Bogdanos, Thesaurus, Iraqi Doctors, Fisk, Arabic, Brit Sheehan

1) The following is a long article on the looting of the Baghdad Museum by Matthew Bogdanos, the US Army officer with a classics MA who oversaw recovery efforts in the spring of 2003. Although I have never met Mr. Bogdanos, I had several differences in opinion with his earlier publications concerning what happened in Baghdad in 2003. Still, it’s a worthy read (although I haven’t read it yet myself):

Summary Abstract:
http://www.ajaonline.org/archive/109.3/bogdanos_matthew.html

Full article:
http://www.ajaonline.org/archive/109.3/pdfs/AJA1093_bogdanos.pdf

2) Thesaurus Tiff:

Online Thesaurus Pulls Listing for ‘Arab’
Aug 22 6:45 PM US/Eastern
By JOHN CURRAN
Associated Press Writer

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J.
An online thesaurus struck a listing Monday for the word “Arab” after Arab-American groups complained the entry listed derogatory synonyms.

The entry, which appeared on thesaurus.com, listed the word as a noun meaning “beggar,” and gave 16 pejorative synonyms including “homeless person” and “welfare bum.”

The American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee contacted the synonym book’s online publisher Friday to complain about the entry; the American Arab Forum also criticized the listing on Monday.

“I looked it up and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” said Aref Assaf, president of the American Arab Forum, which is based in Paterson.

Several hours after Roget’s Thesaurus was called by The Associated Press, all entries for “Arab” had been pulled from the site.

Barbara Ann Kipfer, editor of the third edition of Roget’s 21st Century Thesaurus, said the entry had likely been on the site for years, but never made it into printed versions of the thesaurus.

“We’re simply going to take it out,” she said on Monday. “The last thing you want with a thesaurus is to offend anyone.”

Kipfer said an 18th-century term “street arab” had appeared in other thesauruses, referring to a homeless child who has been abandoned androams through the streets.

The Internet publishing group that produces the thesaurus.com Web site also said it was surprised to learn of the entry.

“We got together and tried to resolve it as soon as possible,” said Jasper Chou, director for marketing for Lexico Group.

Assaf said he was satisfied that the listing had been removed.

“We look forward to working with them, should they need a proper definition of the word. The easier definition is ‘anyone who is Arabic,’ which would have been more than sufficient,” he said.

3) Iraqi Doctors’ Appeal:

** Dahr Jamail’s Iraq Dispatches ** **
http://dahrjamailiraq.com **

*This is an appeal written by Iraqi Doctors concerningwhat is happening in western Iraq. It is bothextremely informative as well as an important appeal.Operations in many of these areas are ongoing today,despite the fact that this press release is a weekold:

DOCTORS FOR IRAQ WARNS OF URGENT HUMANITARIAN CRISISAS US/IRAQI MILITARY ATTACKS CONTINUE IN THE WEST OFIRAQ

*As US/ Iraqi military attacks continue in Haditha,Rawa, Parwana and Heet in the West of Iraq, Doctorsfor Iraq is warning of an urgent health andhumanitarian crisis unfolding on the ground.

Haditha, Rawa and Parwana have been under attack forthe past three weeks with US/ Iraqi militaryactivities intensifying over the past few days. Themain hospitals in the area are reporting shortages ofmedicine oxygen, sugerical kits, anti-biotics andother basic medicines.

Civilians have fled to neighbouring towns and villagessuch as Ana and are in need of basic foods, water andshelter. Shop keepers are unable to open theirpremises because of the US/ Iraqi operation, andtrucks with urgent food supplies are facing seriousdifficulties entering the seiged areas.

Eyewitnesses and medical personal have told DoctorsFor Iraq that snipers are operating inside some of theseiged cities. Haditha hospital estimates that atleast eleven civilians were killed during the attackand 15 injured. The US military prevented ambulancesfrom entering the areas and medics from workingfreely. The area remains under siege.

Local people say that US marines invaded the town ofRawa and carried out air strikes bombing manybuildings and homes. It unclear how many civilianshave been killed or injured in the areas where themilitary is carrying out operations A school buildingin Parwana was bombed with people inside the school.It is unclear how many people were inside the schooland who they were.

Doctors for Iraq has organised for medical aid toreach some of the hospitals and a medical team hasbeen sent to the affected areas.

The military operations in the West of Iraq have leftthe healthcare system paralysed. Hospitals in the areaare unable to provide sufficient medical services forthe population. The new military attacks are furthercompounding the suffering of people in the area.

Doctors for Iraq is calling for the *_immediate_* *_end_* of US/ Iraqi military attacks in the area.

Doctors for Iraqi is calling for an independentinvestigation into the serious breaches of the GenevaConvention, the alleged killing of civilians andobstructing medical personal from carrying out therework.

We need urgent medical supplies to be delivered to thehospitals in the area.

For more information or to find out how you can sendmedical aid to the areas contact:

Dr. Salam Ismael _Salam.obaidi@doctorsforiraq.org _
OrAisha Ismael _Press.officer@doctorsforiraq.org_

4) Fisk on Iraq I:

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=8509

A Constitution That Means Nothing To Ordinary Iraqis
by Robert Fisk
August 15, 2005
The Independent Printer Friendly Version

Behind ramparts of concrete and barbed wire, the framers of Iraq’s new constitution wrestled yesterday to prevent – or bring about – the federalisation of Iraq while their compatriots in the hot and fetid streets outside showed no interest in their efforts.

Today is supposed to be “C” day, according to President Bush and all the others who illegally invaded this country in 2003. However, in ” real” Baghdad – where the President and Prime Minister and the constitutional committee never set foot – they ask you about security, about electricity, about water, about when the occupation will end, when the murders will end, when the rapes will end.

They talk, quite easily, about the “failed” Jaafari government, so blithely elected by Shias and Kurds last January. “Failed” because it cannot protect its own people. “Failed” because it cannot rebuild its own capital city – visible to it between the Crusader-like machine-gun slits in the compound walls – and because it cannot understand, let alone meet, the demands of the “street”….

5) More than a bit of self-glorification here, but again, he’s there, and we’re not:

http://www.robert-fisk.com/articles523.htm

Ten minutes on a trip to the supermarket can mean thedifference between life and death

By Robert Fisk in Baghdad – 12 August 2005

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article305329.ece

http://www.selvesandothers.org/article10898.html

It was the same lunatic co
rkscrew landing in the samelittle Lebanese plane, barrelling down into thesandstorm of Baghdad airport. Piloting his20-passenger twin-prop aircraft – from Flying CarpetAirlines, no less – Captain Hussam has three things onhis mind: American helicopters, pilotlessreconnaissance drones and incoming missiles. So we allscan the dun-coloured runway and terminals and thegrotty slums beside the airport road for the tell-talepink flame surviving pilots have sometimes caughtsight of.

But we landed safely and a scruffy bus took us to theterminal where I bid the customs officer SalaamAleikum and he cheerfully asked me if I was a Muslim.”English,” I replied, which seemed to be good enoughto him. He couldn’t break the airline security stringon my bag so he waved me through. Then there came TheAirport Road. We all need to put this in capitalsthese days. As my Iraqi fixer put it very well: “It’sreally just a matter of luck.” Sometimes you glidesafely across to the city, sometimes you get caught upin a firefight, sometimes – like poor Marla Ruzicka,the American girl who tried to count casualties – youare too close to a suicide attack. “I’m alive,” shecried just before she died.

So we concentrate very hard on The Airport Road. TheAmericans have put a squadron of Bradley FightingVehicles on the central reservation and Iraqi armyunits on each side of the highway. But they still getbombed. “The Iraqi army’s a joke,” an Americancomputer salesman in Baghdad tells me. “It was theIraqi army which kidnapped me near Nasiriyah. Theytried to sell me to the insurgents for $10,000. Thenone of my employees came and told the officer I washalf-Iraqi, taken to America as a child, that I was amember of the Dulaimi clan – and you don’t kidnapDulaimis – and the officer couldn’t read English sodidn’t know my real name.”

So I’m not keen on stopping for Iraqi checkpoints. Wedrive across the Tigris, waved through by a policemanin a hood – cops and insurgents both wear hoods whichmakes life a little tiring – and arrive at the grimlittle hotel where The Independent has its office.Extra security now. More armed men on the gates – mostare Kurdish – and a guard who wants to search my bag.He, too, cannot cut the airline security string on mybag and waves me through. So a piece of string twicestopped my baggage being searched. Very comforting.

My Iraqi fixer offers to buy groceries for me but Idecide I’ve got to buy them myself. Once you letIraqis buy your food on the streets, tell you whatpeople are saying, come back to you with theirobservations, you have entered the pointless hothouseof hotel journalism, the reporter with the mobilephone trapped in his room who might as well bebroadcasting or writing from Co Mayo. So we slink offdown side streets to the Warda grocery store inKarada. It’s a broad street with lots of menlanguishing on the pavements, many holding mobiles.That’s how it’s done these days. A guy with a mobilesees an American patrol, a police unit, a foreigner,and squeezes the dial pad and a bunch of gunmen in acar not far away roar round to blow themselves up orkidnap the stranger – for money, for execution, forpolitics.

The Egyptian diplomat murdered last month had stoppedat a newspaper stand. So we say, “10 minutes”. That’sall I’ve got in the grocery store. Sugar, Arabic bread- a big queue so I squeeze through and grab two loavesand hear someone mutter ajnabi (foreigner) and I gofor the Perrier bottles, the tinned fruits, thesardines, and I push up to the counter.

Eight minutes. “Change in Iraqi money?” Doesn’tmatter. Wrong reply. Too desperate. Should have said”Iraqi”. Three boxes of bottled water. Nine minutes.Your time is up. Out into the oven-like heat, into thecar, a sharp turn to the right, into another alleyway.Ten minutes. Made it.

My fixer looks at me from the front of the car – I amin the back, reading an Arabic newspaper to partlyconceal my face – and puts his finger in the air.”Another suicide bombing in Baghdad. An attack on apolice patrol. Four policemen dead.” Welcome back tothe city of one thousand and one nights.

www.independent.co.uk

6) This is an article on Federalism. I will follow up from now on with occasional Arabic postings — but I caution the reader that in most cases I have at best skimmed these Arabic postings (it’s too time consuming to read them completely):

فيديرالية «الفوضى البناءة» وتقاسم «الرجل المريض»
>محمد صادق الحسيني الحياة – 21/08/05//
الزمان: في الخامس عشر من آاب (اغسطس) 2005، غداة استكمال مشروع هدم الدولة العراقية والانطلاق منه الى مشروع بناء «الشرق الأوسط الكبير» على قاعدة الرؤية الطوائفية للمنطقة العربية والإسلامية.
المكان: بغداد، حيث يقف المندوب السامي الأميركي في العراق وهو الأفغاني الأصل زلماي خليل زاد، متحدثاً في مؤتمر صحافي مباشر من العاصمة العراقية عن محاسن الدستور الجديد لعراق فيديرالي متعدد ديموقراطي ومنفتح على الآخر.
إنها «العملية السياسية» الأكثر نجاحاً في معادلات لعبة الأمم المليئة بالأسرار. إنها الحلم الذي يتحقق للمؤرخ البريطاني الشهير برنارد لويس: إن اجتياح هذا البلد (أي العراق) سيخلق فجراً جديداً.
إنها الرد الضروري على الإسلام السياسي الزاحف على أوروبا، كما يتصور المفوض الأوروبي للسوق الداخلية فريتز بولكشتاين، وهو يشرح سبب مخالفته لانضمام تركيا الى الاتحاد الأوروبي، حيث يقول: «لقد أوقفناهم في بواتييه… أوقفناهم أمام فيينا… وسنوقفهم مرة أخرى…». لماذا كل هذا القلق؟ يستند بولكشتاين الى تنظيرات برنارد لويس عندما يقول: ستصبح أوروبا دولة مسلمة مع نهاية القرن.
ولكن كيف يمكن أن يكون العراق المحتل بداية فجر جديد؟
الجواب لدى ناتان شارانسكي في كتابه «قضية الديموقراطية». وكتاب شارانسكي هذا يمكن اعتباره بمثابة «الخريطة الجينية» لسياسات الرئيس الأميركي وإدارته، كما يقول الكاتب اللبناني وليد شرارة في «لوموند ديبلوماتيك» أثناء شرحه المفصل لسياسة «الفوضى البناءة» التي تتبعها الإدارة الأميركية المدججة بالمحافظين الجدد.
وشارانسكي هذا بالمناسبة هو اليهودي السوفياتي المنشق والذي التحق بالدولة العبرية ليصبح واحداً من أعضاء حكومة شارون المهمين، والذي استقال احتجاجاً على خطة الانسحاب من غزة.
ماذا يقول شارانسكي عن العالمين العربي والإسلامي؟
إن الإسلام، في نظر شارانسكي، حركة إرهابية في الأساس لا تهدد وجود إسرائيل فقط، بل العالم الغربي أجمع. والعالم العربي ليس سوى تجمع لأقليات دينية وعرقية عاجزة عن العيش سوية في كيانات دولة – وطنية… إذاً لا بد من حلول استئصالية لمنابع العنف والإرهاب الذي نشهده من أجل خدمة الديموقراطية ومصالح أميركا معاً. وانه لا حل لهذا إلا باستخدام صريح للطائفية في إطار