War & Peace: February 2005 Archives

From Riverbend's latest posting:

Women feel it the most. Thereà à ­s an almost constant pressure in Baghdad from these parties for women to cover up what little they have showing. ÃThere ­s a pressure in many colleges for the segregation of males and females. There are the threats, and the printed and verbal warnings, and sometimes we hear of attacks or insults.

You feel it all around you. It begins slowly and almost insidiously. You stop wearing slacks or jeans or skirts that show any leg because you don à ­t want to be stopped in the street and lectured by someone who doesn à ­t approve. You stop wearing short sleeves and start preferring wider shirts with a collar that will cover up some of you neck. You stop letting your hair flow because you don à ­t want to attract attention to it. On the days when you forget to pull it back into a ponytail, you want to kick yourself and you rummage around in your handbag trying to find a hair band à – hell, a rubber band to pull back your hair and make sure you attract less attention from *them*.

We were seriously discussing this situation the other day with a friend. The subject of the veil and hijab came up and I confessed my fear that while they might not make it a law, there would be enough pressure to make it a requirement for women when they leave their homes. He shrugged his shoulders and said, à ¬Well women in Iran will tell you it à ­s not so bad- you know that they just throw something on their heads and use makeup and go places, etc. ® True enough. But it wasnà à ­t like that at the beginning. It took them over two decades to be able to do that. In the eighties, women were hauled off the streets and detained or beaten for the way they dressed.

It à ­s also not about covering the hair. I have many relatives and friends who wore a hijab before the war. It à ­s the principle. It à ­s having so little freedom that even your wardrobe is dictated. And wardrobe is just the tip of the iceberg. There are Ãclerics and men who believe women shouldn ­t be able to work or that they shouldn à ­t be allowed to do certain jobs or study in specific fields. Something that disturbed me about the election forms was that it indicated whether the voter was à «male à ­ or à «female à ­- why should that matter? Could it be because in Shari à ía, a women ­s vote or voice counts for half of that of a man? Will they implement that in the future?

A commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Dresden is hijacked by neo-Nazis.

Waving black flags and banners, thousands of neo-Nazis marched through the heart of Dresden yesterday on the 60th anniversary of the city's destruction by British and American bombers.

In the largest neo-Nazi demonstration in Germany's postwar history, about 5,000 people took part in a "funeral march" to mourn the civilians killed by the allied attack.

The protest upstaged the official commemoration of the anniversary, during which the British ambassador laid a wreath at a cemetery where victims were buried. Meanwhile, thousands of local citizens gathered in the old square for a candlelight vigil.

Large numbers of riot police were drafted into Dresden as several hundred anti-fascists hurled abuse at the far-right marchers and shouted: "Nazis out!"

The neo-Nazis marched to the music of Wagner and Bach, blaring from loudspeakers. As they crossed the Elbe towards the old city, they encountered several hundred anti-fascists. The organisers merely turned up the volume and played the Ride of the Valkyries.

Some of the people quoted in the article:

"This is a terrible day for Dresden - I'm furious," said Ursula Hamann, 77, who lives in the city and survived the 1945 attack. "It's sad to see something like this happening in Germany again."

Edeltraud Krause said: "Look at them. You just have to look at their stupid faces. They do not represent us."

"My husband and I are NPD voters," said Anni Lutzner, who attended yesterday's NPD-organised rally in Dresden. "We believe that the German state favours foreigners and the Jews."

She added: "There's no point in banning us - we'll simply find a new name."

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Addressing the rally, the NPD's leader in the Saxon parliament, Holger Apfel, launched an attack on what he called the "gangster politics of the British and Americans".

He said: "They have left a trail of blood from the past to the present, via Dresden, Korea, Vietnam, Baghdad and - tomorrow possibly - Tehran. Terror and war have a name. And that name is the United States of America."

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"I have no sympathy with the neo-Nazis. We don't want to go through those terrible times again," said Gena Mothes, 85, who survived the raid. "The problem is that people don't learn anything from the past. There are always new wars going on.

Iraqis can't save their seeds from planting?

I haven't heard this anywhere else, and I'm not sure who is behind this site, but if this is true, this is very disturbing.

The updated law makes saving seeds for next year's harvest, practiced by 97% of Iraqi farmers in 2002, and is the standard farming practice for thousands of years across human civilizations, to be now illegal.. Instead, farmers will have to obtain a yearly license for genetically modified (GM) seeds from American corporations. These GM seeds have typically been modified from seeds developed over thousands of generations by indigenous farmers like the Iraqis, and shared freely like agricultural 'open source.'"

Iraq law Requires Seed Licenses November 13, 2004

"According to Order 81, paragraph 66 - [B], issued by L. Paul Bremer [CFR], the people in Iraq are now prohibited from saving seeds and may only plant seeds for their food from licensed, authorized U.S. distributors.

The paragraph states, "Farmers shall be prohibited from re-using seeds of protected varieties or any variety mentioned in items 1 and 2 of paragraph [C] of Article 14 of this chapter."

Written in massively intricate legalese, Order 81 directs the reader at Article 14, paragraph 2 [C] to paragraph [B] of Article 4, which states any variety that is different from any other known variety may be registered in any country and become a protected variety of seed - thus defaulting it into the "protected class" of seeds and prohibiting the Iraqis from reusing them the following season. Every year, the Iraqis must destroy any seed they have, and repurchase seeds from an authorized supplier, or face fines, penalties and/or jail time."

And what's up with this missing $9 billion?

And that side comment about assuming "that Western-style budgeting and accounting procedures could be immediately and fully implemented in the midst of a war."

Well, clearly the "buck stops here", we're just not sure where "here" is.

The monumental prickatude never stops...

As usual, Debra Saunders has us liberals pegged! In today's column, she talks about the Iraqi elections on Sunday. Not content with saying, "Well, that went very well. Let's see what happens next!" she has to do a bit of gloating. She also interviews an Iraqi American who conveniently repeats the conservative's latest trope: that liberals are racists.

I ask Al-Bander what he thinks of those who pronounced Iraqis as incapable of ruling themselves. "I think it is racism," he answers. "What amazes me, it is coming from liberals."

That's what Bush-hating has come to in America 2005...

Oh! We're so busted! Does anyone remember when Michael Moore said, "We shouldn't invade war because those little brown people couldn't possibly have invented big bad weapons of mass destruction?"

How about when Howard Dean said, "We're not going to risk our soldiers' lives for a bunch of sand n****s?"

Or when Moveon.org sent out an email saying "Arabs can't handle democracy! It's been genetically proven!"

Oh, I am one ashamed liberal...

Seriously, I suspect Saunders and other conservatives repeat this "Liberals are RACISTS!" line, not because they expect anybody to believe it, but because it gets our goat. It makes us hopping mad. How childish...

But it's even worse than childish. Because with that excuse, Saunders and others no longer have to deal with the inconvenient facts. Facts like the way the U.S. failed to intervene on behalf of the Kurds in 1988. The lack of evidence for WMDs. The piss-poor planning. The money J. Paul Bremer lost track of ($8 billion, reportedly). The torture. The torture. The torture.

But the torture itself isn't racist in her world, nor is the mumbing about "Western accounting practices." Oh no.

GRRRRR.