Dissent this! - Part 1: ZNet between numbers and parallels

Dissent this! - Part 1: ZNet between numbers and parallels
By Gabriele Zamparini

"In a time of universal deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell

On December 15, 2005 I wrote a little piece, White (Phosphorous) Christmas, on the use of lies and propaganda by the ruthless regimes in Washington and London and their state-corporate media jesters and I used some paragraphs written by Adolf Hitler and some others attributed to Joseph Goebbels to introduce it. When I sent the article to ZNet, I got the following reply: “I appreciate the content, but I don't like the Nazi parallels... they're used too often in our stuff, and they're not really necessary to your piece...”. When I asked for some more explanation, I was told “Appropriate, maybe - but still overused in left writing to the point where citing them at the beginning of an article is cliche” and “It sometimes makes sense to use it anyway, depending on context. But especially with Nazis, the stuff is used on the left and on the right and everywhere in between as a marker of pure evil. Because of that overuse, references to the Nazis have lost all precision”.

Of course ZNet - as any other publication - has the right to accept or reject any article and it doesn’t have to justify its editorial decisions either. Even though I strongly disagreed with ZNet, I was therefore grateful for their willingness to motivate their rejection. [Curiously, ZNet hasn’t published anything I wrote since…]

I was reminded of this exchange with ZNet a few days ago when I read Political Observations on Sectarianism in Iraq written by Munir Chalabi and published by ZNet. The author uses four times the word “fascist” and one time the word “Nazi” to make parallels between “German Nazi party and other fascist movements in Italy and other countries in Europe” and “Baathist sectarian” Iraq.

It would seem that those “references to the Nazis” have not “lost all precision” after all; it just depends on the parallel, of course.

Chalabi’s article is an interesting interpretation of Iraq’s history. The author writes:

“The sectarian massacres of over 300,000 Shiites and 200,000 Kurdish civilians, whose bodies were dumped in hundreds of mass graves, took place during the 1980s/1990s by the Baathist sectarian state (and not by the Sunni community in Iraq), well before the occupation. What the US/UK occupying forces have in fact done from day one was to deepen the divisions created by the Baathist state between the Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds as part of their policy of ‘Divide and Rule’”.

The author doesn’t provide any source to justify these numbers. In another passage of the same article he writes:

“Between 1980 and 1985 the Baathist state forcibly removed from their communities over 350,000 Shiite civilians, the majority of whom were Arabs but some were Shiite Kurds (Fwellia), after confiscating all their businesses, property, money and even their Iraqi identity cards and passports. They forced them to walk through mine fields to the Iranian border where thousands of them lost their lives before the remaining survivors reached refugee camps in Iran. All of these civilians were Iraqi women, children and old men. All the young men (over 70,000 and some estimates put them at over 100,000) were arrested and then massacred and secretly dumped in the first of the hundreds of Shiite mass graves.”

This time Chalabi does provide a source for these other numbers. In Note 1, he writes:

“These figures were stated on several Iraqi TV stations -- Al-Diar, Al-Masar and Al-Salam -- dealing with ‘Saddam's mass graves.'"

I would have hoped to learn more from this interesting article and to find more serious sources than “several Iraqi TV stations” so I asked to an Iraqi friend who replied: “True, the Baath party was no ‘enfant de coeur’. Many were executed but I have serious doubts about the numbers put forward. (…) The figures (…) are still to be proven - Not one report I have read so far, gives proof of any of the above allegations. I did not say it did not happen. But I am questioning the extent of it.”

US historian William Blum wrote on November 10, 2005:

“The Bush administration never tires of repeating that line to us. As recently as October 21, Karen Hughes, White House envoy for public diplomacy, told an audience in Indonesia that Saddam had ‘used weapons of mass destruction against his own people. He had murdered hundreds of thousands of his own people using poison gas.’ When challenged about the number, Hughes replied: ‘It's something that our U.S. government has said a number of times in the past. It's information that was used very widely after his attack on the Kurds. I believe it was close to 300,000. That's something I said every day in the course of the campaign. That's information that we talked about a great deal in America.’ The State Department later corrected Hughes, saying the number of victims in Halabja was about 5,000. (This figure, too, may well have been inflated for political reasons; for at least the next six months following the Halabja attack one could find the casualty count being reported in major media as ‘hundreds’, even by Iraq's Iranian foes; then, somehow, it ballooned to ‘5,000’).

Just a few weeks ago, Robert Dreyfuss wrote:

“Convicted of war crimes by a puppet Iraqi regime that dispensed with niceties such as evidence and rebuttal, Saddam Hussein was blamed by his fiercest critics--such as Kanan Makiya, author of Republic of Fear, and others with strong motive to inflate the scale of Saddam's crimes--of killing 300,000 Iraqis during his thirty-five-year rule (1968-2003).”

Dreyfuss continues:

“In less than four years, George W. Bush has more than doubled that, with no end in sight. As war criminals go, Bush wins hands down. The 655,000 US victims in Iraq do not include the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, mostly children, who died during a twelve-year era of US-imposed sanctions on Iraq from 1991 to 2003, but those deaths, at least, were obscured by a fig leaf of legality, since the sanctions had been approved by the UN Security Council. Bush's Iraq War had no such cover: It was deemed "illegal" by Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary general.”

Munir Chalabi’s article originally published by ZNet (by the way, it would be really interesting if both Chalabi and ZNet decided to give some reliable sources of those numbers; as always one is entitled to opinions but not to facts) ends with the following paragraph:

“The recent execution of the Saddam will have some psychological and short term effects, but this will not change much on the ground as the fascist ideology of the Iraqi Baathists is the driving force behind the mass killings and there are many high-ranking Baathists who are just as vicious as Saddam, if not worse.”

At the moment the reality “on the ground” in Iraq tells us a different story. Just randomly and recently:

1) A few days ago Edward Herman wrote and ZNet published Iraq: The Genocide Option. Herman writes:

“It was claimed early in 2005 that the United States was considering resort to what has been called the "Salvadoran Option" in Iraq, in which, as had been done in El Salvador in the 1980s, U.S. Special Forces would train paramilitary squads to hunt down and assassinate rebel leaders and their supporters. A year earlier, it was reported that a sizable fund had been appropriated for the creation of an exile-based paramilitary unit for Iraq, and that the money would more broadly ‘support U.S. efforts to create a lethal, and revengeful Iraqi security force.’ It was expected that this would lead to ‘a wave of extrajudicial killings’ of armed rebels, but also of ‘nationalists, other opponents of the U.S. occupation and thousands of civilian Baathists.’ The rise of the death rate in Iraq, and the evidence of large-scale assassinations and slaughters frequently carried out by uniformed men, suggests that the Salvadoran option was put in place and that it has done its work well even if failing to bring victory to the Shiite leaders and militias and their sponsors.”

2) 90% of Iraqis feel the situation in the country was better under Saddam Hussein.

3) IRIN, the Integrated Regional Information Networks that is part of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, reports:

There is increased international concern about the plight of Palestinians living in Baghdad following the arrest on 16 January of 30 Palestinians by Iraqi security forces in two neighbourhoods of the capital, Baghdad. Although they were released shortly after, the UN is concerned that Palestinians have been systematically targetted and threatened by authorities and militias.

[About the Iraq's Palestinians, please find more info in this important appeal]

4) Veteran journalist and human rights activist Doug Ireland wrote:

For the very first time, an official United Nations human rights report released last week has confirmed the "violent campaigns" against Iraqi gays and the "assassinations of homosexuals in Iraq."

"Attacks on homosexuals and intolerance of homosexual practices have long existed, yet they have escalated in the past year," says the latest bi-monthly Human Rights Report of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI), released on January 16. "Islamic groups and militias have been known to be particularly hostile towards homosexuals, frequently and openly engaging in violent campaigns against them. There have been a number of assassinations of homosexuals in Iraq," the report says.

Who’s responsible for these "violent campaigns" against Iraqi gays and the "assassinations of homosexuals in Iraq"? The same actors who are conducting ethnic cleansing and mass murdering against Sunni, political opponents, Iraqi secularist and nationalist, both Muslim and Christian, both Sunni and Shia: the puppet Iraqi government installed by the US and supported by Iran, together with its militias, mainly Abdul Aziz al-Hakim’s Badr Brigades and Motqada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army [with the blessing of Ayatollah Sistani, the godfather of the sectarian Shia “government” curiously so much admired in some quarters of the Western left].

5) The situation “on the ground” tells us that “a leader of the Sadr movement in one of its Baghdad strongholds publicly endorsed President Bush's new Iraq security plan, which at least some U.S. officials have touted as a way to combat Sadr's group. ‘We will fully cooperate with the government to make the plan successful,’ said Abdul-Hussein Kaabai, head of the local council in the Shiite Muslim-dominated Sadr City neighborhood. ‘If it is an Iraqi plan done by the government, we will cooperate’”

If you have been so naive [or misinformed] to think that Motqada al-Sadr was or will ever be part of the Iraqi Resistance to the US invasion and occupation, read this:

Jamal al Shammari, a senior Sadr official in Baghdad, said the Sadrist movement refused to enter into direct negotiations with the U.S. but approved of "indirect negotiations" that would avert confrontation between the Mahdi Army and U.S. forces.

"There are strict orders to Sadr followers by their leaders to support the new security plan and not to clash with U.S. or Iraqi security forces," he said.

6) Iraqi scientist Imad Khadduri recently published on his blog two interesting official Iraqi documents. Kadduri writes about one of these documents:

A top secret directive from 'Prime Minister' Maliki, upon consultation with Muqtada Al-Sadr and 'National Security Advisor' Al-Rubaii, ordering that the top echelon of Mahdi Army leaders (11 names are listed) who are directly associated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards are to be go underground, preferably sent back to Iran, and that the second tier of Mahdi Army commnaders are to be temporarily dispatched to the south of Iraq in response to the immenint 'surge' of the American forces and the intended campaign against the militias in Baghdad.

Copy of the directive is sent to the Iranian Embassy in Baghadad, The Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq SCIRI, and the Sadr Office.

January 14, 2007

Note: The 'National Security Advisor's' salary is paid directly by the American occupier, not by the Iraqi 'government'.

7) UPI reports:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is defending the U.S.-backed Iraqi government and warns against attempts to undermine it. (…) He said the stability, security, prosperity and progress of the Iraqi people are achieved "thanks to the efforts of the people and national government of Iraq." (…) His remarks came hours after a joint U.S.-Iraqi government force launched a massive military operation in and around Haifa Street in Baghdad early Wednesday, which the Iraqi Sunni religious authority denounced as a "genocide campaign against the civilian residents" of the area.

8) “My name is Ahmed Kamal Nabil. I am a university professor since 1975. I live on Haifa street…” Layla Anwar published this letter on her blog. Take some time to read it.

9) Former U.S. envoy to the United Nations John Bolton said in an interview published in France that the United States has "no strategic interest" in a united Iraq. (…) "The United States has no strategic interest in the fact that there's one Iraq, or three Iraqs"

Many intellectuals and activists of the Imperial anti-war movement started immediately after the invasion to legitimize the “supreme international crime” by supporting the so-called “political process”, a Trojan horse studied to destroy Iraq and force its people into a civil war. Those notorious sectarian Iraqi elections, based on religion and ethnicity, far from being forced on the US by the non-violent resistance of some clerics, were part of the plan to install a quisling government, getting the approval of the vultures and hyenas of the international community and preparing the bases for the eventual partition of the country. All this has been crystal clear all along as crystal clear has been the use of the sectarian militias in support of this project. Why has there been so much support for the “political process” and for one of New Iraq’s most deadly death squads, Motqada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, in so many quarters of the Western left and anti-war movement?

Stay tuned for the second part of Dissent this! Meanwhile enjoy two official truths.

Official truth number 1: The Baath party was a Sunni party that suppressed the Shia and deprived them of their rights. But not everybody agrees. A very well-informed Iraqi blog reported at the beginning of January:

The spokesman for the Arab Baath Socialist Party, which ruled Iraq from 1968 to 2003, who asked to be identified as Abu Muhammad for security reasons, said: "Most Western media outlets have been helping the US occupation authorities to portray the Baath party as a Sunni party which suppressed the Shia and deprived them of their rights. Actually, sect was never an issue in Iraq. I am a Shia and I have been a senior Baath official ... No Baath party official - no Iraqi official - ever asked me about my sect. When the US army occupied Iraq they issued a list of 55 wanted top Iraqi officials, starting with President Saddam Hussein; half of those senior officials were Shia. The Committee of Debaathification issued a list of 100,000 senior Iraqi Baathists who would not be allowed to enjoy governmental posts, 66,000 of them were Shia - so how is the Baath party a Sunni party.”

Official truth number 2: The Sunni minority and Saddam Hussein ruled the Shiite majority in Iraq. But not everybody agrees. Faruq Ziada, who served as an ambassador in Iraq's Foreign Ministry from 1992 to 2000, published an interesting article on December 27, 2006. He writes:

The actual, real percentages of various groups in Iraq is outlined below. Statistics come from the Al- Quds Press Research Center, London Study (www.qudspress.com) and, with reference to the map on the distribution of religious groups, from the Baker--Hamilton Committee report page, 102).

As Nationalities
Arabs 82 - 84%
Kurds, Turks, etc. 16 - 18%

Religions
Moslems 95 - 98%
Christians and others 2 - 5%

Moslem Sects
Sunnis 60 - 62%
Sunni Arabs 42 - 44%
Sunni Kurds and Turks 16 - 18%
Shiites 38 - 40%
Shiite Kurds and Turks 2 - 4%

Dissent this! Part 2 will follow shortly...

Action Alert: Google the Censor

On January 12, 2007 Google has stopped indexing Uruknet.info as a news source

Uruknet is a not-for-profit online news outlet publishing news and analysis coming from a wide range of sources: mainstream and alternative media, analysts, academics, bloggers, independent writers, etc. Its main focus is occupied Iraq.

Alexa, the web-ranking organization, reports that Uruknet is "the most visited site in all 'News and Media' categories" relatively to the Iraq conflict.

Why did Google remove Uruknet from Google News? Uruknet has asked Google this question several times but Google has refused to answer it. I have written to Google too and this is my correspondence with them:

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am a journalist based in London, UK and I will be writing about the following story where Google seems to have taken a very illiberal step toward a very well known news website:

http://uruknet.info/?p=m29907&hd=&size=1&l=e

Please, could you let me know your point of view? Why did you have banned from Google and Google News a news website that you had included for many years?

I look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you.

Kind regards,
Gabriele Zamparini
http://thecatsdream.com

***

Hi Gabriele

Thanks for your email about Google News. While we can't go into the specifics of individual websites, I thought it might be helpful to provide some general background information about our criteria for inclusion in Google News. As you know, we periodically review our index of news sources and have at times removed sources that do not meet our criteria.

News sources included in the service must be from news organisations, which are selected without regard to political viewpoint or ideology. We determine which sites qualify as news organizations by using such criteria as whether the source offers information that is updated regularly; if it is managed by an organization (not an individual) and includes organizational information on its site; and whether the source's website is technically conducive to inclusion. Sources must also not include hate speech or pornography.

The technical requirements for inclusion in Google News are the same as inclusion in Google's general index. Websites use a widely accepted Internet standard called robots.txt to "tell" search engines like Google whether or not they are allowed to crawl their site. If a site uses robots.txt to block Google's crawler, or if it uses content that is difficult for our search engine to crawl, then we don't crawl the site. In addition, other technical reasons – such as when sites use dynamic content – make it difficult for our search engine to crawl, and can also lead to exclusion from Google News.

I hope this is helpful!

Best wishes
Oliver

--
Oliver Rickman
Google Corporate Communications
+44 (0)20 7184 3353

Google UK, Belgrave House, 76 Buckingham Palace Rd, London, SW1W 9TQ

***

RE: http://uruknet.info/?p=m29907&hd=&size=1&l=e


Thanks Oliver.

I read with attention your e-mail and still can’t understand why Google decided to remove Uruknet from Google and Google News. From what you write I can’t see any reasonable reason for this decision and having Google a predominant position on the Internet, I believe Google should take this matter in much more serious consideration and try to justify its decision or to step back from this inept attempt to suppress freedom of speech. Censorship on the Internet is not a new phenomenon and I have read it is not the first time Google is accused of it.

I CC this email to a few people that may be interested in following this serious and worrying matter. Here what’s at stake is not just the right of Uruknet to be included in Google and Google News but the freedom of speech itself and the attempt by Google to suppress it.

Thank you again for your email and please I look forward for Google reply about this case.

Kind regards,
Gabriele Zamparini

***

Hi Gabriele
Thanks for your reply. As I said before, we don't comment on an individual news site's removal from Google News, but there are numerous criteria that we apply to determine whether a site should be included or removed.
However, I'd like to clarify that we have not removed Uruknet from Google Web Search. If you visit www.google.co.uk and search for "uruknet" the website uruknet.info appears as the top result.
Best wishes
Oliver

***

Thanks Oliver.

While I can understand that your internal policy is that you “don't comment on an individual news site's removal from Google News”, this is exactly the point I would like to raise. From what I read and I can understand, it seems that your “criteria” are quite subjective and, at the end, arbitrary. Since Google has a de facto monopoly or quasi-monopoly on the realm of the Internet, its arbitrary policy represents an unacceptable form of censorship. Google’s unwillingness to discuss openly the reason of its inclusion/esclusion from the Internet adds more reasons to be worried. Even though Google is a private corporation, this doesn’t mean that it is above law and ethical principles such as freedom of speech and transparence. Once again I reiterate my request: Why has Google excluded from Google News a news website that had been on Google news for the past few years, that is used by many mainstream and alternative media journalists and by thousands of Internet users around the world? A website that is classified by Alexa, the web-ranking organization - http://www.alexa.com/browse?&CategoryID=79506 - as "Most popular" No. 1 in [Iraq] "News and media"?

Thank you once again for your reply and I look forward to hearing from Google soon.

Kind regards,
Gabriele Zamparini

This is not the first time Google removes Uruknet from Google News. In February 2005 and again in June 2005 Google did the same, only to step back and re-including Uruknet after many readers complained with Google.

The famous quote used to summarize Voltaire's thought, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it", is the essence of what we call Freedom of Speech. The enemies of this freedom have always been numerous and powerful and it's up to us to defend this freedom against its enemies, the old and the new ones.

SUGGESTED ACTION

Please, write to Google and make your voice heard. I strongly urge readers to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.

press@google.com
news-feedback@google.com
source-suggestions@google.com

You may also write to National Coalition Against Censorship and Electronic Frontier Foundation asking for their help in this matter.

UPDATE - SOME REPLIES FROM READERS:

As an admirer and early (and continuing) user of Google, I am deeply disturbed by the news that you have removed Uruknet from Google News. this is, as noted in a communication to your offices by Gabriele Zamperini, "A website that is classified by Alexa, the web-ranking organization - http://www.alexa.com/browse?&CategoryID=79506 - as "Most popular" No. 1 in [Iraq] "News and media"?"

I lost a family member in the attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11. The unconscionable manner in which the US high administration continually links their four years' adventure in Iraq to 9/11 makes what ACTUALLY happens in Iraq of utmost importance to me and to many other sentient beings here in the US and abroad. At London School of Economics, while studying for my MSc in Politics of the World Economy, I learned that the only sure way to figure out what is going on in the world is to read as much as one can, and from all angles.

To deprive the public of the resource provided by Uruknet is to curtail our understanding of an importnat part of the world and leave us at the mercy of willful and dishonest leaders.

Please restore this site to your news mix.

Valerie Lucznikowska
New York City

***

What not explain why Uruknet was delisted from Google News?
When Google arrogantly replies "it is not our policy to explain" you make an excellent case for government regulation. Free speech is too important - and too public- a concern to depend on the whims of any corporation.

Joe Emersberger

Alert - Open Letter to UK's Stop the War

London, Friday, 5 January 2007

office@stopwar.org.uk

Dear Lindsey German
National Convenor of Stop the War

Dear Andrew Murray
National Chair of Stop the War

As you certainly know the sectarian lynching of two codefendants of the assassinated President of Iraq Saddam Hussein has been postponed "due to international pressure".

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon “fully endorses the call made today by (UN High Commissioner for Human Rights) Louise Arbour for restraint by the government of Iraq in the execution of the death sentences imposed by the Iraqi high tribunal."

There is not much time left. Baha al-Araji, an influential Shiite lawmaker from radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr`s parliamentary bloc, said: "I am sure it will be done on Sunday."

Juan Cole reported:

A Ministry of Interior official admitted to Reuters on Wednesday that Saddam's execution was carried out by militiamen rather than by IM security guards, as planned. It is alleged that militiamen infiltrated the guards. That is, the earlier Sunni charges that Saddam was handed over to the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr for execution were more or less correct. The Sunni-owned al-Zaman is having a field day with this. Even the noose that hanged Saddam has ended up in the possession of Muqtada al-Sadr.

The barbaric assassination of Saddam Hussein has been causing protests and violence in many Middle East and other Islamic countries where people see this lynching as the umpteenth demonstration of racist colonialism from the United States and United Kingdom

Raghida Dergham, columnist and senior diplomatic correspondent for the London-based Al Hayat, wrote:

The US military's decision to turn Saddam over to the neo-executioners, who chanted slogans hailing the Muqtada al-Sadr militia, led to the resurfacing of questions on the reason behind allowing this series of US mistakes in Iraq to have been committed, and whether they truly were mere mistakes. (...)

There are those who are convinced that the pillars of the Bush administration still believe that the US should forge an alliance with Iran, the world's largest Shiite nation, and with the Shiites in general, who are a minority in the Islamic World, simply because al-Qaeda and its offshoots are Sunnis.

These also believe that the rising of a Shiite Crescent serves US strategic interests, and that the Iranian-Israeli relationship is essentially one of disengagement, and that the US-Iran-Israel axis is the most plausible axis for specific superiority in the Middle East region, especially on top of the ruins of an officially divided Iraq. (...)

The war in Iraq was a key aspect of a strategic shift that resulted in the consolidation, the success, as well as the undeniable advantages to both Iran and Israel, seen by the architects of this strategy as the natural allies in the drive to contain the Sunni influence and, with it, any unwanted Arab aspirations for superiority.

In these years Stop the War has established good relations with Motqada al-Sadr’s movement. For example last March Sheikh Zagani, foreign affairs spokesperson for Moqtada al-Sadr, spoke at the London rally organized by Stop the War.

To avoid another barbaric act and in consideration of the dramatic political and social consequences that such an act would have in Iraq and in the whole Middle East region, I urge you to endorse the call made by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour for restraint by the government of Iraq in the execution of the death sentences imposed by the Iraqi high tribunal and to consider to use your channels to try to stop this other announced sectarian lynching.

Thank you for your time and for all the work you do to bring about peace and justice.

In solidarity,
Gabriele Zamparini

***

UPDATE: UN chief urges Iraq to suspend executions

***

UPDATE:

STOP THE EXECUTIONS
The Illegality of the Executions of Mr Barzan Ibrahim Al-Tikriti and Judge Awad Al-Bandar
Dr Curtis F J Doebbler, international human rights lawyer and attorney to President Saddam Hussein. Washington, DC, 8 January 2007

Break the silence

Break the silence
By Gabriele Zamparini

The sectarian lynching of two codefendants of the assassinated President of Iraq Saddam Hussein has been postponed "due to international pressure".

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon “fully endorses the call made today by (UN High Commissioner for Human Rights) Louise Arbour for restraint by the government of Iraq in the execution of the death sentences imposed by the Iraqi high tribunal."

There is not much time left. Baha al-Araji, an influential Shiite lawmaker from radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr`s parliamentary bloc, said: "I am sure it will be done on Sunday."

Meanwhile rumors have emerged claiming that Moqtada al-Sadr took part in the actual hanging of Saddam Hussein. (Read here and here)

Will the left and anti-war establishment in the USA and UK break their silence?

UPDATE: FROM JUAN COLE'S INFORMED COMMENT

A Ministry of Interior official admitted to Reuters on Wednesday that Saddam's execution was carried out by militiamen rather than by IM security guards, as planned. It is alleged that militiamen infiltrated the guards. That is, the earlier Sunni charges that Saddam was handed over to the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr for execution were more or less correct. The Sunni-owned al-Zaman is having a field day with this.

Even the noose that hanged Saddam has ended up in the possession of Muqtada al-Sadr. A Kuwaiti businessman is trying to buy it as a momento. Saddam killed Muqtada's father and also invaded Kuwait.

Read also:

The crows join the lynching

30 December 2006 - a day of infamy

The crows join the lynching

The crows join the lynching
By Gabriele Zamparini

There is a sinister caw in the air. Important journalists, liberal commentators, leftist activists, Middle East experts, influential intellectuals, professionals of the antiwar movement with their progressive think tanks and peace networks are now discussing the hanging of Saddam Hussein when nothing had written or said before this vile assassination and often contributed to the lynching through a campaign of misinformation and propaganda.

Who remembers now how all this started? The rotten lies of Tony Blair’s “45 minutes” and Condoleezza Rice’s “mushroom cloud” have been used to justify the supreme international crime, the invasion and occupation of Iraq, a defenseless country that had never attacked the United States, that did not have any weapons of mass destruction, that did not have any ties to al-Qaida, that had no connection to the September 11 attacks... About one million Iraqis have been slaughtered, many more millions displaced and a civil war orchestrated. Finally Saddam Hussein, President of the Republic of Iraq, was assassinated.

Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan called the invasion of Iraq “an illegal act that contravened the UN charter”; the Nuremberg trials of major Nazi war criminals had already called this crime the “supreme international crime”. This supreme international crime started on 20 March 2003 and it’s still being committed. Iraq is an occupied country without sovereignty where terrorists and mass murderers compose its quisling sectarian government. Since 20 March 2003 everything happening in and around Iraq is outside international law and the effects of this persisting illegality is the apocalypse before our eyes.

Now let’s go back to the assassination of the legitimate President of the Republic of Iraq.

Instead of pointing out the barbarity of this umpteenth crime and calling for the restoration of international law and the punishment of its perpetrators, the crows add their caw to the hyenas and vultures of the lynching mob and discuss the alleged crimes of the victim. ZNet, the fleet admiral of the Imperial antiwar movement information network, published several pieces on the death of Saddam Hussein. All these pieces had the same point of view. In “TALKING POINTS ON THE EXECUTION OF SADDAM HUSSEIN”, Phyllis Bennis, one of the most prominent voices of the American anti-war movement, writes:

With U.S. officials still running the legal show in Baghdad, the U.S. military occupation still in control of the country, and the escalating war engulfing Iraq, no trial held under these conditions can be considered legitimate.

2) Some ask "if the trial had been fair, would the results have been different?" The conviction of Saddam Hussein for huge crimes against the Iraqi people would almost certainly be the same.

Bennis’ words [“The conviction of Saddam Hussein for huge crimes against the Iraqi people would almost certainly be the same”] simply repudiate several hundred years of civilization. The use of the word “execution” to describe what really happened, the lynching of the legitimate president of Iraq, together with focusing her essay on the alleged crimes of the victim instead of the ‘supreme international crime’ of the aggressors, deliberately blind the readers and move their attention to more comfortable and safe sites.

The readers must remember that even if Saddam Hussein had been trialed by an international court and had had a “fair trail” instead of that revolting barbarian lynching culminated with his assassination, that would have been illegal under international law because that too would have been the result of that supreme international crime, the illegal invasion and occupation of a sovereign country. Focusing on the victim’s alleged crimes instead of the supreme international crime that our governments have been committing since March 2003 serve to validate that crime, legitimate the quisling Iraqi government and open the door to more invasions and occupations in the future.

Either we respect and uphold international law or we accept to live in a world ruled by violence and the arbitrary act of the powerful but we cannot choose which part of international law we like, according with our political view, mood and whims of the moment. The vague concept of human rights as advocated by discredited organizations such as Human Rights Watch cannot and must not disrupt the UN Charter and the whole building of international law. We have seen the result of this way of thinking and acting. The so-called humanitarian [sic!] interventions, always orchestrated by the Empire toward countries in the South or in the East, it’s an international law monstrosity that has already produced oceans of blood and deserts of corpses.

Empire is an ugly business and human rights have been used as a Trojan horse to sell it. The war of aggression against Iraq has shown very clearly that the Western antiwar movement apparatus has been another Trojan horse where racism, ideologies and self-interest have completely obscured compassion, justice and humanity. 'We know better' has been opposed by Western arrogant intellectuals and self-righteous activists to the Iraqis cry. Iraq has become a business, 'our business'.

Kola Odetola recently wrote on Media Lens Message Board: “The silence of the western antiwar movement on the lynching of Saddam Hussein is deafening and is increasingly beginning to prove what a lot of discerning people have suspected all along – that the mainstream anti-war movement (including large parts of its left wing) in the west is the well concealed left boot of western imperialism, the conscience of the conqueror.”

The Imperial anti-war movement has been a formidable ally to the ruthless Empire it claims to fight and resist. Intellectuals, activists and antiwar professionals have been silent on the scale of the horror inflicted to Iraq; have been silent on the sectarian militias that have reduced the country in a graveyard; have been silent on the role of Iran in the destruction of Iraq and have been actively supporting and sponsoring Motqada al-Sadr whose militia, the Mahdi Army, is responsible for mass murdering and ethnic cleansing.

After their disgraceful silence on the lynching of the assassinated President of the Republic of Iraq, the Western antiwar movement’s professionals are now explaining the barbarity to an audience already brainwashed by our ruthless leaders and their jesters in the mainstream media; the result is a choir of crows, hyenas and vultures.

Postscript

Since I started my writing on the Lynching of Saddam Hussein, I have been attacked and called names by members of the so-called antiwar movement. I have been accused to do “what the occupation wants”, to be a “Saddamist”, to be a “fascist”, and again a paid agent of the CIA and/or the Mossad, even to “justify a Western attack on Iran”. Who said that people “on the left” have no fantasy left?

Since my English is not that good, I will ask George Orwell to help me to write what I think: “But at least let us have no more nonsense about defending liberty against Fascism. If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. The common people still vaguely subscribe to that doctrine and act on it… it is the liberals who fear liberty and the intellectuals who want to do dirt on the intellect…”