Monday, August 09, 2004

Posted here Monday, August 09, 2004 at 4:51:19 PM     The situation in Iraq has the following  elements: The central government appoointed by the US tending towards a Bathist revival, led by Allawi. An oppostion led by al-Sadr that is against the US and also against the interim government. On the side with Chalabi, once US info conduit, now head of Saddham trial, but now accused of Murder by Iraq Judge with a warrant. hence the situation is back on track with an emerging saddham like regime and a religious opposition. Muqtada al-Sadr, Religious Leader / Political Figure Born: 1973 (?) Birthplace: Iraq Best Known As: Fiery young anti-U.S. cleric in post-Hussein Iraq Muqtada al-Sadr is a fundamentalist Shiite cleric who has opposed U.S. and British operations in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Though al-Sadr was quite young at the time of Saddam's fall -- he claimed to be 30 -- he came from a powerful clerical lineage: according to the Council on Foreign Relations, "His father, the Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, was the most powerful Shiite cleric in Iraq in the late 1990s. His uncle, Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Sadr, was a leading Shiite activist before his execution by Saddam Hussein's forces in 1980." (Though Shiites make up the majority of Iraq's population, under Hussein the minority Sunni Muslims dominated the Iraqi government.) Mohammad Sadiq al-Sadr was murdered in 1999 by agents of Hussein, at which time Muqtada al-Sadr went underground with some followers of his father. They emerged after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 and al-Sadr quickly became a vocal critic of the allied forces and of President George W. Bush. He formed a militia, the so-called Imam Mehdi Army, which provided the military muscle to back up his statements. In April of 2004, after violent uprisings were blamed on al-Sadr and his followers, the United States announced its intention to arrest al-Sadr for complicity in the murder of a rival cleric, Abdel Majid al-Khoei, in April of 2003. Al-Sadr claimed to be age 30 in 2003, but some sources insist he is actually several years younger; Time magazine said in 2004 that "many of his associates admit [al-Sadr] is more likely 23."   ********

Posted here Monday, August 09, 2004 at 3:59:21 PM     Details on religion in Iraq. from http://www.counterpunch.org/ for aug 9 The Attraction of the Ba'athist State Why Iraqi Christians are Moving to Syria By GARY LEUPP 4000 Families The recent spate of attacks on Christian churches in Iraq is symptomatic of the general insecurity that Christians (about three percent of the population, around 800,000 people) face in the occupied country. The interim constitution states that "Islam is the official religion of the State and is to be considered a source of legislation" and while recognizing religious freedom "respects the Islamic identity of the majority of the Iraqi people." For some, Islamic identity means the imposition of Muslim morality. In Sadr City, the Mahdi militia is shutting down Christian-owned liquor shops. Some shop owners have been killed, some Christian women attacked for appearing in public inappropriately attired. Others have been attacked because of a widespread belief that Christians are abetting the occupation. The irony here, of course, is that Saddam's Iraq was a secular state, ruled by the Baath Party. The Iraqi regime, although suspicious of and sometimes brutal towards the Shiite majority, supported Shiite and Sunni mosques, Assyrian and Chaldean Christian churches, and even the sparsely attended Baghdad synagogue, while forbidding proselytization in general. Saddam appointed Tariq Aziz, a Christian, to top posts; in response, enraged Islamists tried to assassinate Aziz in 1980. Osama bin Laden hated Saddam's Iraq for its specifically non-Islamic character. Now with the fall of the Baath regime, Islamic fundamentalists (of various types) have been unleashed to redefine the role of religion in the country. The U.S. occupation officially dissolved the huge Baath Party, purged Baathists from their posts (including those in medicine and education) and officially approved the wording of the constitution, while creating the power vacuum in which numerous Islamic militias now thrive.   ********

Posted here Monday, August 09, 2004 at 1:20:35 PM     This is almost funny. http://www.dailyreckoning.com/ Prozac seeping into water supplies KEVIN HURLEY THE anti-depressant drug Prozac is being taken in such large quantities in Britain that it has entered water supplies. Experts from the Environmental Agency are calling for an immediate investigation after it emerged that quantities of the medication were found in rivers and groundwater used for drinking supplies. The government’s environmental watchdog has met officials from leading pharmaceutical companies to discover whether traces of the drug could have an impact on the nation’s health or the ecosystem. A recent report by the Environmental Agency concluded the Prozac, dubbed the "happy pill" in the United States where it is hugely popular for its mood-lifting qualities, could be potentially toxic. It also branded its presence a "potential concern". Experts have also voiced concerns that the drug, which they believe has found its way into the water system from treated sewage water, could seriously damage the human reproductive system. Exact amounts of Prozac detected in British waters have not been specified but the government’s Drinking Water Inspectorate (DWI) said it was likely that the drug has been found in such diluted concentrations that health risks involved will be minimal. Despite this, the discovery will raise concerns that GPs are over-prescribing the pill, Britain’s most popular anti-depressant drug. In the decade up to 2001, prescriptions of Prozac rose from nine million to 24 million a year. Dr Andy Crawford, the Environmental Agency policy manager for pesticides said an investigation was needed to find how such traces of the drug impacts health. "We need to determine the effects of this low-level, almost continuous discharge," he said. Norman Baker, environmental spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, said people needed to know what risks were involved. "This looks like a case of hidden mass medication upon the unsuspecting public," he said. "It is alarming there is no monitoring of levels of Prozac and other pharmacy residues in our drinking water." The problems are that Prozac is a mood changer, reducing the tendency to react with depression to the accurate perception of a distressing environment. Depression is our canary (used for testing oxygen decline in mines) Depression is part of an important feedback loop telling us that things are not going well. Removing that feedback allows us to continue on a destructive path.   There is also the issue of government reducing dissent through the wide distribution of anti-depressants.   So, question, what does an anti-depressant do to political choice? ********

Posted here Monday, August 09, 2004 at 1:12:58 PM     A week away, and what has happened is  a perceived increase in the amount of tension, economic and international, social and personal. From http://www.dailyreckoning.com/ This first slide is a graph of national debt. Notice how total national debt continues to climb at its eerie linear rate, namely $52 billion per month. Look at that number again. That's right; look at it - look at the number $52 billion! A month! Make sure the number is burned into your brain, because years from now your grandchildren are going to be sitting in the dirt playing with rat bones and dried doggy-doo, the only kind of toys you can afford to give them, and they will be asking you, "How much money were you guys spending, anyway, that has caused us to suffer such misery?" To put it in perspective, it's $372 in extra debt, PER MONTH, for everybody who has a job in this whole country, INCLUDING government workers! And next month it is going to be ANOTHER $372! And then another and another and another! Month after month, year after year, the government is putting you farther and farther into debt. And this does not even include the debt that you voluntarily take on, so that you can have those matching Jet Skis. In the last, short 25 months, we bozo Americans have accumulated, in spooky straight-line fashion, another $1.3 trillion in new federal debt. Even if all of this money was loaned out at a lousy 2%, then the interest expense alone, which is one of those federal budget line items, is rising by $26 billion a year! At 3%, it's another $39 billion! At 4%, $52 billion! At 6%, which is closer to where short-term rates should be given the current inflation rate, we will be paying $78 billion a year in extra interest costs on the debt! That's $557 for everybody who has a job in America! Where does this money go? Who is going to end up with $26 billion a year? It's obvious... to the guys who had money to start with, and who loaned it to the government! And who are these guys? Well, it ain't the poor, who don't have any money to lend, and it ain't the Mogambo, who was trying to borrow money from the poor, and we all know how well that worked out. So, once again, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. And how did the poor get poorer? Well, the Bush people just put a nice big tariff on imported shrimp, and now the price of shrimp is going to go up. So the poor are going to pay for this by suffering a decline in their standard of living, which translates into their not being able to afford to eat shrimp anymore. ********