Better than the bhatta

‘For our people, this is the kind of work we do,’ 20 year old Vanita Khabhu told Somini Sengupta. She ‘had once imagined a life beyond these kilns….She left school after the second grade and cannot read or write…Her future, she knows, will be decided by the man she marries. If he and his family work in the kilns, she will join them.’

As she ‘tosses bricks to her brothers, two by two, in a seamless human chain’ her sister in law ‘takes a break to breastfeed her 2-year-old near a pile of black clay.’

For every thousand bricks, they earn a bit less than $5.50. The family, with five adult laborers, pockets on average a little more than $2 a day.

This is the life behind the great Indian construction boom, propelled by an economy still growing at 9 percent a year.

The Khabhus said they gave up when seawater from the nearby Gulf of Kutch crept in and killed their fields. Since Vanita was a child, the family has roamed the country in search of work — in construction and road-building, and finally, here to this brickyard.

Of all the backbreaking work available to the poorest Indian peasant, making bricks offers some of the best earnings. It pays better than making salt, or working in the roof-tile factories. It can allow families to build a proper house, pay for a wedding or buy a goat or a television.

But the work is hazardous, especially at kilns like this one. Smoke spills out everywhere…blackens… the lungs of the people like the Khabhus, who live and breathe bricks. Home is a small room made of bricks, on the edge of the kiln. They sleep on cots outside.

On most days, they work 14 hours, breaking for meals and sleep during the hottest part of the afternoon, when temperatures climb to more than 110 degrees Fahrenheit [43 C.], and that is not counting the heat that rises from the kilns day and night.

An extra pair of hands always helps, even if they belong to a child…Attempts have been made to wean children away from work…At this brickyard, school is a patch of ground in the shade of a tree, with a chalkboard and children sitting in two neat rows. Classes are held for three hours each morning. The children are back at work later.

In neighbouring Pakistan, small scale brick manufacture is also a big employer. Under the peshgi system, reminiscent of the debt slavery in the Bolivian sugarcane industry, or the coal mining industry in West Virginia and Kentucky of yore, whole families are bonded to work for ‘feudal’ bosses to repay unpayable debts. (Thanks to Eli Stephens for the audio link.)

Even though the 1992 Pakistani Bonded Labour System Abolition Act outlaws the peshgi system, cancels debts, and provides for fines and prison sentence of up to five years for violations, the practice continues, with as many as eight million Pakistanis still working in bondage, 1.8 million of them in the kilns (bhatta). Unsurprisingly, most bhatta workers are illiterate and innumerate, so they can’t calculate when their original debts and the arbitrary fines the bosses impose on them are discharged.

[Photo by Alex Stonehill (Common Language Project)]

In an amazing development, in April last year over a million illiterate bonded workers in the Pakistan Bhatta Mazdoor Union (PBMU) organised a major eight day strike that

crippled the functioning of some 15,500 kilns across the country on which Pakistan's massive construction industry depends…

Apart from better wages and kiln registration, the workers demanded an end to the humiliation of women workers at the hands of the owners and the withdrawal of all false cases registered by the police at the behest of the owners.

"We call this a positive strike as to quite an extent our demands have been met," Rahu said, explaining wages per thousand bricks have been increased from 220 rupees (3.6 U.S. dollars) to 350 rupees (5.3 dollars). "The government has assured us that if the owners do not put an end to the peshgi system we can approach the court (earlier it was impossible to register cases against the owners)."

Most importantly, the government has stepped in with a promise that the brick kilns would be registered soon. "The government has promised to start the process and we will see if they keep to it in the next six to eight months. If they don't, we now know how to get our way -- we will protest again," Rahu said.

And yet, Farooq Tariq, general secretary of the Labour Party Pakistan, wrote in April that the bhatta workers in Sindh were still only getting Rs 110 to 190 (US$1.81 to $3.13) per thousand bricks and went on strike again from 31 March this year. Although they lifted their strike camp on 8 April, the bhatta bosses failed to turn up for scheduled meeting and have sent the police to arrest the strike leaders.

Of course not everyone in Pakistan and India works in the bhattas. David Phinney reports on AlterNet

Soon after the State Department awarded a $592 million building contract to First Kuwaiti General Trading and Contracting in July 2005, thousands of low-paid migrant workers recruited from South Asia, the Philippines and other nations poured into Baghdad, beginning work to build the gargantuan complex within two years time…construction crews lived in crowded quarters, ate substandard food and had little medical care. When drinking water was scarce in the blistering heat, coolers were filled on the banks of the Tigris, a river rife with waterborne disease, sewage and sometimes floating bodies, they said…First Kuwaiti held the passports of workers…Some laborers had turned up “missing” with little investigation.

Howard J. Krongard, the State Department’s inspector general, flew to Baghdad for what he describes as a “brief” review on Sept. 15. He now reports that the complaints had no substance.

One former labor foreman at the embassy site who recently read Krongard’s review called it “bull shit.” Another former First Kuwaiti employee viewed it as “a whitewash.”

…former Army emergency medical technician Rory Mayberry found in March 2006. First Kuwaiti had hired Mayberry as a medic under a subcontract…Mayberry says he found the most basic of medical needs missing and that clinics lacked hot water, disinfectant and hand-washing stations. Mayberry also claims that workers’ medical records in total disarray or nonexistent, beds were dirty and the support staff was poorly trained. Prescription pain killers were being handed out "like a candy store ... and then people were sent back to work,” to operate heavy equipment or climb scaffolding, he adds.

Several workers had died prior to Mayberry’s arrival, perhaps because of improper diagnosis, and he recommended an investigation. Days after reporting the problems to First Kuwaiti and the State Department, Mayberry was taken off the site and discharged.

Paul Chapman, who worked for a subcontractor to First Kuwaiti “I’d see them eating alongside the road or near their trailers.”

But what bothered Chapman more was the disappearance of seven workers from India, Pakistan and the Philippines who were listed as “missing” on First Kuwaiti rosters. Fearing they may have been killed and dumped into the Tigris, he began pressing embassy officials overseeing the project to investigate. “They told me to forget about it because the workers had probably found other jobs.”

Since workers were rarely allowed outside the project area, it was a mystery how they would have found other jobs. Even more puzzling was that they may have left without passports.

Supplementing Krongard’s review, the coalition Multi-National Force inspector general in Baghdad …did find workers from Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka who reported deceptive hiring practices by recruitment agencies in their home countries. They said they had been promised higher pay, shorter hours and days off.

In an ominous reminder of home

“A large majority of workers” from the Indian subcontinent incurred recruiting fees of up to one year’s salary.

Chapman and others also claim that standard safety procedures on the project frequently went unobserved. Many worked without safety harnesses when off the ground and had no hardhats or boots…Some worked in sandals, others in bare feet. “They had their toes curled around the rebar like birds,” [Project manager Juvencio] Lopez remembers.

American labor foreman, John Owens, reckons ‘Every U.S. labor law was broken”.

who adds that he never witnessed a safety meeting. Once an Egyptian worker fell and broke his back and was sent home. No one ever heard from him again. “The accident might not have happened if there had been a safety program and he had known how to use a safety harness,” charges Owen, who left the embassy project last June.

But that’s ok. Lopez,

believes that First Kuwaiti is one of the best companies he has ever worked with, adding…workers come from impoverished countries and are eager to work under any conditions. “Just look at where the workers came from,” he says. “They were much better off in Baghdad.”

Computer-generated images of the US embassy complex in Baghdad were posted on the architect's website. Photograph: AP

America’s glittering Emerald City, the largest, most impressive most heavily fortified embassy in the world with over 20 buildings covering 104 acres (42.1 hectares), nearly the size of the Vatican, will be a testament not only to the might of the imperialist hyperpower, but also to the fundamental principles of capitalist exploitation – cutting costs whatever the price in human life and limb. Anyway, they’re just foreigners and it’s better than the bhatta.

Welcome to Hamastan

Lest I be accused of laying into an easy mark, I just wanted to make it clear that even though Dennis Ross may appear to be a gibbering idiot with about as firm a grasp on current events as the Leader of the Free World, he is in fact a respected author and intellectual think tank nabob.

The writer was director for policy planning in the State Department under President George H.W. Bush and special Middle East coordinator under President Bill Clinton. He is counselor of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. His new book is "Statecraft: And How to Restore America's Standing in the World."

So says the blurb at the end of his article in yesterday’s Washington Post.

…Both Israelis and Palestinians were wondering about the consequences of Gaza's becoming, in their word, "Hamastan."

…Some said Israel should let weapons and ammunition get to Fatah forces in Gaza to battle Hamas. I also heard from Palestinians and Israelis alike that Egypt could do much more to prevent Hamas from receiving smuggled arms and money through the Sinai tunnels running into Gaza.

As if we didn’t know that Israel was doing precisely that – sending Fatah militants off for arming and training by the US and sending them back into Gaza effectively to launch an insurgency against the elected ‘government’ of the Palestinian Authority. Note that when Ross writes, ‘Israel should let weapons and ammunition get to Fatah forces’, he acknowledges that it is Israel that has full control of what goes into Gaza.

All those I spoke with were worried about the consequences of Gaza's becoming an Islamist enclave. They saw it offering inspiration to other Islamists throughout the Middle East and providing a new haven for Islamists of all stripes.

But since Israel fully controls ingress to Gaza, how will they get in?

They feared it would spell the end of even the possibility of a two-state solution. Most were convinced Hamas would never accept peace with Israel.

There has never been a possibility of a two state ‘solution’ that provides justice for the Palestinians, especially the 1948 refugees and the ‘Israeli Arabs’, or a really politically and economically viable Palestinian state. Dennis Ross preferred not to ask whether Israel would ever accept peace with Hamas, or anyone. Or if he did, not to report the answer,

Interestingly, there was consensus among Israelis and Palestinians on the dangers of Gaza's becoming a failed state. No one thought it would be easy to isolate and contain -- or had any clear ideas on how to respond to such a development.

That danger would only arise, of course, if Gaza were any kind of state, with a government and an economy and control of its borders and the like. Gaza was fully isolated and contained before the ‘withdrawal’ one of whose principal aims was to demonstrate how Palestinians couldn’t ‘govern themselves’ without the beneficent guiding hand of the occupation authorities.

Among some I heard an interesting proposal: Let's make the West Bank work -- socially, economically and institutionally -- then hold up our model of success in contrast to the failure of Gaza, where functional unemployment is close to 70 percent. Let Hamas preside over a dysfunctional, lawless state. We will build our own. Let's create understandings with Jordan and Israel for at least economic confederation and security. And if Hamas still hangs on in Gaza, perhaps there can be a "three-state solution."

Sounds good in theory, but I doubt it would work.

That would be some theory. As Israel commemorates forty years since it reclaimed jurisdiction over the ‘united Jerusalem’ and Judea and Samaria, how is Fatah, who, Ross acknowledges, ‘lost the elections because of their divisions, the corruption of the old guard and their inability to respond to the needs of the Palestinian public’, or any group of Palestinians, going to ‘make the West Bank work -- socially, economically and institutionally’. They are not in control. They can’t even walk to school or buy bread without interference. And Ross thinks they’re going to create a model state!

No matter how sensible confederation between the Palestinian state and Jordan might be, at least economically…

It might make sense to someone who, like Dennis Ross, hasn’t consulted a map and doesn’t realise that Israel controls the Jordan Valley and all access between the West Bank and Jordan. He goes on to admit

Moreover, while West Bank and Gaza Palestinians have much that divides them, they still have a common identity as Palestinians; the creation of a Palestinian state without Gaza would be an endless source of grievance and irredentism.

But after this brief return to Planet Earth, off he goes again to explain how it’s up to Egypt to prevent the ‘state’ of Gaza from arming itself against its sworn enemy and it’s up to ‘us’ to help ‘rebrand’ Fatah ‘to compete socially, economically and politically’ with Hamas.

Nothing embarrasses these guys.

Your lips are sealed

With the world’s attention diverted to Venezuela, whose democratically elected ‘dictator’, Hugo Chavez, has not renewed the license of a broadcaster implicated in the 2002 coup that briefly overthrew the elected government and replaced it with a ‘democratic’ junta more to Washington’s liking, Pakistan’s actual military dictator, General Pervez Musharraf, yesterday provided new powers to the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA).

[BBC photo]

Just months after parliament had legislated on the relevant issues after years of consultation the new ordinance empowers PEMRA to act against media outlets independent of the committee established for the purpose. Dawn reports

The ordinance authorises the Pemra to confiscate the equipment of broadcasters and seal the premises without consulting a council of complaints.

The council was envisaged in the amendments passed in February. The amendment increased the fine for violators to Rs10 million from the existing Rs1 million.

Some 10 amendments were made in the Pemra (Amendment) Act passed in February this year. An amended sub-section (5) of Section 29 reads: “Provided further that the Authority or the chairman may seize a broadcast or distribution service equipment or seal the premises which is operating illegally or (in) contravention of orders passed under Section 30.”

Freedom of expression as understood in Pakistan precludes criticism of the military or the judiciary, so that is the context in which to construe the expression ‘operating illegally’. Two privately owned television stations, Aaj [‘today’] and ARY One World, had already been denied permission to do live broadcasts under existing rules.

A new provision -- Section 39 (A) -- even authorised the Pemra to make rules and regulations on its own from time to time by simply issuing notifications. It says: “The Authority may, by notification in the official gazette, make regulations, not inconsistent with the ordinance and the rules made thereunder, to provide for all matters for which provision is necessary or expedient for carrying out the purposes of this ordinance.”

As soon as the new ordinance was announced, journalists took to the streets of Islamabad.

[Dawn photo]

Meanwhile, the National Security Council ‘agreed to draw up a multi-pronged strategy to deal with terrorism and extremism and create employment opportunities for the youth, especially in Fata [Federally Administered Tribal Areas bordering Afghanistan] and the NWFP [Northwest Frontier Province].’

In a move that would be derided as populist opportunism if President General Musharraf were not such a good friend of the Free World and such a close ally in the war of terrorism, he asserted

…that the new federal budget would be a catalyst in bringing about a qualitative change in the life of the poor and ensuring fast economic development. He said poverty would be brought down and job opportunities created through a record Public Sector Development Programme. He said massive economic development activities would be generated as a result of massive allocations for various development projects.

President Musharraf said the country had achieved record economic growth. He underlined the need for transferring the benefits of development to people at the grass-root level. He said measures would be taken to ensure the availability of essential items at subsidised rates. He said steps were being taken to check price hike, especially of items of daily use. He said measures would be taken to check inflation.

He said salaries and pensions of government employees would be increased.

Doubtless such vacuous promises are very welcome in a country where 65.6% of the population live on less than US$2 per day and 13.4% under $1. A full 26% are under Pakistan’s own poverty line. Which is not really surprising when cops get Rs3000 (US$50) per month and a primary school teacher can earn as little as Rs1200 ($20) a month.

In an apparent rebuff to General Musharraf, Dawn reported that yesterday, the Supreme Court ‘turned down federal government’s request for initiating contempt of the court proceedings against the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) for defaming the judiciary and military at a seminar’.

Pity the poor torturer

In Iraq, when Tony Lagouranis interrogated suspects, fear was his friend, his weapon. He saw it seep, dark and shameful, through the crotch of a man's pants as a dog closed in, barking. He smelled it in prisoners' sweat, a smoky odor, like a pot of lentils burning.

So writes Laura Blumenfeld in today’s Washington Post. But now,

The American interrogator was afraid. Of what and why, he couldn't say. He was riding the L train in Chicago, and his throat was closing.

"I tortured people," said Lagouranis, 37, who was a military intelligence specialist in Iraq from January 2004 until January 2005. "You have to twist your mind up so much to justify doing that."

Lagouranis's tools included stress positions, a staged execution and hypothermia so extreme the detainees' lips turned purple. He has written an account of his experiences in a book, "Fear Up Harsh," which has been read by the Pentagon and will be published this week. Stephen Lewis, an interrogator who was deployed with Lagouranis, confirmed the account, and Staff Sgt. Shawn Campbell, who was Lagouranis's team leader and direct supervisor, said Lagouranis's assertions were "as true as true can get. It's all verifiable." John Sifton, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch, said the group investigated many of Lagouranis's claims about abuses and independently corroborated them.

"At every point, there was part of me resisting, part of me enjoying," Lagouranis said. "Using dogs on someone, there was a tingling throughout my body. If you saw the reaction in the prisoner, it's thrilling."

Not long ago in Iraq, he felt "absolute power," he said, over men kept in cages. Lagouranis had forced a grandfather to kneel all night in the cold…

"I couldn't make sense of the moral system" in Iraq, he said. "I couldn't figure out what was right and wrong. There were no rules. They literally said, 'Be creative.' "

Now Lagouranis's power had dissolved into a weakness so fearful it dampened his upper lip. Sometimes, on the train, he has to get up and pace. But he can't escape.

Being an interrogator, Lagouranis discovered, can be torture. At first, he was eager to try coercive techniques. In training at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., instructors stressed the Geneva Conventions, he recalled, while classmates privately admired Israeli and British methods. "The British were tough," Lagouranis said. "They seemed like real interrogators."

But interrogators for countries that pride themselves on adhering to the rule of law, such as Britain, the United States and Israel, operate in a moral war zone. They are on the front lines in fighting terrorism, crucial for intelligence-gathering. Yet they use methods that conflict with their societies' values.

But veteran torturers

whose wartime experiences stretch back decades, are more practiced at finding moral balance. They use denial, humor, indignation. Even so, these older men grapple with their own fears -- and with a clash of values.

James, 65, was one of Britain's most experienced interrogators in Northern Ireland. Starting in 1971, James said, he worked for the Special Branch of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), interrogating Irish nationalists Gerry Adams, Bobby Sands and others whom the British government suspected of being terrorists. Peter Taylor, a leading historian of the conflict in Northern Ireland, said he believes that "James's account is entirely credible."

"Yes, a bloke would get a cuff in the ear or he might brace against the wall. Yes, they had sleep deprivation," he said. "But we did not torture."

Once, IRA leader Brendan Hughes claimed that James had cocked a gun to his head. James does not deny it. "You fight fire with fire," he said,…"If it's going to save lives, you're entitled to use whatever means you can." How do you fight bad guys and stay good? "You don't. You can't."

According to an experienced Israeli torturer ‘who spoke on condition that he be identified by his code name, Sheriff’

"You have to play by different rules," the Israeli interrogator told an American visitor. "The terrorists want to use your own system to destroy you. What your president is doing is right."

He played good cop, and bad: "One day I was good. Next day I was bad. The prisoner said, 'Yesterday you were good. What happened today?' I told him we were short on manpower."

But when the pressure mounted for intelligence, Sheriff said, the best method was "a very little violence." Enough to scare people but not so much that they'd collapse. Agents tried it on themselves. "Not torture."

Sometimes a prisoner would accuse Sheriff of torture. He tried to shift the moral burden by blaming the prisoner: "I would tell him this: 'I'm sorry. We prefer it the nice way. You leave us no choice.' "

"I've got a clean conscience because I rarely use it."

Sheriff's concerns, however, aren't legal, they're mortal. He carries a Beretta. In cafes, he faces the door. He ran into a former subject -- "a bit scary" -- knocking on the window of his car.

For all his bravado, quips and denials, Sheriff is afraid to have his full name published.

"I would not like to die in pain."

Life’s tough for a retired torturer.

Faith based decision making

The US Bureau of the Census is set to reduce the sample for its critical Survey on Income and Program Participation (SIPP) by more than half, according to Lyndsey Layton in today’s Washington Post.

Reducing the size of the sample increases the level of statistical error. Although the reduced sample will still provide reliable estimates on a national basis, state level data for most states will no longer be available.

The Census Bureau, which oversees the survey, plans to reduce the number of people questioned nationwide from 45,000 to 21,000. The result will mean that detailed data will be generated for just three states -- California, Texas and New York -- instead of the more typical 31 states, said Preston Jay Waite, deputy director of the Census Bureau.

The SIPP is the only instrument providing data to support analysis of program effectiveness.

It is one of the most important surveys the government conducts -- the only large-scale measurement of the impact of Medicaid, food stamps, school lunches, unemployment and other safety-net programs for the poor… Public officials and researchers rely on those findings to determine how government programs are used, which are most effective and which are faltering.

Even Ralph A. Rector, senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, opposed the cut.

"The worst outcome is if the money is insufficient for the SIPP and they don't continue" working on an alternative, he said. Then researchers don't get good survey data now or a reliable replacement later, he said.

But the Bush administration is firmly committed to faith based decision making. And they’ve been cutting all those programs that SIPP monitors, anyway, so why would anybody be interested in the impact?

Moral decline

Gallup’s Joseph Carroll reported today that the annual Values and Beliefs poll found that 44% of the 1003 American adults surveyed 10-13 May rated ‘the overall state of moral values in this country today’ as poor, the highest proportion since 2002, the earliest poll reported. Eighty-two percent thought ‘the state of moral values in the country as a whole’ was getting worse. Big majorities of every population tabulated – regardless of age, sex, race, region, political affiliation, religion, church attendance, income, or education – agreed. The lowest proportion saying morals were in decline were ‘Liberal Democrats’ with 69%.

Nowhere in his article does Carroll mention how Gallup defines ‘moral values’, much less how they think their respondents do, but presumably it has something to do with the moral cowardice of a population that overwhelmingly rejects the neocons’ aggressive imperialism and won’t stand up against it. Or their failure to hold corporations accountable, or to redress the inequality they perceive penetrating their society.

No, that’s not what they meant. They didn’t mean the kind of moral decline that results in more executions. They meant polygyny (but not polyandry) and married people having affairs, and of course ‘homosexuality’.

To shed some light on the issue, the Boston Globe’s Jeff Jacoby watched the Democratic debate last night. Here’s some of what he had to say about the experience.

But in truth, last night's debate wasn't funny. It was worrisome. Worrisome that in 120 minutes of talk, not one of the Democratic candidates had anything substantive to say about the global jihad. Worrisome that all but one of the Democrats oppose legislation to declare English the official language of the United States. Worrisome that on the issue they spent the most time discussing -- the war in Iraq -- not one spoke seriously or responsibly about the consequences of an American withdrawal.

You’d think he was worried, and quite understandably. Imagine none of those prospective Democratic candidates having anything to say about Bush’s global crusade for Halliburton profits. ‘Not one’ taking a responsible position on the very thing that Iraqis univocally attest they most want. Of course, that’s not really what he meant. He meant he wants all Americans to really believe that billions of Muslims, some of whom are resisting the crusade, are motivated by nothing other than hatred of the moral values all American hold dear – Halliburton’s profits. He wants Democratic candidates to worry about the impact on American ‘prestige’ and ‘full spectrum dominance’ if forced to leave Iraq in disgrace. I gather he’s planning to vote for some Republican candidate, as if that would make any difference. He knows as well as anybody else that Hillary is as bent on world domination as Dubya, and Bill, and HW, and Ron, and Jimmy, and Gerry, and Dick, and Lyndon, and Jack, and Ike…

Why single out China?

Today’s Independent carries a brilliant defense by biologist and secretary of the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine, Steven Rose, of the University and College Union annual congress resolution ‘to organise a campus tour for Palestinian academic trade unionists to explain why they had called for an academic and cultural boycott of Israel, and to encourage UCU members to consider the moral implications of links with Israeli universities’.

Here are some extracts.

Entirely suppressed in this harrumphing has been any thought about why Palestinian university teachers and their union, as well as all the NGOs in the Occupied Territories, have called for a boycott. Academic freedom, it appears, applies to Israelis but not Palestinians, whose universities have been arbitrarily closed, Bir Zeit for a full four years. Students and teachers have been killed or imprisoned. Attendance at university is made hazardous or impossible by the everyday imposition of checkpoints. Research is blocked by Israeli refusal to allow books or equipment to be imported.

Even within Israel itself, some universities sit on illegally expropriated land, Arab student unions are not recognised and there are increasing covert restrictions on Arab-Israelis (20 per cent of the population) entering university at all. No Israeli academic trade union or professional association has expressed solidarity with their Palestinian colleagues a few kilometres away across the wall, though the boycott call may finally encourage them to do so.

…If academic freedom means anything, it must be indivisible. And what are Palestinians to make of the uncensured insistence by senior Israeli academics that their family size constitutes a demographic threat to the Jewish state?

…Why pick on Israel, we are asked…No one asks those campaigning against China's occupation of Tibet why not Israel or Darfur?...The issue is not "Why Israel?" but "Why not Israel?" Yet the secular western press, so willing to express discomfort with states that describe themselves as "Islamic Republics" is seemingly untroubled by the ethnic assumptions underlying the claims of a Jewish republic.

Further, it is precisely because Israel prides itself on its academic prowess (just as South Africa did of its sporting prowess) that the idea of an academic boycott is so painful…

Lurking behind the thinking of even well-meaning opponents of the boycott is that it is in some way anti-Semitic. This ignores the fact that the boycott is of Israeli institutions, not individuals (so it would affect the tiny number of Palestinian academics in Israeli institutions, but not a Jewish Israeli working in the UK or US). Second,… Even a cursory look at the signatories of the various boycott calls will show the large number of prominent Jewish figures among them. It really isn't good enough to attack the messenger as anti-Semitic or a self-hating Jew rather than deal with the message itself, that Israel's conduct is unacceptable.

In relation to this last point, Tony Greenstein has a piece on the Guardian’s ‘Comment is free’ blog inquiring into the question of who gets to speak on behalf of ‘the Jewish Community. The Union of Jewish Students (UJS) at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London has been trying to prevent a meeting that the Jewish Society had organised with speakers from Independent Jewish Voices.

including Brian Klug, Sir Geoffrey Bindman and Professors Donald Sassoon and Jacqueline Rose, the UJS sought to prevent the meeting on the grounds that it was "propaganda for a particular viewpoint". When this ploy failed, Simmons sought to "balance" the speakers' panel - something the UJS has never attempted with pro-Zionist speakers.

What censorship?

Further to Friday’s post, the BBC reports that the threat to the media was not idle.

On Thursday Pakistan's information minister warned that the government would strictly enforce media laws forbidding criticism of the army and the judiciary.

Two private TV channels have now been prevented from live broadcasting after making alleged criticisms of the army and judiciary.

Aaj [‘today’] and ARY One World rely on cable operators who have said that the country's broadcasting regulator has ordered them to cut the feeds for the two channels.

President Musharraf has blamed the broadcast media for stoking the crisis triggered by the suspension of the chief justice [Iftikhar Chaudhry].

Moreover, the top military commanders issued a statement after their meeting with Musharraf Friday threatening they

"took serious note of the malicious campaign against Institutions of State, launched by vested interests and opportunists who were acting as obstructionist forces to serve their personal interests and agenda even at the cost of flouting the rule of law…Any attempt by a small minority to obstruct the aspirations of vast majority would only derail the nation from its path of progress and prosperity."

The Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (Pemra), Dawn’s Amir Wasim reports, has written to the private TV channels banning coverage of the chief justice affair and that it ‘expects maturity and a sense of responsibility from the broadcasters’. Furthermore,

“No programme shall be aired which (i) is likely to encourage and incite violence or contains anything against maintenance of law and order or which promotes anti-national and anti-state attitude; (ii) contains anyRAand integrity of the armed forces of Pakistan; (iv) maligns or slander any individual in person or certain groups, segments of social, public and moral life of the country; and is against basic cultural values, morality and good manner.”

“You are, therefore, advised to refrain/desist from relaying programmes which deviate (from) Pemra laws and Code of Conduct. Non-implementation of the directives in this respect shall invoke legal action under Pemra Ordinance 2002 and rules/regulations made there under,” says the letter carrying the signature of Pemra director-general (enforcement) Rana Altaf Majid.

Meanwhile, Dawn further reports, in response to threats and alleging subscriber complaints, the Cable Operators Association of Pakistan (CAP) at a Karachi press conference yesterday threatened to take offending satellite TV channels off the air

“We have decided that we’ll not become part of any campaign which goes against the armed forces, judiciary and integrity of Pakistan and will virtually boycott the channels, which indulge in such acts.”

In response to the military commanders’ statement released by the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) about the meeting endorsing President General Musharraf’s unconstitutional dual role, Dawn reports that opposition parties

The MMA [Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal] and Tehrik-i-Insaaf [PTI] leadership demanded the immediate resignation of General Musharraf from the posts of president and army chief, and said that leaders in exile should return to participate in the election process. They said that a neutral interim national government should immediately conduct free, fair and transparent elections, and that the election commission should be reconstituted in consultation with the country’s major parliamentary parties. They also demanded the complete independence of the judiciary.

Also,

At a Saturday press conference in Islamabad, acting parliamentary leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan accused General Musharraf of presenting the army as a political party and warned that this could lead to a civil war.

The MMA leadership had discussed their response with representatives of the Pakistan Oppressed Nations Movement (PONM) and Awami National Party (ANP). In Lahore, MMA president Qazi Hussain Ahmed and PTI chief Imran Khan (yes, that Imran Khan!) told the press the ISPR statement was “unconstitutional and unethical.”

They said that the corps commanders’ meeting constituted an effort to involve the army leadership in the political survival of a ruler who has lost all legitimacy.

The MMA and PTI statement accused General Musharraf of using the armed forces for his own survival and asserted that…it points to a fundamental departure from the role of the armed forces as laid down in the Constitution and the Army Act.

The essence of democracy

At a joint press conference with the Leader of the Free World on 4 March last year, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said,

… we have introduced the essence of democracy now in Pakistan. It has… never existed before…we have liberated the media and the press…the result of my democratization of Pakistan, opening the Pakistan society of the media -- the print media and the electronic media, both. And they're totally liberated…Sustainable democracy has been introduced in Pakistan and will prevail in Pakistan…

It turns out, however, that Information Minister Mohammad Ali Durrani may not entirely agree. As today’s Dawn reports,

“The events of the past two months have brought into sharp focus the issue of freedom with responsibility and a matter of concern for everyone within the government or outside it,” the information minister said.

He said that the judicial issue, which required a judicial verdict, had been politicised to the extent that the Supreme Court’s own directives were also not adhered to…

“The armed forces of Pakistan have … embraced martyrdom whenever the country faced any threat. Be it an ordinary soldier or a general, the commitment to the defence of Pakistan is immeasurable.

“We cannot, therefore, let the defenders of our frontiers be maligned and defamed,” the minister said.

“An element clearly violated the limits that the Constitution and the law of the land put on every citizen about protecting the honour and respect of the judiciary and the armed forces,” he said, indicating that such moves warranted action.

Information ministry officials said the government, while using some Pemra [Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority] laws, was planning to make it mandatory for televisions channels to seek prior permission for live coverage of outdoor events. If applied strictly, the government may restrict all live coverage, particularly of events like opposition rallies or events relating to the judicial crisis.

Also in today’s Dawn, Raja Asghar reports that the Pakistani governmetn’s commitment to freedom of expression didn’t preclude putting the kibosh on the launch of military analyst Dr Ayesha Siddiqa’s new book, Military Inc: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy.

She had arranged its launch at the exclusive Islamabad Club.

But the author told a surprised audience that not only the club cancelled the booking of its auditorium, “all hotels in Islamabad were also told” by unspecified authorities not to allow the use of their halls for this, forcing the organisers to find a sanctuary at a third-floor room provided by a non-governmental organisation.

Declan Walsh wrote in yesterday’s Guardian, that the pioneering study valued the Pakistani military’s business interests at nearly US$20 billion, as well as 4.8m hectares of public land.

Five giant conglomerates, known as "welfare foundations", run thousands of businesses, ranging from street corner petrol pumps to sprawling industrial plants. The main street of any Pakistani town bears testament to their economic power, with military-owned bakeries, banks, insurance companies and universities, usually fronted by civilian employees. Ms Siddiqa estimates that the military controls one-third of all heavy manufacturing and up to 7% of private assets.

Profits are supposed to be pumped back into schools, hospitals and other welfare facilities - the military claims it has 9 million beneficiaries - but there is little transparency. "There is little evidence that pensioners are benefiting from these welfare facilities," she said.

Of the 96 businesses run by the four largest foundations, only nine file public accounts. The generals spurn demands by parliament to account for public monies they spend.

The military's penetration into society has accelerated under President Pervez Musharraf, who has also parachuted 1,200 officers into key positions in public organisations such as universities and training colleges. The military boasts that it can run such organisations better than incompetent and corrupt civilians.

But according to Dr Siddiqa,

the military businesses thrive, thanks to invisible state subsidies in the form of free land, the use of military assets, and loans to bail them out when they run into trouble. "There are gross inefficiencies and the military is mired in crony capitalism…They are not designed for the corporate sector."

"Over the past three years a lot of my friends have advised me not to publish this book. They think I have suicidal tendencies."

While the serving and retired brigadiers enjoy their sinecures, their prestigious university rectorships, and their ill gotten gains, Bakhtawar Mian reported in Monday’s Dawn that

The Asian Development Bank has found serious flaws in the Zakat distribution programme and termed it politicised and vague with poor implementation procedures and no accountability or monitoring system.

The Zakat is an Islamic tithe intended principally to relive poverty that all Pakistani Muslims are required to pay by law.

Political agendas are easily injected into the programme implementation due to excessive discretionary powers conferred on the local committees. Moreover, the programme requires no public disclosure of the final list of beneficiaries and reasons for selecting them, and has no system of appeals or public accountability, the study says.

…“Studies have shown that under the Zakat programme, beneficiaries need to bribe officials to get the money to which they are entitled. This is the result of an organised mechanism of bribery that ensures leakages to the extent that a deserving person might not receive any money at all. Moreover, payments to subsistence recipients are not made regularly, sometimes for months on end,” the report further says.

And that’s why Musharraf can boast, ‘We have empowered the people of Pakistan now -- they were never empowered before…’

[Photos courtesy of Whitehouse website, BBC, and Dawn.]

Soul searching

Colum Lynch reports from New York in this morning’s Melbourne Age that Lebanese Minister of Culture, Tareq Mitri, called yesterday’s UN Security Council decision to establish an international criminal tribunal to prosecute the masterminds of the February 2005 suicide-bomb killing of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri, ‘the path of the salvation of Lebanon’.

The US also hailed the decision. "People who have committed political assassination need to be brought to justice," said Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador to the UN. "They cannot have impunity."

Mr Khalilzad acknowledged that the council's action might trigger a violent reaction, but he said "many of us believe that the risks of not moving forward are greater".

Political assassins must never go unpunished. That would send entirely the wrong signal. Unless, of course, they are committed in pursuit of a higher principle. Like Saddam Hussein, not to delve too deeply into ancient history. Oh, but that wasn’t a political assassination. That was a legitimate execution carried out on the express instructions of the sovereign people of Iraq after due process and a fair trial. Of course. Well, then, what about Uday and Qusay Hussein? They never had their day in court, did they? Were they political assassinations? Of course not! They were fugitives from justice. The legitimate invaders and occupiers of Iraq had decided they were a threat, tracked them down and shot them to pieces. It’s only fair. After all, America did it, so it wasn’t an assassination.

What about other unpunished political assassinations? It wasn’t all that long ago that Sheikh

Ahmed Yassin was killed in an Israeli attack on March 22, 2004. While he was being wheeled out of an early morning prayer session, an Israeli helicopter gunship fired Hellfire missiles at Yassin and both of his bodyguards. They were killed instantly, along with eight other bystanders. Allegedly, more than a dozen people were injured in the operation, including two of Yassin's sons. Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi replaced him as Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip, and Rantissi himself was assassinated by Israel on April 17, 2004.

Anyway, same old, same old. It’s not who you kill – it’s who does the killing. If ‘we’ do it, or ‘our friends’ do it, it’s not political assassination. It’s execution, it’s killing a fleeing escapee, it’s combat… Same goes for terrorists, if you’re Jose Padilla, you’re a terrorist. If you’re Luis Posada Carriles, or Robert Ferro, you’re not.

So, anyway, you’d think that the Lebanese authorities might like to investigate and punish their own murderers, but as the BBC reported yesterday

A UN inquiry has suggested that Syrian and Lebanese intelligence forces played a role - which Syria denies.

And anyway, according to Robert Fisk in today’s Independent,

…the UN Security Council invoked Chapter VII of the UN Charter to create a special international court to try the suspects in Hariri's murder but the very fact that the Lebanese government could not formally request the court spoke volumes about its own impotence.

The point is that tracking down the murderers of one rich former politician in February 2005 is of the utmost concern to the UN Security Council, while the well known murderers of over a thousand Lebanese civilians and UN personnel, including attacks on ambulances and other crimes against humanity, pissing all over the last remaining shreds of credibility the UN might have been able to lay claim to last July and August, well they’re Israeli, so that’s ok then. Anway, the Israelis have already had their own painful soul searching Winograd Commission inquiry that named names and blaced the blame on the highest levels of government. Curiously, among the 21 main findings summarised on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website, there is no mention of the decimation of Lebanese infrastructure, the deaths or injuries, the Qana massacre, or indeed any indication with any concern other than Israel’s failure to win.

What a coincidence!

Today’s Forward, carried a piece by Rebecca Spence claiming,

Britain’s largest teachers union voted this week to boycott Israeli academic institutions, setting the stage for a bitter struggle to reverse the decision.

The University and College Union, representing more than 120,000 college-level educators, voted May 30 to pass a controversial resolution calling for a boycott of Israeli academics and universities, as well as a moratorium on European Union funding of Israeli research.

The resolution that UCU Congress carried Wednesday was not 'to boycott Israeli academic institutions'. It instructed the union's executive to circulate the call for a boycott from the Palestinian Committee for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) to branches for discussion.

By why should the facts matter? Anyway, coming to the rescue, was none other than

Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Law School professor and prominent pro-Israel advocate, said that to protest the vote he will attempt to mobilize 1,000 American university professors of diverse backgrounds to join him in declaring themselves honorary Israeli professors.

“I now consider myself an Israeli professor, and I will act as if I am an Israeli professor,” Dershowitz said. “If they boycott Israel,” he added, “they’re boycotting me.”

When we finally do get the boycott off the ground, I hope everybody takes the abominable Dershowiitz at his word. Nobody deserves it more than he does and it will do no harm to exclude him comprehensively from all academic activity.

“The UCU boycott motion is an assault on academic freedom,” said Jeremy Newmark, the chief executive of Britain’s Jewish leadership council. “While the vast majority of academics do not support a boycott, the decision damages the credibility of British academia as a whole.”

As I wrote yesterday, ‘One of the strongest arguments I’ve encountered in support of the boycott is the self serving hypocrisy of those who bleat about infringing academic freedom for Israelis while issuing not so much as a peep against the almost total eradication of academic activity of any kind in Palestine’. Well, the AP’s Aron Heller writes that Israel’s three most important authors and the presidents of four Israeli universities have written to Defense Minister Amir Peretz

"Blocking access to higher education for Palestinian students from Gaza who choose to study in the West Bank casts a dark shadow over Israel's image as a state which respects and supports the principle of academic freedom and the right to education," the letter states…. they called on Israel to lift its sweeping ban on the travel of Palestinians between the West Bank and Gaza so students could pursue their education.

Authors Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua and David Grossman, and the presidents of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Ben-Gurion University, Haifa University and the Technion technology institute, recognising that the true issue is Israel’s image, published their missive

…the same day Israeli academic institutions faced a potential boycott from British academics. Britain's University and College Union was due to discuss a boycott of Israeli universities and prevent European Union research funds from going to Israel because of its policy toward the Palestinians.

What an amazing coincidence!

[Thanks to Moshe Machover for the link to the AP article.]

The law’s the law

Matthew Wagner reports in yesterday’s Jerusalem Post that the former Sephardi chief rabbi, Mordechai Eliyahu, has written to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert explaining the impact of Jewish law on his treatment of the qassam rocket issue. In particular, the Rabbi ‘said it was forbidden to risk the lives of Jews in Sderot’.

According to Jewish war ethics, wrote Eliyahu, an entire city holds collective responsibility for the immoral behavior of individuals. In Gaza, the entire populace is responsible because they do nothing to stop the firing of Kassam rockets.

Since it is also forbidden to take any risks with ‘the lives of IDF soldiers’, Eliyahu's son, Shmuel Eliyahu, chief rabbi of Safed, explained

his father opposed a ground troop incursion into Gaza that would endanger IDF soldiers. Rather, he advocated carpet bombing the general area from which the Kassams were launched, regardless of the price in Palestinian life.

Eliyahu ruled that there was absolutely no moral prohibition against the indiscriminate killing of civilians during a potential massive military offensive on Gaza aimed at stopping the rocket launchings.

The letter…cited the biblical story of the Shechem massacre (Genesis 34) and Maimonides' commentary (Laws of Kings 9, 14) on the story as proof texts for his legal decision… Eliyahu quoted from Psalms. "I will pursue my enemies and apprehend them and I will not desist until I have eradicated them." [18:37]

Eliyahu wrote that "This is a message to all leaders of the Jewish people not to be compassionate with those who shoot [rockets] at civilians in their houses."

There is of course no prohibition in Jewish law for raining precision guided munitions and less accurate tank shells on Palestinians. Nor is there any scriptural basis for retaliation. After all, a million of them are not worth one Jewish fingernail.

[Thanks for Moshe Machover for the heads up]

The next meal

The UN’s Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN), yesterday reported via Reuters/Alertnet the story of Adeela Harith, a 39-year-old Iraqi widowed mother of three.

"I will keep trying to find food for us in rubbish bins and with the money my children get in the streets by begging, we can buy some water and milk for them…

“…They no longer attend school. The oldest two are street beggars and the youngest, Youssef, is with me looking for food in rubbish bins.

"After my husband was killed, militants came to my home and threatened to kill everyone if we didn't leave our house in 24 hours. I left without carrying anything… I don't have parents. The only brother I had was killed a year ago and his wife is leading a similar life to mine.”

Almost a year has now elapsed since the conclusion of the study of excess mortality in Iraq by Burnham’s team from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Al Mustansiriya University published in The Lancet last October. As of the beginning of last July, they estimated about 655,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the invasion and occupation. Projecting from that estimate, assuming that the monthly toll has remained at the average for the thirteen months form June 2005 through June 2006 (although we know it has actually increased), by the end of this month, there will be nearly a million Iraqis who have died needlessly in America’s brutal war for control of the planet’s energy resources.

Lurking behind each individual unnecessary death is a story like that of Adeela Harith and her three children, Ahmed 14, Zaineb 12, and Yasser 8. George Bush, Tony Blair, John Howard, and all their accomplices have left a country full not only of death and destruction but millions of grieving homeless widows, widowers, and orphans.

"A local NGO recently told me they will assist me but I am still waiting. Youssef has serious diarrhoea and two weeks ago Zaineb got sick from the food we ate. The doctors told us to stop eating food which we collect from rubbish bins but we don't have a choice. Either we eat like this or we die of starvation.

“I keep remembering how good the old days were when we had good food, good health and good living conditions but now our life is a disaster. And with the deteriorating situation in Iraq no one cares any more."

And what of the wounded. In posts like ‘Iraqi deaths’ (29 May), Eli Stephens has been pointing out that the death counts we read in the media only enumerate those who die on the spot. They often report large numbers of injured who we never hear of again. With Iraq’s medical infrastructure in the parlous state the occupation and ‘rebuilding’ of Iraq have reduced it to, many of those must subsequently die. And that’s an important point. Many others, however, live on without their legs or without their sight. They may need constant attention by a family member who therefore doesn’t even have time to beg or to scavenge. The statistics are horrifying, but the reality is worse.

A good idea

The other day, I mentioned the high level of inequality in the land of the free. On Alternet today, Barbara Ehrenreich puts a bit finer point on it than just the Gini Coefficient.

Recent findings shed new light on the increasingly unequal terrain of American society…the rising tide in executive pay does not lift all yachts equally. The latest pay gap to worry about is the one between the CEO and his -- or very rarely her -- third in command.

According to a just-reported study by Carola Frydman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Raven E. Saks at the Federal Reserve, 30-40 years ago, the CEO's of major companies earned 80 percent more, on average, than the third-highest-paid executives. By the early part of the 21st century, however, the gap CEO and the third in command had ballooned up to 260 percent.

Now take a look at what's happening at the very bottom of the economic spectrum, where you might have pictured low-wage workers trudging between food banks or mendicants dwelling in cardboard boxes. It turns out, though, that the bottom is a lot lower than that.

On May 16, a millionaire couple in a woodsy Long Island suburb was charged with keeping two Indonesian domestics as slaves for five years, during which the women were paid $100 a month, fed very little, forced to sleep on mats on the floor, and subjected to beatings, cigarette burns and other torments.

This is hardly an isolated case…Some of America's slaves are captive domestics, like the Indonesian women in Long Island. Others are factory workers, and at least 10,000 are sex slaves…

…Top-ranked college professors, for example, enjoy salaries of several hundred thousand a year, often augmented by consulting fees and earnings from their patents or biotech companies. At the other end of the professoriate, you have adjunct teachers toiling away for about $5000 a semester or less, with no benefits or chance of tenure…adjuncts who moonlight as waitresses or cleaning ladies are legion.

…law firm partners billing hundred of dollars an hour, now has a new proletariat of temp lawyers working for $19-25 an hour in sweatshop conditions...temp lawyers report working 12 hours a day, six days a week, in crowded basements with inadequate sanitary facilities.

Shaun at Hollowpoint linked to my post about ‘the other 0.001%’, including this great old graphic, which I’m copying over here for your delectation.

Meanwhile, a Pew survey carried out in December and early January of 2,007 adults reveals that only 38% of Americans agree that ‘Business corporations generally strike a fair balance between making profits and serving the public interest’, while 58% disagree. No doubt corporations disagree about what is in the public interest, because the LA Times’s Henry Weinstein reports,

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a suit Wednesday that accused a Boeing Co. subsidiary of helping the Central Intelligence Agency facilitate "the forced disappearance, torture and inhumane treatment" of three men the government suspected of terrorist involvement.

"This is the first time we are accusing a blue-chip American company of profiting from torture," ACLU lawyer Ben Wizner said at a news conference in New York City.

Since at least 2001, Jeppesen Dataplan Inc. of San Jose "has provided direct and substantial services to the United States for its so-called 'extraordinary rendition' program,"…the suit said that Jeppesen provided flight and logistical support services for more than 70 extraordinary renditions over a four-year period… a spokesman for Chicago-based Boeing, declined to confirm whether Jeppesen worked for the CIA. "The services Jeppesen provides are provided on a confidential basis for all its customers," he said.

According to Clive Stafford Smith, ‘a British lawyer who has been…serving as co-counsel on the ACLU suit, ‘Corporations should expect to get sued where they are making blood money off the suffering of others’. Smith has clearly failed to absorb the true spirit of capitalism.

And neither, apparently, do a lot of Americans, 76% of whom agree that ‘There is too much power concentrated in the hands of a few big companies’, while 65% think ‘Business corporations make too much profit’. Now in a real democracy like the US, the government is responsive to what the citizens think. So you’d surmise that these crazy attitudes are some kind of fluke or a recent development. It transpires, however, that Pew has tabulated their responses to these questions over the last 20 years and over that period, the proportion who think corporations have too much power has never dropped below 72% (May 1993) and has reached as high as 84% in February 1989, when 72% also thought they made too much profit. The proportion with this peculiar attitude dropped as low as 56% in September 1999.

Some democracy!

Also on Alternet today, Margaret Kimberley of Black Agenda Report writes

The terror attack that took place on September 11, 2001 was an aberration in more ways than one. Muslims were the perpetrators, but that is usually not the case. The purveyors of hate and violence in America are almost always Christians… Muslims are constantly asked to denounce their members who are terrorists. Why is there no similar demand of Christians? Will the good Christians, the peaceful ones, ever speak out against their co-religionists who carry bombs in their cars or drop them on civilians in Iraq?

…few commentators pointed out what Christians tell pollsters about their urge to maim and kill. Most Christians, 65 percent of Protestants and 72 percent of Catholics, believe that torture is justifiable under certain circumstances. Nearly half of Americans, 46 percent, believe that it may be acceptable to deliberately target civilian populations in war time. An average of 75 percent of Muslims in Egypt, Pakistan, Indonesia and Morocco believe that such attacks are never acceptable.

Just as it is unfair to smear all Muslims with the legacy of bin Laden, it would be unfair to smear all Christians as disciples of Jerry Falwell. Muslims are constantly asked to denounce their members who are terrorists. Why is there no similar demand of Christians? Will the good Christians, the peaceful ones, ever speak out against their co-religionists who carry bombs in their cars or drop them on civilians in Iraq?

While Americans have been told to fear Islam and all things Muslim, Christians are riding around with home made bombs…The threat from Christians who publicly express a willingness to die for their faith goes unreported…Mark Uhl, a student at [Jerry Falwell’s] Liberty University, was in possession of homemade bombs when he was arrested at Falwell's funeral. He reportedly planned to use them against any protesters who might disrupt the festivities. Uhl had this to say…’The fear of death shows you don't believe…God needs soldiers to fight so his children may live free…’

Christians perpetrated the crusades, the inquisition, the slave trade and imperial adventures too numerous to mention. It may be comforting to pat ourselves on the back and consign those behaviors to past centuries. We are living in the 21st century after all. Who would use the name of the Christian God to justify mass killing? A majority of modern day American Christians, that's who.

Today’s NY Times carries a report by Julia Preston that a study by three law professors of 140,000 decisions by immigration judges on asylum cases between January 2000 and August 2004.

“Oftentimes, it’s just the luck of the draw,” said Cheryl Little, a lawyer and executive director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, a legal assistance group in Miami that represents many asylum seekers. “It’s heartbreaking,” Ms. Little said. “How do you explain to people asking for refuge that even in the United States of America we can’t assure them they will receive due process and justice?”

So things are actually worse than they seemed when I wrote about ‘expedited removal’ back in February. ‘…Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me…’ Yeah, right.

In one of the starker examples cited, Colombians had an 88 percent chance of winning asylum from one judge in the Miami immigration court and a 5 percent chance from another judge in the same court.

Curiously, ‘the three professors did not examine the judges’ political affiliation or the administration that appointed them’, even though.

Monica M. Goodling, a former aide to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales,…testified last week that she had “crossed the line” in applying political considerations to candidates for nonpartisan legal jobs. Immigration judges are appointed by the attorney general, and 49 of 226 current judges were appointed during the tenure of Mr. Gonzales

The study also examined 76,000 decisions by the appeals board from 1998 through 2005. The proportion of successful appeals by applicants represented by lawyers declined from 43% in 2001 to 13% in 2005.

American civilisation…‘that would be a good idea’.