Plundering a New Mexico Treasure
Houston-based El Paso Corporation hopes to use close ties to the White House to gain drilling access to Valle Vidal. But not without a fight.
By Jeremy Vesbach, Alibi

Bush and Cheney aren’t exactly counting on the environmentalist vote this fall; however, there are around 47 million sportsmen in the United States, and of those who voted, around 68 percent voted for Bush-Cheney in 2000, according to estimates by the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation, a D.C.-based advocacy organization whose board of directors includes corporate representatives from outdoor gear and apparel manufacturers.

Without that overwhelming support of hunters and fishermen, the people now in charge of lands managed by the federal government would still be working for the oil and gas industries. And this has angered a growing number of conservative sportsmen who are beginning to speak of a double-cross.

Tony Dean, the host of a popular outdoors show on television, has written in the publication Outdoors Unlimited that, ”Saying you are a friend of sportsmen because you support gun ownership, while using it to hide the dismantling of America’s conservation policies, is patently dishonest.”

Ryan Busse, vice president of the Kimber Manufacturing Company, (a high-end rifle-maker located in Kalispell, Montana), traveled to D.C. with Raton’s Alan Lackey and told reporters that because of the administration’s support for drilling in Montana hunting grounds, ”This year’s presidential election will probably be the first time in my life that I will have voted for somebody other than a Republican in a national election.”

Lackey also voted for Bush in 2000, believing what Bush said about the importance of conservation.

”Bush said that we can use the best technology to provide protection for the environment while providing energy for the country, but that was all double-speak,” said Lackey, ”What they have going is just the opposite. It’s a raid on our public resources and a double-cross to sportsmen and outdoors people.”

Meanwhile, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has already shown an interest in trying to win over some of the reel and rifle crowd, now that he has demonstrated his prowess as a snowboarder and windsurfer. On an Iowa pheasant hunting trip, Kerry told reporters of his desire to extend the assault weapon ban and require unlicensed dealers to do background checks at gun shows, which was obviously antithetical to the die-hard gun lobby. But he did prove that he’s a good shot (two dead pheasants in two shots) and that he’s willing to take flak from animal rights activists to win over sportsmen.

Compare that to George W. Bush’s most famous hunting trip. In 1994, Bush staged a dove hunt to help win over the sportsmen while he was running for Texas governor. But in one of seven shots, he accidentally shot a protected shorebird known as a killdeer and had to pay the fine. Still, just how many hunters and fishermen will give Bush the ultimatum over public lands oil and gas development remains to be seen.

”I think it’s a real galvanizing issue for the hunter and angler,” says Lackey. ”We are ready to lose the last wild places that we can enjoy as a public, and I’m trying to get the word out to as many people as I can.”

TERROR IS LOSING By PAUL WOLFOWITZ, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense

One such [web] site shows Iraqi women demonstrating against Resolution 137, passed by the Iraqi Governing Council, which threatened women’s rights.

These women – who were exercising their right of free speech to demonstrate for women’s rights – were dressed in very conservative Muslim fashion. Yet, as one of them put it: ”We didn’t wait all these years without the most basic rights to be denied them now.”

An Arab reporter asked if she were Sunni or Shi’a. She snapped: ”I’m an Iraqi citizen first and foremost, and I refuse to be asked such a question.”

In increasing numbers, likeminded Iraqi women – and men – are making it clear they expect basic rights. People are listening. Not only did this pressure force the repeal of Resolution 137, but, when the new Iraqi interim constitution was signed March 8, it contained assurances of equal rights – and substantial representation – for women.

It also provides for other fundamental pillars of true democracy, including separation of powers and an independent judiciary, rule of law, fundamental civil rights and civilian control of the military. That’s a significant step forward that came from heated and healthy political debate – debate that would have been impossible a year ago.

While such debates do show that Iraqis disagree among themselves, they demonstrate – more importantly – that Iraqis can debate those issues openly and democratically. Significantly, in a recent opinion poll of Iraqis, 56 percent said things were going better today than a year ago; 71 percent said they thought they would be better off a year from now.

This is a long and disturbing article about what we are dying for in Iraq. mjh

President George W. Bush says that for the Iraqi people, Saddam Hussein’s removal ”was the beginning of their deliverance”:

”The liberation of Iraq was good for the Iraqi people, good for America, and good for the world. The fall of the Iraqi dictator has removed a source of violence, aggression, and instability from the Middle East.”

Women Under Siege by Lauren Sandler, The Nation (Posted December 11, 2003)

Millions of women have found themselves living under such de facto house arrest since the coalition forces claimed Baghdad in April [2003]. …

[A]s women here will remind you, the advantage to living under a police state is that the streets feel safe. As demeaning, terrifying and tragic as life under a dictator was for Iraqis, threats were not random acts from random criminals but rather tightly controlled, deliberately deployed terrors. These days the sheer unpredictability of violence is what makes the fear so pervasive. Then, women may have been afraid to step out of line, but now they’re afraid even to step outside their homes alone. …

”All cases that have to do with kidnapping, they are lies, they are not real. And after the war we haven’t received any case of rape,” says a thickly mustached Lieut. Khalil Majid Ahmed, who manages the all-male-staffed precinct. My questioning of this assertion was met with livid bellowing. ”Has anyone tried to assault you? No? So how can you judge? This subject should be closed!” His second in command–with matching mustache–named Lieut. Col. Ra’ad Heider, elaborated vehemently, ”Iraqi society has customs and traditions that keep us very well served. No American values are practiced here. Things that have to do with women, rape, that kind of thing–we will never follow American values!” …

For women, moreover, the sad irony is that while many Iraqis would see any attempt to help them as a US ploy, the coalition is doing nothing to help them anyway. … [T]he coalition failed to grapple with the human rights consequences of a power shift in that direction, especially as far as women, who make up 65 percent of Iraq’s war-ravaged population, are concerned. While new governmental ministries were created to support various causes like the environment and displaced people, a ministry of women’s affairs was immediately rejected. … Over dinner in the palace cafeteria one night, when I discussed the accelerating crisis for women with two high-ranking American officials in the Interior Ministry–which oversees police and security–I was told with shocking candor as my pen perched over my reporter’s notebook: ”We don’t do women.” It’s hardly a dirty secret that our government abroad views women’s rights as at most a secondary concern, yet it was thoroughly sobering to hear this lack of interest so casually discussed. … The Americans’ utter lack of comprehension of what Iraqi women have to offer was apparent at a meeting about women’s work prospects, when one well-meaning camouflage-clad officer said to rows of female attendees, including many professionals such as judges and doctors, ”Under the occupation, you can think about what work is appropriate for women to do–you don’t have to just sew anymore.”

Sad State: The Status of Women’s Rights Throughout the World – American Jurist – Features By Angela N. White, American Jurist [WARNING: shocking photo at the previous link]

Ironically, before Hussein took over – and even during part of his reign – women in Iraq enjoyed an unusual amount of freedom in the Middle East. For the past 40 years, Iraq’s civil code protected women by prohibiting marriage below the age of 18, as well as outlawing arbitrary divorce and polygamy. But now in post-war Iraq, women are fighting simply to retain the rights they once had.

The Iraqi Governing Council – backed by the U.S. – approved Resolution 137, which places family law under the jurisdiction of Islamic law. This would allow polygamy and divorce at will available only to men, as well as guaranteed custody of children by men in the event of divorce.

Furthermore, feminist activists attempting to restore women’s rights in Iraq have received death threats. And last fall, Aquila Hashima of Iraq’s Governing Council was murdered, according to the Feminist Majority. She was one of only three women on the Council.

This sobering overview notes conditions for women in Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, China, Pakistan, Nigeria and elsewhere. mjh

From the article:
It’s a man’s world. And women are paying the ultimate price to live in it.

Despite efforts by the United Nations and international organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, systematic (and often government-sanctioned) violence against women remains a problem throughout the world. As a result, women are treated as prisoners, as slaves, as punching bags and as property. And it appears as though no woman is immune.

The Daily Star – Politics – Iraqi women try to stay the course after an advocate’s killing By Annia Ciezadlo

KARBALA, IRAQ: Those in public roles often face death threats, assassination attempts. ‘We are all targets,’ says an outspoken feminist. ‘There are many activists, but they cannot speak out boldly against political Islam.’

For their new women’s center, the women of Karbala chose the name of a warrior: Zainab al-Hawraa. Sister of the Shiite martyr Imam Hussein, Zainab fought alongside him in 680 AD, saving his young son and his legacy for future generations.

When Fern Holland heard the story, she laughed and told the women, ”We want all Iraqi women to be just like her.”

Holland, a young lawyer from Oklahoma, was women’s rights coordinator of Iraq’s Shiite heartland for the Coalition Provisional Authority. She helped write the portion of the new constitution addressing women’s rights. To the women in Karbala, she was ”just like a sister.”

On March 9, after visiting the center, Holland and her deputy, Salwa Ourmashi, and coalition press officer Robert Zangas were killed, their car forced off the road and machine gunned. Investigators arrested six suspects, four with valid Iraqi police ID.

Coalition officials hesitate to conclude if the three civilians were targeted for promoting women’s rights….

Over the past few months, Iraqi women in public roles, especially those who work with the US or promote women’s rights, have been targets of death threats and assassination attempts. Many large international aid groups, including most of those with women’s programs, have already withdrawn international staff, and the few remaining women’s groups fear they will be next. …

[E]ven devout women who wear the veil aren’t safe: Raja Habib Khuzai, a Shiite member of the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, received threats after opposing a measure that would have replaced Iraq’s civil personal status laws with Sharia law. …

Under Saddam Hussein, women enjoyed civil protections relatively advanced for the Arab world, a legacy of the pre-Baathist monarchy. But after the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, Hussein began courting Islamic hard-liners, segregating schools and decriminalizing polygamy and ”honor killings.”

After the 1991 Gulf War, women in Iraq’s Kurdish-controlled north passed laws protecting their rights, including one outlawing honor killings. But elsewhere, Saddam’s regimed clamped down on women, especially in the south, where Saddam executed tens of thousands of Shiites.

Today, women make up about two-thirds of southern Iraq’s population. Yet they are largely absent from public life.

We ‘liberated’ Afghanistan. They wrote a constitution that many Bush supporters have suggested is a shining example of what the world will be like after Duhbya finishes remaking it. Back in your burkas, girls! mjh

Women banned on Afghan province’s TV and radio

JALALABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) – An Afghan province has banned women from performing on television and radio, declaring female entertainers un-Islamic.

The ban in Nangahar, a southeastern province heavily patrolled by U.S.-led troops hunting for Islamic militants, took effect from Friday and also covers women presenters of news and other information, an official said on Saturday.

The decision echoes the strict imposition of sharia Islamic law imposed during the Taliban’s repressive five-year rule of Afghanistan when television was banned, women were forbidden from working and girls were kept out of schools. …

Diplomats said Nangahar’s ban would be seen as a setback for moderates in President Hamid Karzai’s government in their battle with conservatives opposed to liberalisation since the Taliban’s overthrow.

AFGHANISTAN: Local radio makes impact in conservative Kandahar

Established just two months ago with the support of the Washington-based Afghan Cultural Society (ACS), Azad Afghan has a more challenging task of promoting democracy in the conservative, male-dominated and poor security environment of the south.

While the station is well equipped, with funding for the next three years, according to Zeyarmal, they have yet to be able to attract female workers pending safety concerns for women heard on the media. ”There are no female reporters in Kandahar, even in state media. Due to security and cultural limitations even educated women wouldn’t dare be heard via radio or seen on TV,” Zeryamal noted.

StarNewsOnline.com: The Voice of Southeastern North Carolina

Mr. Brahimi, a veteran of peacekeeping operations, most recently was in charge of putting together a government in Afghanistan, for which he won widespread praise. The Afghan model of convening a council of notables from around the country to approve a new constitution is similar to the one he has proposed for Iraq.

Remarks By First Lady Laura Bush at Kilmer for Congress Luncheon

Thanks to my husband’s decisions and America’s actions, 50 million people are free from tyranny and oppression. (Applause.) Consider the women and girls of Afghanistan. During the long years of the Taliban regime, they were virtual prisoners in their homes, unable to leave their home without a male relative. And if they didn’t have a male relative, they were actually forced to have to beg, because they were outlawed from going to school or to work.

Now the people of Afghanistan have new leaders, new freedoms and a constitution guaranteeing the rights of women. And thanks to my husband’s leadership and America’s actions, the people of Iraq are free from the tyranny and the torture of Saddam Hussein and today they are building a free and democratic society.

Yeah, right, Laura. After your husband finishes liberating the women of the world, he’s going to free American women from the tyranny of choice. mjh