Human Rights, Gays and Iran

From DIRELAND:

The September 23 Washington Blade reprints as a column a press release from Paula Ettelbrick, executive director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), headlined “Standing Up for Gays in Iran.” I found Ettelbrick’s column disingenuous and hypocritical in the extreme. Here’s why.

The Persian Gay and Lesbian Organization (PGLO) has appealed to North American activists for help in mobilizing support for their campaign against the vicious, lethal, anti-gay crackdown taking place in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The anti-gay pogrom in Iran includes arrests and torture of gay people, executions of gay Iranians on trumped up charges, and a well-organized Internet entrapment campaign by Iran's religious sex police that is ensnaring gay Iranians daily. (Read more)

Walter Wolfgang: Tony Blair is the worst leader the Labour Party has ever had

My case is not important. But what happened to me when I was ejected from the Labour conference - simply for a one-word protest during Jack Straw's speech this week - tells us there is something deeply wrong with the culture of our Government under Tony Blair. (...) Tony Blair is the worst leader the Labour Party has ever had, Ramsay Macdonald included. Mr Blair's instincts are basically those of a Tory. He picked up this cause from the Americans without even analysing it. I suspect that he is too theatrical even to realise that he is lying.

Read "Walter Wolfgang: 'We have been lied to about the war. I dared to speak the truth'" By Walter Wolfgang on The Independent

International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission's Hypocrisy

The September 23 Washington Blade reprints as a column a press release from Paula Ettelbrick (right), executive director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), headlined “Standing Up for Gays in Iran.” I found Ettelbrick’s column disingenuous and hypocritical in the extreme. Here’s why.

Read "I.G.L.H.R.C. and IRAN -- A Reply to Paula Ettelbrick" by Doug Ireland

Global Warming

Arctic sea ice has melted to a record low this month, prompting fears that the entire polar ice cap may disappear within decades. Satellite images of the northern hemisphere's floating sea ice show that the area of ocean covered by the ice during this month was the lowest ever observed by scientists.

Read "Sea ice melts to record low because of global warming" By Steve Connor on The Independent

On the same topic:
- Why are we so stupid?
- New Viruses, Global Warming and Blair's "new views"
- Bush and Global Warming
- Global Warming, Think Tanks and Propaganda

New Viruses, Global Warming and Blair's "new views"

First you read this:

Last week, the latest study to track global warming revealed that Alaska's snowless season is lengthening. As the world warms and ice-sheets and glaciers begin to melt, most of us worry about how the earth will respond and what kind of impact climate change will have. Will flooding become a regular feature, or is the land going to become parched? Are hurricanes and typhoons going to spring up in places they have never visited before? Is the rising sea level going to swallow some of the world's most fertile farmland, along with millions of homes?

All of these are valid concerns, but now it turns out that the impact of global warming could be worse than we first imagined. Ice sheets are mostly frozen water, but during the freezing process they can also incorporate organisms such as fungi, bacteria and viruses. Some scientists believe that climate change could unleash ancient illnesses as ice sheets drip away and bacteria and viruses defrost. Illnesses we thought we had eradicated, like polio, could reappear, while common viruses like human influenza could have a devastating effect if melting glaciers release a bygone strain to which we have no resistance. What is more, new species unknown to science may re-emerge. And it is not just humans who are at risk: animals, plants and marine creatures could also suffer as ancient microbes thaw out.

Read "Global warming: Death in the deep-freeze" by Kate Ravilious on The Independent

Then you read this:

Tony Blair has admitted that he is changing his views on combating global warming to mirror those of President Bush - and oppose negotiating international treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol. (The Independent)

Now think!

Corporate Media: Complicity in War Crimes

Two good example of how the Corporate Media work as the propaganda machine of the power (Goebbels would be proud!) From the land of War Criminal Bush:

Hundreds of thousands of Americans around the country protested the Iraq War on the weekend of September 24-25, with the largest demonstration bringing between 100,000 and 300,000 to Washington, D.C. on Saturday.

But if you relied on television for your news, you'd hardly know the protests happened at all. According to the Nexis news database, the only mention on the network newscasts that Saturday came on the NBC Nightly News, where the massive march received all of 87 words.

Read "Disappearing Antiwar Protests. Media shrug off mass movement against war" on FAIR

... and from the land of War Criminal Blair:

"There are two paradigms for interpreting the success of the Iraq project." So writes Peter Beaumont in the Observer.

We wonder if Beaumont would describe the September 11 attacks as "the New York project", or "the American project". Would he talk of Saddam Hussein's 1990 "Kuwait project"?

Beaumont continues:

"Confronted with a vigorous but limited Sunni insurgency, bolstered by al-Qaeda atrocities, it is tempting to focus on the violence; to put the question of engagement in Iraq in terms of a cost-benefit analysis."

"In one column, you put the totals of US and UK dead - going on 3,000 and 100 respectively - and then try to extract a meaning for those lost lives. In this equation, no progress on the security front equals wasted lives. Its ultimate logic is withdrawal." (Beaumont, 'Despair is still not an option,' The Observer, September 25, 2005; http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1577939,00.html)

It is remarkable that Beaumont can include US and UK military deaths in one column while excluding 100,000 Iraqi civilian deaths, subsequently mentioning them only as an afterthought (see below). Should not the death of Iraqi civilians - innocents who are neither paid nor trained to place their lives in danger - be prominent in any such calculation?

Beaumont adds:

"But there is a second paradigm. This demands that the headline violence is stripped out and that Iraq's progress is counted not by the bodies of foreign soldiers or of Iraqis [the afterthought], but by how much democracy has begun to take root. The answer to the question of whether British and US troops should remain should not be calculated by the scale of their losses, but by whether they are doing any good."

Again, astonishingly, Beaumont focuses on "the scale of their [British and US] losses" - the incalculably greater suffering of the Iraqi population has once again disappeared. This is shameful.

Read "PETER BEAUMONT OF THE OBSERVER ON 'THE IRAQ PROJECT'" on Media Lens

John Pilger: Britain is shamed

Here are questions that are not being asked about the latest twist of a cynical war. Were explosives and a remote-control detonator found in the car of the two SAS special forces men "rescued" from prison in Basra on 19 September? If true, what were they planning to do with them? Why did the British military authorities in Iraq put out an unbelievable version of the circumstances that led up to armoured vehicles smashing down the wall of a prison?

Read "SINISTER EVENTS IN A CYNICAL WAR" by John Pilger

War Criminal Blair's Agenda

Mr War Criminal Blair said:

"The world is on the move again; the change in the early 21st century is even greater than that of the late 20th century. So now in turn, we have to change again. Not step back from New Labour but step up to a new mark a changing world is setting for us" (The Guardian)

He meant the world that his pals are setting for us. His pals? Murdoch, Bush, Berlusconi and Co. Their agenda is the same agenda of Reagan and Thatcher. Their interests are the same. The people and the interests they represent are the same. Their policies are the same: Iraq, human rights, environment, economy, labour rights, tax cuts for the rich, dismantling the welfare state, police state, control of the media and propaganda… you name it.

Neo-Con? New Lab? It would be much more appropriate to call these thugs and war criminals Neo-Fascist. Their hands are covered in blood and there is no water, there is no river or ocean able to clean them. No matter how powerful they are, the fancy parties they go, the elegant houses and the expensive dresses, no matter their smiles and the lies they hide behind. They are miserable gangsters, bloody war criminals, responsible for unspeakable atrocities. They belong to jail and deserve our deepest contempt.

Robert Fisk: If you ever saw what I saw...

Many of the most gruesome images don't appear in Western media. "If you ever saw what I saw, you would never, ever dream of supporting a war again in your life," Fisk said. "It is about death and infliction of suffering. And it is about total failure of the human spirit -but we don't show it."

"'Full-scale insurgency' controls much of Iraq. Robert Fisk drew a standing ovation at the Lensic Center for the Performing Arts on Wednesday night at the conclusion of his interview with Pacifica Radio's Amy Goodman." by Anne Constable, SantaFeNewMexican.com Read the whole article on Global Echo

Have fun with your mouse...

... just click here!

Getty Museum

Very meaningful story indeed!

The J Paul Getty Museum, one of the world's largest and best endowed art collections, faces a fresh blow to its reputation following the publication of internal documents suggesting it ignored warnings that up to half of its highest profile antiquities acquisitions were looted from ruins in Italy.

The Getty is already under a dark cloud, with the Italian government demanding the return of 42 pieces in its collection and its curator of antiquities, Marion True, on trial in Italy on criminal conspiracy charges.

But the new documents, obtained by the Los Angeles Times, add considerable detail to previous allegations and depict an organisation both tortured by the question of the provenance of its treasures and, at the very least, unwilling to delve too deeply into its acquisition practices.

Read "Getty museum 'knew it was buying looted Italian antiquities'" By Andrew Gumbel on The Independent

German court declares Iraq war violated international law

Just a few weeks ago, a highly significant judicial decision was handed down by the German Federal Administrative Court but barely mentioned in the German media. With careful reasoning, the judges ruled that the assault launched by the United States and its allies against Iraq was a clear war of aggression that violated international law.

Further, they meticulously demonstrated that the German government, in contrast to its public protestations, had assisted in the aggression against Iraq without having any legal right to do so. Although the decision was made three months ago, the judgement and its legal arguments have only just been made available in written form, comprising more than 130 pages.

The decision was made in relation to legal proceedings initiated by a German army officer who had refused to obey an order following the invasion of Iraq by the US-led coalition of forces because he feared that he would in effect be supporting the war. As a result, he was demoted from major to captain and the army filed a criminal complaint against him for insubordination. In its latest judgement, the Federal Administrative Court reversed the demotion and said the charges against the officer contravened Article 4, Paragraph 1 of the German Constitution, which guarantees the right to freedom of conscience.

Read "German court declares Iraq war violated international law" By Justus Leicht on World Socialist Web Site

Bye Bye Silvio

Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's prime minister, was dealt a blow on Monday when an opinion poll showed a collapse in support for his Forza Italia party and his leadership of the Italian centre-right. With a national election due by May, a survey by the SWG research institute put Forza Italia's support at 17.5 per cent, the party's lowest score since it swept to power in 2001 with 29.4 per cent of the vote. (...) According to SWG, the centre-left opposition headed by Romano Prodi is leading the centre-right camp by 50 per cent to 44 per cent.

Read "Poll shows collapse in Berlusconi support" By Tony Barber on Financial Times

Now the question is: Will the Italian Left (in the centre-left coalition) be able to be Progressive or will go after the Church and the Italian industrial elite represented by the Confindustria? Will Italian troops leave Iraq?

Sheehan arrested in front of White House

Sheehan and several dozen other protesters sat down on the sidewalk after marching along the pedestrian walkway on Pennsylvania Avenue. Police warned them three times that they were breaking the law by failing to move along, then began making arrests.

Sheehan, 48, was the first taken into custody. She stood up and was led to a police vehicle while protesters chanted, "The whole world is watching."

Read "Sheehan arrested in front of White House. Civil disobedience meant to protest Iraq war" by AP on CNN

"No Iraqis left me on a roof to die"

As we circle back toward the Mall, we pass a mother and son standing on the sidewalk. She's holding what, for me, is the most striking sign of the day: "No Iraqis left me on a roof to die." Her twelve year-old son, Muata Hunter, holds a sign too. It's simple and eloquent. "No war." Just as I approach them, a young black woman comes up to ask (as I was about to do), "Is your home in New Orleans?"

"No," the woman answers, "but my heart is. It's my people."

She's Aziza Gibson-Hunter, a local artist. "I've been thinking and thinking," she says, "trying to figure out how to make my people understand the direct correlation of this war and our well-being and I just thought this put it succinctly."

Read "No Iraqis Left Me on a Roof to Die" By Tom Engelhardt with Photos by Tam Turse on Tomdispatch.com

HRW: Katrina and NO Prison

(New York, September 22, 2005)—As Hurricane Katrina began pounding New Orleans, the sheriff's department abandoned hundreds of inmates imprisoned in the city’s jail, Human Rights Watch said today. Inmates in Templeman III, one of several buildings in the Orleans Parish Prison compound, reported that as of Monday, August 29, there were no correctional officers in the building, which held more than 600 inmates. These inmates, including some who were locked in ground-floor cells, were not evacuated until Thursday, September 1, four days after flood waters in the jail had reached chest-level. “Of all the nightmares during Hurricane Katrina, this must be one of the worst,” said Corinne Carey, researcher from Human Rights Watch. “Prisoners were abandoned in their cells without food or water for days as floodwaters rose toward the ceiling.”

New Orleans: Prisoners Abandoned to Floodwaters
Officers Deserted a Jail Building, Leaving Inmates Locked in Cells
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH

UK vs Tony Blair

From The Guardian

Only 41% of voters are persuaded by the prime minister's argument that troops have a duty to remain in the country until things improve. By contrast, a majority of voters, 51%, want the government to set out plans to withdraw troops from Iraq regardless of the situation in the country. (...) But the poll, taken after last week's attack on British troops in Basra, shows that a clear majority, 64%, believe the situation in the country is worsening despite the presence of British forces. Just 12% now share Mr Blair's belief that British troops are actually helping to improve the security situation. Support for Britain's presence in Iraq appears to be dropping in the wake of repeated attacks on coalition forces and the growing prospect of civil war in the country. At the start of this year ICM found 38% of voters believed the war against Iraq was justified, with 47% arguing that it was not. (...) Most voters, 58%, are now unhappy with the job he is doing as prime minister, a reversal of the position in last month's Guardian/ICM poll, when a majority of voters said they were happy with him.

And Tony Blair vs UK. From The Independent

Tony Blair will signal this week that Labour should abandon "urban intellectuals" who deserted it over the Iraq war. As the party's conference begins in Brighton today he is determined to face down growing pressure for a withdrawal of British troops.

Katrina and US Government Corruption

More than 80 percent of the $1.5 billion in contracts signed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency alone were awarded without bidding or with limited competition, government records show, provoking concerns among auditors and government officials about the potential for favoritism or abuse.

Already, questions have been raised about the political connections of two major contractors - the Shaw Group and Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton - that have been represented by the lobbyist Joe M. Allbaugh, President Bush's former campaign manager and a former leader of FEMA.

From "Many Contracts for Storm Work Raise Questions" by By ERIC LIPTON and RON NIXON on The New York Times

War Criminal Blair

From BBC News

But he said despite insurgents infiltrating the Iraqi police force and the escalating violence in the country, he would have made the same decision to invade Iraq.

Mr Blair said he would "absolutely not" accept an arrest warrant from a Basra judge for two British soldiers after an Iraqi civilian was reportedly killed and a police officer injured.

Blair's UK: The Rise of a Totalitarian State

A 43-year-old woman has been arrested in connection with the leak of documents from the investigation into the death of Jean-Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian electrician wrongly shot by police as a terrorist suspect after the London bombings in July.

Leicestershire Constabulary was asked, as an outside authority, to investigate the leak after ITV News ran details of the inquiry by the Independent Police Complaints Commission into the shooting at Stockwell underground station on 22 July.

The leaked documents showed that police statements immediately after the shooting were misleading, including comments made by the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair.

Read "Woman held in probe into Tube shooting leak" by Martin Bright on The Guardian

Kyoto Protocol: Tony Blair's volte-face

The masters called and the puppet reply:

Tony Blair has admitted that he is changing his views on combating global warming to mirror those of President Bush - and oppose negotiating international treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol. The Independent

In a magazine article this month, Blair's own climate change minister Elliot Morley also wrote that the US focus on technology was 'not... a substitute for internationally agreed targets and actions' The Guardian

War & Business

US forces have fired so many bullets in Iraq and Afghanistan - an estimated 250,000 for every insurgent killed - that American ammunition-makers cannot keep up with demand. As a result the US is having to import supplies from Israel.

Read "US forced to import bullets from Israel as troops use 250,000 for every rebel killed" By Andrew Buncombe on The Independent

US soldiers torture Iraqi "routinely"

Remember Bush and Blair talking about "our way of life" and "our values"?

WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 - Three former members of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division say soldiers in their battalion in Iraq routinely beat and abused prisoners in 2003 and 2004 to help gather intelligence on the insurgency and to amuse themselves. The new allegations, the first involving members of the elite 82nd Airborne, are contained in a report by Human Rights Watch. Fron "3 in 82nd Airborne Say Beating Iraqi Prisoners Was Routine" By ERIC SCHMITT on The New York Times

Hart Viges: 'You can't wash your hands when they're covered in blood'

My name is Hart Viges. September 11 happened. Next day I was in the recruiting office. I thought that was the way I could make a difference in the world for the better.

Read "Hart Viges: 'You can't wash your hands when they're covered in blood'" on The Independent

U.S. BARS ROBERT FISK FROM ENTERING COUNTRY

The internationally renowned correspodent for The Independent -- the great British journalist Robert Fisk (right) -- has been banned from entering the United States. Fisk has been covering war zones for decades, but is above all known for his incisive reporting from the Middle East for more than 20 years. His critical coverage of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, and the continuing occupation that has followed it, has repeatedly exposed U.S. and British government disinformation campaigns. He also has exposed how the bulk of the press reports from Iraq have been "hotel journalism" -- a phrase Fisk coined.

Read "U.S. BARS ROBERT FISK FROM ENTERING COUNTRY" by Doug Direland on DIRELAND

USA-UK Regimes: Lies, Just Bloody lies

The US and the Iraqi government have overstated the number of foreign fighters in Iraq, "feeding the myth" that they are the backbone of the insurgency, an American thinktank says in a new report.

Foreign militants - mainly from Algeria, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia - account for less than 10% of the estimated 30,000 insurgents, according to the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

From "Report attacks 'myth' of foreign fighters" by Brian Whitaker and Ewen MacAskill on The Guardian

Hurricans Rita and Katrina caused by Climate Change

Super-powerful hurricanes now hitting the United States are the "smoking gun" of global warming, one of Britain's leading scientists believes. The growing violence of storms such as Katrina, which wrecked New Orleans, and Rita, now threatening Texas, is very probably caused by climate change, said Sir John Lawton, chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. Hurricanes were getting more intense, just as computer models predicted they would, because of the rising temperature of the sea, he said. "The increased intensity of these kinds of extreme storms is very likely to be due to global warming."

Read "This is global warming, says environmental chief. As Hurricane Rita threatens devastation, scientist blames climate change" By Michael McCarthy, The Independent

Tariq Ali: The logic of colonial rule

There is now near-universal agreement that the western occupation of Iraq has turned out to be an unmitigated disaster; first for the people of Iraq, second for the soldiers sent by scoundrel politicians to die in a foreign land. The grammar of deceit utilised by Bush, Blair and sundry neocon/neolib apologists to justify the war has lost all credibility. Despite the embedded journalists and non-stop propaganda, the bloody images refuse to go away: the immediate withdrawal of all foreign troops is the only meaningful solution.

Read "The logic of colonial rule" by Tariq Ali on The Guardian

MEDIA LENS: IMMEDIATE WITHDRAWAL FROM IRAQ - THE GUARDIAN BLANKS PUBLIC OPINION

RAPID RESPONSE MEDIA ALERT:

IMMEDIATE WITHDRAWAL FROM IRAQ - THE GUARDIAN BLANKS PUBLIC OPINION

We do not know whether Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger wrote yesterday's leader on "Britain's post-invasion commitment to Iraq", but we assume that he approved it. ('Signposting the Exit,' The Guardian, September 21, 2005)

"No one is arguing for an immediate pull-out", the editorial claims.

Presumably those calling for an immediate withdrawal, including many in the anti-war movement, do not exist.

"No one" includes Caroline Lucas, Green Euro-MP, one of many speakers who called for "the immediate withdrawal of British troops from Iraq" at a 'Troops Out Now' rally in central London on March 19, 2005. (Green Party news release, March 18, 2005)

"No one" includes Andrew Murray, chair of the Stop the War coalition. In a Guardian comment piece ahead of the same rally, he called for "the occupation [to be] brought to a speedy end, our troops brought home, and full sovereignty restored to the Iraqi people". (Murray, 'No escape from the war,' The Guardian, March 16, 2005)

"No one" includes Rose Gentle, who lost her 19-year-old son Gordon, killed by a roadside bomb in Basra. She helped form the Justice for Gordon Gentle campaign, and has been campaigning for the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq. She told a public rally in Glasgow last year:

"Gordon's pals came home last night and he could have been here. I feel his life was wasted by going into an illegal war. I will not stop calling for the troops to come home." (Cameron Simpson, 'Mother says she feels her son's life was wasted,' The Herald, December 8, 2004)

"No one" includes American mother Cindy Sheehan, who also lost a son in Iraq. Mrs Sheehan has been conducting a "Bring Them Home Now" bus tour in the US. In calling for troops to be "brought home immediately", she exhorted Bush: "You can't win the war on terror by killing more of our soldiers and innocent Iraqi people. You are breeding more terror." (Sheehan, 'My response to George' August 24, 2005)

"No one" includes more than half of the US public. When asked how long American troops should remain in Iraq, 52 per cent interviewed called for an immediate withdrawal, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. (Raymond Hernandez and Megan Thee, 'Iraq's Costs Worry Americans, Poll Indicates,' New York Times, September 17, 2005)

"No one" includes Iraqis themselves. Guardian comment editor Seumas Milne observed last year that "polls show most Iraqis want foreign troops out now". ('If the US can't fix it, it's the wrong kind of democracy,' The Guardian, November 18, 2004) Does the Guardian think Iraqi opinion doesn't count?

"No one" includes the Guardian's new columnist Simon Jenkins who wrote this week:

"Don't be fooled a second time. They told you Britain must invade Iraq because of its weapons of mass destruction. They were wrong. Now they say British troops must stay in Iraq because otherwise it will collapse into chaos.

"This second lie is infecting everyone. It is spouted by Labour and Tory opponents of the war and even by the Liberal Democrat spokesman, Sir Menzies Campbell." (Jenkins, 'To say we must stay in Iraq to save it from chaos is a lie,' The Guardian, September 21, 2005).

One can debate what timescale is implied by "immediate" withdrawal. Many peace activists propose a deadline of Christmas 2005. A rally taking place this Saturday in Hyde Park will call for the withdrawal of troops to be completed by then (www.stopwar.org.uk). A letter in support condemning the continued occupation of Iraq as "an unmitigated disaster", was signed by 100 academics, MPs and activists, and delivered by musician Brian Eno and actor Julie Christie to Downing Street last week. Signees also included Richard Dawkins, Harold Pinter, Ken Loach, A L Kennedy, George Monbiot, Tony Benn, John Pilger and former UK ambassador Craig Murray. (Ben Russell, 'Arts world unites for plea to pull troops out of Iraq,' The Independent, September 16, 2005)

Calling for a rapid withdrawal of 'coalition' troops does not mean accepting that the people of Iraq will be required to suffer even worse chaos and violence. US historian and peace activist, Howard Zinn, comments:

"The UN should arrange, as US forces leave, for an international group of peacekeepers and negotiators from the Arab countries to bring together Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, and work out a solution for self-governance that would give all three groups a share in political power. Simultaneously, the UN should arrange for shipments of food and medicine, from the United States and other countries, as well as engineers to help rebuild the country." (Zinn, 'How to get out of Iraq,' The Nation, May 6, 2004)

But this is an inconceivable option for warmonger Tony Blair, his faithful retinue of ministers, and his supporters in the media who, on the evidence to date, include the 'liberal' Guardian.

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UK, the New Fascism

The home secretary has promised the prime minister that he will lock away for five years anyone who "glorifies, exalts or celebrates" a terrorist act committed in the past 20 years. He does not care if glorification was not meant. If someone, somewhere takes anything that I say or write as encouraging to terror, even if they do not act on it, I have committed a criminal act.

Read "This is an act of censorship worthy of Joseph Goebbels. The plan to draw up a list of historical events that people can be prosecuted for celebrating is a sign of a leader losing his grip" by Simon Jenkins on The Guardian

Al Franken

From "Al Franken Interview" By Stephen Thompson, The Progressive

I do USO [United Service Organizations] tours, and when I do a USO tour, I don’t go, “Your President lied to you and you’re dying for no reason.” I do, “Boy, this army grub doesn’t agree with me. So far, I’ve had five MREs and none of them seem to have an exit strategy.” I’m a comedian: I do a Saddam bit, you know what I mean? [Laughs.] So, if I do a venue where it’s only appropriate to be funny and not political, I can do that. The question is whether I’m going to do The Al Franken Sitcom soon, and the answer is probably not. I’ve got bigger fish to fry.

As the historian William Blum recently wrote:

"Are American soldiers brave because they're risking their lives every day? No, they're foolish; foolish to be risking their lives for the awful purposes of this war, which they do not even understand. If I'm opposed to the war because of the thousand kinds of horror it rains down upon the Iraqi people, how can I support those who carry out the horrors?

Al Franken, the humorist who's the leading host of Air America radio, would like you to believe that he's against the war, but he went to Iraq to entertain the troops a while back. Does that make sense? Why does the military bring entertainers to the soldiers? To lift their spirits. Why does the military want to lift the soldiers' spirits? A happier soldier does his job better. What's the soldier's job? Raining down a thousand kinds of horror upon the Iraqi people."

QUOTE OF THE DAY

From "Bush Firm on Iraq Policy as Antiwar Forces Plan Protest" By MARIA NEWMAN, The New York Times

The president [Bush] asserted at a news conference afterward that terrorists had studied the American responses to the Iranian hostage crisis during the Carter administration, the bombing of United States Marines' barracks in Lebanon during the Reagan administration and the first terror attack on the World Trade Center during the Clinton administration, among other events.

"The terrorists concluded that we lacked the courage and character to defend ourselves, and so they attacked us," the president said. "The only way the terrorists can win is if we lose our nerve and abandon the mission."

Isn't a state that keeps files on innocent persons a police state?

A London underground station was evacuated and part of a main east-west line closed in a security alert on Thursday, three weeks after suicide bombers killed 52 people on the transport network, police said. (Reuters)

This Reuters story was written while the police were detaining me in Southwark tube station and the bomb squad was checking my rucksack. When they were through, the two explosive specialists walked out of the tube station smiling and commenting: "Nice laptop." The officers offered apologies on behalf of the Metropolitan police. Then they arrested me.

Read "Suspicious behaviour on the tube" by David Mery on The Guardian

March On The Media

It is time to recognize that the war in Iraq was not just a government crime. It was and is still a media crime.

Read "Time To Also March On The Media? That time has come again" By Danny Schechter on MediaChannel.org

Haiti: Another Uncle Sam's Product

On market day in Dajabón, a bustling Dominican town on the Haitian border, you can pick up many bargains if you know where to look. You can haggle the price of a live chicken down to 40 pesos (72p); wrestle 10lb of macaroni from 60 to 50 pesos; and, with some discreet inquiries, buy a Haitian child for the equivalent of £54.22. "You just ask around town," says Hilda Pe-a, who monitors border crossings for the Jesuit Refugee Service. "People know who the scouts are. You just tell them what kind of child you are looking for and they can bring across whatever it is that you want."

Read "Haitian children sold as cheap labourers and prostitutes for little more than £50" by Gary Younge on The Guardian

QUOTE OF THE DAY

From "Blair under new pressure to set date for pulling troops out of Iraq" By Kim Sengupta and Colin Brown, The Independent:

The Defence Secretary said the rise in violence was a direct result of the political progress: "You can measure the success of the politics by the ferocity of the terrorism. As the elections come up we will see more of this."

'THEY'LL KILL ME' - A GAY IRANIAN TORTURE VICTIM SPEAKS

Amir is a 22-year-old gay Iranian who was arrested by Iran’s morality police as part of a massive Internet entrapment campaign targeting gays. He was beaten and tortured while in custody, threatened with death, and lashed 100 times (see photos). He escaped from Iran in August, and is now in Turkey, where he awaits the granting of asylum by a gay-friendly country. In a two hour telephone interview from Turkey, Amir -- through a translator -- provided a terrifying, first-hand account of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s intense and extensive anti-gay crackdown, which swept up Amir and made him its victim. Here is Amir’s story: (Read it on DIRELAND)

George Galloway replies to Greg Palast

Until a couple of days ago I hadn't heard of Greg Palast in years, the man who claims to have been pursuing me with questions for two months. He has never phoned, written, emailed or made any other contact with me, which is curiously reminiscent of the behavior of the US Senate committee. Having now forced myself to look at his pernicious writing, it seems like the deranged ramblings you might expect to find pushed out from under the door of a locked ward. He claims to be a journalist. He clearly doesn't get much work.

Read "Reply to Greg Palast" by George Galloway on ZNet

Italy: Hunger Strike and Anti-War Movement

Seven antiwar activists remain on a hunger strike in front of the Farnesina, the Italian Foreign Ministry in Rome, to protest censorship. Leonardo Mazzei, 49, employed by national electric company and spokesman for the Italian "Free Iraq" Committee; Anika Persiani, 31, active in the "Free Iraq" Committee; Lara Wintzer, 21, active in the "Free Iraq" Committee in Germany; Ilia Montani, 20, philosophy student and activist in the Umbria Student Movement; Jörg Ulrich, 38, student and former PKK militant of the "Free Iraq" Committee in Germany; Roberto Gabriele, 66, of the international Foundation "Nino Pasti" of Rome; and Emanuele Fanesi, student-worker in Perugia active in the "Anti-Imperialist Camp" have been on strike since August 31 to protest the refusal of the Foreign Affairs Minister of Italy, Gianfranco Fini, to grant visas for six prominent Iraqi anti-occupation activists to attend the "Leave Iraq in peace - support the legitimate resistance of the Iraq people" conference in Chianciano, Italy. The condition of the strikers remains stable as they enter their 3rd week without sustenance, prominently displaying a banner in Italian that reads "We want to see the visas".

Read "Hunger Strike Against Censorship. The Anti-war Movement in Italy" By KATRINA YEAW on CounterPunch

Egyptian elections

Hosni Mubarak's victory in the Egyptian presidential election of Sept. 7 was about as surprising as a Las Vegas casino fleecing its customers at the roulette tables. Egyptians joked that the only requirement for winning the presidency was 24 years of prior experience. What was surprising was that only 23 percent of the eligible voters bothered to come out for the country's first multiparty elections for the executive since 1952. Despite the conviction of supporters of the Bush administration that Bush's invasion and bloody occupation of Iraq would somehow suddenly make Middle Easterners yearn to join the American Republican Party, the "Arab spring" of political liberalization discerned by the Wall Street Journal has yet to materialize.

Read "Bush's war and the Egyptian elections. Mubarak's rigged victory shows that right-wing predictions of an 'Arab spring' were wishful thinking." by Juan Cole on Salon.com

Hugo Chavez at the UN

Mr. President: in only seven years the Bolivarian Revolution, the Venezuelan people, can show important social and economic conquests. 1,406,000 Venezuelans learned to read and to write in one and a half years, and our population only consists of 25 million people. In a few weeks, the country will be able to declare itself to be a territory free of illiteracy. Three million Venezuelans have incorporated to the primary, secondary and university education that before were excluded because of poverty. 17.000.000 Venezuelans, almost 70% of the population, receive for the first time in history free medical attention, including medicines. And in a few years, all Venezuelans will have access to excellent medical attention. More than 1,700,000 tons of food were distributed at reasonable prices to 12.000.000 people, almost half of the Venezuelans. 1.000.000 million of them are temporarily receiving this food for free. These measures have generated a high level of nutritional security for the most needy. Mr. President, 700,000 jobs have been created, reducing unemployment by 9 percentage points. All this has occurred in the middle of internal and external aggression that included a military coup, supported by Washington, and an oil strike, also supported by Washington. In spite of these conspiracies, and the lies that have appeared in the media and the permanent threats of the Empire and its allies. These threats have included the incitation to magnicide. The only country where a person has the luxury to request assassination of a Chief of State is the United States. This just happened when the Reverend Pat Robertson, a very good friend of the White House publicly requested my murder, and then walked free. This is an international crime, international terrorism.

Read the whole speech on ZNet

Rupert Murdoch, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and the BBC

Rupert Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of News Corporation:

"Tony Blair... told me yesterday that he was in Delhi last week and he turned on the BBC World Service to see what was happening in New Orleans, and he said it was just full of hate at America and gloating about our troubles" (...)

Mr Murdoch revealed Mr Blair's private remark as he took part in a New York seminar hosted by Bill Clinton on Friday night. The former US president also took the BBC to task, saying it was "stacked up" to criticise the federal government's slow response.

Read "Blair tells Murdoch: 'gloating' BBC is 'full of hatred for America'. Extraordinary attack on corporation's coverage of New Orleans disaster" by Francis Elliott, Deputy Political Editor on The Independent

Robert Fisk: Human Rights, the West and the Middle East

A hundred years of Western interference in the Middle East has left the region so cracked with fault lines and artificial frontiers and heavy with injustices that we are in no position to lecture the Islamic world on human rights and values. Forget the Amalekites and the Persians and Martin Luther and the Caliph Abu Bakr. Just look at ourselves in the mirror and we will see the most frightening text of all.

Read "We have long ago lost our moral compass, so how can we lecture the Islamic world? Years of Western interference in the Middle East has left the region heavy with injustices" by Robert Fisk, The Independent. You can read the whole article on Global Echo

'The Pied Piper of Arkansas' and other fairy tales

'The Pied Piper of Arkansas' and other fairy tales
By Gabriele Zamparini


Summary:

- Support the Troops: I get an Oscar, you get a bullet!
- The Rule of the Game
- The Pied Piper of Arkansas


Support the Troops: I get an Oscar, you get a bullet!

Hollywood stars, singers and other celebrities have gone to Iraq and other places to "support the troops". The list is quite long: Bruce Willis (September 2003), Robin Williams (December 2003 and December 2004), Tiger Woods (March 2004) and Al Franken (December 2004) just to name a few. Even Mick Jagger, who has been quite critical of Bush's and Blair's madness, recently said he would be prepared to perform in Iraq to raise the troops' morale: "The boys are doing a very professional and a very tough job over there and they aren't getting a lot of fun. If we were asked to go it would be a very, very serious consideration. Just because I don't support the policy doesn't mean I don't support the troops. That was one of the tragedies of Vietnam". (1) Tu quoque Mick!

As the historian William Blum recently wrote: "Are American soldiers brave because they're risking their lives every day? No, they're foolish; foolish to be risking their lives for the awful purposes of this war, which they do not even understand. If I'm opposed to the war because of the thousand kinds of horror it rains down upon the Iraqi people, how can I support those who carry out the horrors?

Al Franken, the humorist who's the leading host of Air America radio, would like you to believe that he's against the war, but he went to Iraq to entertain the troops a while back. Does that make sense? Why does the military bring entertainers to the soldiers? To lift their spirits. Why does the military want to lift the soldiers' spirits? A happier soldier does his job better. What's the soldier's job? Raining down a thousand kinds of horror upon the Iraqi people." (2)

BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW! This is the call of the international antiwar movement. It's a call to the US Government and to the other members of this notorious "coalition of the willing". But shouldn't we raise our voices and call the troops home now even if the governments (as it seems likely!) are not bringing them back? It's time to stop going to entertain the troops and to lift their spirits. It's time to call for mutiny. We should, can and must call for a mass desertion of the troops in Iraq and show them our concrete solidarity when they do so. The only way to support the troops is to stand with those who refuse to kill innocent lives. COME BACK HOME NOW!

"But the proles, if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength, would have no need to cospire. They needed only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. If they chose they could blow the Party to pieces tomorrow morning. Surely sooner or later it must occur to them to do it? And yet---!" (3)


The Rule of the Game

Reporting the debate Hitchens vs Galloway, The Independent's reporter from New York writes:"Both men also fell into the trap of insulting the audience. Galloway did it just a little when he lamented that anyone could doubt the statistics recording the numbers of Iraqi dead because of the war. (100,000 he says.)" (4)

The journalist writes: "(100,000 he says.)" He says? Where does this number come? Not one more word!

Is that because The Independent's reporter has never heard of the Lancet report? No, of course he has! It's just that THE RULE OF THE GAME is that that report (5) must be discredited. Even better: ignored!

As Media Lens writes: "Regardless of the rationality or facts of the matter at hand, when the US and British governments rejected the Lancet's 100,000 figure as wildly exaggerated and flawed, the US and British media simply fell into line. But flawed methodology cannot be the determining factor, because the same media entities expressed zero dissent in response to the same lead researchers using the same methods in Congo.

The difference in media performance is clearly explained by the stance of power - the establishment on which the media system depends and of which it is a part. Indeed it is hard to imagine a more striking example of how the mass media act as a propaganda system for these interests.

Given the extraordinary gravity of the issue - our governments' responsibility for the illegal killing of tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of innocent civilians - it is also hard to imagine a more appalling journalistic failure and betrayal." (6)

The number 100,000 echoes Arthur Miller's words: "Few of us can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that the state has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable. And so the evidence has to be internally denied." (7)


The Pied Piper of Arkansas

Former US President Clinton has inaugurated these days the Clinton Global Initiative. Here the music: "It is my pleasure to announce the inaugural meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative to be held September 15-17, 2005, in New York City. This event, which will bring together King Abdullah II, President Leonel Fernandez Reyna, President Olusegun Obasanjo, Prime Minister Tony Blair, Secretary General Kofi Annan, Vice Premier Shimon Peres, Dr. Hernando de Soto, Rupert Murdoch, Richard Parsons, and an array of other distinguished and dedicated leaders, will coincide with and complement this fall's Millennium Summit of the U.N. General Assembly. This nonpartisan conference will concentrate a diverse and select group of current and former heads of state, business leaders, noteworthy academicians, and key NGO representatives to identify immediate and pragmatic solutions to some of the world's most pressing problems. The workshops will focus on how to reduce poverty; use religion as a force for reconciliation and conflict resolution; implement new business strategies and technologies to combat climate change; and strengthen governance." (8)

Among the "distinguished attendees", also Condoleezza Rice, Madeleine K. Albright and George Soros.

From the Italian provinces of the Empire, Romano Prodi and Massimo D'Alema joined the call. Romano Prodi is the former President of the European Commission (kind of the executive branch of the European Union) and now leader of the center-left coalition that should dethrone Silvio Berlusconi in the next year elections. Massimo D'Alema is the former Prime Minister of Italy (the one who joined the NATO's bombing of former Yugoslavia; do you remember? It was called at the time "humanitarian intervention") and now President of the former Italian Communist Party (PCI) - which has changed a number of names in these past fifteen years (and lost millions of votes too!) - and now called - unless it's changed name again in these past 24 hours - Democratici di Sinistra (Democrats of the Left).

The good old Pied Piper of Arkansas keeps seducing liberals, at home and abroad.

"When he thought that he had them all he led them to the River Weser where he pulled up his clothes and walked into the water. The animals all followed him, fell in, and drowned." (9)



NOTES

(1) The Rolling Stones would play in Iraq if asked, Bang Media International Sep 14, 2005


(2) The Anti-Empire Report: Some things you need to know before the world ends. By William Blum - September 5, 2005

(3) Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell

(4) Hitchens vs Galloway: The big debate, by David Usborne, The Independent, 16 September 2005

(5) "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." and "Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were women and children." Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: cluster sample survey, The Lancet, 20 November 2004

(6) MEDIA ALERT: BURYING THE LANCET, Media Lens, September 5 and September 6, 2005

(7) Why I Wrote "The Crucible", by Arthur Miller, The New Yorker, 21 October 1996

(8) Clinton Global Initiative, Our Mission: Message from President Clinton

(9) The Children of Hameln, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm [Die Kinder zu Hameln, Deutsche Sagen (1816/1818), vol. 1, no. 245]



Gabriele Zamparini is an independent filmmaker and freelance writer living in London. He's the producer and director of the documentaries XXI CENTURY and The Peace! DVD and author of American Voices of Dissent (Paradigm Publishers). He can be reached at info@thecatsdream.com

JOURNALISM: THE RULE OF THE GAME

From "Hitchens vs Galloway: The big debate" By David Usborne in New York on The Independent, Published: 16 September 2005

Both men also fell into the trap of insulting the audience. Galloway did it just a little when he lamented that anyone could doubt the statistics recording the numbers of Iraqi dead because of the war. (100,000 he says.) "How far has the neocon rot seeped into your souls?" he asked us.

The Independent's reporter from New York writes:

(100,000 he says.)

Is that because he has never heard of the Lancet report? No, of course he has! It's just that THE RULE OF THE GAME is that that report must be discredited. Even better: ignored!

Dahr Jamail: Meanwhile, in Iraq...

For the last several days a