No subject

officials was able to meet with cabinet ministers in Baghdad including
Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, Foreign Minister Nagi Sabri and Oil
Minister Amer Mohammed Rashid, as well as to talk with doctors, teachers and
scientists. We had the opportunity to meet ordinary Iraqis and visit sites
recently inspected for weapons of mass destruction. The aim was to
contribute to efforts to prevent war and to gather information not available
in the western press, particularly with regard to the human situation.

Attached is a brief summary of a very intense series of visits, as well  as
suggestions  responding to the frequent question asked by citizens of
western countries "What can we do to help prevent war?"

Please circulate these documents as widely as possible, asking NGOs and
individuals to act quickly on the practical suggestions offered. Your  help
will be very valuable.

With warm wishes,
from

Margarita Papandreou, former First Lady of Greece
Scilla Elwort hy, Director, Oxford Research Group, UK
Denis Halliday, former Assistant Secretary-General of the UN and UN
Humanitarian Co-ordinator in Iraq
Christian Harleman, the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future
Research,  Sweden
Jan Oberg, Director, the Transnational Foundation, Sweden
Zeynab Oral, Winpeace and Peace Initiative, Turkey
Omaima Rawas, peace activist and Vice President of the Syrian Arabic League,
Syria
Fotini Sianou, President, Women's Committee, European Trade Union
Confederation

**********************

NEWS FROM BAGHDAD - a visit to Iraq 3rd - 8th January 2003
Including meetings with Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, Foreign Minister
Nagi Sabri and Oil Minister Amer Mohammed Rashid, as well as  conversations
with ordinary Iraq is in the street and visits to sites.

..1.  Attitudes of Iraqis today. We experienced a mixture of fatalism, faith
and defiance in the El-zahrawi tearoom. Watching Saddam Hussein's Army Day
speech on television, we talked with people at random, many of whom spoke
English. They said that twice now world opinion has predicted that Iraq
would collapse - after the Gulf War in 1991, and in 1998 when 350 cruise
missiles hit the country - and once again they will survive. Yes, their
children are afraid. Yes, the teenagers do not know if it is worth studying
seriously or not. No, they will not go to the shelters. They do not talk so
much of US or UK aggression but rather of Bush and Blair: they do not resent
the people of the countries about to bomb them, nor the civilizations, but
the leaders. In the words of Dr. Hoda Ammash "People here bear every respect
for western  people and western civilization. We respect your technological
advancement, and your values. We know that westerners are being given the
opportunity to learn about Arabic civilizations. Yet hatred is being
manufactured, by some, to engineer a  clash of civilizations."

2. Food reserves. Iraqi households have been given three months' (and now a
further two months') food rations in order to get out of the main storage
sites to prevent it being bombed. The food distribution  programme,
according to Denis Halliday (former Assistant Secretary-General of the
United Nations and UN Humanitarian Co- ordinator in Iraq (1997-98), is one
of the most efficient in history, involving 49,000 food distribution agents
and minimizing corruption through a system whereby if 100 people complain
about an agent, he or she is removed. Iraqis are also stock-piling water but
have no suitable large containers. People with gardens are being  asked to
dig wells.

Under the UN Oil-for-Food Programme only about half the oil revenues can be
used for buying food and other necessities for the population of the centre
and South of the country; the rest being used for compensation to Kuwait and
the costs of the UN programme including the UNMOVIC weapons inspections.

Halliday concludes: " The twelve year sanctions regime has become a  weapon
of mass destruction, built on the massive damage to civilian infrastructure
by US bombing and resulting in the deaths of over one million people > since
1991, over half of whom are children."

According to UNICEF 25% of Iraqi babies are born weighing 2kgs or less, a
key indicator of famine. One million children under 5 suffer acute or
chronic malnutrition.

3. Shelters. Everyone we spoke to said they would not use the 34 shelters
provided for civilians in Baghdad because of the 1991 bombing of  Al-Amarya
shelter when 408 out of 422 women and children in the shelter were burned to
death.

4. Weapons Inspectors. Dr. Sami Al-Araji, a nuclear engineer and Director
General of Planning at the Ministry of Industry, is facilitating the work of
the UNMOVIC inspectors. Everywhere we went there was a remarkable
willingness to co-operate with the inspections, but patience is being
tested. During our visit there was a routine inspection near the University
of Baghdad where there are 6 science centres. The inspectors wanted to
investigate one of these, but froze the e ntire complex meaning that  nearly
3,000 people could not move for six hours, even though their place of  work
was not under inspection. This meant that toddlers were left uncollected at
nursery schools. Not even the Iraqi Ambassador to the UN, there for a visit,
was allowed to leave.

A professor of microbiology at the University of Baghdad told us that during
1991-98 inspectors re-examined the university every three weeks, searching
minutely. They enter exam halls where students are doing their finals and
search under their chairs." Iraqi people thought the inspections would last
2-3 years, and then they could go back to normal life. The inspections are
now into their 12th year, are more intense than ever, and there is no end in
sight.

We visited the al-Dawrah Foot and Mouth Vaccine Institute which was  high on
the list in the UK Government dossier (published September 2002) of
biological weapons sites. Since 1994 the site has been inspected 60 times,
it has been closed since 1995, when all the equipment was destroyed or
removed and there were cameras  everywhere connected to the former UNSCOM
Monitoring Centre in Baghdad. The place was wrecked.

5. Civil and political rights. Since Oct 2002, laws and regulations have
been or are  being revised as follows:

a.. Amendments to the constitution to allow for a multi-party system.
b.. Abolition of special 'security violations' courts which had no rights of
appeal
c.. Abolition of laws requiring cutting off hands of thieves
d.. Amnesty for political prisoners
e.. Exiles not linked to intelligence services may now return to Iraq with
the right to criticise the government
f.. Reduction of fee for exit visa from Iraq  from $200 to $10.

6. Oil. Current Iraqi production is approx 3 million barrels per day
(current world production approx 77 million) but it has the second  largest
reserves in the world. If controls were lifted, and with infrastructure
investment, with its immense reserves of easily extractable oil Iraq has the
potential to supply 10% of the world's oilneeds, and to continue to do so
for at least a century (since less than 1% of reserves are being used up
each year). Iraqis are very conscious of the energy needs of the western
economies - the US has to import 60% of its oil needs - and know that the
main reason for military invasion is to gain control of its vast reserves of
oil. Iraqi ministers fear that if the US were to control Iraq's oil
production, it would manipulate the  economies not only of the Far East, but
also of Europe. Iraq takes a long-term view, wants a stable oil price, and
would like to adopt normal trading relations rather than be subject to
crises, threats and manipulation.

7. Depleted Uranium (DU). Water-borne and air-borne dust from DU shells,
used by the US and the UK in the 1991 Gulf war, is spreading over vast areas
of Iraq but the government has no way of detecting the direction of  the
spread because airborne radiation sensing equipment is prohibited. People
are developing cancers by consuming meat and milk from animals grazing in
polluted areas. Cancers of all kinds are increasing dramatically in Iraq
particularly amongst women with breast  cancer and leukaemia. Members of our
delegation have visited hospitals in Iraq since 1991 and observed that
current conditions in the hospitals have worsened.  Equipment needed for
treatment lies idle because the computerized controls have been removed due
to sanctions. There is one nurse for every 16 beds where previously there
was one for every two beds. Every child has a mother or grandmother giving
full time care. Omar, three years old has a plastinoblastoma*, which attacks
kidneys and then  destroys the brain and nervous system: his head is
enlarged to twice normal size, his face swollen unrecognizably out of shape
and his eyes blind. His mother sits with him like a madonna, waiting for her
child to die. Tiny Aia ('Miracle') was born with a second head, a brain sack
attached to the back of her own head, a condition known as meningoceal* and
not seen in Iraq before the mid-1990s. Dr. Ahmed Fadeh of the Baghdad ad
Children's Hospital told me there are unlimited cases he simply can't treat
because his equipment is worn out or lacks spares, and he has not got the
drugs or  even the suture thread that he needs because of sanctions.

*this was told to us phonetically in a hurry, we are not sure of the correct
spelling [[possibly meningococcal Dave Parry]]
8. Implications for the future. This visit was a shock treatment in learning
what it feels like to be an Iraqi. This is an ancient people with a
civilization 7000 years old (Iraqis point out that the United States is
barely 300 years old), an economy that until the  1980s was a model for the
entire Middle East, and with a free health service that was ahead of the
National Health Service in the UK. The streets are now rubble-strewn most of
the middle class have left, and people are selling their household goods on
street corners in order to survive. The currency has devalued 6000 (six
thousand) % in 20 years; in 1981 one dinar bought three US dollars, today
one US dollar buys about 2000 dinars. To pay a modest hotel bill for 6 days,
you need a pile of dinar notes two meters high. Twelve years of sanctions,
which were intended to make the Iraqi people revolt against their
leadership, have had the opposite effect
giving Saddam Hussein total control over his people through food rationing.
Sanctions have simply disabled Iraqi people through hunger and the wholesale
disintegration of their  infrastructure. Rather than rebel against Saddam
Hussein, they feel defiance towards Bush and Blair which their leader can
constantly reinforce, since their sense of honour is  continuously provoked.
The humiliation is very deep and very dangerous. In these  circumstances a
war and subsequent occupation of Iraq will no doubt fuel the fires of hatred
and terror, and consequently the risk of attacks on the West.

For more information see websites: www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk
www.transnational.org

WHAT YOU CAN DO
Time is short. The UNMOVIC inspectors are due to report on 27th January
2003. Military preparations indicate that an attack may begin in early
February. A pre-emptive attack will be a clear-cut violation of the UN
Charter and international law. Medical and public health experts in the UK
estimate that between 48,000 and 260,000 civilians could be killed in
the first 3 months of conflict, and that if WMD are used, there could be up
to 4 million dead.

What can be done to move towards a genuine solution of this conflict other
than war and occupation?

1.The free press and NGOs must speedily step up their analysis and reporting
to challenge disinformation about the realities in Iraq. Please distribute
this report to all your media contacts.

2.  Whenever you hear a news broadcast on Iraq which does not mention
something about ordinary people, call them to ask for some human interest
stories. Iraq is not one man, it is 26 million fellow citizens. They have
points of views, hopes and fears like all of us.

3. A consistent well-structured mediation process has not been tried by any
government or international organisation so far. The European Union has a
substantial potential role to play. It could convene and support a meeting
between the most senior representatives of the
United States and of Iraq to 'explore whether all avenues short of war have
been exhausted'. This meeting would need to be announced before 27th
January, perhaps to take place mid-February. It would need to take place in
a very safe > environment and employ state-of-the-art conflict resolution
techniques. These moves  could be supported by France and by Germany in
their chairmanship of the UN Security Council in January and February 2003
respectively.
Urge your EU government to support such an initiative, and copy your letter
to
Prime Minister Costas Simitis of Greece,
15 Vassilissis Sofias Avenue,
10674 Athens,
mail at primeminister.gr which has the current presidency of the European
Union.

4. If you are yourself willing, go to Baghdad to become part of the Civilia
n Protection that has already begun with contingents from Spain, the US and
Austria. 5000 people are needed to stay at civilian sites such as
electricity, water and telecommunications facilities to try to prevent  them
being bombed. Individuals taking this course of action should be aware of
the serious risks involved. Contact either Voices in the Wilderness
www.nonviolence.org or www.iraqpeaceteam.org or
Dr. Al-Hashimi, President of the Iraqi Organisation for Friendship, Peace
Solidarity in Baghdad, Silm at uruklink.net Fax: + 964 1 537 2933 or + 964 1
8853298.

5. Call your foreign office to ask it you have an embassy in Baghdad. Many
governments do not have any representation and thus cannot collect first
hand facts and impressions on which to base an independent analysis. Neither
Britain nor the US has an embassy in Baghdad, and communications have to go
through the Polish embassy.

6. Ask your parliamentary committee for foreign affairs whether they have
visited Iraq to see for themselves and if not, why not. Ask them to talk  to
Iraqi people at all levels.

7. Make it known that the 12-year sanctions regime has had the opposite
effect to that intended; it has put Saddam Hussein in total control of the
Iraqi people, through the rationing programme. He can withdraw food from any
person or group, and they will starve.

8. Prime ministers and presidents worldwide need to understand the strength
and urgency of public opposition to this proposed attack, so that they will
actively support mediation rather than allowing themselves to be bribed or
bullied into supporting an attack. See George Monbiot's arti cle 'Act now
against war' http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,869807,00.html
for ideas on how to get the message across, through non-violent civil
disobedience. He suggests disrupting the speeches of ministers, blocking the
roads down which they must travel, blockading important public buildings, or
airports from which troops take off.

'What comes to pass does so not so much because a few people want it to
happen, as because citizens abdicate their responsibility and let things
be.' Gramsci
http://www.sentienttimes.com/02/feb_mar/indifferenceT.html
=======================
=======================
The following is from

which I (daveparry at cix.co.uk ) found by typing the above quote into Google
search

  Indifference

Don Kyhote

I have been reflecting on our world during 2001 and I find myself drawn back
to a piece that I have been handing out to my students for the past thirty
years. I include it below.

"Indifference is actually the mainspring of history. But in a negative
sense. What comes to pass, either the evil that afflicts everyone, or the
possible good brought about by an act of general valor, is due not so much
to the initiative of the active few, as to the indifference, the absenteeism
of the many. What comes to pass does so not so much because a few people
want it to happen, as because the mass of citizens abdicate their
responsibility and let things be. They allow the knots to form that in time
only a sword will be able to cut through; they let men rise to power whom in
time only a mutiny will overthrow. The fatality that seems to dominate
history is precisely the illusory appearance of this indifference, of this
absenteeism.

Events are hatched off-stage in the shadows; unchecked hands weave the
fabric of collective life-and the masses know nothing. But eventually the
events that are hatched come out into the open; the fabric woven in the
shadows is completed, and then it seems that fatality overwhelms everything
and everybody. It seems that history is nothing but an immense natural
phenomenon, an eruption, an earthquake, and that we are all its victims,
both those who wanted it to happen as well as those who did not, those who
knew it would happen and those who did not, those who were active and those
who were indifferent.

And then it is the indifferent ones who get angry, who wish to dissociate
themselves from the consequence who want it made known that they did not
want it so and hence bear no responsibility. And while some whine piteously,
and others howl obscenely, few people, if any, ask themselves this question:
had I done my duty as a man or woman, had I sought to make my voice heard,
to impose my will, would what came to pass have ever happened?

But few people, if any, see their indifference as a fault-their skepticism,
their failure to give moral and material support to those political and
economic groups that were struggling either to avoid a particular evil or to
promote a particular good. Instead such people prefer to speak of the
failure of ideas, of the definitive collapse of programs, and other like
niceties. They continue in their indifference and their skepticism. Tomorrow
they will begin anew their life of absenting themselves from any direct or
indirect responsibility for things .
Certainly they are not born of that sharp sense of historical responsibility
that drives men to take an active part of life. Therefore, this new
sensibility must be drummed into us-we must have done with the inconclusive
whinings of the eternally innocent.

Everyman must be asked to account for the manner in which he has fulfilled
the task that life has set him and continues to set him day by day; he must
be asked to account for what he has done, but, especially for what he has
not done. It is high time that the social chain not weigh on just the few;
it is time that events should be seen to be the intelligent work of men, and
not the products of chance, of fatality. And so it is time to have done with
the indifferent among us, the skeptics, the people who profit from the small
(social) good procured by the active few, but who refuse to take
responsibility for the great evil that is allowed to develop and come to
pass because of their absence from the struggle."*

Could this be more timely? Isn't it time to ask:

Could the theft of the American Presidency last December have occurred
without the absenteeism of the majority of the American people?

How might have our collective indifference contributed to the terrible
tragedy of 9/11? Are we merely victims of international terrorism?

Would the American people have supported the "war on terrorism" if they had
known that the vast majority of the world's people (89% according to
International Gallop Poll, 9/21/01)
weren't behind it? Why didn't they know that?

Did they know that the day after the first Anthrax exposure it was
positively identified as being from the US Army's Biological Weapons Program
at Fort Detrick, Maryland? Why didn't they know that?

How is our compliant silence enabling the current assault on the most basic
civil liberties upon which this country is based?

How did the abdication of our responsibility allow the Enronization of
America where an elite few enrich them-selves at the expense of the average
American and great public need?

What is it that we could have done, but didn't because of the inconvenience
of it all? Fail to question the loss of jobs in the country because it didn'
t personally affect us? Fail to consider the cost and cultural impact of our
addiction to monster cars, yearly available fruit, fresh, fragrant coffee-in
short, to our "blessed way of life?"

Has our corrupt corporate capitalism become a "knot that only a sword can
cut through?"

Where do you stand on the issue of globalization? With those who would
export the Enron model worldwide? Or with those who question its value to
normal people and see that indifference to their planetary neighbor's fate
is mirrored at home?

Who is teaching the danger of this indifference and what do they suffer for
doing so? (Hint: many of those courageous voices appear on Lynn Cheney's
list of "unpatriotic interpreters of history.")

Has our indifference to the abuse of women worldwide been reconciled by the
recent disingenuous focused concern for women under Taliban rule? (How many
times did CNN air that documentary?)

How much of our indifference is cultivated by those who benefit by it? And
how do they manufacture consent for their weaving of events?

Are our personal interests or even universal interests served by our
absenteeism? Whose interests does it serve?

Has your new vulnerability-your entry into the real world from the fool's
paradise of God's invulnerable promised land-encouraged your active
engagement in determining the future or are you willing, now more than ever,
to allow the "active few to weave the fabric of your life in the shadows?"

Just some questions to think about.

*Unsigned, Turin edition of Avanti, 26 August 1916 under the heading "Sotto
la Mole" in Gramsci: Political Writings 1910-1920.

Don Kyhote is an educator and supporter of those who speak truth to power
and has been confronting the status quo his entire professional career.






 

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