{"id":303,"date":"2004-01-16T06:02:43","date_gmt":"2004-01-16T10:02:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/wordpress\/?p=303"},"modified":"2004-01-16T06:02:43","modified_gmt":"2004-01-16T10:02:43","slug":"whose-democracy-is-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=303","title":{"rendered":"Whose Democracy Is It?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The NYT<\/i>‘s headline reads ‘U.S. Joins Iraqis to Seek U.N. Role in Interim Rule’<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Bit of a stretch to imply that Iraqis on the Governing Council are representatives of more than U.S. interests, but to the NYT<\/i>‘s credit, they explore some reasons why that isn’t the case even as representatives of the Bush administration insist that it is.<\/p>\n

Juan Cole does a much better job<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And while bartering for the rubber-stamping of U.S. approved elections in Iraq may be part of the reason some countries are now being given serious consideration for reconstruction contracts, I can’t help but wonder if Martin’s willingness to negotiate<\/a> on missile defence shield plans didn’t play a factor in Canada’s upgraded status.<\/p>\n

Update 1-16-04: Just read the conclusion<\/a> of Sean Penn’s two-part series about his recent trip to Iraq. He describes two encounters with private military corporation (PMC) personnel.<\/p>\n

The following conversation took place while Penn waited outside the hotel of Newsday’s Africa correspondent Samson Mulugeta, the man he was to share a 12-hour taxicab ride to Jordan still inside:<\/p>\n

I walk out onto the stoop in front of the hotel to smoke a cigarette in the morning air. And there they are, another unit of PMC men polishing their rifles, suiting up in bulletproof vests and warming up the engines of armored vehicles. And out of the hotel comes their client. He too has a chain around his neck with an identification card, sees me and says, “Hey, aren’t you …?” <\/p>\n

“Yeah,” I say. “Your ID card says contractor. What do you build?” <\/p>\n

And with a smile, he says, “Elections.” <\/p>\n

“How do you do that?” <\/p>\n

He grins a little more and says, “Whatever it takes.” <\/p>\n

(Could this guy be from Florida?)<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The NYT‘s headline reads ‘U.S. Joins Iraqis to Seek U.N. Role in Interim Rule’. Bit of a stretch to imply that Iraqis on the Governing Council are representatives of more than U.S. interests, but to the NYT‘s credit, they explore … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-4T","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}