ACTION ALERT: ask the European Parliament to conduct an enquiry into the human cost of the war in Iraq

Dear friends,

After my e-mail exchange with Graham Watson MEP - Leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe in the European Parliament - Mr. Watson replied again today:

Dear Mr Zamparini,

I write further to my Caseworker James Sully’s holding reply of 8 May regarding events in Iraq.

I have written to the European Parliament’s Chairman of the Foreign Affairs, Jacek Saryusz-Wolski MEP asking for the Committee to conduct an enquiry into the human cost of the war in Iraq.

Yours sincerely,

Graham Watson MEP
Member of the European Parliament for South West England and Gibraltar and
Leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe in the European Parliament

I'm really grateful to Graham Watson for pursuing this important matter and I think we should keep some pressure on our representatives at the European Parliament now.

PLEASE, ask the European Parliament to conduct an enquiry into the human cost of the war in Iraq:

Write to the European Parliament’s Chairman of the Foreign Affairs, Jacek Saryusz-Wolski MEP asking for the Committee to conduct an enquiry into the human cost of the war in Iraq. His e-mail is:

jacek.saryusz-wolski@europarl.europa.eu

Also write to your representatives to the European Parliament. Find their contact info here

Please, maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone. Also, please help circulate this action alert. Thank you!

Gabriele Zamparini

UPDATED - Google: Kiss Freedom Goodbye

Google's censorship against Uruknet.info [see below, Google: Kiss Freedom Goodbye] and other anti-Zionist blogs and websites may better be understood by reading the following:

1) Israel News Agency Creates Israel 60 Birthday Website Resource Center

"In addition to illustrating the latest news and events listed on this Israel 60 mother of all blogs, we are optimizing this news and event blog as we do all news and feature content on the Israel News Agency. The Israel 60 Birthday Website will combat Palestine, Iran, Nazi and Syria sites which have started to attack Israel's 60th birthday by enjoying a stronger search engine optimization (SEO) marketing and public relations ranking on Google and appearing throughout the Net using all of the tools of Web 2.0."

(...)

A long list of celebrities will be coming to Israel for the Israel 60th birthday anniversary celebrations. They include: film director Steven Spielberg, US President George W. Bush, former USSR president Mikhail Gorbachev, ex-US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, Middle East Quartet envoy Tony Blair, Indonesian president Abdurrahman Wahid, French philosopher Bernard-Henri Le'vy, Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, former German foreign minister Joscka Fischer, the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Havel, News Corporation Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch, social networking Web site Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

***

2) Facebook, Google founders to attend Jerusalem conference in May
By Guy Grimland, Haaretz Correspondent

Co-founder of internet giant Google, Sergey Brin, will join Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and Yahoo president Susan Decker at a presidential panel on technology to be held at the Jerusalem International Convention Center May 13-15.

The convention, which was formed at the initiative of President Shimon Peres, will also be attended by a number of Israeli political, religious and financial leaders, as well as academics and cultural figures.

The panel will discuss issues facing technology in today's age and the future, in particular in regard to how it will affect Israel and the Jewish world.

Former UK prime minister Tony Blair will also take part in the conference, as will French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former prime minister of the Czech Republic Vaclev Havel, Nobel Prize Laureate Eli Wiesel, and Georgia President Michael Saakashvili

***

3) The following article was published by dozens of Zionist websites:

Google’s news and the hate sites by Islamic radicals: such as “uruknet”

Can anyone explain to me how did such a — pro Hamas terror and anti Israel hate — site manage to be bumped at GoogleNews?One of the typical examples of this crazy site’s language and “credibility” is such a title (in 2007) “Israelis enjoy torturing the Palestinians”.

No further explanation is really needed, it is against Fatah, it backs the GENOCIDE party of Hamas all the way as “martyrs” and presents its crimes against humanity — of using its civilians as pawns, especially their kids — as “heroic”. [continues]

***

Now enjoy Google: Kiss Freedom Goodbye

"Looking-glass, looking-glass, on the wall,
Who in this land is the fairest of all?" - Grimm Brothers, Snow White

Once upon a time, in a Land of the Free far-far away…

On April 24, 2008 Google Inc. has stopped (again!) indexing Uruknet.info as a news source.

This is the fourth time Google Inc. discontinues indexing Uruknet; in the past Google Inc. reinstated it following many complaints sent in by Uruknet’s readers. But this time we’re lucky: we may know the exact reason why Google Inc. did it directly from a Google News Help page.

On April 14, 2008 Uruknet posted an article by Malcom Lagauche, the pseudonym used by author and journalist Jeff Archer

The second paragraph of Lagauche-Archer’s article read:

My friend is a Shi’ite Muslim who grew up in Basra and gained his university education in Baghdad. Naturally, our conversation was mostly about current Iraq. Within a minute of our sitting down to chat, he said, "Those fucking Iranians. I never thought they would do this." Then, he told me how he has not made contact with his sister in Baghdad for eight months. He added that his uncle, an Iraqi Air Force pilot during the Iran-Iraq War, was murdered by Shi’ite militia people who were aligned with Iran.

Lagauche-Archer used “Those fucking Iranians” (using the inverted commas) as the title for his piece.

The same day, on April 14, one “Panda Gear” wrote to Google:

I was wizzing through the news and came across this title on news about Iran "Those Fucking Iranians". I find this kind of reporting to be offencive and racist despite the actual quote coming from a source by the reporter. This kind of heading should not be allowed, I care for freedom of speech but I also care for respect amongst all of us. Why has google allowed this to go ahead? and is this the level of reporting we are going to expect if there was a showdown with Iran this summer?

With all the propaganda directed against Iran one can find everywhere, including on Google News, it seems odd this "Panda Gear" complained against Uruknet.info for an article which reports on Iraq and whose title comes directly from an Iraqi testimony. Even odder, Google's reply, which came the following day:

Thanks for pointing this out, Panda Gear -- it should be taken care of now.

Keep in mind that in order to maintain our objectivity, we have an automatic system for crawling and indexing headlines. So if you see something that you think goes against our policy, please let us know! We just launched a nifty new form designed to streamline this process:

http://www.google.com/support/news/bin/request.py?contact_type=report...

Cheers to Panda Gear and others for the report :)

And “taken care of” it was indeed! In other words: first Corporate Amerika launches a war of aggression - the supreme international crime - against Iraq, using those notorious WMD that Iraq didn’t have against the civilian population and killing more than one million of human beings, making five millions more refugee. Now that Iraq is completely annihilated, the same Corporate Amerika censors what Iraq’s citizens say. Welcome to Politically Correctness’ World, much better than Disneyland!

Now, before someone starts to consider the 'pros and cons' of Google Inc.’s behavior – and since Voltaire seems to have been completely forgotten in these times beyond Orwell and Kafka – it may be useful to quote Noam Chomsky:

"If you believe in freedom of speech, you believe in freedom of speech for views you don’t like. Goebbels was in favor of freedom of speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re in favor of freedom of speech, that means you’re in favor of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise."

I was reminded of this quote by Mary Rizzo, Editor of Peacepalestine, who recently wrote: Censorship and Press Freedom: at home and away

Google, Google on the Wall… Who's The Biggest Censor Of All?

Popcorn and Champagne - The Trial of Tareq Aziz

Getcha popcorn ready! The Green Zone Puppet Theatre in Baghdad is putting on a new show, The Trial of Tareq Aziz.

The charges against the former deputy premier of Iraq – when Iraq was still free and a country – are related to the execution of 42 Baghdad merchants in 1992. At the time Iraq was under the genocidal embargo imposed by the United States and its British vassal through the United Nations.

The New York Times reported on 5 August 1992:

But the final straw came when the Iraqi authorities, facing mounting public anger at rising food prices brought about by the devaluation, arrested some 500 merchants on charges of speculation and profiteering and then executed 42 of them in an effort to force prices lower.

It’s difficult to understand what the responsibilities of a deputy prime minister could be in such a case, but if the bloodthirsty puppets wanted to find the responsible they wouldn’t need to look further than their Washington and London’s puppeteers.

Tareq Aziz has been held hostage by the illegal, foreign Occupation of his country for five years; he’s not been charged, tried or investigated so far. But the new amnesty law states that anyone held for a year without being referred to court must be released. The puppets and the puppeteers can’t allow that to happen to Aziz who not only refused to testify against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein but also praised Saddam defiantly when he was called as a witness:

"I had the honour to work with the former regime and with the hero Saddam Hussein. He is the hero behind the unity of Iraq and its sovereignty. This is an honour to me."

In April 1980 Tareq Aziz – then Foreign and Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq– survived an Iranian-backed assassination attempt carried out by members of the Islamic Dawa Party (the party of Prime Puppet Maliki). In the attack, members of Islamic Dawa Party threw a grenade at Aziz in central Baghdad. The attack killed several people. This terrorist act was among the casus belli of the Iran-Iraq War.

Aziz is a Chaldean Catholic; how many Christian countries have a Muslim serving as Foreign or Deputy Prime Minister? Washington and London have put much effort in depicting pre-occupation Iraq as a sectarian country ruled by a minority. This propaganda, aiming to demonize Iraq and instrumental for the invasion and occupation (Iraqi Freedom, remember?), have been spread not only by the War Party and its many lackeys in the state-corporate media but also – and much more disgracefully – by many leftists and alternative news outlets. The result is New Iraq, a place - not even a country anymore - torn into pieces by Saddam Hussein’s enemies, a bunch of terrorists and warlords installed and supported by the great puppeteers, the United States and Iran. Credits for the precious assistance must of course be given to Nostalgic Britain, a former Empire which still didn’t get it’s become a colony, Holy Israel, the 51st (or 1st – it depends where one starts to count) of the United States of Amnesia and the never missing International Community of hyenas and vultures.

The Green Zone Puppet Theatre’s Show, The Trial of Tareq Aziz, will star Kurdish “judge” Rauf Rasheed Abdel Rahman, who also presided the last stages of Saddam Hussein’s lynching in 2006, after his predecessor, Kurdish judge Rizgar Amin, resigned over fear for his life after being criticized by the sectarian Quisling government for being “soft” on Saddam in court. At the time, Moqtada al-Sadr played a big role in that show, which also included the kidnapping, torture and killing of a few defense lawyers.

Out of curiosity, just a few days before Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was assassinated, Rauf Rasheed Abdel Rahman fled Iraq and applied for political asylum in Britain with his family.

Now he’s back on the stage, the show must go on after all! The other time Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the United Nations gave that show very bad reviews. But who cares for the reviews? The few spectators are already athirst to open a new bottle of Champagne!

After more than five years

After more than five years of this war of aggression, the Nuremberg supreme international crime, the BBC continues its genocide denial business.

"Another website run by academics and peace activists, iraqbodycount.net, estimates up to 90,782 Iraqi civilians have been killed in the same period."

After more than five years of this war of aggression, the Nuremberg supreme international crime, Iraq Body Count still doesn’t care its work is used to deny the Iraq genocide.

After more than five years of this war of aggression, the Nuremberg supreme international crime, the anti-war movement establishment still doesn’t consider the human cost of the Iraq war THE priority and its agenda still doesn’t include a campaign to inform the public of the real extent of this carnage and to denounce unequivocally the War Party’s propaganda.

After more than five years of this war of aggression, the Nuremberg supreme international crime, the people in the United States and United Kingdom are still kept in the dark about what the Liberation of Iraq has meant for the people of Iraq.

After more than five years of this war of aggression, the Nuremberg supreme international crime, Iraq has being torn into pieces by Saddam Hussein’s enemies, a bunch of warlords installed and supported by the United States and Iran, while the Western maîtres à penser are still clapping at that political process. Freedom! Freedom! Democracy! Democracy!

After more than five years of this war of aggression, the Nuremberg supreme international crime, history has being re-written by the victors: The genocide denial business is the most important chapter of the book.

Exchange with Graham Watson MEP, Leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe in the European Parliament

An e-mail exchange with Graham Watson MEP, Member of the European Parliament for South West England and Gibraltar and Leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe in the European Parliament

Dear Graham,

I hope all is well.

Please find below an e-mail I sent to your colleagues Edward Davey and Nick Clegg.

I kindly invite you too to highlight the human cost of the Iraq war.

Thank you.

Best wishes,
Gabriele Zamparini
London

email to Liberal Democrats MPs Edward Davey and Nick Clegg RE: Iraq war death toll

Graham Watson's reply:

Dear Gabriele Zamparini

Thank you for copying me in on your email to Edward Davey and Nick Clegg. You may be interested to read a speech I made in the EP on Iraq. It can be found at: [link]

Yours sincerely

Graham Watson MEP

My reply to Graham Watson MEP:

Dear Graham Watson MEP,

Thank you for your reply and for sending the link to the speech you gave on Wednesday, 16 November 2005 at the European Parliament at Strasbourg.

You said then: “Yet after two years and eight months of war, the deaths of countless Iraqis and over 2 000 coalition troops, it is clear that life in Iraq is little better than before.”

Yes, “little better” indeed.

Let’s remember that the “before” was when the UN, under the US and UK pressure, imposed an embargo to Iraq, that helped destroyed the country and caused the death of a terrifying number of innocent people. One million? Two millions? Will we ever know? Denis Halliday, former UN Assistant Secretary General and Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq (1997-98) said: “I had been instructed to implement a policy that satisfies the definition of genocide: a deliberate policy that had effectively killed well over a million individuals, children and adults.” After thirty-four years with the United Nations, he resigned in protest over the effects of the embargo on the civilian population. Hans Von Sponeck, who had succeeded Denis Halliday as UN Assistant Secretary General and Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq (1998-2000), resigned on February 13, 2000. He asked: “How long should the civilian population of Iraq be exposed to such punishment for something they have never done?” Like Halliday, he had been with the United Nations for more than thirty years. [Source: The New Rulers of the World, by John Pilger, Verso, 2002]

Then came the US+UK war of aggression, illegal under the UN Charter – as recognised by the then United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan - and called at Nuremberg in 1945 the supreme international crime: "To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." - Judgment of the International Military Tribunal for the Trial of German Major War Criminals - Nuremberg, Germany 1946

I was glad to read in the second part of your speech, the first of your three concerns: “First, the Pentagon’s acknowledgement a few hours ago that the US used phosphorous incendiary devices in Fallujah. The European Union must demand a UN inquiry into the use of these banned weapons.” This was in November 2005. Please, may I ask you if the European Union demanded that UN inquiry?

Most importantly, I would kindly like to have your attention on one point. Once again, as the media watch FAIR wrote a few weeks ago: "There is no more important question about the Iraq War than the question of how many Iraqis have died. It is impossible to truly evaluate the war or discuss where to go from here without knowing the human cost of the war, and that cost has overwhelmingly been borne by Iraqis."

Please, it would be possible for the European Parliament to ask for an investigation on the human cost of the Iraq war?

Thank you again for your time and all you’ll be able to do on this issue.

Best wishes,
Gabriele Zamparini
London

P.S. Useful resources:

Iraq: the Human Cost

Updated Iraq Survey Affirms Earlier Mortality Estimates

ORB Update on Iraqi Casualty Data

Answers to Questions About Iraq Mortality Surveys

Counting Iraqi Casualties -- and a Media Controversy

What is the real death toll in Iraq?

Iraqi deaths survey 'was robust'

The colonel’s numbers

The Institute for National Strategic Studies - a policy research and strategic gaming organization within National Defense University serving the U.S. Department of Defense, its components, and interagency partners - published a report called “Choosing War: The Decision to Invade Iraq and Its Aftermath” REPORT - PDF LINK

Written by Joseph Collins, a retired colonel and former senior adviser to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, the report reads:

Iraqi civilian deaths—mostly at the hands of other Iraqis—may number as high as 82,000.

In the Notes section, Note 1 reads:

(…) Iraq civilian casualties are hardest to track; estimates run from 38,000 to over 600,000. Most sources tied to actual incident-related counts show a maximum of 82,000. (…)

The report doesn’t say it so let’s ask the colonel: Where does that number - 82,000 - come from?

Waiting for the colonel’s answer, it’s reasonable to assume that number comes from Iraq Body Count (IBC) at the time the report was written. I wonder if even the “mostly at the hands of other Iraqis” comes from IBC’s data.

That Note 1 also reads: “The U.S. Government does not keep statistics on these losses, which is a significant mistake.”

The colonel is playing naïve now: where is the mistake if the anti-war movement can so easily be used by the War Party?

Mass Graves in Iraq. Whose mass graves are these?

Finally the notorious Iraqi mass graves are being unearthed. There is only one problem: they are the product of Liberated Iraq

Az-Zaman (London; Iraq): Largest mass grave found in Mahmoudiya – Iraqis were shocked yesterday by the discovery of the largest mass grave in their modern history, with 4,020 bodies of mostly women, youth and men from Mahmoudiya and its surroundings. Local residents said the bodies belonged to victims of kidnappings and executions carried out by (Shiite) al-Mahdi Army, Badr, and al-Dawa militias in 2005 and 2006.

Please read the full article here. It seems this is just the beginning; not only Oil in New Iraq's underground.

Have you ever seen such a Liberation?

By the way, someone should now tell Iraq Body Count to update their counter. The last time I checked it displayed 90,000 - more or less, Bush would say.

***

WATCH ALSO THIS VIDEO: Baghdad's killing fields: In the second of Ghaith Abdul-Ahad's series of three films he visits Baghdad's killings fields on the edge of Sadr City. The scene of thousands of sectarian murders over the last three years, it is a desolate and evil place: 'Only the killers and the killed ever come here' says Abdul-Ahad. Here in the thousands of unmarked graves lie the victims of the Shia militia gangs

***

P.S. Please read and spread the info below

Iraq: the Human Cost

Updated Iraq Survey Affirms Earlier Mortality Estimates

ORB Update on Iraqi Casualty Data

Answers to Questions About Iraq Mortality Surveys

Counting Iraqi Casualties -- and a Media Controversy

What is the real death toll in Iraq?

Iraqi deaths survey 'was robust'

email to Liberal Democrats MPs Edward Davey and Nick Clegg RE: Iraq war death toll

Dear Edward Davey MP,
Liberal Democrat Shadow Foreign Secretary

CC Dear Nick Clegg MP,

Thank you for your recent comments on the Iraq war.

"Five years after the invasion of Iraq, the death and destruction wrought by this disastrous war ought to compel even the most diehard supporters of the original decision to revise their position. Gordon Brown and David Cameron should now apologise for voting for the Iraq war. Contrary to the ludicrous claims of victory made by the likes of David Miliband and George Bush, the war has made Iraq a more dangerous place at a horrific cost whether measured in terms of lives, money or our security. Labour and the Conservatives share the blame for this catastrophic foreign policy mistake."

“The war in Iraq has already cost thousands of lives and billions of pounds. This tragic revelation brings home the continued human and financial impact, both at home and abroad.”

Presumably, when you said “thousands of lives”, you were just thinking of US and UK military personnel.

The US media watch FAIR wrote a few weeks ago: "There is no more important question about the Iraq War than the question of how many Iraqis have died. It is impossible to truly evaluate the war or discuss where to go from here without knowing the human cost of the war, and that cost has overwhelmingly been borne by Iraqis."

Surely I would not call a war of aggression – illegal under the UN Charter – that might have cost the lives of over one million Iraqi citizens a “mistake”. Please, may I ask you if the Liberal Democrats intend to spend some time and energy to highlight the human cost of the Iraq war?

Thank you for your time

Sincerely,
Gabriele Zamparini
London

P.S. Please, I send here some useful links:

Iraq: the Human Cost

Updated Iraq Survey Affirms Earlier Mortality Estimates

ORB Update on Iraqi Casualty Data

Answers to Questions About Iraq Mortality Surveys

Counting Iraqi Casualties -- and a Media Controversy

What is the real death toll in Iraq?

Iraqi deaths survey 'was robust'