrorist law." So far, al-Sadr has refrained from
calling on his supporters to join the armed
resistance, but many here are predicting that the
closing down of the newspaper--a nonviolent means of
resisting the occupation--was just the push he needed.
But then, recruiting for the resistance has always
been a specialty of the Presidential Envoy to Iraq:
Bremer's first act after being tapped by Bush was to
fire 400,000 Iraqi soldiers, refuse to give them their
rightful pensions but allow them to hold on to their
weapons--in case they needed them later.

While US soldiers were padlocking the door of the
newspaper's office, I found myself at what I thought
would be an oasis of pro-Americanism, the Baghdad Soft
Drinks Company. On May 1 this bottling plant will
start producing one of the most powerful icons of
American culture: Pepsi-Cola. I figured that if there
was anyone left in Baghdad willing to defend the
Americans, it would be Hamid Jassim Khamis, the
Baghdad Soft Drinks Company's managing director. I was
wrong.

"All the trouble in Iraq is because of Bremer," Khamis
told me, flanked by a line-up of thirty Pepsi and 7-Up
bottles. "He didn't listen to Iraqis. He doesn't know
anything about Iraq. He destroyed the country and
tried to rebuild it again, and now we are in chaos."

These are words you would expect to hear from
religious extremists or Saddam loyalists, but hardly
from the likes of Khamis. It's not just that his Pepsi
deal is the highest-profile investment by a US
multinational in Iraq's new "free market." It's also
that few Iraqis supported the war more staunchly than
Khamis. And no wonder: Saddam executed both of his
brothers and Khamis was forced to resign as managing
director of the bottling plant in 1999 after Saddam's
son Uday threatened his life. When the Americans
overthrew Saddam, "You can't imagine how much relief
we felt," he says.

After the Baathist plant manager was forced out,
Khamis returned to his old job. "There is a risk doing
business with the Americans," he says. Several months
ago, two detonators were discovered in front of the
factory gates. And Khamis is still shaken from an
attempted assassination three weeks ago. He was on his
way to work when he was carjacked and shot at, and
there was no doubt that this was a targeted attack;
one of the assailants was heard asking another, "Did
you kill the manager?"

Khamis used to be happy to defend his pro-US position,
even if it meant arguing with friends. But one year
after the invasion, many of his neighbors in the
industrial park have gone out of business. "I don't
know what to say to my friends anymore," he says.
"It's chaos."

His list of grievances against the occupation is long:
corruption in the awarding of reconstruction
contracts, the failure to stop the looting, the
failure to secure Iraq's borders--both from foreign
terrorists and from unregulated foreign imports. Iraqi
companies, still suffering from the sanctions and the
looting, have been unable to compete.

Most of all, Khamis is worried about how these
policies have fed the country's unemployment crisis,
creating far too many desperate people. He also notes
that Iraqi police officers are paid less than half
what he pays his assembly line workers, "which is not
enough to survive." The normally soft-spoken Khamis
becomes enraged when talking about the man in charge
of "rebuilding" Iraq. "Paul Bremer has caused more
damage than the war, because the bombs can damage a
building but if you damage people there is no hope."

I have gone to the mosques and street demonstrations
and listened to Muqtada al-Sadr's supporters shout
"Death to America, Death to the Jews," and it is
indeed chilling. But it is the profound sense of
betrayal expressed by a pro-US businessman running a
Pepsi plant that attests to the depths of the
US-created disaster here. "I'm disappointed, not
because I hate the Americans," Khamis tells me, "but
because I like them. And when you love someone and
they hurt you, it hurts even more."

When we leave the bottling plant in late afternoon,
the streets of US-occupied Baghdad are filled with
al-Sadr supporters vowing bloody revenge for the
attack on their newspaper. A spokesperson for Bremer
is defending the decision on the grounds that the
paper "was making people think we were out to get
them."

A growing number of Iraqis are certainly under that
impression, but it has far less to do with an
inflammatory newspaper than with the inflammatory
actions of the US occupation authority. As the June 30
"handover" approaches, Paul Bremer has unveiled a slew
of new tricks to hold on to power long after
"sovereignty" has been declared.

Some recent highlights: At the end of March, building
on his Order 39 of last September, Bremer passed yet
another law further opening up Iraq's economy to
foreign ownership, a law that Iraq's next government
is prohibited from changing under the terms of the
interim constitution. Bremer also announced the
establishment of several independent regulators, which
will drastically reduce the power of Iraqi government
ministries. For instance, the Financial Times reports
that "officials of the Coalition Provisional Authority
said the regulator would prevent communications
minister Haider al-Abadi, a thorn in the side of the
coalition, from carrying out his threat to cancel
licenses the coalition awarded to foreign-managed
consortia to operate three mobile networks and the
national broadcaster."

The CPA has also confirmed that after June 30, the
$18.4 billion the US government is spending on
reconstruction will be administered by the US Embassy
in Iraq. The money will be spent over five years and
will fundamentally redesign Iraq's most basic
infrastructure, including its electricity, water, oil
and communications sectors, as well as its courts and
police. Iraq's future governments will have no say in
the construction of these core sectors of Iraqi
society. Retired Rear Adm. David Nash, who heads the
Project Management Office, which administers the
funds, describes the $18.4 billion as "a gift from the
American people to the people of Iraq." He appears to
have forgotten the part about gifts being something
you actually give up. And in the same eventful week,
US engineers began construction on fourteen "enduring
bases" in Iraq, capable of housing the 110,000
soldiers who will be posted here for at least two more
years. Even though the bases are being built with no
mandate from an Iraqi government, Brig. Gen. Mark
Kimmitt, deputy chief of operations in Iraq, called
them "a blueprint for how we could operate in the
Middle East."

The US occupation authority has also found a sneaky
way to maintain control over Iraq's armed forces.
Bremer has issued an executive order stating that even
after the interim Iraqi government has been
established, the Iraqi army will answer to US
commander Lieut. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez. In order to
pull this off, Washington is relying on a legalistic
reading of a clause in UN Security Council Resolution
1511, which puts US forces in charge of Iraq's
security until "the completion of the political
process" in Iraq. Since the "political process" in
Iraq is never-ending, so, it seems, is US military
control.

In the same flurry of activity, the CPA announced that
it would put further constraints on the Iraqi military
by appointing a national security adviser for Iraq.
This US appointee would have powers equivalent to
those held by Condoleezza Rice and will stay in office
for a five-year term, long after Iraq is scheduled to
have made the transition to a democratically elected
government.

There is one piece of this country, though, that the
US government is happy to cede to the people of Iraq:
the hospitals. On March 27 Bremer announced that he
had withdrawn the senior US advisers from Iraq's
Health Ministry, making it the first sector to achieve
"full authority" in the US occupation.

Taken together, these latest measures paint a telling
picture of what a "free Iraq" will look like: The
United States will maintain its military and corporate
presence through fourteen enduring military bases and
the largest US Embassy in the world. It will hold on
to authority over Iraq's armed forces, its security
and economic policy and the design of its core
infrastructure--but the Iraqis can deal with their
decrepit hospitals all by themselves, complete with
their chronic drug shortages and lack of the most
basic sanitation capacity. (US Health and Human
Services Secretary Tommy Thompson revealed just how
low a priority this was when he commented that Iraq's
hospitals would be fixed if the Iraqis "just washed
their hands and cleaned the crap off the walls.")

On nights when there are no nearby explosions, we hang
out at the hotel, jumping at the sound of car doors
slamming. Sometimes we flick on the news and eavesdrop
on a faraway debate about whether invading Iraq has
made Americans safer. Few seem interested in the
question of whether the invasion has made Iraqis feel
safer, which is too bad because the questions are
intimately related. As Khamis says, "It's not the war
that caused the hatred. It's what they did after. What
they are doing now."



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