THE CLOWN OF THE DAY

What we saw last night was revolting. (...) Here was this monster who killed 3,000 of our fellows showing up on our TV screens, trying to insert himself into our election, trying to lecture us on who is lying and who is telling the truth. Here was this villain traipsing through his own propaganda spiel with copycat Michael Moore rhetoric about George Bush in the schoolroom, and Jeb Bush and the 2000 Florida election. Here was this deranged killer spreading absurd theories about the American monarchy and threatening to murder more of us unless we do what he says. One felt all the old emotions. Who does he think he is, and who does he think we are? One of the crucial issues of this election is, Which candidate fundamentally gets the evil represented by this man? Which of these two guys understands it deep in his gut - not just in his brain or in his policy statements, but who feels it so deep in his soul that it consumes him?

The Osama Litmus Test
By DAVID BROOKS
The New York Times

Note: On the same day Mr David Clown Brooks was writing, The Lancet published the first scientific study of the human cost of the Iraq war. 100,000 Iraqis have lost their lives since their country was invaded in March 2003. More than half of those who died were women and children killed in air strikes by the United States.

WHAT ARE YOU STILL WAITING FOR?

Making conservative assumptions, we think that about 100000 excess deaths, or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Violence accounted for most of the excess deaths and air strikes from coalition forces accounted for most violent deaths. Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were women and children.

The Lancet

NOTES & BACKGROUND:

1) Iraqi deaths directly attributable to the Gulf War in 1991: between 142,000 and 206,000. Source: U.N. 1991 the Ahtisaari report; Daponte 1993

2) The Iraqi civilian population was the intentional target and victim of more than 12 years of SANCTIONS imposed by the United Nations Security Council on the request of the United States and Great Britain Governments. As a result of these sanctions, a few millions of people have died since the sanctions were imposed on 6 August 1990 (HIROSHIMA DAY).

3) Before the invasion of Iraq started in March 2003, many NGOs issued warnings and reports about the possible effects of a new conflict. "Collateral Damage: the health and environmental costs of war on Iraq" was issued in London on 12 November 2002 by the global health organisation Medact, the UK affiliate of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War - winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985.

"XXI CENTURY" - an Award Winning (and MUCH CENSORED!) Documentary - gives the rare opportunity to really understand the facts and the responsibilities, the historical background and the real reasons behind this new colonial crusade wanted by the political, economic and intellectual elites of the Western powers. Understand the New World Order and join millions of people around the world who are resisting and fighting to change it.

Bush, Kerry and the War Against the World

(...) In a supposedly free and open society, the degree of censorship by omission is staggering. The New York Times, the country's liberal standard-bearer, having recovered from a mild bout of contrition over its abject failure to challenge Bush's lies about Iraq, has been running tombstones of column inches about what-went-wrong in the 'liberation' of that country. It blames mistakes: tactical oversights, faulty intelligence. Not a word suggests that the invasion was a colonial conquest, deliberate like any other, and that 60 years of international law make it 'the paramount war crime', to quote the Nuremberg judges. Not a word suggests that the American onslaught on the population of Iraq was and is systematically atrocious, of which the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib was merely a glimpse. (...)

(...) The most enduring silence is that which guards the system that has produced these catastrophic events. This is Americanism, though it dares not speak its name, which is strange, as its opposite, anti-Americanism, has long been successfully deployed as a pejorative, catch-all response to critical analysis of an imperial system and its myths. Americanism, the ideology, has meant democracy at home, for some, and a war on democracy abroad. From Guatemala to Iran, from Chile to Nicaragua, to the struggle for freedom in South Africa, to present-day Venezuela, American state terrorism, licensed by both Republican and Democrat administrations, has fought democrats and sponsored totalitarians. Most societies attacked or otherwise subverted by American power are weak and defenceless, and there is a logic to this. Should a small country succeed in breaking free and establish its own way of developing, then its good example to others becomes a threat to Washington. (...)

(...) That is why people all over the world, whose consciousness about these matters has risen sharply in the past few years, are 'anti-American'. It has nothing to do with the ordinary people of the United States, who now watch a Darwanian capitalism consume their real and fabled freedoms and reduce the 'free market' to a fire-sale of public assets. It is remarkable, if not inspiring, that so many reject the class and race based brainwashing, begun in childhood, that such a class and race based system is called 'the American dream'. What will happen if the nightmare in Iraq goes on? (...)

John Pilger
The New Statesman

OUR CHILDREN

A nine-year-old Palestinian girl has been shot dead by Israeli occupation forces in the southern Gaza Strip. Rania Aram died on Thursday after being hit by a bullet in the neck as she stood in front of her house in the Khan Yunus refugee camp. Witnesses said the shot was fired from an army position on the outskirts of the illegal Jewish settlement, Gush Katif. Some 23 Palestinian children have been killed since 30 September – the majority receiving bullets in the chest, neck and head. On 30 September, 15 Palestinian children were killed within hours of each other.

ALJAZEERA

See also "Just Another Day in Palestine"

The Best Democracy Money Can Buy

CONGRATULATIONS, MR. PRESIDENT!
FLORIDA'S COMPUTERS HAVE ALREADY COUNTED THOUSANDS OF VOTES FOR GEORGE W. BUSH

Before one vote was cast in early voting this week in Florida, the new touch-screen computer voting machines of Florida started out with a several-thousand vote lead for George W. Bush. That is, the mechanics of the new digital democracy boxes "spoil" votes at a predictably high rate in African-American precincts, effectively voiding enough votes cast for John Kerry to in a tight race, keep the White House safe from the will of the voters. To understand the fiasco in progress in Florida, we need to revisit the 2000 model...

"Another Florida"
by Greg Palast
Harper's Magazine

JUST ANOTHER DAY IN PALESTINE

An Israeli settler shot and killed a 17-year-old boy named Salman Yusif Al-Safadi yesterday. Salman was picking olives in the fields of Urif village, Nablus region, when the settler shot him. (...) In the Gaza Strip today, Israeli occupation forces began dynamiting Palestinian homes and demolishing lands near the illegal Israeli settlements of Nezarim and Morag as well as near the Sofia entrance in the north. Israeli forces also shelled a Palestinian military post and destroyed it completely.

PALESTINE MONITOR
October 27, 2004

"FAIR & BALANCED" JOURNALISM

A military offensive by American and Iraqi forces to reclaim rebel-held Falluja is probably inevitable and would be the largest and potentially the riskiest since the end of major combat in May 2003, senior American officers say.

INSURGENTS
Military Assault in Falluja Is Likely, U.S. Officers Say
By ERIC SCHMITT
Published: October 27, 2004
The New York Times

Insurgent: a person who revolts against civil authority or an established government; especially: a rebel not recognized as a belligerent

Resistance: an underground organization of a conquered or nearly conquered country engaging in sabotage and secret operations against occupation forces and collaborators

Note: The difference between INSURGENTS and RESISTANCE is quite remarkable. Most of the Western mainstream media use terms as INSURGENTS, TERRORISTS, and REBELS. Never for a moment putting in discussion the legitimacy of the invasion of Iraq and its moral and legal consequences. This use of words hides the complicity of complacent media with the power, with "fair and balanced" (sic!) journalists acting as servants of the propaganda machine. As Noam Chomsky points out in "XXI CENTURY", "our leaders and our intellectual elites despise democracy". Read more about the Award Winning Documentary "XXI CENTURY".

YOU MUST READ THIS!

(...) The United States has been trying to fix elections in every corner of the world for more than half a century without any other foreign power being in the picture at all. (...) Ever since the insurgency began in Iraq, the United States has tried to emphasize the presence of "foreign fighters" amongst the insurgents in an attempt to play down the notion of the people of Iraq rising up in resistance to their occupiers, so reminiscent of the Second World War European resistance fighters rebelling against their Nazi occupiers. But the United States has had many more "foreign fighters" at their side than do the Iraqi insurgents -- from Australia, Britain, Poland, El Salvador, and a number of other countries, not to mention the largest contingent of foreign fighters in Iraq, from the United States. Why shouldn't the Iraqi insurgents have the same right? (...)

The Anti-Empire Report
Fear Factors
By WILLIAM BLUM
in CounterPunch

William Blum is one of the most important voices to understand the American Empire. He is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II; Rogue State: a guide to the World's Only Super Power; and West-Bloc Dissident: a Cold War Political Memoir. Read William Blum's review of the Award Winning Documentary "XXI CENTURY".

Seymour Hersh

BERKELEY – The Iraq war is not winnable, a secret U.S. military unit has been "disappearing" people since December 2001, and America has no idea how irreparably its torture of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison has damaged its image in the Middle East. These were just a few of the grim pronouncements made by Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter Seymour "Sy" Hersh to KQED host Michael Krasny before a Berkeley audience on Friday night (Oct. 8).

Investigative Journalist Seymour Hersh Spills the Secrets of the Iraq Quagmire and the War on Terror - By Bonnie Azab Powell, U.C. Berkeley News


Click here for the same interview on Truth Out

UNPEOPLE

Iraqis are in practice regarded as "unpeople" whose deaths matter little in the pursuit of western power; the major block on committing atrocities is the fear of being exposed and ministers will do all they can to cover them up. The public is the major threat to their strategy, which explains why they resort to public deception campaigns. If, as must be expected, atrocities now multiply in Iraq - with Britain complicit - we cannot claim we were not warned.

Mark Curtis
The Guardian

Mark Curtis is currently Director of the World Development Movement, a campaigning organisation that tackles the root causes of poverty and works alongside people in the developing world who are standing up to injustice. His latest book, Unpeople: Britain's Secret Human Rights Abuses is published by Vintage in November 2004.

State of Barbarism

WASHINGTON, Oct. 25 - A new legal opinion by the Bush administration has concluded for the first time that some non-Iraqi prisoners captured by American forces in Iraq are not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions, administration officials said Monday.

U.S. Action Bars Right of Some Captured in Iraq
By DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times

16

Up to 16 Palestinians have been killed in an Israeli military raid, which included the firing of missiles, into the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Yunus. An eight-year-old child, who was hit by a bullet in the neck, is among the casualties in the raid that began late on Sunday and continued into Monday.

Aljazeera

Update: 17

On the Road to Civil War

Everybody in Israel is talking about the Next War. The most popular TV channel is running a whole series about it. Not another war with the Arabs. Not the nuclear threat from Iran. Not the ongoing bloody confrontation with the Palestinians. The talk is about the coming civil war.

On the Road to Civil War
Uri Avnery
Gush Shalom

Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is one of the writers featured in The Other Israel: Voices of Dissent and Refusal. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's hot new book The Politics of Anti-Semitism.

Executing Another Child in Rafah

Iman al-Hams was a 13-year old refugee schoolgirl who was executed -- after being wounded -- by an Israeli platoon commander on the sad sands of Rafah.
According to testimonies given by soldiers in the same company to the mass Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, a soldier in the watchtower identified Iman and cautioned his commander shouting, "Don't shoot. It's a little girl". The company commander, the soldiers testified, "approached her, shot two bullets into her [head], walked back towards the force, turned back to her, switched his weapon to automatic and emptied his entire magazine into her." (1) Eyewitnesses corroborated the soldiers, account, saying that Iman was shot almost 70 meters away from the Israeli military position. After a bullet hit her leg, Iman, who was wearing her school uniform, fell. Then, they said, the officer went over to her, saw that she was bleeding from her wounds, but still shot her twice in the head to "confirm the killing", an Israeli euphemism for the practice of executing a wounded Palestinian. A cursory army investigation later cleared him of any "unethical conduct", as is customary, and suspended him only because of "poor relations with subordinates".(2)
In a flash, Israel proved to the world -- yet again -- that it is not only intransigent in its patent and consistent violation of international law, but also incapable of adhering to the most fundamental principles of moral behavior. (...)

The Killing of Iman al-Hams
Executing Another Child in Rafah
By OMAR BARGHOUTI
on CounterPunch

Omar Barghouti is an independent Palestinian political analyst. His article "9.11 Putting the Moment on Human Terms" was chosen among the "Best of 2002" by the Guardian.

Right Wing Attacks Indymedia. Again!

Today I posted an article on Indymedia Colorado in the USA about the Take Back Democracy Film Festival which will be held in Denver, Colorado from the 28th to the 31st October, 2004.

The "interesting" thing is that when one goes on Indymedia Colorado, this website disappears and many other PRO BUSH websites show up.

UPDATES: The problem at Indymedia Colorado has been fixed. During the day, many other Indymedia sites in the USA have been attacked by presumably the same person/s. As far as I know, the Indymedia of Atlanta and New Jersey, among them.

Please, pass the word.

£100,000

This week, she (Mrs Blair) will be spending the school half term in the US, where her visit will include a highly lucrative lecture tour that will help to pay for the Blairs' £3.6m new home in Bayswater, London. She was signed up by the Harry Walker Agency in New York, whose clients include Bill Clinton, Benazir Bhutto and Henry Kissinger, to deliver three lectures, for which it has been estimated she could earn £100,000.

Cherie 'helped make the legal case for war'
By Andy Mcsmith and Andrew Grice
The Independent

Mr Blair's New Home

The American prison company whose director set up Iraq's infamous Abu Ghraib jail for use by the US military is bidding to run a number of prisons in Britain.

The Utah-based Management and Training Corporation (MTC) has set up a London headquarters and is in advanced negotiations to operate at least one prison in Britain. It is also planning bids to build and manage a number of other jails, including the extension of Belmarsh in south-east London, Britain's maximum security prison, where terrorist suspects are being held without trial.

Antony Barnett, Martin Bright and Solomon Hughes
Sunday October 24, 2004
The Observer

Finally a real new home for Mr. Tony War Criminal Blair and his pals

"Our" war on terrorism

Whoever the next President will be, it is up to the American people to demand that he begin a bold reconsideration of the role our country should play in the world. That is the only possible solution to a future of never-ending, pervasive fear. That would be "our" war on terrorism.

Howard Zinn
The Progressive

Read what Howad Zinn wrote about the Award Winning Documentary "XXI CENTURY"

UNITY

We're at a moment in history when progressives must work together -- not with a false kind of unity that papers over differences, but instead with a candid kind of unity that recognizes and fights for a vital common goal. Our collective task is to kick George Bush out of the White House. The thousands of African-American women and men lining up at early-voting sites in Florida are sending a profound message across this country. After nearly four years of "Hail to the Thief," we have a chance to oust the Bush-Cheney gang. We're depending on each other.

Two Weeks To Go (and One President to Oust)
by Norman Solomon
ZNet

Norman Solomon is one of the many voices of dissent featured in the Award Winning Documentary "XXI CENTURY"

THE CLOWN OF THE DAY

Republicans, from Reagan to Bush, particularly admire leaders who are straight-talking men of faith. The Republican leader doesn't have to be book smart, and probably shouldn't be narcissistically introspective. But he should have a clear, broad vision of America's exceptional role in the world. (…) Republicans admire a president who is elevated above his executive branch colleagues. It is impossible to imagine George W. Bush or Reagan as a cabinet secretary. Instead, they are set apart by virtue of exceptional moral qualities. Relying on their core values, they set broad goals and remain resolute in times of crisis.

By David Brooks
Tne New York Times

The heroine who offered hope for Iraq

If ever there was a true friend of Iraqis, it is Margaret Hassan. Brave, outspoken, steadfast, she is a heroine. Her captors should be humbled that they can speak to so fine a lady.

Robert Fisk
The Independent

Noam Chomsky

There are serious problems here. One problem is almost a total disillusion, disappearance of the basis for a democratic society. I mean, if we compare, say, this election with elections in, say, the second biggest country in the hemisphere, Brazil. We ought to be ashamed of ourselves.

Noam Chomsky interviewed by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!

Noam Chomsky and Amy Goodman are among the many voices of dissent featured in the Award Winning Documentary “XXI CENTURY”

They Will Steal the White House Again!

If the election were held today and the votes were counted fairly, Senator John Kerry would probably win. But the votes won't be counted fairly, and the disenfranchisement of minority voters may determine the outcome.

Last week I described Greg Palast's work on the 2000 election, reported recently in Harper's, which conclusively shows that Florida was thrown to Mr. Bush by a combination of factors that disenfranchised black voters. These included a defective felon list, which wrongly struck thousands of people from the voter rolls, and defective voting machines, which disproportionately failed to record votes in poor, black districts.

One might have expected Florida's government to fix these problems during the intervening four years. But most of those wrongly denied voting rights in 2000 still haven't had those rights restored...


Voting and Counting
By PAUL KRUGMAN
The New York Times

PORNOGRAPHY

"Re-engage in the peace process" is precisely what the Europeans, the Russians and the United Nations have been pressuring the United States to do for years. Do you believe any of them have Israel's safety at heart? They would sell out Israel in an instant, and they are pressuring America to do precisely that.

Why are they so upset with President Bush's Israeli policy? After all, isn't Bush the first president ever to commit the United States to an independent Palestinian state? Bush's sin is that he also insists the Palestinians genuinely accept Israel and replace the corrupt, dictatorial terrorist leadership of Yasser Arafat.

To reengage in a "peace process" while the violence continues and while Arafat is in charge is to undo the Bush Middle East policy. That policy -- isolating Arafat, supporting Israel's right to defend itself both by attacking the terrorist infrastructure and by building a defensive fence -- has succeeded in defeating the intifada and producing an astonishing 84 percent reduction in innocent Israeli casualties.

Sacrificing Israel
By Charles Krauthammer
The Washington Post

The Most Dangerous Person in Baghdad

On April 19, 2004, John Dimitri Negroponte was nominated by US President George W. Bush to be US ambassador to Iraq after the June 30 handover. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on May 6, 2004, by a vote of 95 to 3, and was officially sworn in on June 23, 2004, replacing L. Paul Bremer as the country's head American civilian official.

Please, take a few moments to know this person through the following links.

John Negroponte - Dorian Gray goes to Iraq
by Toni Solo, ZNet

Negroponte, a Torturer's Friend
Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive

Noam Chomsky on John Negroponte's Career From the Death Squads of Honduras to the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad - Democracy Now!

Bush's New Iraq Viceroy
by David Corn, The Nation

CHILDREN

More than 30 Palestinian children were killed in the first two weeks of Operation Days of Penitence in the Gaza Strip. It's no wonder that many people term such wholesale killing of children "terror." Whereas in the overall count of all the victims of the intifada the ratio is three Palestinians killed for every Israeli killed, when it comes to children the ratio is 5:1. According to B'Tselem, the human rights organization, even before the current operation in Gaza, 557 Palestinian minors (below the age of 18) were killed, compared to 110 Israeli minors.

Killing children is no longer a big deal
By Gideon Levy
HAARETZ

WAR CRIMES

Israeli destruction of Palestinian homes 'violates international law'

Israel has systematically violated international law by destroying the homes of 16,000 people in Gaza's southernmost town regardless of military necessity, a leading New York-based human rights agency said yesterday.

By Donald Macintyre
The Independent
19 October 2004

Do you remember him?

The war against terrorism is the right war at the right time for the right reasons. And Iraq is one of the places that war must be fought and won. George W. Bush has his eye on that ball and Senator John Kerry does not.

Tommy Franks
Former commander in chief of the U.S. Central Command
The New York Times

P.S. Many thanks to the New York Times for always allowing War Criminals to have their say.

Be part of the movement!

Dear sisters and brothers,

We want to thank every one who came to see "XXI CENTURY" at the EUROPEAN SOCIAL FORUM.

All the seven screenings were a great success and it was such a powerful and energizing experience to have an audience so numerous, sympathetic and supportive.

In the discussions that followed the screenings, the most frequent question was "How can we get more people to watch this film?"

Here a few suggestions:

- E-mail as many friends and colleagues as you can to let them know about the film;

- E-mail College and High School Faculty;

- Ask your Public, College or University Library to include "XXI CENTURY" in their catalogue;

- Media Action! Contact your local or national newspaper, tv or radio station and let them know about the film;

- Organize a screening in your community;

- Get a copy of the film through our website;

- Join our e-mail list to receive The Cat's Dream NewsLetter

- Contact us to know more.

"XXI CENTURY" needs YOUR support. PLEASE PASS THE WORD!!!

THANK YOU.

"War Criminals of the World, Unite!"

Putin Offers Hand to Bush in U.S. Election

DUSHANBE, Tajikistan (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin, siding with President Bush two weeks before the U.S. election, said Monday that armed attacks in Iraq were staged by "international terrorism" out to block his re-election.

by Denis Dyomkin
REUTERS

Elites & Genocide

"(...) everyone needs to remember that on the most critical count, sanctions worked."

The New York Times Editorial
14 October 2004


"The very provisions of the Charter of the United Nations and the Declaration of Human Rights are being set aside. We are waging a war, through the United Nations, on the children and people of Iraq, and with incredible results: results that you do not expect to see in a war under the Geneva Conventions. We're targeting civilians. (...) I had been instructed to implement a policy that satisfies the definition of genocide"

Denis Halliday resigned in 1998 after thirty-four years with the United Nations in protest against the effects of the embargo on the civilian population. He was then Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations and UN's Co-ordinator of Humanitarian Relief to Iraq.

From "The New Rulers of the World"
by John Pilger

URGENT APPEAL

On behalf of the Palestinian civil society, the Palestine Monitor calls on all members of the international community and on all friends around the world to organize protest campaigns and help us in delivering our simple but urgent message:

STOP THE ISRAELI ARMY MASSACRE OF PALESTINIANS!

CHILDREN

At 9.15 this morning, Ghadeer Jaber Mokheimer, a grade five pupil at UNRWA's Co-Ed Elementary D School in Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip died of her injuries from a gunshot wound received while sitting at her desk in an UNRWA school.

She had been hit in the stomach by a shot from an Israeli military position on the outskirts of Khan Younis camp.

Ghadeer would have been ten years old on December 9.

From The Electronic Intifada

HUMAN RIGHTS NEWS

At least 11 al-Qaeda suspects have “disappeared” in U.S. custody, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. U.S. officials are holding the detainees in undisclosed locations, where some have reportedly been tortured.

“‘Disappearances’ were a trademark abuse of Latin American military dictatorships in their ‘dirty war’ on alleged subversion,” said Reed Brody, special counsel with Human Rights Watch. “Now they have become a United States tactic in its conflict with al-Qaeda.”

ITALY & RESISTANCE

Once upon a time there was a beautiful country in Southern Europe. Art, culture, climate and hospitality were the main ingredients of a welcoming atmosphere. History had taught the people of this sunny country the meaning of a simple word: RESISTANCE.

Today Italy is facing its darkest time. The most corrupted and reactionary government in its history is destroying not only what is left of the conquests of decades of popular struggle and social movements, but the Italian soul itself.

The intellectual (sic!) and economic elites are the true responsible of this destruction of values. The traitors of Justice and Freedom. With very few exceptions, the mainstream media has cooperated with the power in the most shameful restoration in modern times. Once again they gave proof of their contempt for Democracy.

Greed, xenophobia, homophobia, racism and misogyny are the real guidelines for a government composed of ruthless individuals who share the same values of their totalitarian fascist and nazi fathers and grandfathers.

A pernicious alliance between the Catholic Church hierarchies, a mediocre and reactionary political class and the top guns of the industrial and financial complex is once again producing the devastating effects Italy knew at the beginning of the ‘20s for two decades.

It will be up to us, THE ITALIAN PEOPLE, to get rid of these war criminals who took back Italy to an illegal, bloody and colonial war and occupation. With our tax money. In our name.

Once again we have to fight to restore the dignity of our country and be proud of our name. Once again RESISTANCE.

THE CLOWN OF THE DAY

When Bush talks about the world he hopes to create, he talks first about spreading freedom. What he's really talking about is a decentralized world. Individuals would be free to live as they chose, in their own nations, carving out their own destinies.

David Brooks
The New York Times

Future generations will struggle...

The Americans have a professional army in Iraq, but it is becoming frighteningly casual about the way it kills women and children in Fallujah, simply denying that its air strikes are killing the innocent, and insists that all 120 dead in their Samarra operation are all insurgents when this cannot possibly be true. What about the latest wedding party carnage, another American "success" against terrorism? Because journalists can scarcely travel in Iraq any more, there is no longer any independent witness to this awful war. What is going on in Ramadi and Hilla and all the other cities where US forces carry out their brutal raids?

Tony Blair still thinks his hideous invasion was not a mistake. He still seems to believe in his own version of The Great War for Civilisation, just as my father once believed in it. And now I wonder what terrors this disaster holds in store for our future generations, who will also ask themselves if they can escape from history.

From "Future generations will struggle to escape the legacy of the disaster in Iraq"
by Robert Fisk
The Independent

The Choice

The first years of the 21st century have unleashed the modern day version of the crusades. Of course, the language is now couched in softer terms. No longer is it politically correct to talk about civilizing the savages and heathens and dark-skinned peoples. Such brazen language would not be tolerated. However, while the language may have changed a bit, the mindset has not. The front men for the military-industrial complex still talk about bringing civilization to the darker corners of the earth, and justify it all in the name of doing God's work. The packaging may be slightly different, but the mayhem, carnage and destruction are the same. Oh, excuse the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians. That is just collateral damage. (...)

(...) It is amazing how little has changed in the last 100 years or so. One of the most famous writings in opposition to imperialism is the Junius Pamphlet, written by German socialist Rosa Luxemburg in 1915 while she was in prison for opposing the First World War. (Four years later she was brutally murdered by German right-wingers.) In this document, Luxemburg argued very convincingly that the stark choice facing humanity was one between socialism or barbarism:

"We stand today...before the awful proposition: either the triumph of imperialism-and the destruction of all culture, and, as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration, a vast cemetery-or the victory of socialism."

Perhaps she was a bit premature in her dire prophecy. In any case, in the early stages of the 21st century the choice before us is even starker, given the sheer unbridled power of the US Empire and its global reach. If the barbarism of capitalism and militarism is not overcome, our children and our children's children could indeed find themselves in a vast cemetery, a brutal world where Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay serve as models for the treatment of human beings, where environmental catastrophe becomes increasingly inevitable, and where the finest products of human culture are reduced to nothing more than commodities to be sold off to the highest bidder. Rosa Luxemburg put it quite eloquently:

"This madness will not stop, and this bloody nightmare of hell will not cease, until the people...wake up out of their drunken sleep, clasp each others hands in brotherhood and drown the bestial chorus of war agitators and the hoarse cry of capitalist hyenas..."

The choice is as clear as ever.


From The Choice
by Charlie Kaften
ZNet

Indymedia 2

Indymedia has learned that the request to seize Indymedia servers hosted by a US company in the UK originated from government agencies in Italy and Switzerland. More than 20 Indymedia sites, several internet radio streams and other projects were hosted on the servers. They were taken offline on October 7th after an order was issued to Rackspace, Inc., one of Indymedia's web hosting providers.

IFJ's Statement

"We have witnessed an intolerable and intrusive international police operation against a network specialising in independent journalism," said Aidan White, International Federation of Journalists General Secretary. "The way this has been done smacks more of intimidation of legitimate journalistic inquiry than crime-busting."

"The seizing of computers and the high profile nature of this incident suggests that someone wanted to stifle these independent voices in journalism," said Aidan White. "We need a full investigation into why this action took place, who took part and who authorised it.”

JOURNALISM & JOURNALISM

"As is so often the case in this conflict it's the Iraqi civilian population which suffers the greatest loss of life - either as a result of mistakes by the Americans, or, far more frequently, of course, as a result of the bombs and the bullets of the insurgents." (Nicholas Witchell, BBC1, 18:00 News, September 30, 2004)

Earlier this week, Knight Ridder Newspapers reported that operations by US and multinational forces and Iraqi police are killing twice as many Iraqis - most of them civilians - as attacks by insurgents, according to statistics compiled by the Iraqi Health Ministry.

According to the ministry, the interim Iraqi government recorded 3,487 Iraqi deaths in 15 of the country's 18 provinces from April 5 - when the ministry began compiling the data - until Sept. 19. Of those, 328 were women and children. Another 13,720 Iraqis were injured, the ministry said. (Knight Ridder, Washington Bureau )

As for your astonishing claim idea that US forces merely make "mistakes" in killing civilians, Jonathan Steele wrote in the Guardian earlier this month:

"[I]t is not just the launch of the war which was illegal. Illegality continues today. Take the US helicopter attack on a crowd in Haifa Street, Baghdad, last Sunday, which killed 13 people and injured dozens (including a Guardian reporter). It was almost certainly a war crime."

David Edwards
Media Lens
ZNet

THE CLOWN OF THE DAY

Sanctions would have been lifted. Saddam, rich, triumphant and unbalanced, would have reconstituted his W.M.D. Perhaps he would have joined a nuclear arms race with Iran. Perhaps he would have left it all to his pathological heir Qusay.

We can argue about what would have been the best way to depose Saddam, but this report makes it crystal clear that this insatiable tyrant needed to be deposed. He was the menace, and, as the world dithered, he was winning his struggle. He was on the verge of greatness. We would all now be living in his nightmare.

David Brooks
The New York Times

COLUMBUS DAY

October 11th America will celebrate Columbus Day.

It was A.D. 1492.
In Italy artists of great value are working on the masterpieces that centuries later will be known as Renaissance. Banks and the first big capitalistic companies are starting their journey too. The New Era begins!

Same year, same story. Just seen from another angle. The civilized white man arrives to the "new" (sic!) world and immediately starts his best business. Columbus was greatly impressed by the beauty of the people and their hospitality. "(They) are so naïve and so free with their possessions that no one who has not witnessed them would believe it. When you ask for something they have, they never say no. To the contrary, they offer to share with anyone...". The great hero continues: "They would make fine servants... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want".

District of Columbia. Columbia University. Columbus Circle. Columbus Day... Bloodshed. Deceit. Genocide. This is what we celebrate today.

Howard Zinn writes in "A People's History of the United States": "The treatment of heroes and their victims - the quiet acceptance of conquest and murder in the name of progress - is only one aspect of a certain approach to history, in which the past is told from the point of view of governments, conquerors, diplomats, leaders."

Columbus is still with us. Years after years. Generation after generation. Genocide after genocide.

"I do not admit... that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia... by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race... has come in and taken its place." Churchill to Palestine Royal Commission, 1937

Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: "We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it? "
US Ambassador at the United Nations (soon to become Secretary of State) Madeleine Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price - we think the price is worth it." CBS - "60 Minutes", May 12, 1996

“We come to Iraq with respect for its citizens, for their great civilization and for the religious faiths they practice. We have no ambition in Iraq, except to remove a threat and restore control of that country to its own people.” - US President George Bush, March 19, 2003

Again in "A People's History...", Howard Zinn writes: "Columbus and his successors were not coming into an empty wilderness, but into a world which in some places was as densely populated as Europe itself, where the culture was complex, where human relations were more egalitarian than in Europe, and where the relations among men, women, children, and the nature were more beautifully worked out than perhaps any place in the world."

Let's remember this. Not for the past. But for the present. And our future.

BEIRUT DECLARATION

We support the right of the people of Iraq and Palestine to resist the occupations. We call for the unconditional withdrawal of US and “coalition” forces from Iraq. We demand the end to the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

From "Declaration of the international strategy meeting of anti-war and anti-globalisation movements" Beirut, Lebanon 17-19 September 2004

THE CLOWN OF THE DAY

Nonetheless, I suspect that the reason Bush's approval ratings hover around 50 percent, despite a year of carnage in Iraq, is because of the reason many of us in the commentariat don't like to talk about: in a faithful and moralistic nation, Bush's language has a resonance with people who know that he is not always competent, and who know that he doesn't always dominate every argument, but who can sense a shared cast of mind.

David Brooks
The New York Times
2 October 2004

WAR CRIMES AT ABU GHRAIB

Some of the worst things that happened that you don’t know about. OK? Videos. There are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at [Abu Ghraib], which is about 30 miles from Baghdad — 30 kilometers, maybe, just 20 miles, I'm not sure whether it's — anyway. The women were passing messages out saying please come and kill me because of what’s happened. And basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children, in cases that have been [video] recorded, the boys were sodomized, with the cameras rolling, and the worst above all of them is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking. That your government has, and they’re in total terror it’s going to come out.

Seymour Hersh at ACLU Conference "Stand Up for Freedom"
7 July 2004