Long Tours Extend Heartaches for Military Moms

By Alison Bowen
Women's eNews

Sunday 27 May 2007

Thirty-eight percent of active-duty military women are mothers. Many are deployed abroad but have children at home in the US. A congressional report says these military moms lack child care support and services to help ease the separations.

U.S. Army Capt. Wendy Bernard, in the middle of a one-year deployment in Iraq, came home for two weeks' leave in the summer of 2004 to find that her year-old daughter, Clark, wouldn't speak to her after six months of separation.

"By the time she warmed up to me, it was time to go again," Bernard said. She returned to Iraq, staying until January 2005 while her husband, U.S. Army Master Sgt. Matthew Atkinson, took care of Clark and their 13-year-old son Blake at home in New York.

Extended deployments and abbreviated family leaves are among the difficulties probed by a May 11 congressional report by the Joint Economic Committee on the difficulties of deployed mothers, who typically are young parents with lower incomes.

"I think that all mothers face challenges, but military moms have the added burden of longer deployments and longer separations from their children," said Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., who released the report with Sen. Charles Schumer.

Women represent 1 in 7 military personnel in Iraq, and 38 percent of active-duty women are mothers.

Mothers in active duty have been at the center of a controversial debate since women joined the armed forces in support positions in 1901, stirring ideological battles over how the mother-child bond affects women's right to equal work, pay and rank.

But the study, "Helping Military Moms Balance Family and Longer Deployments," accepts that women with children are in the armed forces and focuses on practical and procedural matters: the availability of high-quality child care, the length of leaves of absence and access to mental health services.

Nearly half of active-duty women are in the lower pay grades - earning between $14,436 and $24,744 - and more than half of soldiers with children became parents between 20 and 25 years old.

Scramble for Child Care

For many, word of a deployment can mean a scramble for child care because, while military bases have substantial day care systems, not all children remain on the base after a deployment.

At least 230,000 children have a parent stationed in Iraq, Afghanistan or the Horn of Africa, according to the report. Among these, the military estimates it lacks 35,000 spots in its day care program for children whose parents are deployed abroad.

Army equipment parts clerk and single mom U.S. Army Sgt. Karyn Obey decided to move 2-year-old Christopher to live with her parents in New York when she deployed to Afghanistan.

Before she left, she and Christopher's father, who had just been posted to a Washington state military base, cobbled the money together for his $685-per-month New York day care bill. Each parent contributed $500 a month for Christopher's food, clothes, and piano and karate lessons.

Obey flew to Afghanistan on her son's third birthday for a year-long deployment.

"I'd never been separated from him before," Obey said. "To be at the flight line, looking at this plane, and to know that today's my son's special day and I'm about to go on this plane instead of being with him and blowing out his candles; that tore me up for a long time."

The report recommends expanding child care services to meet upcoming deployment needs, extending family leave periods after child birth and adoption and setting aside resources for mental health services to assist mothers before and after deployments.

Maloney expects them to be implemented within the decade.

Risk of Losing Female Soldiers

The U.S. Government Accountability Office, which evaluates government programs and expenditures, will release another report on June 21 about work-and-family balance. If resources for military mothers do not improve, Maloney says, the military will lose female soldiers.

Obey, who recently re-enlisted for six more years, said the Army was a way to pay off student loans, fix her credit and earn a master's degree in public administration.

For Bernard, who left her native Jamaica at age 16 to pursue an education in the United States, joining the military was a way to give back for the opportunities she received.

"A lot of people say to me, 'How could you do it? How could you?'" Bernard said. "And for me, I say, 'How could you not?'"

Deployment can be particularly difficult for mothers: 64 percent of women with children experience emotional health problems after deployment, compared to 39 percent of women without children, according to the congressional report.

"Sometimes the only thing you can do is go to bed sobbing yourselves to sleep," said Bernard, who missed her daughter's first steps and words. "Sometimes you have to be completely strong and not think about your own issues."

The Internet allowed Bernard to monitor her teen son's homework and receive photos of her daughter in amusing outfits chosen by her husband. Obey depended on weekly phone calls and packages to speak with her son Christopher, who was too young to understand why she left home.

"That crushed me," Obey said. "That broke me. I had no choice but to say, 'It's not that you're a bad boy; it's just that mommy's working.'"

The Department of Defense implemented new Web restrictions May 14 that prohibit soldiers' access to MySpace and YouTube, sites commonly used to share messages, photos and video with family and friends. The restrictions are intended to free up the military's network space and increase connection speed.

Disrupting Parental Relationship

After returning from deployment, women report a decline in emotional health and well-being that affects relationships with their children, according to the report.

"I was kind of freaked out by him," says Obey about returning to Christopher, who turned 4 in her absence. "He had grown so much and become so independent; it kind of made me feel like I had been replaced."

When Obey returned in March 2007, she stayed with her parents and Christopher before returning with her son to North Carolina, where she lives now and was stationed before deploying.

One day, just after she returned, her parents left her alone with her son for four hours. When they came home, she cried. She said she felt he had become a different child.

Her nerves were fragile, Obey said. She felt she was too quick to snap at Christopher, and she couldn't get used to not carrying the 4-pound gun she was required to have with her at all times in Afghanistan. She woke from nightmares during the night, disoriented, and she avoided New York City because the crowds reminded her of a May 2006 riot in Kabul where her vehicle, the first in a convoy, was trapped in the middle of 5,000 rioters throwing rocks.

She and Christopher leave in July for Germany, where she will be posted on a base. She hopes her re-enlistment will not include a 15-month tour in Iraq so she and her son can keep on getting back to normal.

"I try to be as patient with him as possible," she said. "I hope he's patient with me too."

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Alison Bowen is a New York-based reporter with Women's eNews.

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Bill Heats Up Talk of Solar Water Systems

By Margot Roosevelt
The Los Angeles Times

Tuesday 29 May 2007

The Assembly measure offers incentives for using the sun's energy instead of gas or coal. Utilities fear they could lose millions of dollars.

At first glance, the ranch-style stucco house on a quiet Encino street looks no different from its neighbors. A manicured lawn. A bottlebrush tree. Two cars in the driveway. You couldn't tell, unless you climbed a ladder or glanced into the utility shed, that Richard and Barbara Braun's home is a foot soldier in the war against global warming.

On a south-facing slant of the roof, two solar panels warm pipes of circulating water for showers, dishwashing and laundry.

"It's simple - no complicated parts," said Braun, a retired surgeon.

A bill aimed at making such heating systems widely available is expected to move through the state Assembly's Appropriation Committee on Wednesday and to the full body next week.

But the bill, which would offer $250 million in incentives to build 200,000 solar water systems statewide over the next 10 years, is running into opposition from gas and electric companies. They don't want the plan funded through a surcharge on residential and commercial gas bills.

"It's a noble effort," said Avis Kowalewski, vice president for Western Regulatory Affairs at Calpine Corp., which owns 22 gas-fueled power plants in the state. "But this bill could cost our company alone between $14 million and $18 million over 10 years."

But residential gas users would pay only about 13 cents a month extra, according to the California Public Utilities Commission. And the benefits could be substantial.

Studies by KEMA-Xenergy, an energy consulting firm, show that using solar systems in California homes and businesses with access to sunlight could cut the use of residential natural gas by about 24% and reduce total statewide consumption by more than 5%, said Assemblyman Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael), the bill's author.

Though natural gas is cleaner than oil or coal, its burning still spews carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and is a major cause of climate change, experts say.

"This is one of the simplest, easiest steps we can take to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels," Huffman said.

Although a federal tax credit currently exists for installation of solar water heaters, no state subsidies have been available since the mid-1980s, when generous incentives were allowed to expire.

Last year, California enacted a "million solar roofs" bill, which allocates $3.2 billion in rebates for solar photovoltaic panels - a sophisticated silicon-based technology - that replace electricity. But the final law excluded solar water heaters.

A residential solar water heating system can cost $4,000 to $6,000, but with the incentives proposed under Huffman's bill, consumers could recoup their costs in less than 10 years through reduced gas bills. On average, a solar system takes the place of about 75% of the gas normally used in a home.

When Braun installed a solar water system 30 years ago, he had four children and a niece living in the house.

"We saved a third of our gas bill," he said. Now with only himself and his wife at home, "The gas is rarely on."

For hotels, restaurants, apartment buildings and other big hot water users, the savings can make the difference between profit and loss.

"They've performed very well and saved me a bundle," said William McLaughlin, who installed solar water heaters in the 1980s on three of his Inglewood apartment buildings and on his own house in Rancho Palos Verdes.

On one 28-unit building, which features 26 panels, the monthly gas bill runs $400, but "without solar, it would be $1,000," McLaughlin said.

Unlike solar photovoltaic electricity, the technology for solar water heaters, also known as solar thermal, is hardly new. The world's first solar water heater was patented in the U.S. in 1891. By 1897, a third of all Pasadena homes had them. But with the discovery of cheap natural gas in the Los Angeles Basin in the 1920s, solar went out of fashion.

The 1970s energy crisis revived the industry. Federal and state subsidies that together covered 80% of costs led to a proliferation of fly-by-night installers charging high prices. Solar water heating got a bad name, and when the energy crisis lifted, subsidies dried up and the industry all but collapsed. Last year, only 1,000 solar water heaters were installed in all of California. Nationwide, 9,000 were installed, nearly half in Hawaii, where hefty rebates are offered.

In the meantime, improved technology and higher fuel prices are boosting the use of solar thermal around the world. Installations jumped 14% in 2005, bringing the worldwide total to 46 million homes. In Israel, 90% of homes have solar water heaters. Even Austria, with its chilly climate, installed 40 times more systems in 2005 than California - although it has a quarter of the population.

In opposing the bill, Calpine is joined by San Francisco-based Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego-based Sempra Energy, which owns Southern California Gas Co. and San Diego Gas & Electric Co. But the gas companies and Huffman said they would work to forge a compromise.

There are signs that momentum is building for solar water heating, especially with mounting opposition to proposed liquid natural gas terminals.

A pilot program, sponsored by the Public Utilities Commission, will subsidize 750 installations in San Diego beginning this summer.

Today, homeowners and businesses are wary of the upfront costs of solar heating. But "the legislation will create a large enough market that prices will drop and it will become cost-effective in time," said Bernadette Del Chiaro, an energy expert for the advocacy group Environment California who helped draft the bill.

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Here Comes the Sun

The United States lags behind many countries in the use of solar energy to heat water.

Heating Water With Solar Energy

Percent of each country's total hot water generation produced by solar energy in 2005:

• China: 62%
  
  
• Rest of the world: 17%
  
  
• EU: 13%
  
  
• Japan: 6%
  
  
• U.S.: 2%

Typical System

Generally, solar water heaters work either by heating the water directly or via a heat-transfer fluid. Hot water is stored in a tank until needed.

• Rooftop collector
  
  
• Storage tank or backup heater
  
  
• Solar-heated tap water

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Source: Environment California Research and Policy Center.

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Lawmakers Push for Big Subsidies for Coal Process

By Edmund L. Andrews
The New York Times

Tuesday 29 May 2007

Washington - Even as Congressional leaders draft legislation to reduce greenhouse gases linked to global warming, a powerful roster of Democrats and Republicans is pushing to subsidize coal as the king of alternative fuels.

Senator Jeff Bingaman, Democrat of New Mexico, is drafting a bill to promote renewable fuels, but not liquefied coal, for electricity.

Prodded by intense lobbying from the coal industry, lawmakers from coal states are proposing that taxpayers guarantee billions of dollars in construction loans for coal-to-liquid production plants, guarantee minimum prices for the new fuel, and guarantee big government purchases for the next 25 years.

With both House and Senate Democrats hoping to pass "energy independence" bills by mid-July, coal supporters argue that coal-based fuels are more American than gasoline and potentially greener than ethanol.

"For so many, filthy coal is a dirty four-letter word," said Representative Nick V. Rahall, Democrat of West Virginia and chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee. "These individuals, I tell you, have their heads buried in the sand."

Environmental groups are adamantly opposed, warning that coal-based diesel fuels would at best do little to slow global warming and at worst would produce almost twice as much of the greenhouse gases tied to global warming as petroleum.

Coal companies are hardly alone in asking taxpayers to underwrite alternative fuels in the name of energy independence and reduced global warming. But the scale of proposed subsidies for coal could exceed those for any alternative fuel, including corn-based ethanol.

Among the proposed inducements winding through House and Senate committees: loan guarantees for six to 10 major coal-to-liquid plants, each likely to cost at least $3 billion; a tax credit of 51 cents for every gallon of coal-based fuel sold through 2020; automatic subsidies if oil prices drop below $40 a barrel; and permission for the Air Force to sign 25-year contracts for almost a billion gallons a year of coal-based jet fuel.

Coal companies have spent millions of dollars lobbying on the issue, and have marshaled allies in organized labor, the Air Force and fuel-burning industries like the airlines. Peabody Energy, the world's biggest coal company, urged in a recent advertising campaign that people "imagine a world where our country runs on energy from Middle America instead of the Middle East."

Representative Rick Boucher, a Virginia Democrat whose district is dominated by coal mining, is writing key sections of the House energy bill. In the Senate, champions of coal-to-liquid fuels include Barack Obama, the Illinois Democrat, Jim Bunning of Kentucky and Larry Craig of Wyoming, both Republicans.

President Bush has not weighed in on specific incentives, but he has often stressed the importance of coal as an alternative to foreign oil. In calling for a 20 percent cut in projected gasoline consumption by 2017, he has carefully referred to the need for "alternative" fuels rather than "renewable" fuels. Administration officials say that was specifically to make room for coal.

The political momentum to subsidize coal fuels is in odd juxtaposition to simultaneous efforts by Democrats to draft global-warming bills that would place new restrictions on coal-fired electric power plants.

The move reflects a tension, which many lawmakers gloss over, between slowing global warming and reducing dependence on foreign oil.

Many analysts say the huge coal reserves of the United States could indeed provide a substitute for foreign oil.

The technology to convert coal into liquid fuel is well-established, and the fuel can be used in conventional diesel cars and trucks, as well as jet engines, boats and ships. Industry executives contend that the fuels can compete against gasoline if oil prices are about $50 a barrel or higher.

But coal-to-liquid fuels produce almost twice the volume of greenhouse gases as ordinary diesel. In addition to the carbon dioxide emitted while using the fuel, the production process creates almost a ton of carbon dioxide for every barrel of liquid fuel.

Coal industry executives insist their fuel can actually be cleaner than oil, because they would capture the gas produced as the liquid fuel is being made and store it underground. Some could be injected into oil fields to push oil to the surface.

Several aspiring coal-to-liquid companies say that they would reduce greenhouse emissions even further by using renewable fuels for part of the process. But none of that has been done at commercial volumes, and many analysts say the economic issues are far from settled.

"There are many uncertainties," said James T. Bartis, a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation, who testified last week before the Senate Energy Committee. "We don't even know what the costs are yet."

The clash between "energy independence" and global warming will break into the open next month. The Senate energy bill, being drafted by Senator Jeff Bingaman, Democrat of New Mexico, would promote renewable fuels - but not coal-to-liquid fuels - and would require electric utilities to produce 15 percent of their power with renewable fuels by 2020.

But coal-state Republicans have vowed to resume their push for coal incentives when the bill reaches the Senate floor, and many Democrats are likely to support them. In the House, Democrats like Mr. Boucher and Mr. Rahall will be pushing in the same direction.

But some energy experts, as well as some lawmakers, worry that the scale of the coal-to-liquid incentives could lead to a repeat of a disastrous effort 30 years ago to underwrite a synthetic fuels industry from scratch.

When oil prices plunged in the 1980s, the government-owned Synthetic Fuels Corporation became a giant government albatross that lost billions and remains a symbol of misguided industrial policy more than 25 years later.

"This is the snake oil of energy alternatives," said Peter Altman, a policy analyst at the National Environmental Trust, an environmental advocacy group. "The promises are just as lofty and the substance is just as absent as the first snake oil salesmen who plied their trade in the 1800s."

Coal executives contend that the technology for converting coal to "ultraclean" diesel fuel for use in cars and trucks has been around for decades. Known as the Fischer-Tropsch process, the technology dates to the 1920s. It was used by Germany during World War II and by South Africa during the apartheid era, in both cases because the countries were blocked by international embargoes from buying oil.

SASOL, a South African chemical conglomerate, is the world's largest producer of coal-based liquids and operates a plant that produces 150,000 barrels a day.

"Greener and cleaner - we can do it, and we will do it," said John Baardson, president of Baard Energy, a firm in Vancouver, Wash., that is trying to build a $4 billion coal-to-liquid plant in Ohio.

But no company has built a commercial-scale plant that also captures carbon, and experts caution that many obstacles lie ahead.

"At best, you're going to tread water on the carbon issue, and you're probably going to do worse," said Howard Herzog, a principal research engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a co-author of "The Future of Coal," a voluminous study published in March by M.I.T. "It goes against the whole grain of reducing carbon."

The M.I.T. team expressed even more skepticism about the economic risks. It estimated that it would cost $70 billion to build enough plants to replace 10 percent of American gasoline consumption.

The study estimates that the construction costs for coal-to-liquid plants are almost four times higher than the costs for comparable petroleum refineries, and it argues that cost estimates for synthetic fuel plants in the past turned out to be "wildly optimistic."

In a new report last week, the Energy Department estimated that a plant capable of making 50,000 barrels of liquefied coal a day - a tiny fraction of the nearly 9 million barrels in gasoline burned daily in the United States - would cost $4.5 billion.

But the Energy Department also estimated that such a plant could produce a 20 percent annual return if oil prices remain about $60 a barrel.

Coal executives say that they need government help primarily because oil prices are so volatile and the upfront construction costs are so high. "We're not asking for everything. All we're asking for is something," said Hunt Ramsbottom, chief executive of Rentech Inc., which is trying to build two plants at mines owned by Peabody Energy.

But coal executives anticipate potentially huge profits. Gregory H. Boyce, chief executive of Peabody Energy, based in St. Louis, which has $5.3 billion in sales, told an industry conference nearly two years ago that the value of Peabody's coal reserves would skyrocket almost tenfold, to $3.6 trillion, if it sold all its coal in the form of liquid fuels.

Coal industry lobbying has reached a fever pitch. The industry spent $6 million on federal lobbying in 2005 and 2006, three times what it spent each year from 2000 through 2004, according to calculations by Politicalmoneyline.com.

Peabody, which has quadrupled its annual lobbying budget to about $2 million since 2004, recently hired Richard A. Gephardt, the Missouri Democrat who was House majority leader from 1989 to 1995 and a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988 and 2004, to help make its case in Congress.

One of the most vociferous champions of coal-to-liquid fuels is the Southern States Energy Board, a group organized by governors from 16 states. Last year, the group published a study, which cost $500,000, that concluded that coal-to-liquid fuel could and should replace almost one-third of imported oil by 2030.

As it happens, the coal industry supplied much of the financing for the study and subsequent marketing. Peabody Energy contributed about $150,000 and the National Mining Association added $50,000, officials at the Southern States Energy Board said.

The inducements under discussion would not only subsidize up to 10 coal-to-liquid plants, but also guarantee a minimum market through long-term contracts with the Air Force and minimum prices for at least some producers.

"There is financial uncertainty, which is inhibiting the flow of private capital into the construction of coal-to-liquid facilities," said Mr. Boucher, who supports most of the proposals and is drafting portions of the energy bill.

In addition to construction loan guarantees, Mr. Boucher would protect the first six liquid plants from drops in energy prices. If oil prices fell below about $40 a barrel, the government would automatically grant loans to the first six plants that make coal-based fuels. If oil prices climbed to $80 a barrel, companies would have to pay a surcharge to the government.

But the most important guarantee, many coal producers said, is the prospect of signing 25-year purchase contracts with the Air Force.

The Air Force consumes about 2.6 billion gallons a year of jet fuel, and Air Force officials would like to switch as much as 780 million gallons a year to coal-based fuels. Air Force officials strongly support the idea of extremely long contracts, but others at the Defense Department worry that the military could be left holding the bag for years if oil prices dropped significantly.

For Mr. Boyce, chief executive of Peabody Energy, there is no reason to be timid.

"If America has the will to be one of the great energy centers of the world," he told an industry conference last year, "we have the resources right under our feet."

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Desperate Iraqi Refugees Turn to Sex Trade in Syria

By Katherine Zoepf
The New York Times

Tuesday 29 May 2007

Maraba, Syria - Back home in Iraq, Umm Hiba's daughter was a devout schoolgirl, modest in her dress and serious about her studies. Hiba, who is now 16, wore the hijab, or Islamic head scarf, and rose early each day to say the dawn prayer before classes.

But that was before militias began threatening their Baghdad neighborhood and Umm Hiba and her daughter fled to Syria last spring. There were no jobs, and Umm Hiba's elderly father developed complications related to his diabetes.

Desperate, Umm Hiba followed the advice of an Iraqi acquaintance and took her daughter to work at a nightclub along a highway known for prostitution. "We Iraqis used to be a proud people," she said over the frantic blare of the club's speakers. She pointed out her daughter, dancing among about two dozen other girls on the stage, wearing a pink silk dress with spaghetti straps, her frail shoulders bathed in colored light.

As Umm Hiba watched, a middle-aged man climbed onto the platform and began to dance jerkily, arms flailing, among the girls.

"During the war we lost everything," she said. "We even lost our honor." She insisted on being identified by only part of her name - Umm Hiba means mother of Hiba.

For anyone living in Damascus these days, the fact that some Iraqi refugees are selling sex or working in sex clubs is difficult to ignore.

Even in central Damascus, men freely talk of being approached by pimps trawling for customers outside juice shops and shawarma sandwich stalls, and of women walking up to passing men, an act unthinkable in Arab culture, and asking in Iraqi-accented Arabic if the men would like to "have a cup of tea."

By day the road that leads from Damascus to the historic convent at Saidnaya is often choked with Christian and Muslim pilgrims hoping for one of the miracles attributed to a portrait of the Virgin Mary at the convent. But as any Damascene taxi driver can tell you, the Maraba section of this fabled pilgrim road is fast becoming better known for its brisk trade in Iraqi prostitutes.

Many of these women and girls, including some barely in their teens, are recent refugees. Some are tricked or forced into prostitution, but most say they have no other means of supporting their families. As a group they represent one of the most visible symptoms of an Iraqi refugee crisis that has exploded in Syria in recent months.

According to the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, about 1.2 million Iraqi refugees now live in Syria; the Syrian government puts the figure even higher.

Given the deteriorating economic situation of those refugees, a United Nations report found last year, many girls and women in "severe need" turn to prostitution, in secret or even with the knowledge or involvement of family members. In many cases, the report added, "the head of the family brings clients to the house."

Aid workers say thousands of Iraqi women work as prostitutes in Syria, and point out that as violence in Iraq has increased, the refugee population has come to include more female-headed households and unaccompanied women.

"So many of the Iraqi women arriving now are living on their own with their children because the men in their families were killed or kidnapped," said Sister Marie-Claude Naddaf, a Syrian nun at the Good Shepherd convent in Damascus, which helps Iraqi refugees.

She said the convent had surveyed Iraqi refugees living in Masaken Barzeh, on the outskirts of Damascus, and found 119 female-headed households in one small neighborhood. Some of the women, seeking work outside the home for the first time and living in a country with high unemployment, find that their only marketable asset is their bodies.

"I met three sisters-in-law recently who were living together and all prostituting themselves," Sister Marie-Claude said. "They would go out on alternate nights - each woman took her turn - and then divide the money to feed all the children."

For more than three years after the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iraqi prostitution in Syria, like any prostitution, was a forbidden topic for Syria's government. Like drug abuse, the sex trade tends to be referred to in the local news media as acts against public decency. But Dietrun Günther, an official at the United Nations refugee agency's Damascus office, said the government was finally breaking its silence.

"We're especially concerned that there are young girls involved, and that they're being forced, even smuggled into Syria in some cases," Ms. Günther said. "We've had special talks with the Syrian government about prostitution." She called the officials' new openness "a great step."

Mouna Asaad, a Syrian women's rights lawyer, said the government had been blindsided by the scale of the arriving Iraqi refugee population. Syria does not require visas for citizens of Arab countries, and its government had pledged to assist needy Iraqis. But this country of 19 million was ill equipped to cope with the sudden arrival of hundreds of thousands of them, Ms. Asaad said.

"Sometimes you see whole families living this way, the girls pimped by the mother or aunt," she said. "But prostitution isn't the only problem. Our schools are overcrowded, and the prices of services, food and transportation have all risen. We don't have the proper infrastructure to deal with this. We don't have shelters or health centers that these women can go to. And because of the situation in Iraq, Syria is careful not to deport these women."

Most of the semi-organized prostitution takes place on the outskirts of the capital, in nightclubs known as casinos - a local euphemism, because no gambling occurs.

At Al Rawabi, an expensive nightclub in Al Hami, there is even a floor show with an Iraqi theme. One recent evening, waiters brought out trays of snacks: French fries and grilled chicken hearts wrapped in foil folded into diamond shapes. A 10-piece band warmed up, and an M.C. gave the traditionally overwrought introduction in Arabic: "I give you the honey of all stages, the stealer of all hearts, the most golden throat, the glamorous artist: Maria!"

Maria, a buxom young woman, climbed onto the stage and began an anguished-sounding ballad. "After Iraq I have no homeland," she sang. "I'm ready to go crawling on my knees back to Iraq." Four other women, all wearing variations on leopard print, gyrated on stage, swinging their hair in wild circles. The stage lights had been fitted with colored gel filters that lent the women's skin a greenish cast.

Al Rawabi's customers watched Maria calmly, leaning back in their chairs and drinking Johnnie Walker Black. The large room smelled strongly of sweat mingled with the apple tobacco from scores of water pipes. When Maria finished singing, no one clapped.

She picked up the microphone again and began what she called a salute to Iraq, naming many of the Iraqi women in the club and, indicating one of the women in leopard print who had danced with her, "most especially my best friend, Sahar."

After the dancers filed offstage and scattered around the room to talk to customers, Sahar told a visitor she was from the Dora district of Baghdad but had left "because of the troubles." Now, she said she would leave the club with him for $200.

Aid workers say $50 to $70 is considered a good night's wage for an Iraqi prostitute working in Damascus. And some of the Iraqi dancers in the crowded casinos of Damascus suburbs earn much less.

In Maraba, Umm Hiba would not say how much money her daughter took home at the end of a night. Noticing her reluctance, the club's manager, who introduced himself as Hassan, broke in proudly.

"We make sure that each girl has a minimum of 500 lira at the end of each night, no matter how bad business is," he said, mentioning a sum of about $10. "We are sympathetic to the situation of the Iraqi people. And we try to give some extra help to the girls whose families are in special difficulties."

Umm Hiba shook her head. "It's true that the managers here are good, that they're helping us and not stealing the girls' money," she said. "But I'm so angry."

"Do you think we're happy that these men from the gulf are seeing our daughters' naked bodies?"

Most so-called casinos do not appear to directly broker arrangements between prostitutes and their customers. Zafer, a waiter at the club where Hiba works, said that the club earned money through sales of food and alcohol and that the dancers were encouraged to sit with male customers and order drinks to increase revenues.

Zafer, who spoke on condition that only his first name be used, refused to discuss specific women and girls at the club, but said that most of them did sell sexual favors. "They have an hourly rate," he said. "And they have regular customers."

Inexpensive Iraqi prostitutes have helped to make Syria a popular destination for sex tourists from wealthier countries in the Middle East. In the club's parking lot, nearly half of the cars had Saudi license plates.

From Damascus it is only about six hours by car, passing through Jordan, to the Saudi border. Syria, where it is relatively easy to buy alcohol and dance with women, is popular as a low-cost weekend destination for groups of Saudi men.

And though some women of other nationalities, including Russians and Moroccans, still work as prostitutes in Damascus, Abeer, a 23-year-old from Baghdad working at the same club as Hiba, explained that the arriving Iraqis had pushed many of them out of business.

"From what I've seen, 70 percent to 80 percent of the girls working this business in Damascus today are Iraqis," she said. "The rents here in Syria are too expensive for their families. If they go back to Iraq they'll be slaughtered, and this is the only work available."

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When Common Sense Is Not All That Common

By Dr. Wilmer J. Leon III
t r u t h o u t | Guest Contributor

Tuesday 29 May 2007

In an attempt to rush a deal through, the US Senate has begun to debate the Secure Borders, Economic Opportunities and Immigration Reform Act of 2007 - the so-called comprehensive immigration reform. This is another clear example of how rhetoric, labels and partisanship are getting in the way of common sense. I guess in today's American politics, common sense is not all that common.

In earlier editorials, I have defined politics as the honest debate and resulting negotiations between interested factions or groups about the distribution of limited public resources. The problem with the immigration debate is that both sides are so focused on their own principles and ideals that neither side can be intellectually honest and deal with the realities and practicalities of the issues. Also, because of partisan divisions that have been created by the rhetoric and intolerance, compromise (the true basis and strength of politics) is seen as weakness.

Theoretically, we would love to be able to welcome everyone to "the land of the free and home of the brave." Theoretically, everyone should have a shot at the American dream. Practically, because of limited resources, limits must be place on the number of those who immigrate to this country. The United States is a country of laws, and not of men. Theoretically, all of those who have broken the law to enter this country or violated the law while in this country should be captured and punished. Practically and realistically, that is not going to happen. So, what do we do?

• First and foremost, the borders must be secured. This is not some xenophobic paranoia of people from other countries. Practically, every country in the world needs to know who is entering the country, where they are coming from and why they are coming. There are health concerns, labor considerations and security issues that can't be ignored.
  
  The influx of immigration must be managed and controlled. That management should be based upon humanitarian concerns for all peoples of the world - the reality that people will travel and move to the United States in search of a better life - as well as the labor interests of the United States. If the United States can intercept international email traffic, listen to telephone conversations from all around the world, and use satellite imagery to see a flea on a fly's butt, why can't it secure its borders? One reason may be that maintaining a low-wage labor underclass in America is more important to business interests than real border security and national security. Up to this point, the border security proposals have been a farce.
  
  
• Second, greater responsibility must be placed on businesses to validate that the people they hire are properly documented. I have watched too much video of immigration agents raiding worksites in this country, arresting undocumented workers and carting them off to detention centers for deportation, while the employers of those workers go unpunished. Until the penalty for hiring undocumented workers becomes greater than the penalty for being an undocumented worker, the circumstance will not change.
  
  By enforcing penalties on employers, you can decrease the number of illegal jobs available. This will dramatically decrease the number of undocumented workers coming to this country in search of jobs. By focusing on employers and forcing them to keep track of and report who they actually employ, you can focus on fairer wages being paid and track the taxes those workers and employers should be paying. But, if maintaining a low-wage labor underclass in America is more important to business interests and the legislators they control, the American people will never get balanced comprehensive immigration reform.
  
  
• Third, America must take a hard look at its trade policy. As Noam Chomsky addresses in "Starving the Poor," for years, a goal of US foreign policy has been the creation of a global economy in which US corporations have unfettered access to markets, resources, investment opportunities and cheap labor. Inequities and injustices in US trade policy are creating circumstances in many countries, such as El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico, that force people to flee. I think it is fair to say that most people will not risk life and limb to leave their homeland if they feel safe and secure there. US trade policy has exacerbated the circumstance that we call illegal immigration.
  
  According to Chomksy, "An unlevel-playing-field impact of NAFTA was to flood Mexico with highly subsidized agribusiness exports, driving Mexican producers off the land.... One-sixth of the Mexican agricultural work force has been displaced in the NAFTA years, a process that is continuing, depressing wages in other sectors of the economy and impelling emigration to the US."

If you don't want these workers in your country, don't create the circumstances that force them to flee their own. Finally, how do we practically address the more than 12 million or so people who are in this country on expired visas or never received a visa at all? First, enforce the laws that are currently on the books. Again, this is a country of laws, and those laws must be respected. As much as the conservatives hate to admit it, at the end of the day, we are not going to deport all of those who are here illegally. The only practical solution is to provide those people a sensible path to legal, permanent status. This can be done without penalizing those who have come here legally.

In spite of the rhetoric and disinformation campaigns, providing undocumented workers a path to legitimate work status that includes the payment of fines is not amnesty. Amnesty is defined as the act of an authority (as a government) by which a pardon is granted. A pardon is a release from the legal penalties of an offense. Therefore, requiring that undocumented workers pay fines and meet other criteria before they can receive work documents is not amnesty. This amnesty argument is patently dishonest.

This comes down to discussing the circumstances that impact the quality of life for human beings. The policies that develop from this debate need to provide real, honest solutions for where we are today, not to exacerbate the situation based on broken policies of the past. Supporters of reform must admit that those who broke the law to come to the United States must pay the penalty for their offenses. Those who are opposed to real reform must stop supporting the trade policies that are creating the circumstances that are driving too many victims of those policies into this country for sanctuary.

Rhetoric such as "amnesty," labels such as "illegals" and partisanship are getting in the way of common sense solutions to real human problems. I guess in today's American politics, common sense is not all that common.

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Dr. Wilmer Leon is Producer/Host of the nationally broadcast call-in talk radio program "On With Leon" on XM Satellite Radio Channel 169, Producer/Host of the television program "Inside The Issues With Wilmer Leon" and a teaching associate in the Department of Political Science at Howard University in Washington, DC. Go to www.wilmerleon.com or email: wjl3us@yahoo.com.

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Let's Keep Fighting for Cindy Sheehan

Today Cindy Sheehan "retired" from the anti-war movement after leading the fight for two years with every piece of her heart and soul.

Cindy wrote: "Good-bye America… you are not the country that I love and I finally realized no matter how much I sacrifice, I can't make you be that country unless you want it. It's up to you now."

Sadly, America needs Cindy more than ever. Eight more Casey Sheehans died today in Iraq, leaving eight more grieving Cindy Sheehans back home. Sgt. David Safstrom of the 82nd Airborne told the NY Times, "What are we doing here? Why are we still here? We're helping guys that are trying to kill us. We help them in the day. They turn around at night and try to kill us."

Cindy lost heart after a few dozen "Bush Democrats" voted with virtually every Republican to keep Bush's criminal occupation going forever.

And it's easy to lose heart when we put our time and money into electing anti-war Democratic majorities, only to have those majorities betrayed by a few dozen "Bush Democrats" who are bribed by powerful defense contractors or intimidated by Karl Rove's political henchmen.

But we cannot afford to lose heart because May's total deaths of U.S. troops hit 114, the highest since Cindy began her anti-war campaign and the third highest of the war. And at the current monthly rate, 2007 will be the deadliest year for U.S. troops in the four years of Bush's criminal occupation.

So all of us must pick up the torch that Cindy laid down and find a way to end this war. But how?

In May, 169 House Democrats voted for the McGovern Amendment to end the occupation in March 2008, while only 59 "Bush Democrats" voted against it. If we can switch 43 of those 59 "Bush Democrats," the McGovern Amendment will pass. So let's recruit anti-war Democrats to run against those 59 "Bush Democrats" in the 2008 primaries.

This strategy produced dramatic results in 2006. Both Jane Harman (CA-36) and Al Wynn (MD-4) voted for the war in 2002, but voted against the occupation in 2007 as a direct result of primary challenges by outstanding anti-war candidates Marcy Winograd and Donna Edwards. (Edwards lost by only 3% and will run again in 2008.)

So let's find challengers for all 59 "Bush Democrats"! We created a map of all 59 "Bush Democrat" districts here:
http://tinyurl.com/2hl9vz
Click the pins to see the incumbent's name and a link to a page for that incumbent.
If you know an anti-war candidate who could run a good race, click that link and nominate that candidate in a comment. Also share your thoughts on other nominees you find there.

We also created an online pledge form to start building support for our anti-war challengers:

"I pledge to vote against every Senator and Representative who approves funding to continue the disastrous Iraq War. We have already given far too much of our blood and treasure - and killed far too many Iraqis - for a war based on lies. We are now occupying a hostile nation divided by civil war for the benefit of military contractors and Big Oil.

The only way to support our troops is to bring them home NOW, and no funds should be used for any other purpose. If Congress fails to bring our troops home, I will do everything I can - and urge everyone I know - to defeat pro-war Senators and Representatives, both in my party's primary elections and in the November general election."

Over 18,000 have already signed our pledge. Sign it now and tell your friends:
http://www.democrats.com/iraq-vote-pledge

Let's do it for Cindy Sheehan - and for her beloved son Casey.

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Tell Congress to Impeach Cheney First

Dick Cheney was in the news today as Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald filed a court memo highlighting Cheney's direct role in the criminal outing of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame. Cheney also made news for illegally scrubbing records of who he meets with.

Behind the scenes, Dick Cheney is doing everything in his power to provoke World War III with Iran, even over the objections of Condi Rice. So Dennis Kucinich is doing everything in his power to impeach Cheney. Kucinich's Articles of Impeachment for Vice President Cheney (H. Res. 333) has three co-sponsors. Urge your Representative to join them:

http://www.democrats.com/peoplesemailnetwork/73

______________

This Just In: BAGS!

Get Yours Here!

http://beachblogger.net/barbara

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Forward this message to everyone you know!

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May 28:

1961 : Appeal for Amnesty campaign launches

On this day in 1961, the British newspaper The London Observer
publishes British lawyer Peter Benenson's article "The Forgotten
Prisoners" on its front page, launching the Appeal for Amnesty 1961--a
campaign calling for the release of all people imprisoned in various
parts of the world because of the peaceful expression of their
beliefs.


Benenson was inspired to write the appeal after reading an article
about two Portuguese students who were jailed after raising their
glasses in a toast to freedom in a public restaurant. At the time,
Portugal was a dictatorship ruled by Antonio de Oliveira Salazar.
Outraged, Benenson penned the Observer article making the case for the
students' release and urging readers to write letters of protest to
the Portuguese government. The article also drew attention to the
variety of human rights violations taking place around the world, and
coined the term "prisoners of conscience" to describe "any person who
is physically restrained (by imprisonment or otherwise) from
expressing…any opinion which he honestly holds and does not advocate
or condone personal violence."


"The Forgotten Prisoners" was soon reprinted in newspapers across the
globe, and Berenson's amnesty campaign received hundreds of offers of
support. In July, delegates from Belgium, the United Kingdom, France,
the United States, Germany, Ireland and Switzerland met to begin "a
permanent international movement in defense of freedom of opinion and
religion." The following year, this movement would officially become
the human rights organization Amnesty International.


Amnesty International took its mandate from the United Nations
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which holds that all people
have fundamental rights that transcend national, cultural, religious
and ideological boundaries. By the 10th anniversary of the Appeal for
Amnesty 1961, the organization it spawned numbered over 1,000
voluntary groups in 28 countries, with those figures rising steadily.
In 1977, the organization received the Nobel Peace Prize.


Amnesty International owes much of its success in promoting human
rights to its impartiality and its focus on individuals rather than
political systems. Today, Amnesty International continues to work
toward its goals of ensuring prompt and fair trials for all prisoners,
ending torture and capital punishment and securing the release of
"prisoners of conscience" around the globe.

history.com/tdih.do


1754 : First blood of the French and Indian War
history.com/tdih.do?action=tdihArticleCategory&id=6911

1991 : Ethiopian capital falls to rebels
history.com/tdih.do?action=tdihArticleCategory&id=5043

American Revolution
1754 : Lieutenant Colonel George Washington begins the Seven Years' War
history.com/tdih.do?action=tdihArticleCategory&id=636

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