Entries this day: Dream Elait Kids_lesson Sick Storm all_English_session_with_Erik

Dream

6:45am GST Friday 15 July 2005

I was writing a letter to myself from my parents - what I wanted them to say. I was crying crying crying.. stuff like "we love you; we are proud of you; you can do it; you are a good person;" these are the things I wanted to hear from them. It was a good dream.

Elait

4:45pm GST Friday 15 July 2005

Tonight Eilat told us about some direct action things she has done, and about direct action in general.

Kids lesson

6:05pm GST Friday 15 July 2005

I just saw Carissa do a kids lesson, and she was really amazing. I would have just given up; she was impressively patient.

Sick

11:45pm WGST Friday 15 July 2005

Katt is sick, so Audrey will be teaching her classes tomorrow. I am getting Katt's stuff from her classroom so she can go through it in her room to get it ready for Audrey.

Storm

11:55pm WGST Friday 15 July 2005

There is a pretty cool heat lightning storm outside, so I'm going to go outside and experience it for a bit. No rain and no bolts of lightning, but the clouds are blinking pretty well.

all English session with Erik

8:46pm GST Friday 15 July 2005

Notes from the all English session with Erik:

He was scheduled to go to Iraq soon after the US declared the war over, but there were too many kidnappings, so they cancelled the whole trip.

There are no NGOs *in Iraq*; all those that say they are on the ground in Iraq (except the Quakers) are actually in Jordan. Therefore it's really hard to get started there.

The US has forced Iraqis to inquire about religious differences within Iraq that were not considered before.

The UN has identified about 40 different groups that are variously called "insurgents" "freedom fighters" etc. The numbers of the insurgency have gone steadily up since the US has continued its occupation.

Basically all of the destruction in Iraq is being done by non-Iraqis who can come into the country and want to fuck with the US. The border is too difficult to control, so this flow hasn't been stopped.

The US has a deadly version of Midas' golden touch.

The US is making the situtation worse, but can't figure out how to make it better, and won't admit that it's just getting worse.

The people at Department of State had a pretty decent plan at post war reconstruction. They had done it in consultation with Iraqi-Americans and spent nine months of effort to do it right. The Department of War (DoD) threw away all the State Department's work and just bullied their way through because they had been told (by people who would be fired for bad news) that the Iraqi's would all welcome them with open arms.

The DoD is good at war, not reconstruction.

One reason the UN resolutions / sanctions didn't work is that the international community wasn't united on which ones were important. Saddam was really able to play off these differences to his advantage.

There was no link between Saddam and the World Trade Center destruction until Bush and friends created a link in the public mind.

In the UN, when Yemen voted NO to going to war, the aid to the US ambassador said "that will be the most expensive NO vote you've ever cast in your life," And two days later aid to Yemen was cancelled.

The electrical infrastructure in Iraq is basically French and Russian, but those countries were disallowed from helping with reconstruction and the citizens are suffering while they are not allowed to fix their own system and the US contractors are trying to figure out how to make US equipment work with the French and Russian infrastructure.

alternet

Informed Comment (Juan Cole)

Foreign Policy in Focus

The US is buildng the largest embassy in the world in Iraq.

Iraq has a pretty decent constitution, but there is not much chance of it being used.

It's possible for people to get pilot's licenses without being able to read the instruments, they have visual navigation only, so sometimes pilots get lost over DC and F-16s are scrambled from the nearby airforce base.

(whoah)

If we poll the average American and ask how the US Government should allocate its money, they would draw a pretty progressive chart. But what people *think* we are spending / should be spending on international aid, is nowhere near what we are actually spending on it.

The US congress gets to allocate about 1.2 trillion dollars every year. About half of that goes to Defense / War. That's been standard fare for a while, just on "even keel" with no wars going on.

"Foreign Aid" is not just humanitarian aid. It goes for military training, loans to buy used US military equipment, etc.

The reconstruction projects for Iraq all go to US companies employing US employees. It's creating more of a dependency than any sort of aid.