Israel Detains Palestinian Ministers
Knocks out Electricity to Half of Gazans

Half of the Palestinians in Gaza, who were already living pretty miserable lives after decades of marginalization and brutalization by the Israelis, were left without electricity yesterday.

Palestinian officials like Saeb Erekat rejected the idea that knocking out electricity for hundreds of thousands of people is targeting a "terrorist infrastructure." In fact, destroying electricity generation capability interferes with water purification. Palestinian children will die because of this, from drinking unpurified water. And what crime did Palestinian toddlers commit, to be murdered in this way?

The Israelis escalated the crisis by detaining Hamas government ministers. The likelihood is that the captors of the Israeli soldier are freelancers. This wasn't something plotted out by the Haniyeh government, which, in fact, recently granted a huge concession on the issue of potentially recognizing Israel.

PM Ismail Haniyeh called for the United Nations Security Council to intervene.

The ministers detained are members of a freely and democratically elected government. I can't imagine under what legal authority the Israelis have arrested them. But everyone in the Middle East can see exactly what "elections" and "democracy" amount to. Bush's promises have never seemed so hollow.

Secretary-General of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, called for the US to get involved as an honest broker. Well, I suppose miracles do happen.

I am upset about the renewed crisis in Palestine because it is an emotional issue and will spill over into Sunni Arab Iraq. It is likely that pro-Palestinian Sunni guerrillas will kill some US troops specifically to avenge the people of Gaza. This is one reason I am complaining about the massively disproportional character of the Israeli response. It has the potential of further endangering American lives in the region.

And, it is counter-productive. The Israelis can't get back their soldier by destroying electricity plants in Gaza. They can't get more security by depriving Palestinians of security.

PS Jeff Morley at WaPo does a fine piece on the beach bombing background to the current round of violence.

Bombings in Baghdad, Baquba, Mahaweel
Guerrilla Groups offer Truce if US will Withdraw

Reuters details Iraq's ongoing civil war violence:

Guerrillas bombed a market in the Shiite quarter of Kadhimiyah, Baghdad, killing one person and wounding 8.

Guerrillas detonated a car bomb near a throng of workers who had gathered to look for work at Baquba, killing 3 and wounding 12.

Also in Baquba, guerrillas set off a bomb at a Shiite mosque, which produced no casualties. But then when policemen came running in tesponse to the first bomb, guerrillas set off a second, seriously injuring the two policemen.

A US military raid that netted a radical Islamist resulted in the death of an innocent civilian, the US military admitted.

In Mahaweel south of the capital, guerrillas detonated a roadside bomb near a police patrol, killing 1 and wounding 3.

In Falluja, guerrillas killed two policemen.

Two US GIs were announced dead, one north of Baghdad and one in al-Anbar province.

Guerrillas in the south near Samawah targeted the Australian troops with a roadside bomb, but missed.

Several Sunni Arab guerrilla groups have offered a ceasefire to the United States if the US will pledge to withdraw all foreign troops within two years.

One problem with this offer is that the goal of the guerrilla groups in their roadside bombings and other violence is . . . to get US and other foreign troops out of the country. In other words, they are seeking to get simply by asking what they have not achieved in 3 years of concerted warfare.

Another problem is that there is no guarantee that when the US presence is completely gone the guerrillas will not try to storm the Green Zone and take over.

The two largest and most important Baathist guerrilla groups (Jaysh Muhammad and Jaysh Islam al-`Iraqi), along with the Salafi Jihadis of the Mujahidin Shura Council, all declined to join in the backchannel negotiations.

Finally, the Bush administration just has no intention of getting out within two years and will blow these groups off.

Relief agencies are overwhelmed and cannot meet the needs of Iraq's 150,000 recently displaced persons.

Billmon is scathing on the hypocrisy of the Bush administration and the Republicans in congress in branding anyone who talks of troop draw-downs in Iraq as devotees of "cut and run," while Gen. Casey is clearly trying desperately to figure out plausible ways of drawing down US troops in Iraq.

The USG Open Source Center paraphrases reports from the Iraqi press for June 27:

. . . Tariq al-Sha'b runs on page 2 a 300-word report on the statement issued by a number of Iraqi parties and civil society organizations condemning Al-Mahawil police for raiding the Communist Party's headquarters. . .

Al-Zaman carries on the front page a 1,100-word report entitled "1,500 Iraqi Dinars for 1 Liter of Gasoline in Black Market; Huge Jump in Commodity Prices and Transportation Costs; Kilometers-Long Lines and 7 Hours Waiting in Front of Gas Stations." . . .

Al-Zaman carries on page 3 a 200-word report entitled "Maysan Advisory Council Declares General Strike on Wednesday and Thursday in Solidarity with Karbala Advisory Council Chairman." [The Karbala council chairman, from the Fadila Party, has been arrested for possible complicity in terrorism.] . . .

Al-Sabah carries on page 2 a 320-word report citing a source at the Kurdistan parliament saying that a senior Kurdish delegation will visit Baghdad to urge Iraqi officials to quickly solve the issue of Kirkuk . . .

Al-Bayyinah al-Jadidah carries on the front page a 350-word report citing Al-Sadr Trend member Hazim al-A'raji calling for a national reconciliation inside the parliament. He held parliament members responsible for the blood shed in Iraq. . .

Dar al-Salam carries on the front page a 180-word report citing Iraqi Al-Tawafuq Front member Salim al-Juburi saying that the front supports Nuri al-Maliki's initiative for national reconciliation, but the problem lies in the details. . .

Al-Mashriq carries on the front page a 400-word report citing Adnan al-Dulaymi calling on the Shiite religious and political scholars to open dialogue with their Sunni counterparts. . .

Al-Bayyinah al-Jadidah carries on the front page a 180-word report that a terrorist group has warned Shiite families in Al-Muqdadiyah to leave the city. . .

Al-Zaman carries on page 3 a 750-word report entitled "Baghdad Health Directorate: Campaign To Control Violations in Residential Areas; Baghdad's families Resort To Breeding Sheep To Overcome Economic Crisis."

Al-Adalah carries on page 4 a 1,500-word report on the illegal slaughtering of cattle and storing of meat.

Al-Sabah al-Jadid runs on page 4 an 80-word report on the role of unemployment and not enforcing the law in discouraging drug addiction. . .

Al-Sabah carries on page 14 a 120-word report citing director of Al-Sadr Bureau in Al-Diwaniyah saying that the bureau has started a campaign to clean up the governorate.

Al-Sabah carries on page 15 a 1,400-word report citing Karbala's inhabitants complaining about the fuel crisis in the governorate.

Al-Sabah carries on page 15 a 70-word report citing an official source in Al-Najaf Governorate saying that the governorate has signed a contract with a Bahraini company to construct a sports city at a cost of $42 million. . .

Tariq al-Sha'b carries on the back page a 600-word report entitled "Communist Party Supporters Association in Baghdad Holds Third Conference." . . .

Al-Da'wah runs on page 7 a 400-word article by Karim al-Najjar criticizing Iraqi newspapers for claiming that 5 million Iraqis issued a petition demanding the government to support Mujahidin-e-Khalq Organization. . .

Al-Bayyinah al-Jadidah carries on page 2 a 600-word article by the political editor strongly criticizing Saudi Arabia for supporting terrorism and exporting terrorists to Iraq to kill Shiites. . .

Al-Sabah al-Jadid runs on page 5 a 1,500-word report on the recent demonstration by Babil's Al-Qasim district's inhabitants, stating that the major reasons behind the demonstration were corruption and unemployment. . .

Defending Markos
And the Discourse Revolution

I've been doing a lot of traveling recently, some of it abroad, and have barely been able to keep up with Iraq, much less with the blogosphere. I was sorry, as a result to have missed yearly Kos and to have been unable to return Markos Moulitsas's kindnesses (i.e. favorable comments and links) at that point. The internet community he fostered at Daily Kos has been absolutely central to progressive politics in the US in recent years.

I was therefore so sorry to hear that Martin Peretz at The New Republic, which he occasionally hijacks from its seasoned professional journalists for petty vendettas and cranky editorials underwritten by his wife's Singer Sewing Machine money has presided over an attempt to smear Markos, as Billmon details. Likewise, Kos was attacked, very unfairly, by David Brooks of the NYT, who comes off sounding like a conspiracy theorist from the McCarthy period.

That this smear campaign involved a forged email published without contacting its putative author at TNR is all the more egregious.

Smear campaigns, underpinned by just making things up about people, are the viruses of blogosphere politics. Memes in cyberspace are easy to get started and hard to knock down. The rich and determined can just buy the destruction of a reputation, and our watered-down libel laws offer no avenue of self-defense to the smeared where the person is a public figure. (The rich and determined can also buy and ruin major formerly liberal magazines like The New Republic).

Like Billmon, even after looking into it a bit, I can't figure out what wrong Markos is actually alleged to have committed. It is falling down funny to imagine that anyone "controls" bloggers, especially progessive bloggers. And as for money, for the most part a blogad goes for less than a 3-line classified ad in a small town newspaper does. And, blogads.com allows anyone to form a network on any basis, so Markos's just is not and cannot be the only game in town, quite apart from which lots of bloggers on blogads have the authority to "sponsor" other weblogs.

Billmon thinks that the attacks on Kos and his cyber-community may in part be coming from the section of the Democratic Party that leans toward Neoconservative philosophy and policies, and who, for instance, are disturbed by the prospect that Lieberman will be unseated by a Democratic challenger.

This point makes sense. But I think that the struggle is larger. For all the talk about freedom of speech and individual freedom in the United States, ours is actually a hierarchical society in which most people cannot afford to speak out unless they are themselves independently wealthy. A lot of Americans work for corporations, which would just fire anyone who became so outspoken in public as to begin to affect their company's image. Look at how many bloggers are anonymous! Purveyors of opinion in the mass media, who use their real names, are employed by, or in some way backed by, media moguls. It is fairly easy to depart from the spectrum of acceptable opinion (i.e. acceptable to the three million or so people who have disproprotionate weight in how America is run), and if one does, after a while one is not heard from so much any more. Thus, those attacking Kos work for Martin Peretz and Arthur Shulzberger, Jr., and if they didn't they would not have their current influential perches.

The very wealthy are used to getting their way in US politics and to dominating public discourse, since so much can be controlled at choke points. Journalists can just be fired, editors and other movers and shakers bought or intimidated. Look what happened to MSNBC reporter Ashleigh Banfield, who dared complain about the propaganda in the US new media around the Iraq War. Phil Donohue, who presided over MSNBC's most popular talk show, was apparently fired before the war because General Electric and Microsoft knew he would be critical of it, and did not want to take the heat. Politicians who step out of line can just be unseated by giving their opponents funding (the Supreme Court just made it harder to restrict this sort of thing).

A grassroots communication system such as cyberspace poses a profound challenge to the forces of hierarchy and hegemony in American society. Now anyone with an internet connection and some interesting ideas can potentially get a hearing from the public.

Kos and his community, in short, are at the center of a discourse revolution. Now persons making a few tens of thousands of dollars a year can be read by hundreds of thousands of readers with no mediation from media moguls. The old joke had been that anyone can own a newspaper, it only takes a million dollars (a really old joke, since it would take much more).

The lack of choke points in cyberspace means that people like Kos can't just be fired. How then to shut them up? Why, you attempt to ruin their reputation, as a way of scaring off readers and supporters. This technique, as Billmon points out, does not usually work very well in cyberspace itself, though it can be effective if the blogger moves into a bricks and mortar institutional environment where big money and chokeholds work again. A political party is such an environment.

Cyberspace itself, though, is a distributed system, not a centralized one. That is why the charges against Kos are so silly. In essence, creatures of the old choke-point hegemonies are projecting their own hierarchical system inaccurately on Kos. Of course you wouldn't expect people like Peretz or David Brooks to understand what a distributed information system is, dinosaurs as they are, of both politics and media.

Iraqi Sermons from June 23, 2006

The USG Open Source Center translates sermons in Iraq on 6/23/2006:

"At 0845 GMT Baghdad Satellite Channel in Arabic, reportedly sponsored by the Iraqi Islamic Party, carries a live relay of Shaykh Harith al-Ubaydi's sermon from the Sunni Al-Shawwaf Mosque in Baghdad.

In his sermon, Shaykh Harith Al-Ubaydi touches upon the issue of security. Al-Ubaydi asserts that only upright and trustworthy people should be charged with security responsibilities, adding that "those who are not trustworthy are incapable of providing others with security. Those who are unjust are incapable of providing others with justice." Al-Ubaydi also underlines the importance of retribution for the achievement of security and the elimination of crime.

Moreover, Al-Ubaydi maintains that sectarian and political tensions are the driving force behind the killings and abductions in Iraq. Al-Ubaydi asks: "Who benefits from these killings and the blood that is being spilled on the streets of Baghdad, Basra, Mosul, and Al-Anbar, as well as many other cities in Iraq?" He adds: "Who benefits from the bombing of mosques and husayniyahs? Who benefits from the bombing of churches? Who benefits from the assassination of scientists, doctors, and university professors?" Al-Ubaydi holds certain parties, "who do not wish for stability in Iraq, or who seek the benefit of their people," responsible for the atrocities committed in Iraq. Similarly, Al-Ubaydi denounces the killing of Sunni and Shiite imams and the displacement of Iraqi families."

Read the rest.

Israel invades Gaza, Hits Bridges, Electricity

The Israeli military destroyed 3 bridges that connect Gaza, and knocked out electricity along the coast, as troops made incursions into Gaza.

I don't have time to comment much on all this right now, except to say that the use of force here is all out of proportion. Without electricity, you can't purify water, and uncooked water is a severe health problem, especially to babies. It can ultimately cause cholera.

The incursion was made necessary by the Sharon-Olmert unwise policy of unilateral withdrawal. Unilateral withdrawal means that no structure was put in place for security in the evacuated terrirories, which increasingly look like a failed state, a Somalia. The PLO and Hamas have fought hot encounters recently.

Why would anyone create a failed state all around their house, right in their neighborhood?

The US press has, as far as I can see, been irresponsible in not broadcasting much about the prologue to the present violence, the Israeli military's bombing of civilians on a Gaza beach earlier in the month. This atrocity was on the front page of every Arabic language newspaper every day for a while earlier this month. We cannot understand the region if we cannot understand how outraged they are, and the source of the outrage.

Predictably, the Israeli military's propaganda machine denied responsibility for the beach explosion. Human Rights Watch called the Israeli military inquiry "not plausible" based on its own evidence-gathering at the scene. The Israeli Army has a long history of using plausible deniability to muddy the waters about its accountability in deaths of innocents. If we had videotape of everything they have done in the West Bank and Gaza, we'd be having war crimes trials for the rest of the century. The fact is that Israeli culpability for the Gaza beach incident is, on the evidence gathered independently by HRW at least highly plausible. The press should be looking into it instead of taking talking points from war propaganda offices.

Sunni Mosque Burned

Guerrillas (likely Shiite militiamen) use mortar fire to destroy a Sunni mosque and burn down 20 shops in Shahraban near Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, on Wednesday morning.

Reuters reports the civil war violence for Tuesday. There were bombings in Baghdad, Kirkuk and elsewhere, killing some 21 persons in iraq on Tuesday.

Al-Zaman runs an article claiming that 632 Palestinians have been killed or imprisoned in Iraq since the war started in spring 2003.

Iraq displaced children suffer health effects, mental problems from their plight.

Personal Investment as Commitment

AP says that a "safer Iraq" is needed for US investment. D'oh.

But this article reminds me of all the politicians (of both major parties) and bloggers who keep saying that things are just fine in Iraq and that the bad news is exaggerated by the "liberal media" (oh mythic phoenix!).

And, I think we ought to hold their feet to the fire. Every time someone says that in reality things are just fine in Iraq, we should ask them how much of their own, personal money they have invested in a private business enterprise in Iraq. The Iraqi-American Chamber of Commerce can help them with specific investment opportunities.

I think we should exclude buying real estate or investing in mercen . . . I mean US contracting. Also, it has to be an investment in Arab Iraq, not the Kurdistan Regional confederacy. But, if things are going so great, then surely this is the time to put $100,000 into, say, a textile factory in . . . I don't know, Baquba. Most of these politicians and bloggers on the Right could afford such an investment, and most wouldn't even be too badly off if they lost the whole wad.

So, Fox Cable News anchors, rightwing bloggers, smug pundits, etc., etc.-- Pony up. How much have you put on the line here to back up your Dr. Pangloss-style rose colored glasses? And, if you haven't put at least a few tens of thousands of dollars into a private Iraqi business, then you do not have a leg to stand on.

Saudi Ambassador Calls on Palestinians to Use Gandhian Tactics
Saudi Elected Parliament within the Decade?

I heard the Saudi ambassador to the US, Prince Turki Al-Faisal, give this speech Tuesday evening at the US-Arab Economic Forum, and am excerpting a few key passages. He also made remarks in the afternoon. At one point he said that he expected that within the next decade, Saudi Arabia's Shura Council or legislature would be popularly elected. I.e., it would become a democratic parliament. He said that the provincial legislatures would also be elected by then. I, at least, had not before heard such a direct and specific timetable laid out for this development. Of course, he is an ambassador and not the Saudi executive, but his remarks were unequivocal.

On Tuesday evening, he openly called on the Palestinians to give up all violence to and wage their struggle for self-determination using Gandhian principles of nonviolent peaceful resistance.

I have in the past been critical of Reagan-Fahd policies in the 1980s, both in Central America and in Afghanistan, and the willingness to fund irregulars (who in the next generation became the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan) to fight the Soviets. But from what I heard this eveing, Prince Turki, who as Saudi minister of intelligence circa 1980-2001 must have been a key part of those 1980s events, has had a significant change of heart. If so, he has learned more from the earlier mistakes than has e.g. Donald Rumsfeld (imagine Rumsfeld or any old Reaganaut invoking Gandhian ahimsa!) I have to say, I was startled. As for the question of sincerity, well, Reagan used to quote what he said was a Russian saying, "Trust, and verify." This could be an important development, and we should keep our eyes on the new Saudi Ambassador in Washington.

"A Force for Peace & Stability"

Speech by Saudi Ambassador to the U.S.

Prince Turki Al-Faisal

at the U.S. Arab Economic Forum Gala Dinner

Houston, Texas on June 27, 2006

. . . Political reforms are also being implemented to increase citizen participation, such as last year's elections for municipal councils. More elections are planned for the future in order to give our people a more direct say in the decisions that affect them.

Saudi Arabia's goal is also to promote peace and stability in our region. The Roman poet Horace once wrote: "It is your concern when your neighbor's wall is on fire." Right now, our neighbors' walls are ablaze. Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine all require immediate attention. In addition, the situation with Iran calls for international engagement and diplomacy. In each of these circumstances, the Kingdom is doing what it can to bring parties together, open up dialogues, and offer solutions for peace and progress.

Many of the world's problems also require humanitarian assistance, such as for natural disasters, disease and poverty. In those areas Saudi Arabia is a leader. Many people don't know that the Kingdom contributes more per capita in foreign aid than any other country in the world. We have also provided hundreds of millions of dollars to victims of the tsunami in the Indian Ocean region, hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and the earthquakes in Pakistan and, most recently, in Indonesia. . .

. . . So tonight, I lay down the following challenges for all of us.

First, to Saudi Arabia, I challenge ourselves to meet the needs of our youth and ensure that they have the education, the tools and the means to help change the world, and become a force for good and tolerance.

I challenge the Palestinian people to give up the armed struggle and follow the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King by engaging in civil disobedience instead of violence, even in the face of Israeli guns. Violence is the weapon of the weak; non-violence is the weapon of the strong.

I challenge the Israeli people to give up their illegal, immoral and colonial occupation of Palestine.

I challenge the United States to use the power and abilities with which God has blessed this great nation to bring about an end to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict through the implementation of the President's Roadmap.

And I challenge the Arab-Americans in this audience tonight to take a more active part in resolving the conflicts that exist in the world today. We must compel the governments of the world to take the required actions to end the injustices that fuel tensions, distrust, hatred and violence. And so as you leave this conference, I implore each of you to continue in your own right-as ambassadors from the Arab world. Whether you are from Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, or any other part of the Arab world, you should be proud of your Arab heritage and legacy-which truly does extend here to the United States. You should be proud of the contributions Arabs have made to the advancement of humanity over the centuries, and to the greatness of American culture and life. And you should be proud of yourselves, for you are the only ones who can bridge the gap between the two great societies. It is not always easy, but it will always be rewarding. And it can't be done without you. . ."

This material is distributed by DNX Partners, LLC on behalf of the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia. Additional information is available at the Department of Justice, Washington, DC.

The Zarqawi Effect

My article on the aftermath of the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in the Muslim world is out in Salon.com.

Excerpt:

' Whatever the meaning of the killing of Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi by a U.S. airstrike earlier this month, it has not lessened Iraq's violent nightmare, or calmed tensions in the Middle East. Al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri called him "the prince of martyrs" and vowed revenge on the U.S. Some reports suggest that the two U.S. soldiers captured at Yusufiyah were tortured and killed by Zarqawi's shadowy successor. The three weeks after his death have witnessed daily bombings with dozens of casualties throughout Iraq. And Zarqawi's demise has stirred up trouble throughout the region, as controversies on how to respond to it have erupted among secularists and fundamentalists, Sunnis and Shiites. '

Read the whole article.

Civil War Violence Leaves 60 Dead over 100 Wounded
130,000 Displaced in Past 4 Months

Bombings and other civil war violence took the lives of at least 60 Iraqis on Monday. In addition, guerrillas kidnapped 10 Sunni students who were attending a technical institute in Shiite East Baghdad.

In the worst incident, guerrillas detonated a bomb in a crowded market in the Shiite city of Hilla south of Baghdad, killing 30 and wounding 56.

In the village of Khairnabat near Baquba, a troubled city northeast of the capital, a motorcycle bomb in a crowded market killed at least 18 and wounded 30.

Guerrillas used a car bomb in the Amiriyah district of Baghdad to kill 5 Iraqi soldiers.

In Saydiyah, southern Baghdad guerrillas detonated a bomb at a checkpoint, killing 3 police commandos.

Guerrillas tried yet again on Monday to kill Adnan Dulaimi, a leader of the Sunni fundamentalist Iraqi Accord Front that is cooperating with the new government of PM al-Maliki. They only managed to kill his bodyguard.

Four Russian embassy employees, kidnapped earlier, were confirmed dead.

US and Iraqi troops--but mainly US troops are trying to take Ramadi neighborhood by neighborhood and then to garrison Iraqi troops in each so as to keep them secure in the long term. But there is a problem with Iraqi troops not showing up to fight, saying they do not want to fight other Iraqis or that they fear they will provoke tribal feuds if they fight the Dulaim in Ramadi.

As the AFP/ Daily Times piece linked above notes, the Iraqi government is saying that 7 Sunni Arab guerrilla groups, mostly Baathist in character, have indicated a willingness to engage in talks. This news may or may not lead anywhere. Guerrilla insurgencies often talk to the governments they are endeavoring to overthrow, and sometimes go on to overthrow it even after the talks.

Iraq violence in the past 4 months has expelled 130,000 persons from their homes and neighborhoods, leaving them displaced and uncertain of their future.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat/ DPA say [Ar.] that the people of Tikrit are disappointed in Maliki's reconciliation plan, insofar as the amnesty it offers to opponents of the new regime is too limited.

School enrollment is up over-all in Iraq. This phenomenon is largely a result of the removal of the United States/ United Nations sanctions, which had devastated the Iraqi middle classes, and had actually cause the literacy rate to fall substantially in the 1990s. Tavernise notes, however, that school enrollment has actually fallen in Baghdad, which is about a fourth of the country.

Iraqi Petroleum Exports up
25 killed in Civil War Violence

Borzou Daragahi of the LA Times reports severe doubts about PM Maliki's reconciliation plan in the Sunni Arab al-Anbar province.

Iraq's petroleum production has recently surged to above 2 million barrels a day, according to petroleum minister Husain Shahristani. The government recently managed to get the northern Kirkuk pipelines back online, after they faced repeated sabotage. Bad winter weather had also harmed exports from Basra earlier this year, but that problem subsided with the onset of summer.

That the US military has contingency plans for troop cuts in Iraq is not actually very interesting. Actual significant troop cuts? That would be interesting. Swopa points out that the same story about planned cuts appeared in the NYT last summer.

Al-Zaman says that the Revenge Brigades in Basra, a secretive Shiite organization, is circulating a pamphlet warning Sunni Arabs in the largely Shiite southern port city that they had until 1 July to leave the city. The threat is part of a general move to ethnic cleansing of Sunnis in the city; many Sunni families are fleeing to West Baghdad hundreds of miles to the north.

Al-Zaman reports that US troops invaded the homes of Shaikh Mithal al-Hasnawi of the Sadr Movement, and of his brother, in the town of Hindiyah in Karbala province. Al-Hasnawi eluded them, not being at home. He is accused of being implicated in attacks on music shops

Reuters reports violence in Iraq's ongoing civil war on Sunday:

Guerrillas set off a roadside bomb in the al-Shorja shopping district of Baghdad, killing 3 and wounding 17. Then guerrillas detonated a bomb in a minibus, killing 2 and wounding 5 in al-Nahda district of Baghdad. Then in the eastern Zayouna district, a suicide car bomber detonated his payload at a police checkpoint, killing a police commando and wounding 9 persons. So that is 6 dead and 31 wounded from bombings in the capital, at a time when there is a major crackdown on the guerrilla movement in Baghdad.

Guerrillas kidnapped 16 employees of a technology institute at Taji north of Baghdad.

In Khan Bani Sa`d, near Baquba to the northeast of Baghdad, guerrillas attacked a police checkpoint and killed 5 Iraqi soldiers.

In the mostly Christian town of Bartila (near Mosul) in the north, guerrillas set off a car bomb near the office of the (Shiite) Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, among the leading parties in parliament, killing 2 persons and wounding 13.

There were other scattered shootings and assassinations around the country, with a GI killed near Tikrit. US forces killed or captured a number of guerrilla fighters. The total number of dead was at least 25 on Sunday, with dozens wounded.

Number of car bombings in Iraq from the dawn of time until 2002 before the US invasion: 0.

At least 50,000 Iraqis have died in violence since the US invasion, according to Iraqi health officials. I am told by people who should know that the Lancet estimate of 100,000 is perfectly plausible, and that was some time ago.

Fresh fighting broke out in Diwaniyah. Clashes took place in al-`Asri district, gunmen clashed with police commandos. (Just speculation, but this is probably actually a fight between Mahdi Army irregulars and Badr Corps who were recruited into the police commandos by the SCIRI-dominated Interior Ministry.

In downtown Amara, gunmen assassinated Haydar Abdul Husain al-Maliki, who had just received a fellowship to study English in Switzerland from the Iraqi Ministry of Education. He was in a taxi when he was cut down; the driver was wounded.

The Iraqi parliament seems set to affirm the free market legislation of Paul Bremer, allowing foreign concerns to own 100 percent of Iraqi firms and allowing unconstrained repatriation of profits.

Sarah Smiles of The Age in Melbourne reports on Australian worries that its troops will face a tougher situation replacing the Italians in Nasiriyah than they had in sleepy Muthanna. Nasiriyah has competing Dawa, SCIRI, Mahdi Army and Fadhila factions and has seen many anti-Western demonstrations. She interviews Ahmed S. Hashim, who has been in Iraq and talks of the new Iraqi army:

' Critics have described the new force [the Iraqi Army], forged after the 2003 war when the coalition dissolved the old Iraqi army, as highly unprofessional, and doubt its ability to provide security.

"I really wasn't impressed by them, their training or equipment," said Dr Ahmed Hashim of the US Naval War College, who was in Iraq as an adviser to the US Army until late last year.

"Some units were more like militias of each ethnic and sectarian group rather than a national army … Their allegiances are owed to political parties and class rather than the nation per se."

Smiles is to be congratulated for reporting the reality from Hashim, who is qualified to judge it; we see too little of this in the US press.

23 Killed in Renewed Violence
Reconciliation Plan to be Unveiled

US troops had briefly arrested, then released, Shaikh Jamal Abdul Karim al-Dabaan. He is the chief Sunni jurisconsult (mufti) of Iraq, and the US military called his arrest "a mistake." A thousand people gathered to picket the house of the governor of Salahuddin Province in protest.

Reuters gives the specifics of some of the bombings and other violence on Saturday.

Al-Hayat says that 23 fresh lives were lost on Saturday to civil war violence.

Steve Hurst points out that the guerrilla and civil war violence has gone on in spades since Zarqawi's death. I'd make two further points. First, the daily carnage against Iraqis has been enormous in the past two weeks. There were several deadly car bombings again early Sunday in Baghdad itself. Second, the violence is not most "al-Qaeda"-driven. People in the Sunni district of Adhamiyah in Baghdad are mostly Baathists, not al-Qaeda, and some of them are surely planning out these bombings. Adhamiyah is now under actual attack by US and Iraqi forces, though there is some kind of news blackout on the operation. But the violence is going on anyway. The guerrillas, who still are able to coordinate, have just shifted operations to some other cities, or other districts of Baghdad. As Hurst notes, there was heavy fighting on Haifa Street near the Green Zone just the other day, an area of longstanding guerrilla activity that has been declared pacified over and over again by the US military and press. Bottom line, this article's corrective is a good one, but doesn't go far enough.

Update: Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki presented a 28-point reconciliation plan to parliament on Sunday.

Al-Hayat reports that Malik views this initiative as a privilege of the executive and that he does not intend to have parliament vote on it. A Shiite parliamentarian said it was outrageous to by-pass parliament in this way. Also, significant elements within al-Maliki's own United Iraqi Alliance (Shiite) are disturbed by the idea of granting amnesty to Sunni Arab guerrillas.

The problem is quite the other way around. The amnesty is not extended to anyone who has "shed Iraqi blood," and the Bush administration made al-Maliki back off the idea of granting amnesty to guerrillas who had killed US troops.

But if the point of the amnesty is to bring the guerrilla leadership in from the cold, this amnesty is useless. What Sunni Arab guerrillas worth their salt have killed no Iraqis and no US troops? As for the rest, why would Sunnis who had not killed anyone need to be amnestied? And wouldn't they be rather pitiful guerrillas?

This is like Kissinger saying he would talk to the North Vietnamese but not to any of them who helped the VC kill ARvN and US soldiers. There wouldn't have been any round table talks (not that that whole thing went very well anyway. Just saying.)

It appears that the main point of the "reconciliation" is not in fact to reconcile with the guerrilla movement. It is an attempt to draw off support from it by rehabilitating the Sunni Arabs who had been Baath party members. Those who had not actively killed anyone would now be brought back into public life and deep debaathification would be reversed, as I read it. (Ironically, al-Maliki led the charge for deep debaathification in the past 3 years!) Sunni Arabs would be compensated for losses inflicted on them by Iraqi and US troops (this is key to settling clan feuds against the new order). Shiite militias are to be disbanded. Militia influence in Iraqi police to be curbed. etc.

The plan also hopes to separate out the ex-Baathists from the Qutbists, who style themselves "Salafi Jihadis" but actually are just violent vigilantes, who, in the tradition of Sayyid Qutb of Egypt, blithely brand as non-Muslims worthy of death anyone who disagrees with their version of Islam. The Qutbists are coded as mainly foreigners.

My reading is that large numbers of Iraqi Sunni Arabs have swung to fundamentalist religion, and that the ex-Baathists use them in various ways, and it won't be easy to break up this alliance of convenience.

I do not think this plan goes far enough. It is too little too late. But, well, reversing Ahmad Chalabi's deep debaathification, in which school teachers were punished for joining the Baath Party in 1994 to get a promotion, would be a positive step, if that is what is envisaged. But then there is the question of implementation, and the question of what economy or government is left for the ex-Baathists now to join. Moreover, there is a lot of anger that can't be dampened down so easily.

British forces seem unable to quell the rising tide of violence and insecurity in southern Iraq.

Some Iraqi veterans are already showing up back in the states as among the homeless.

Militias Oppressing Iraqi Women

The USG Open Source Center translates an article about the oppression of women in the new Iraq.

Woman's Rights Observatory on Retreat of Women's Role in Political Process

Organized acts of oppression against Iraqi women The National Observatory for the Iraqi Woma's Rights: The militias prevent women from going to the market in Karbala

Al-Ittijah al-Akhar

Wednesday, June 21, 2006 T13:06:41Z

Document Type: OSC Translated Text

In a memorandum addressed to the United Nations and a number of embassies in Baghdad, the National Observatory for Iraqi Woman's Rights said that it has received bitter complaints from Iraqi female activists and defenders of women's rights in Iraq indicating that there has been a retreat in what the observatory described "woman's role in political life". The number of female ministers has dropped from six to four, the memo added. The memorandum drew attention to the fact that the Unified Iraqi Coalition, which is the largest bloc in the new government, has refused to nominate any woman for a ministerial position. The four appointed female ministers are all from other political blocs. Two of them are from the Kurdish Alliance; one is from the Iraqi al-Tawafuq Front and the fourth one is from the Iraqi List.

Read the rest.

Bombings in Basra, Hibhib kill at least 20

Ayman al-Zawahiri, the number 2 man in al-Qaeda, released a video Friday in which he pledged that the organization would take revenge on the United States for the killing of Zarqawi. He quoted Bin Laden as saying that the Americans would never rest easy until the Palestinians have their rights. In a recent video, al-Zawahiri had urged the jihadis to concentrate on Afghanistan, but on Friday he again expanded the field of endeavor.

Reuters has Friday's report on civil war violence:

Up to ten persons were killed and 15 injured by a car bombing near a gas station in the southern port city Basra. The Basra governor attempted to downplay the number of deaths.

Another bombing, near a mosque in the small town of Hibhib near Baqubah, killed 10 and wounded 15. Hibhib was where the US recently killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. In nearby Buhriz, a roadside bomb at an army checkpoint wounded 3 civilians. Iraqi soldiers laid down fire around them in response, wounding another 11 civilians.

In downtown Baghdad, Iraqi policemen and soldiers clashed with guerrillas around Haifa Street. Three to five Iraqi police and/or army soldiers were wounded. There are also reports of US troops battling the Mahdi Army militia of Shiite nationalist Muqtada al-Sadr.

Police fished 5 bodies out of the Tigris near Kadhimiyah. The bodies were probably those of factory workers kidnapped last week.

Also in the capital, 4 more US troops were announced killed.

In Kirkuk, the sister of the former speaker of the Iraqi parliament was injured in an attack.

Guerrillas in Hilla killed two policemen.

CAIR: Miami Cult not Muslims

I just saw the spokesman for the Council on American Islamic Relations on CNN saying that the Miami cult members just arrested are not Muslims. I'd say that is a fair statement.

For one thing, they are vegetarians!

It seems pretty obvious that they are just a local African-American cult which mixed Judaism, Christianity and (a little bit of) Islam. It seems to be a of vague offshoot of the Moors group founded by Dwight York. I heard on CNN that one of them talked of being Moors. And Batiste, the leader, called whites "devils" in the tradition of the original Nation of Islam and York's Moors. Now CNN is saying one member said they practiced witchcraft [likely meaning Haitian voodoo or perhaps Santeria-like rituals]. One former member is called Levi-El, suggesting he might be associated with the Black Hebrew movement or an offshoot. Now a relative of one of the members, Phanor, said that they wore black uniforms with a star of David arm patch and considered themselves of the Order of Melchizadek. I wonder if it is "Seas of David" or "C's of David", with "c" meaning commando or some such?

I define cult as a religious group that has values that put it in a high state of tension with the norms of mainstream society, and that has a leadership that imposes high levels of discipline and demand for control of adherents' lives.

This Seas of David group primarily seems to have been studying the Bible. The mother of one insisted that he is a Catholic. Then there is all that Jewish symbology and terminology, even in their names. Islam was nothing more for them but a set of symbols they could pull into their syncretic local culture. The group drew on poor Haitian immigrants and local indigent African-American youth. If this were the 1960s, they'd have been Black Panthers or Communists.

American folk religion, pursued in small groups with charismatic leaders, is replete with such groups, from Father Divine to Jim Jones of the People's Temple to David Koreish.

The group never got past the stage of talking big, and violently. They talked dangerously, and some sort of intervention was warranted. Since they begged the FBI informant for "shoes," they weren't exactly a well-heeled group that seems very dangerous in actual practice. And, to what extent did the FBI informant press an al-Qaeda connection on these otherwise clueless but imaginative zealots?

But contrast the grandstanding of Alberto Gonzales on this group of poor unarmed ghetto folk with the way in which the Robert J. Goldstein case was treated. He actually had the bombs in his house and was going to blow up Floridians. No press called him a "Jewish" terrorist and no questions were ever raised about his possible international links.

Imagine the horror of an urbane Arab-American professional with university higher degrees, steeped in Islamic culture and contributing to American society, at being lumped in by the American press and officialdom with these cultists who appropriated his religion for their violent religious fantasies.

The other thing to say is that American law is soft on cultic practices, of dirty tricks against and smearing of critics, enforced third-party shunning, manipulation, and group coercion. These things are not protected by the First Amendment and I think one part of our counter-terrorism strategy must be to develop legal strategies to make it easier to disrupt the workings of cults before they accumulate a critical mass for violent action. The practice of just letting the head of the Internal Revenue Service decide if a group is a tax-free religion should also be revisited. In the past, some IRS heads appear to have been blackmailed by cults into granting them that status, which allows them to accumulate more wealth.

Whereas most terrorism is a form of educated, middle class politics, this particular group clearly grew out of the grievances and resentments of race and class inequality in the United States.

The sister of one was just on MSNBC saying that he deeply resented Bush spending money to drop bombs on poor people who could not defend themselves, while depriving the poor in the United States of any support. "We are not capable," she said. This is a theory of class war, connecting the poor of Kut with the poor of Miami's inner city. The city, by the way, has horrific levels of unemployment.

The position of the poor and workers in particular is deteriorating in the US, as more and more of the privately held wealth is concentrated in the hands of a white, privileged, few. The unions have been gutted, the minimum wage is inadequate, and racist attitudes are reemerging on a worrisome scale. Cities such as Detroit, New Orleans and Miami continue to witness enormous strains coming mainly from racist attitudes. In this case, the best counter-terrorism would be more social justice.