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Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Phyllis Bennis and the post-modern anti-war movement

Phyllis Bennis and the post-modern anti-war movement
By Gabriele Zamparini

It’s official. Phyllis Bennis, the spokesperson of the US peace movement, stated, “the U.S. peace movement doesn't embrace the Iraqi resistance. Right.”

Bennis wrote,
“I never supported Saddam Hussein, who was "resisting" the U.S. during the sanctions years, and I didn't -and don't--support what is called "the Iraqi resistance" today.”
Note that “what is called”. One could try stop for a second and reflect why so many people use that “what is called” when addressing what is called the anti-war movement Bennis now has become the official spokesperson for.

The US peace movement’s spokesperson explains why “the U.S. peace movement doesn't embrace the Iraqi resistance”:
“what is understood to be "the Iraqi resistance" against the U.S. occupation is a disaggregated and diverse set of largely unconnected factions, in which the various often-antagonistic armed movements (including some who attack Iraqi civilians as much as they do occupation troops) hold pride of place. There is no unified leadership that can speak for "the resistance," there is no NLF or ANC or FMLN that can claim real leadership and is accountable to the Iraqi population as a whole. There is no unified program, either of what the fight is against or what it is for. We know virtually nothing of what most of the factions stand for beyond opposition to the U.S. occupation - and from my own personal vantage point, of the little beyond that that we do know, I don't like so much.”
The Western post-modern anti-war movement got to the point to decide which resistance movement we like and which one we “don’t like so much”.

So now you know!

You, the resistance movements around the world that are resisting this rapacious Empire whose fat belly we live so comfortably in, you must be approved to have our respect, sympathy and intellectual support.

Approved by whom?

We shall create a special office for this task. We may call it the Empire's anti-war movement's department for the right to exist of the indigenous peoples. If you have a better name, please, send your suggestions. We are tolerant and encourage politically correctness to make you feel at home.

But please remember. We have become a little fussy, you know. Try to look a little more like those resistance movements we so much admire in those romantic Hollywood movies. And since you are at it, shave and get a shower.

Let's go back to the peace movement's spokesperson.

On another point, she writes,
“As to our movement. Cockburn is wrong when he claims the peace movement is dead. How does he think that 70% anti-war opinion he notes was created? Certainly spontaneous opposition has played a part, based on rising casualty figures from Iraq (unfortunately only U.S. casualties seem to have this effect, not the enormously larger Iraqi casualties) and the lengthening litany of Bush administration outrages. But the peace movement's work has been critical as well.”
Unfortunately indeed! Especially when it’s that anti-war movement to conceal the real extent of the horror the Anglo-American invasion, [read: our leaders, our troops, our money, our will and our indifference] brought into Iraq.

But the post-modern anti-war movement doesn’t do resistance.

Bennis is even more explicit, I would say honest, in her realpolitik approach:
“I don't think we gain strength by making sympathy with resistance fighters a demand of our movement.”
Indeed. To know why, please read my two pre-emptive replies:

Once upon a time in Iraq… Money makes the world go around

Once upon a time in Iraq… A Nobel Peace Prize for the Anglo-American Peacekeepers?

Monday, July 30, 2007

The Guardian’s Readers’ Editor’s Problem? She’s still her boss’ lawyer

The Guardian’s Readers’ Editor’s Problem? She’s still her boss’ lawyer
By Gabriele Zamparini

After receiving “more than 30 emails”, Siobhain Butterworth, the Guardian’s Readers’ Editor, has finally replied on the topic I had issued two alerts in the past weeks, or, as she called the work of citizens-activists in a democracy, “an organised lobbying campaign”.

Being the former Legal Director for Guardian News & Media (a top lawyer representing and defending the private interests of her boss), one can hardly be surprised of Siobhain Butterworth’s contempt for the Guardian’s readers she’s supposed to listen “from a position of independence within the paper”.

Coming from a background where she was “responsible for legal matters relating to The Guardian and The Observer newspapers and the Guardian Unlimited network of sites, including: pre-publication advice; libel and media related litigation; intellectual property matters and commercial and corporate work”, one can’t blame her for ignoring the ABC of her new job, starting from the UNESCO’s International Principles of Professional Ethics in Journalism:
Principle I: People’s Right to True Information

People and individuals have the right to acquire an objective picture of reality by means of accurate and comprehensive information as well as to express themselves freely through the various media of culture and communication.

(…)

Principle III: The Journalist’s Social Responsibility

Information in journalism is understood as a social good and not as a commodity, which means that the journalist shares responsibility for the information transmitted and is thus accountable not only to those controlling the media but ultimately to the public at large, including various social interests. The journalist’s social responsibility requires that he or she will act under all circumstances in conformity with a personal ethical consciousness.
Of course, this strange idea of democracy is nothing new in the Guardian’s corridors and when Siobhain Butterworth writes about “an organised lobbying campaign”, she’s simply repeating the fancy words of her predecessor and other Guardian’s guardians.

The top Guardian’s lawyer improvised readers’ editor writes:
“This month I received more than 30 emails (an organised lobbying campaign) after the Guardian website published a piece about the US House of Representatives' vote to withdraw troops from Iraq. The article said that according to the Iraq Body Count website (IBC) around 70,000 civilians have died in Iraq. (…) The email lobby prefers the Lancet research which estimated that by July 2006 more than 650,000 civilians had died.”
Good and Bad News. The good news first: activism works.

If just one person with a blog can “organize” such a “lobby” and force the Guardian to go back to its shoddy, flawed, third-rate journalism, imagine what could be done with a little more coordination, persistence and hope. As I recently wrote, I haven’t lost hope in the power of collective action or in the difference each of us can make. Or to quote the great American historian Howard Zinn, “There is no act too small, no act too bold. The history of social change is the history of millions of actions, small and large, coming together at points in history and creating a power that governments cannot suppress.”

Now, the bad news… but not that bad after all.

Having a law background myself, I can recognize the technique used by those lawyers who have no arguments to win in court but still need to defend their clients. Those windy lawyers will try to confuse the court and the jury using a verbose smokescreen of preposterous excuses.

Ladies and gentlemen of the only real court that matters in these matters – we, the public opinion, which demand democracy and won’t let it be just an empty name used by its enemies – ladies and gentlemen, the matter is quite simple.

The Guardian had written,
"There have also been around 70,000 Iraqi civilian deaths as a result of the military action by the US and its allies, according to the Iraq Body Count website." [US House calls for Iraq pullout by spring, James Sturcke, The Guardian, Friday July 13, 2007]
Now, the Guardian’s lawyer – ops, pardon, readers’ editor – writes,
“The email lobby prefers the Lancet research which estimated that by July 2006 more than 650,000 civilians had died.”
It’s not only the “lobby” (read: public opinion) that “prefers” the study published in the peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet.

As George Monbiot wrote on the issue of climate change,
"If these papers have not been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, they are not science. They carry no more scientific weight than an article in the National Enquirer. (...) This is why the peer-review process exists: to weed out nonsense."
Top lawyer Siobhain Butterworth desperately tries to defend the indefensible in this unprincipled concluding statement,
“What is the right estimate to use for the civilian death toll? The figures do not easily bear comparison and all the estimates are disputed, so journalists are in an insuperably difficult position. Given the debate around these estimates, a correction relating to the use of the IBC figure is inappropriate”
Siobhain Butterworth has made a mockery of Chair of the Scott Trust’s Liz Forgan’s words,
"The Guardian Readers' Editor, a role established with great distinction by Ian Mayes, has become an emblem of the relationship of trust between the Guardian and its readers. It exemplifies the values, which the Scott Trust, owners of the Guardian, exists to safeguard. Siobhain Butterworth has played a courageous and distinguished role in upholding those values in her former role as legal director. I know that the respect she has earned from readers and Guardian journalists alike will stand her in good stead in her new responsibilities."
KEEP “THE LOBBY” ALIVE!

Please, write to the Guardian and ask for a formal correction of its July 13 article: "There have also been around 70,000 Iraqi civilian deaths as a result of the military action by the US and its allies, according to the Iraq Body Count website." [US House calls for Iraq pullout by spring, James Sturcke, The Guardian, Friday July 13, 2007]

As always, I strongly urge you to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.

Write to:

- Siobhain Butterworth, Guardian's Readers Editor

reader@guardian.co.uk

Siobhain.Butterworth@guardian.co.uk


- Alan Rusbridger, Editor of The Guardian

alan.rusbridger@guardian.co.uk


- The Guardian’s Letters page

letters@guardian.co.uk


- Liz Forgan, Chair of the Scott Trust

contact@gmgplc.co.uk

You may also want to write Guardian's George Monbiot and ask his opinion on his own paper's readers' editor's work in this important matter.

- George Monbiot

g.monbiot@zetnet.co.uk


Please, send a copy of your emails to me

info@thecatsdream.com

*** *** *** *** *** *** ***

Click here to read the previous Alerts and some of the responses from the readers

*** *** *** *** *** *** ***

My new e-mail to the Guardian:

Dear Siobhain,

Thank you for your quasi-correction in today’s Guardian.

You write: “What is the right estimate to use for the civilian death toll? The figures do not easily bear comparison and all the estimates are disputed, so journalists are in an insuperably difficult position. Given the debate around these estimates, a correction relating to the use of the IBC figure is inappropriate.”

But the Guardian had written:

"There have also been around 70,000 Iraqi civilian deaths as a result of the military action by the US and its allies, according to the Iraq Body Count website." [US House calls for Iraq pullout by spring, James Sturcke, The Guardian, Friday July 13, 2007]

So the point you seem to miss is that, while a scientific study published by the peer reviewed medical journal the Lancet was available, the Guardian ignored that study and reported (wrongly) a figure coming from IBC, which is a count based on media, not an estimate, I hope you will ask someone for the difference.

If, as you now write, “all the estimates are disputed”, (by the way, disputed by whom?) why did the Guardian ignore the Lancet’s and favoured the IBC’s figures?

You seem to be absolutely ignorant on this delicate issue and this adds shame to shame.

Respectfully,
Gabriele Zamparini
London

PS I have just written a little post on my blog on this issue, I hope you don’t mind
*** *** *** *** *** *** ***

In her article, Guardian's Readers' Editor writes:
"(...) John Sloboda, IBC's executive director, told me. (...)"
One wonders if the same John Sloboda, Iraq Body Count's executice director, also told the Guardian's Readers' Editor of Iraq Body Count's John Sloboda's involvement in the campaign to discredit the two studies published by the peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet. To know more click here

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

The Silence of the Guardian's Readers' Editor - Please, keep sending emails

RE: ACTION ALERT: e-mail The Guardian's Readers Editor Siobhain Butterworth

"There have also been around 70,000 Iraqi civilian deaths as a result of the military action by the US and its allies, according to the Iraq Body Count website."
[US House calls for Iraq pullout by spring, James Sturcke, The Guardian, Friday July 13, 2007]

Following my email exchange with Guardian's James Sturcke and George Monbiot, many people have written to Guardian's Readers' Editor Siobhain Butterworth.

She hasn't replied yet but I am confident she's been reading the emails asking kindly to correct publicly this disgraceful "error".

Those responsible keep hiding the true horror caused by the illegal Anglo-American war of aggression against Iraq. Please, help break the mainstream media's silence.

Please, keep writing Guardian's Readers Editor Siobhain Butterworth:

reader@guardian.co.uk

Siobhain.Butterworth@guardian.co.uk

Please, send a copy of your emails to me at

info@thecatsdream.com

As always, I strongly urge you to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone

You may read the Alert here:

ACTION ALERT: e-mail The Guardian's Readers Editor Siobhain Butterworth

You may read the responses here and here and here and here and here

Thank you

Best wishes,
Gabriele Zamparini

***

To: Siobhain.Butterworth@guardian.co.uk, reader@guardian.co.uk
Subject: a reminder for the Guardian’s Readers’ Editor

Dear Siobhain,

I trust you’re well.

I’m writing to know if the Guardian’s Readers’ Editor had the chance to read all those Guardian’s readers’ emails about that disgraceful Guardian’s error:

"There have also been around 70,000 Iraqi civilian deaths as a result of the military action by the US and its allies, according to the Iraq Body Count website." [US House calls for Iraq pullout by spring, James Sturcke, The Guardian, Friday July 13, 2007]

I have posted a reminder on the Media Lens Message Board I would kindly invite you to read.

Please, I am looking forward to reading your reply on the Guardian.

Thank you

Respectfully,
Gabriele Zamparini
London

***

FROM Guardian's Readers' Editor Siobhain Butterworth's online page

Corrections and clarifications

It is the policy of the Guardian to correct significant errors as soon as possible. Please quote the date and page number.

Readers may contact the office of the readers' editor by telephoning 0845 451 9589 (UK only, calls charged at local rate) or +44 (0)20 7713 4736 between 11am and 5pm UK time Monday to Friday excluding UK Bank Holidays.
Mail to Readers' editor, The Guardian, 119 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3ER, UK.
Fax +44 (0)20 7239 9997.
Email: reader@guardian.co.uk


***

UPDATE: The Guardian’s Readers’ Editor’s Problem? She’s still her boss’ lawyer

Monday, July 23, 2007

Once upon a time in Iraq… Money makes the world go around

Once upon a time in Iraq… Money makes the world go around
By Gabriele Zamparini

Fucking shit! That’s all I can say every time I see that “interesting flowchart showing the flow of money from foundations to progressive media and other organizations of the left”, as dissident US historian William Blum described it back in October 2005, when he sent it with his Anti-Empire Report.

I thought back of that “interesting flowchart” when a few days ago I read on AlterNet, “Is the Right Really Rising Up Against the Iraq Occupation?”, the latest fatigue of Homeland’s anti-war movement’s policy maker Phyllis Bennis. Her article is also available on ZNet, needless to say...

Bennis writes:
“(…) this new period is going to be very dangerous, and create new problems for the anti-war movement. (...) Bush administration officials are responding with new dire reports from military and White House officials about the dire consequences of troop withdrawals. But with mainstream Republicans increasingly distancing themselves from Bush on Iraq, there's a danger that their counterparts in the Democratic leadership are likely to soften their own [already wobbly] opposition to the U.S. occupation in order to reach the brass ring of a "bipartisan" [read: politically safe] position. That could well mean agreement on a "post-surge redeployment" designed to partially withdraw some troops (probably about half the current 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq), and establish what is already being touted as the prize: a "sustainable" U.S. military occupation of Iraq. Sustainable, in this context, means permanent. Partial withdrawal will set the stage for permanent occupation. A smaller, less visible occupation force stationed primarily at the huge U.S. bases built across Iraq will keep U.S. soldiers mostly off Iraq's IED-filled roads and far away from Iraq's resistance-stoked major cities. The U.S. troops will no longer maintain even the fiction of responsibility for protecting Iraqi civilians, and crucially, will take far fewer casualties. The result (since the far more numerous Iraqi casualties are so easily ignored): Iraq will be largely out of the headlines and off the front page.”
Now, let’s skip the passage where she writes,
“the Democratic leadership are likely to soften their own [already wobbly] opposition to the U.S. Occupation”
since from where I stand I haven’t seen much of that opposition, wobbly or otherwise; but perhaps from Homeland things look different.

Besides what Phyllis Bennis reported in her article, [Hillary Clinton says that even with redeployment, "remaining vital national security interests in Iraq" require "a continuing deployment of American troops."] she-Clinton also said,
“The American military has done its job. Look what they accomplished. They got rid of Saddam Hussein. They gave the Iraqis a chance for free and fair elections.”
Bennis must have missed it. It happens.

Let’s skip also this other passage,
“The U.S. troops will no longer maintain even the fiction of responsibility for protecting Iraqi civilians, and crucially, will take far fewer casualties”
It seems to me that - fiction or not fiction - she’s missing the primary responsibility of the US troops in the actual, direct killing of Iraqi civilians. Again, it happens to miss details.

What caught my eyes in her article was the last line in the little piece I reported above,
“The result (since the far more numerous Iraqi casualties are so easily ignored): Iraq will be largely out of the headlines and off the front page.”
Now, wouldn’t it have been quite easy and simple at this very point of the article to give the actual figures of those “Iraqi casualties”? Wouldn’t it have been even more useful to the point she was making and to the alleged broader message of her article, namely, “the anti-war movement will continue its fight”, as she proclaims at the end of her piece? Why didn’t Bennis take this chance to highlight the 1,000,000 Iraqi lives slaughtered since the Iraqi “liberation” four years ago, since, as she rightly admits, “Iraqi casualties are so easily ignored”?

Am I being too fussy?

Back in April 2006 I had an email exchange with Phyllis Bennis. But first, a few words to paint a little background are needed. Please, follow me now even if it could seem a little complicated and I promise at the end we’ll all have some fun together.

At that time most of the Homeland’s anti-war organizations and alternative media were still using Iraq Body Count’s ridiculous figures and I was trying to understand why they had not adopted the figures coming from the first study published in the peer reviewed British medical journal the Lancet in the fall of 2004. Its findings: 100,000 Iraqi human lives slaughtered in the first year and half alone of the “liberation”.

At the same time Media Lens [the guys who first dared to adventure in this fog of war] and a very few of us were challenging the mainstream media’s use of IBC’s figures, I wrote also to many anti-war organizations and activists, both here in the UK and in the US.

By the way, in those months, quite a lot was achieved. The BBC, the Guardian and other “respectable media”, gave the spotlight to IBC’s Sloboda to attack viciously Media Lens and those of us (very few and very isolated!) guilty of trying to focus on the most important aspect of this madness, the extent of the carnage caused by the “liberators” in Iraq, and its burying by the mainstream media.

Sloboda interviewed by the BBC:
BBC’s question: Your critics claim that your work is a vast undercount, how do you answer that?

IBC’s John Sloboda’s answer: The claim (that our work is a vast undercount) is made basically on the back of some quite shaky extrapolations from a single study that was carried out with a particular methodology in 2004. That is the celebrated Lancet study. (…) Some critics of the Lancet study have said it's like a drunk throwing a dart at a dartboard. It's going to go somewhere, but who knows if that number is the bulls eye. Unfortunately many many people have decided to accept that that 98,000 figure is the truth - or the best approximation to the truth that we have.
As a result of the work of IBC's Sloboda, Human Rights Watch and Pentagon's expert Marc Garlasco and the atrocious job of most of the mainstream media, that Lancet study was discredited and millions of people (among them also many mainstream journalists in good faith) deceived. [That deception is still going on in these very hours]

But that was not enough. IBC’s Sloboda had to discredit also the few people who were asking uncomfortable questions:
BBC’s question: How would you describe Media Lens?

IBC’s John Sloboda: They are a pressure group that use aggressive and emotionally destructive tactics. On the belief that the gravity of the issues they're dealing with justify that, and also on the belief that that's somehow effective. (…) I think it's because we don't fit into their worldview. The hard left and the hard right, they're both utterly rigid, and the stuff that's going on in the middle, they can't handle. They want certainty. They want something they can latch onto and say - this is what I believe. They like the sense of being a beleaguered minority. What's most chilling is if you look at people's allegiance to much more dangerous causes than either of our critics are adopting. This is also the mindset that draws angry young men towards terrorism. And it's ultimately self-destructive."
More fog of war in this FLASHBACK

I got my part too. In one of the numerous Iraq Body Count’s attempts to discredit the two scientific studies published in the peer-reviewed journal the Lancet, IBC’s John Sloboda, Hamit Dardagan and Josh Dougherty were so courteous to recognize my persistence in campaigning for the truth about the genocide against the Iraqi people,
“One of the campaigns' most persistent email crusaders, and regular Media Lens message board users”.
Yes, I’m really proud of these words [hey, I am vane as everybody else] and I’ll never be able to repay such a kindness. Thank you.

Where was at that time the "anti-war" movement of peace, justice and solidarity? Besides a few noble exceptions, the panorama was darkened with silence and omerta.

In those same months, ZNet’s Brian Dominick, one of the main members of Michael Albert’s ZNet’s family, was very busy in sending private emails (again, I got my part too) to help IBC’s plan to silence those few voices that dared to ask uncomfortable questions or, in Dominick’s vocabulary, a “ridiculous Iraq Body Count bickering”.

Even worse, when the second Lancet study came out in 2006 and after IBC’s shameful new attempt to discredit it, Dominick went public on the Media Lens message board and stood, needless to say, as a brave chevalier, next to IBC and against… the truth!

Finally, to end this depressing backstage, this IBC’s scandal was the reason I resigned from the BRussells Tribunal [BT], an organization I had trusted and spent a few energies to help. The irrational persistence with which a few decision makers of the BT would keep defending Sloboda and his IBC, forced me to pose this scandal to the attention of a larger circle of BT’s members. I resigned and the BT had to expel Sloboda from its Advisory Committee; but the BT’s persistence in defense of IBC can be seen in the wording of the short note the BT itself made public:
Dear friends,
John Sloboda has been excluded from the BRussells Tribunal. Not because of the conflict about IBC, but because he's apparently heading the Oxford Research Group, a think tank. They published this report recently: http://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/publications/books/iraqiliberation.htm .
Because of this report, that is in total opposition with everything the BT stands for, he really cannot be a part of our network.
Thought I'd let you know.
Dirk.
Isn't it amazing how sometimes coincidences are really unbelievable? Anyway, all and each piece of this miserable background has already been in public domain. I just like to help here recollect our collective fragile memory in these horrendous years, for those who still care about that 1,000,000 and counting and above all for those 1,000,000 and counting. 1,000,000 Iraqis slaughtered in four years. 1,000,000. Let's try to think of this number. Where is the outrage?

Back to April 2006 and my email exchange with Phyllis Bennis.
Zamparini: “Don’t you think that United for Peace and Justice’s website is misleading and it hides the truth when it writes: “over 33,000 Iraqi civilian lives (and some estimates are as high as 100,000 lives)”?

Bennis: No it's not. There are plenty of estimates out there. No one is hiding anything.
It’s true, there was a positive follow-up to those exchanges and when the new Lancet study came out later in the same year, its findings were finally presented to the US Congress

But it was too little, too late. The mainstream media, both in the UK and in the US would keep burying those uncomfortable numbers and too many anti-war organizations and websites are still using the Iraq Body Count’s figures with the result that the vast majority of the population has no idea of the real extent of the carnage caused by “Iraqi Freedom”.

Maybe if the “anti-war movement” - instead of trying to silence those few voices; solidarity my ass! - had been more active and responsible in campaigning and informing the public opinion about the real extent of the carnage the US were inflicting to Iraqis, things could have been different by now. Who knows? But even Phyllis Bennis will agree with me that after two scientific studies have been published in the peer reviewed journal the Lancet, we can by now be quite confident that there are NOT “plenty of estimates out there” and therefore it should be our first moral responsibility to focus on that number, 1,000,000, EVERY SINGLE TIME we talk and write about Iraq and lecture about or on behalf of the “anti-war” movement. That 1,000,000 is not a detail, Phyllis, that’s THE issue. Everything else comes after, including “realistic” strategies and allegiances to political parties.

Bennis’ article is very long, yet it misses the essential; the real scale of the horror “our troops” have inflicted to Iraqis and our responsibility for this genocide. Any strategy, tactic, response of the anti-war movement should move from that horror. But maybe Bennis didn’t want to ruin the breakfast to those delicate ears her article was addressed to; because that article looks to me like a spot for the Democratic Party.

In that 2006 email exchange, Bennis also wrote me:
“My concern is that we figure out how to bring the war to an end, in a period in which we have overwhelmingly won the battle for public opinion.”
[Who's “we”? The Homeland’s antiwar movement? its policy makers?]

This thesis is also expressed in the first paragraph of her latest article:
“The sudden "surge" of anti-war positions among powerful Republican senators, most recently John Warner and Richard Lugar, and other elite forces (such as the editors of the New York Times) is putting intense new bi-partisan pressure on the White House to begin withdrawing troops. And while it is certainly an indication that our years of work are bearing fruit, this new period is going to be very dangerous, and create new problems for the anti-war movement.”
Now, the thesis that “we” [?] “have overwhelmingly won the battle for public opinion” so that even “powerful Republican senators” and “other elite forces (such as the editors of the New York Times)” have been converted, sounds like a mind-boggling assertion. In other words, more than a “fruit”, it smells of bullshit.

In the Homeland the establishment is abandoning the collapsing Bush Junta because it understands the Bush Junta can’t go anywhere at this point. The Democratic Party, pieces of the Republican Party, the Media, the Money are all jumping out from the sinking boat. Even some of the neo-cons! So now we see the New York Times, the powerful TV networks, and all these brave politicians saying: “It’s all Bush fault”. Well, you know what? That’s not all Bush fault. They are as responsible as Bush. Their hands are as dirty as Bush’s ones. Dirty with the blood of innocent people. The genocide of Iraqis didn’t start in 2003 (when Hilary Clinton and her Democratic comrades were clapping and clapping and clapping in Congress their dear president) but in 1990 with the genocidal UN (read: US+UK) embargo, and then the first Gulf War, and then the (illegal) bombings of the (illegal) No Fly Zones. The liberal Democrats with their beloved president, Bill Clinton, killed as many Iraqis as the two Bushs combined, if not more.

Let alone for now Afghanistan, remember? the Just War which reminds me of another Just War, Yugoslavia. And then we still have the big taboo, the genocide of Palestinians. Sh! Sh! Let’s not scare the big donors of the Democratic Party! The fruit has not matured for all this, I guess. Let’s give it more time, who knows? And Iran? Sh! Sh! Those donors are listening!

Maybe the reasons of that ‘conversion’ of the Homeland’s elites need to be looked again for somewhere else? Maybe those Homeland’s elites are abandoning the sinking boat because they want to save their Empire and their dirty ass with it? Maybe the resistance of the Iraqi people, which has never been recognized as such, respected as such, let alone supported dear Bennis, by the anti-war movement and its policy makers, that resistance (not insurgency) has more to do with that sinking boat? Yes, the Homeland’s public is starting to count the bodies. But only the bodies of those brave troops, not the Iraqis; ONE MILLION and counting.

But of course the Homeland’s anti-war movement’s policy makers and their Democrats friends are using the “politics of reality”. Pilger recently explained in Chicago:
A senior member of the antiwar coalition, United For Peace and Justice, said recently, and I quote her, "The Democrats are using the politics of reality." Her liberal historical reference point was Vietnam. She said that President Johnson began withdrawing troops from Vietnam after a Democratic Congress began to vote against the war. That's not what happened. The troops were withdrawn from Vietnam after four long years. And during that time the United States killed more people in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos with bombs than were killed in all the preceding years. And that's what's happening in Iraq. The bombing has doubled since last year, and this is not being reported. And who began this bombing? Bill Clinton began it. During the 1990s Clinton rained bombs on Iraq in what were euphemistically called the "no fly zones." At the same time he imposed a medieval siege called economic sanctions, killing as I've mentioned, perhaps a million people, including a documented 500,000 children. Almost none of this carnage was reported in the so-called mainstream media. Last year a study published by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health found that since the invasion of Iraq 655, 000 Iraqis had died as a direct result of the invasion. Official documents show that the Blair government knew this figure to be credible. In February, Les Roberts, the author of the report, said the figure was equal to the figure for deaths in the Fordham University study of the Rwandan genocide. The media response to Robert's shocking revelation was silence. What may well be the greatest episode of organized killing for a generation, in Harold Pinter's words, "Did not happen. It didn't matter."
Most Americans tend to think that Vietnam was an American problem. The same Americans seem now to believe that Iraq is an American problem. The reality is that as with Vietnam, Iraq is not an American problem; it’s America to be a problem for Humanity.

The US’ leadership, its media, its Hollywood stars, its Academia, its institutions, its mainstream culture need a thorough de-Nazification, not the never coming impeachment or a new tenant at the White House. Bush is not the new Hitler. He’s simply the latest of a long series of Hitlers. Each of them has been worse than the previous one. When you have such a rapacious Empire to satisfy, you can’t be a good führer. That’s the reality. And the only strategy, the only tactic, the only politics for all of us, trying to look toward peace and justice is really simple: telling the truth, repeating it every single time and building on it.

But the truth is not welcome from that “politics of reality” the Democratic Party and its friends among the hierarchy of the Homeland’s “anti-war” movement have been adopting.

A few days ago this is what we were forced to read:
The pro-Democratic blog Daily Kos warns the anti-war Cindy Sheehan that if she does, indeed, challenge House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, it will ban her from promoting her candidacy on the blog. She may have soured their relationship when she attacked Democrats in a Daily Kos diary:
“The Democrats are the party of slavery and were the party that started every war in the 20th Century except the other Bush debacle. The Federal Reserve, permanent federal (and unconstitutional) income taxes, Japanese Concentration Camps and, not one, but two atom bombs dropped on the innocent citizens of Japan were brought to us via the Democrats. Don’t tell me the Democrats are our ‘Saviors’ because I am not buying it.”
Prison Planet reported a few days ago:
Sheehan slammed Pelosi as a warmongering elitist who lives in a mansion on a hill and is completely out of touch with her electorate, as well as a major supporter of AIPAC, a group which has expressed its explicit support for an attack on Iran.

"You can't have allegiance to two countries when you're a lawmaker in one of those countries," said Sheehan, adding that many politicians put America's best interests second behind Israel.
Ouch! Ouch! That taboo again.

Of course Cindy Sheehan has her limits and contradictions, as I have mine and Bennis has hers. But I wish those limits and contradictions were all could be said of the Democratic Party of she-Clinton and her comrades. Sheehan was of course good to be waved as a flag when that would bring consent, media attention and votes. But hey, Cindy, keep having fun with the toys we give you and let the real “business as usual” to “us”.

And so the silencing of Cindy Sheehan has begun.

This is nothing new of course. When Ralph Nader, who had devoted his life to social justice, decided to run for the US Presidential Elections in 2000 and then again in 2004, there was an insurrection among liberal and progressive intellectuals and activists. Open letters, dedicated websites, rational arguments, polite invitations, reasonable articles and vicious attacks started to demolish the image of one of the most decent people in American political landscape.

I remember an American friend who told me at that time, “Nader’s fault is in his name”. Why? Maybe its sound is too uncomfortable for the delicate ears of the generous donors of the Democratic Party?

Those were the times of Anyone But Bush. Bush won and kept his ass in the White House but - surprise surprise - Nader didn’t determine Bush’s victory against Kerry. However, the Homeland’s anti-war movement and all those people who still believe in peace and justice, and there is no doubt they are the vast majority of the United States’ citizens, lost a formidable chance to build a more organized front able to break what Gore Vidal has called the Property Party:
"[t]here is only one party in the United States, the Property Party...and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt—until recently... and more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand. But, essentially, there is no difference between the two parties."
Interestingly, for those “anti-war” movement’s policy makers, progressive intellectuals and liberal minds, the times of Anyone But… never seem to end and there’s always been an emergency situation for “let’s not waste our vote” and support the Democratic Party and its “politics of reality”. Meanwhile in the real world…
"Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn't know it. It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest." [From: Harold Pinter Nobel Lecture]
Bennis’ misleading spot is just the latest and more innocent example of an incestuous, necrophilic relationship between the Homeland’s hierarchy of the “anti-war movement” and the Democratic Party. In that e-mail exchange I had with her in 2006, she writes:
“Since you're monitoring the U.S. press and anti-war movement so closely i assume you are familiar with the rising polls of anti-war sentiment and the near 2/3 of americans who say bring the troops home -- our challenge is how to empower that sentiment into political action at a moment when the supposed opposition party is frightened and supine, rendering congress largely unwilling to challenge the white house. I am less concerned with which figures get cited as the wars consequences than in finding a good strategy for ending it altogether.
many thanks for your ideas.”
Now, let’s not pay attention to her “Since you're monitoring the U.S. press and anti-war movement so closely” and “many thanks for your ideas”; each of us can have a bad day. Let’s focus instead on the essential here:
“the supposed opposition party is frightened and supine”
Are we talking of the same Democratic Party of she-Clinton and her comrades? They didn’t seem very “frightened and supine” when I watched them in the US Congress, year after year, giving several standing ovations to their beloved President Bush. And the recent she-Clinton’s words, “The American military has done its job. Look what they accomplished. They got rid of Saddam Hussein. They gave the Iraqis a chance for free and fair elections.”, do they seem to you the words of a “frightened and supine” Senator wannabe President?

In spite of the unspeakable atrocities and horror that the American military has accomplished, in Iraq people seem still to be able to think and speak common sense:
"I am Shiite," Ali said. "My uncles and cousins were murdered by Saddam's regime. I wanted desperately to get rid of him. But today, if Saddam's feet appeared in front of me, I would fall to my knees and kiss them!"
Obviously common sense has nothing to do with those “politics of reality” that the anti-war’s mandarins have been diligently following.

“The Democrats don’t really want to end the war despite their veneer of opposition. If they desired to end the war they would have halted its funding long ago.” wrote a few days ago Joshua Frank.

“[T]he Democratic leadership chose merely to appear to oppose the war while continuing to fund it. This they have now achieved, amid the satisfied cheers of the progressive sector.” commented a few months ago Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair.

So, why do the anti-war movement and its policy makers keep supporting this party? Or, the same problem in different terms, why is there all this deafening silence on the hijacking of the anti-war sentiment in support of she-Clinton’s Democratic Party?

Probably Upton Sinclair’s answer would be,
"It is difficult to get a man [or a woman] to understand something when his [or her] salary depends on his [or her] not understanding it."
Phyllis Bennis concludes her article:
“This moment's spike in anti-war sentiment, including from some unlikely sources, is an indication of the strength and breadth of the anti-war movement and of anti-war sentiment throughout the country. (…) All of this points to the importance of remembering that Congress is not the peace movement. (…) U.S. occupation of Iraq, "sustainable" or not, must end. Until it does, the anti-war movement will continue its fight.”
If only rhetoric could save human lives!

A few days ago, Alex Cockburn asked at the end of his piece,
“The American people are largely against the war, to the huge embarassment and distress of the Republican and Democratic leadership. So does it matter that there's not much of an antiwar movement? Very much so. It's how the left down the years has learned its internationalist ABC.”
How’s it possible that on the same days, two among the most famous intellectuals of the American left can express such different points of view?

But an even more important, decisive question I believe is, Which kind of anti-war movement?

The main preoccupation of this “anti-war” movement has been from the beginning the legitimization of the puppet Green Zone’s government. This is true both for the movement’s main intellectuals who shaped the course and for its main organizations’ policy makers who implemented it.

Remember United for Peace and Justice’s “pleasure to welcome” puppet Maliki “in the United States”? “Politics of reality” or beyond Orwell and Kafka?

Remember the deafening silence of this “anti-war” movement during the lynching-trial and then assassination of the President of the Republic of Iraq?

Remember that sinister caw in the air or the noble art of rewriting history?

This is the “anti-war” movement of those who still deny the influence of the Jewish-Zionist-Israeli lobby on the US foreign policy when that lobby highly conditions that movement from within, if we have to believe Rabbi Michael Lerner
Nor was there any of the Israel-bashing or Marxist rhetoric that has tended to make other demonstrations feel so distant from the people who attend them that no one wants to listen. So, curiously, and happily, people listened.”
Is there anyone out there who still wonders why Palestine is still a taboo, even within the Homeland’s “anti-war” movement or why decent people and fine intellectuals are marginalized and attacked from within that “movement”?

Which kind of “anti-war” movement is Phyllis Bennis talking about? Is the one whose policy makers are only interested in the safety of “our troops”, those troops that have raped, tortured, slaughtered hundreds of thousands of human beings and transformed Iraq into a wilderness? Is the “anti-war” movement whose establishment is worried to not use the word “resistance” and that still considers the “insurgency” the enemy while siding with the puppet Iraqi so-called government, and giving revolting show of welcoming? Which kind of meaning that “anti-war” movement’s policy makers give to the words “peace and justice”? Or shall we believe that those words have a whole different meaning in Homeland? Maybe is that another side of the infamous American exceptionalism? I don’t think so.

The American anti-war people deserve better. The World anti-war people deserve better. But above all, the Iraqis, the Afghans, the Palestinians... the victims of imperialism deserve better than this charade, an “anti-war” farce whose main actors are much closer to Hollywood’s star system than to any decent resistance movement in human history.

"Politics of reality" my ass, dear comrade Judith LeBlanc, UFPJ co-chair!

We’ve finally got back to the starting point. Money.

Political Science Professor Joan Roelofs writes in the first chapter (available online in PDF) of her book, Foundations and Public Policy. The Mask of Pluralism:
My studies also have been guided and inspired by educational theorist Robert Arnove’s anthology, Philantropy and Cultural Imperialism, and its contributors. Arnove maintains that:
… [F]oundations like Carnegie, Rockfeller, and Ford have a corrosive influence on a democratic society; they represent relatively unregulated and unaccountable concentrations of power and wealth which buy talent, promote causes, and, in effect, establish and agenda of what merits society’s attention. They serve as “cooling out” agencies, delaying and preventing more radical, structural change.
Where does this “corrosive influence on a democratic society” stop?

Bob Feldman writes:
The multi-billion dollar Ford Foundation's historic relationship to the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] is rarely mentioned on Pacifica's DEMOCRACY NOW / Deep Dish TV show, on FAIR's COUNTERSPIN show, on the WORKING ASSETS RADIO show, on The Nation Institute's RADIO NATION show, on David Barsamian's ALTERNATIVE RADIO show or in the pages of PROGRESSIVE, MOTHER JONES and Z magazine. One reason may be because the Ford Foundation and other Establishment foundations subsidize the Establishment Left's alternative media gatekeepers / censors.
I have no certainties and I make no allegations here but surely the problem deserves to be kept in mind, especially in these dark times of fog of war and “politics of reality”. In other words, nobody is perfect but here we have gone too far folks!

More Once upon a time… fairy tales soon. But first, as I’ve promised, let’s have some fun…

Saturday, July 21, 2007

Robert of Arabia's confusion?

"I despise the internet. It's irresponsible and, often, a net of hate. And I don't have time for Blogopops." - Robert Fisk
Not long time ago Fisk said:
"So more and more people are trying to find a different and more accurate narrative of events in the Middle East. It is a tribute to their intelligence that instead of searching for blog-o-bots or whatever, they are looking to the European ‘mainstream’ newspapers like The Independent, the Guardian, The Financial Times"
Now, he finally admits:
"No wonder the bloggers are winning"
Some worrying confusion here from the great reporter?

Maybe if "the bloggers are winning" could be because "So more and more people are trying to find a different and more accurate narrative of events in the Middle East"?

It seems that Robert of Arabia can't stand competition when it's too close to home.

His hatred for the Internet makes the brilliant writer so blind he can't even see he keeps offending the vast majority of his readers who use the Internet to read what he writes.

It seems that it's not only beauty to be in the eye of the beholder

Best wishes,
Gabriele Zamparini
from Blogopop The Cat's Blog

PS Just for those missing this point, I'm sure Fisk would be honored for that "Robert of Arabia", since his admiration for T.E. Lawrence.

Thursday, July 19, 2007

ACTION ALERT: e-mail The Guardian's Readers Editor Siobhain Butterworth

ACTION ALERT: Please, e-mail The Guardian's Readers Editor Siobhain Butterworth and ask her to issue a formal correction about the issue below. It's extremely important to inform the public opinion on the real extent of the carnage caused by the Anglo-American illegal war of aggression against Iraq. When the Iraqi slaughtered because of this illegal war might well be over one million, millions of people are still being deceived by the pernicious collaboration between Iraq Body Count and the mainstream media. I strongly urge you to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone. Please send a copy of your emails to me at info@thecatsdream.com

The Guardian's Readers' Editor email:

reader@guardian.co.uk

Siobhain.Butterworth@guardian.co.uk


This is the e-mail I sent:

Dear Siobhain Butterworth, Guardian Readers Editor

CC. James Sturcke
CC. George Monbiot
CC. Media Lens
CC. Les Roberts

In US House calls for Iraq pullout by spring, Guardian’s James Sturcke wrote:

"There have also been around 70,000 Iraqi civilian deaths as a result of the military action by the US and its allies, according to the Iraq Body Count website."

I have had an email exchange with James on this issue and you can read it below and/or on Media Lens’ website where I have posted our correspondence.

For your convenience, this is the link of all our correspondence, which included also an exchange with Guardian’s George Monbiot

Guardian’s Monbiot’s reply to my email was:
Thanks Gabriele. I mentioned the million figure in my last column. I agree that the Lancet study is much more credible than the IBC's work.

With best wishes, George
I ask you to formally issue a correction of this irresponsible and misleading error. We have two scientific studies published in the British peer reviewed medical journal the Lancet. The last of this study, published last year, tells us that the Iraqi deaths because of this war might be as many as 655,000. Probably many more by now, as you can read here

Please, give to this issue all the due and necessary time and priority. You’re now responsible for this grave deception made by the Guardian.

I look forward for your prompt reply on this matter.

Thank you

Respectfully,
Gabriele Zamparini,
London

***

Further responses

A response from Baghdad

Read some responses to this alert here

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Once upon a time in Iraq… A Nobel Peace Prize for the Anglo-American Peacekeepers?

Once upon a time in Iraq…
A Nobel Peace Prize for the Anglo-American Peacekeepers?
By Gabriele Zamparini


First, an apology. On 30 January of this year I ended my piece writing, “Dissent this! Part 2 will follow shortly...” but then I have been silent since.

Many friends have written asking for the reason of this silence. The reason is that in spite of everything, I had then still hope in the so-called Western anti-war movement and the so-called Left. That hope has been killed by the lies, propaganda, opportunism and blind ideologies of the major Western anti-war organizations. Power corrupts indeed.

No, this doesn’t mean I have lost hope in the power of collective action or in the difference each of us can make. In the Western countries, starting with the US and UK, there are lots of organizations, groups and individuals that are a source of inspiration and give hope to humanity. Even more importantly, there are millions of people who still believe in peace and justice all over the world, especially in those countries on the receiving end of our respectable benevolence, which is to say those countries our liberal attitude makes us believe are desperate to import from us human rights, freedom, democracy and “our way of life”. Human Rights Watch, please take note; they have had enough of this kind of human rights. – Just out of curiosity… Do you know where Human Rights Watch has its headquarter? Empire State Building, of course. Where else? ;-)

I know personally great and seriously compassionate people working there. The problem is the role of “human rights” and Human Rights Watch in particular in “providing a political cover for good-old-fashioned imperialism”, as a friend recently pointed out about the so-called Harvard's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.

It’s my view that all those millions of people, at home and abroad, have been betrayed by what I can’t find better words to describe than as the anti-war movement’s establishment and its “realistic” agenda.

One of the most spectacular examples of this “realistic” agenda, comes from the Homeland’s anti-war movement’s establishment whose policy makers have been bargaining away what was left of the principles of peace and justice to support the Democratic Party of she-Clinton who recently said, “The American military has done its job. Look what they accomplished. They got rid of Saddam Hussein. They gave the Iraqis a chance for free and fair elections.”

Yes, “look what they accomplished” indeed. That “job” cost the lives of one million innocent Iraqis [by the way, Iraq Body Count counted so far “around 70,000”] , with many more millions maimed and displaced, and a whole country destroyed. But the policy makers of the Homeland’s anti-war movement are distracting millions of Americans in good faith with Impeachments, Orange Revolutions, Pink t-shirts, clowns and cotillions.

Have I said clowns?

A few days ago, Nicholas D. Kristof of the All The News That's Fit to Print’s family, wrote,
“If Iraqis were pleading with us to stay and quell the violence, maybe we would have a moral responsibility to stay. But when Iraqis are begging us to leave, and saying that we are making things worse, then it’s remarkably presumptuous to overrule their wishes and stay indefinitely because, as President Bush termed it in his speech on Tuesday, “it is necessary work.”
I found Kristof’s article on the message board of the truly excellent Media Lens’ website [a website by the way, I’d invite people to visit often as an antidote to our “liberal” media’s daily poisoning].

I was really touched by Kristof’s article and I felt something inside that demanded to come out. So I wrote my first reaction on that message board:
"If Iraqis were pleading with us to stay and quell the violence, maybe we would have a moral responsibility to stay."

Reading the words "moral responsibility" in relation to the US and what it's done to Iraq, makes me vomit.

The US establishment - including the NYT and its editorialists - that made the Iraqi genocide not only possible but inevitable is escaping the sinking boat, that's it. But when they have the nerve to use words such as "moral responsibility", I wonder whom Diderot, had been alive today, would have chosen instead of kings and priests.

“Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest”. - Denis Diderot
A little debate followed, with people expressing different views.

This is the same Kristof who writes in November 2004:
"First, The Lancet, the London-based medical journal, published a study suggesting that at least 100,000 Iraqis, and perhaps many more, had died as a result of the invasion of Iraq. Among Iraqis, the risk of death by violence was 58 times greater after the war than before, and infant mortality also nearly doubled. That's apparently because of insecurity."
INSECURITY? Really?

ACTUALLY that Lancet 2004 read:
"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. We have shown that collection of public-health information is possible even during periods of extreme violence. Our results need further verification and should lead to changes to reduce non-combatant deaths from air strikes."
And
"Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were women and children."
But according to Kristoff, "That's apparently because of insecurity."

Why does he need to misrepresent the Lancet? [Well, yes, I write, “misrepresent”… you know, where I am from – the land of Pinocchio… yes, it was an Italian writer to create that character, not Walt Disney – people call that kind of things, LIES. But then people could accuse me to be rude and angry. So, I hope you’ll pass me this more polite word, a misrepresentation].

Back to Kristof. Why does he need to “misrepresent” the Lancet with that “That's apparently because of insecurity"?

He needs to say that to finally make his point in his 2004 NYT’s article:
"The best answer to that question, I think, is that our mistaken invasion has left millions of Iraqis desperately vulnerable, and it would be inhumane to abandon them now. If we stay in Iraq, there is still some hope that Iraqis will come to enjoy security and better lives, but if we pull out we will be condemning Iraqis to anarchy, terrorism and starvation, costing the lives of hundreds of thousands of children over the next decade. Those hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children, whose lives we placed at risk by invading their country, are the reasons we should remain in Iraq, until we can hand over security to a local force. Saving hundreds of thousands of lives is a worthy cause to risk American lives for, even to die for."
Read it slowly now, “Saving hundreds of thousands of lives is a worthy cause to risk American lives for, even to die for."

So, it’s not “the greatest strategic prize in history”, as the U.S. State Department once called the oil-rich Middle East, “a worthy cause to risk American lives for, even to die for". Of course not, you stupid! Don’t forget, “we” are the good guys, so “we” must appeal to the “good cause”, in New York Times’ Kristof’s words, “saving hundreds of thousands of lives”. And then you wonder why these gentlemen are paid so well to write this sh*t? They deserve every single buck they get.

In 2004 the US’ establishment still wanted to "stay the course" and the liberal intellectuals had to manufacture consent. Nothing has changed. They are the same liberal intellectuals, writing on the same liberal media, defending the same Empire. As I wrote in one of my comments in that little debate on Media Lens Message Board:
The "power" is abandoning Bush and his pals because they can't get anywhere. But that power - of which the NYT is part - is the real responsible for Iraq (and the rest). Presidents pass and go but Corporate America will stay.

It's much more than sheer cynicism. This is Corporate America at its best.
And while the Homeland’s anti-war movement’s policy makers seem to have moved into “liberal” territories and together with those liberal media are now distracting those (relatively) few Americans who still bother to vote, demonstrate, campaign and act, Corporate America knows what Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa wrote in his novel, The Leopard: "Everything has to change so that nothing changes."

This is not a “realistic” agenda but realpolitik. At least, let’s call this sh*t with its real name.

***

Patrick Cockburn writes on the Independent,
“The United States surge, the use of the American troop reinforcements to bring violence in Iraq under control, is bloodily failing across northern Iraq. (...) The dispatch of 28,000 extra troops to Iraq starting in January, and the more aggressive deployment of the US army in the country, is not working. At best it is moving violence from one area of Iraq to another. The US is allying itself to local tribes and militias against guerrillas but that is angering the government in Baghdad and deepening the violence."
Associated Press’ Robert Burns writes,
“The plan is focused on providing better security for Iraqis in Baghdad, but the intended effect — political reconciliation between Sunnis and Shiites — has yet to be achieved”
It seems that all mainstream journalists feel the need to stress what the "intended effect" of the surge, and indeed of the very presence of the Anglo-American troops in Iraq, really is. But it's just so obvious, isn’t it? Why do they need to repeat it over and over again? We know that, don't we?

Of course, they are failing for now and the intended effect has yet to be achieved. But hey, Rome was not built in one day, was it? Maybe with some more troops, who knows… or maybe we can try leaving in Mesopotamia a dozen permanent huge military bases - of course with lots of swimming pools, clubs, tennis courts and all the rest of the amenities, so that our good boys and girls can have some fun… which is to say when they don’t rape and kill little girls and boys just for the fun of it… after all, they do need to release all the stress they get from doing the big killings with those expensive death toys, paid for by our tax money, don’t they?

And now you don’t tell me that these Anglo-American Peacekeepers don’t deserve a Nobel Peace Prize. After all, if Kissinger and Carter got it… why not the ones who do the dirty job? Stop with this unfair classism. Our boys and girls risk their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq so that we at home can enjoy our way of life. Nobel Peace Prize for all!

Meanwhile in Iraq…

Iraqi independent journalist Ali al-Fadhily, who works in close collaboration with American independent journalist Dahr Jamail, informs us from Iraq:
Many Iraqis are now beginning to see the rising sectarian violence as part of a larger plan to partition the country.

"Americans want to alter the shape of our cities, dividing Iraqis into ethnic and sectarian groups living separately from each other," Khali Sadiq, a researcher in statistics at Baghdad University told IPS.

"They are not doing this directly, but they have obviously given room to militias and Iraqi forces to do the job," he said. "We are more than halfway towards a sectarian Iraq." (…)

Many Iraqis today believe this is part of an intentional plan to divide Iraq along sectarian lines.
The use of the sectarian militias by the Occupation and its Quisling government to fight the Iraqi national resistance and precipitate Iraq into the actual terror has not been a secret.

That piece I wrote in January read:
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?
As always, the replies came from the Net in the form of insults, indirect reproofs and veiled threats. Thank you.

While in the West Motqada al-Sadr was presented to the anti-war crowds as the hero of the Iraqi resistance, in the real Iraq his drill boys were kidnapping, torturing and killing Sunni and Shia alike, adults and children alike, homosexuals and heterosexuals alike… The only people that this peculiar resistance movement was not harming were the Occupation’s troops. It must be a first in the history of the resistance movements under occupation. Yes, I know. They organized lots of demonstrations with people really angry against the USA. NO! NO! U-S-A. NO! NO! U-S-A. I wasn’t impressed, nor it seems the U-S-A.

While I’m writing this piece, Aljazeera has just reported:
Nassar al-Rubaei, spokesman for [al-Sadr] bloc in parliament, said: "Starting from today, we have ended our suspension to the parliament. We are back."
Interesting development. We’ll see soon if the Long Wait of those who have had much hope in the radical cleric and his followers will be rewarded. If not, don’t despair; next time you'll be more lucky.

But let’s go back to the “sectarian Iraq”.

In my latest piece, Dissent this! - Part 1: ZNet between numbers and parallels, I tried to highlight the “contradictions” of one of the most respected and useful alternative media in English language, ZNet of Michael Albert & Co.

In Political Observations on Sectarianism in Iraq, an original article written by Munir Chalabi and published by ZNet, the author claims,
“There is a widespread misconception in the minds of many people that the US/UK Occupation created the sectarian political map in Iraq and that the sectarian massacres only started after the occupation of Iraq. (…) 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 provides some interesting figures to support his thesis. [Please, read the whole article, not only the excerpts I reported above.]

In my January 30 piece I wrote: “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”. As of July 17, 2007 I haven’t got any reply.

But let’s go back to sectarianism and misconception. I am not questioning Chalabi’s interpretation of Iraq’s history, but apparently the “misconception” is more widespread than ZNet’s author seems to believe.

On June 23, the Guardian published a discussion between two Iraqi reporters:
Ghaith So what do you think? Why did this happen in the last three years?

Rajiv I see a lot of the roots back in decisions made in 2003. I wouldn't blame the US for the civil war in Iraq, but I certainly think an awful lot of decisions made by Ambassador Bremer, the first American viceroy to Iraq, have helped to fuel the instability we see today. The commonly discussed ones: de-Ba'athification; the dissolving of the army. But it goes beyond that. It was an American effort at social engineering in Iraq. And there was a simplicity to it. It was almost binary: Sunnis equal bad guys; Shia equal oppressed. We must empower the Shia, we must marginalise the Sunnis.

Ghaith In Baghdad, in 2003 or 2004, it was kind of impossible to say that's a Sunni or that's a Shia neighbourhood.

Rajiv Or even that's a Sunni or that's a Shia person. Nobody identified themselves as that. You'd ask any man on the street "Who are you?" They would say first, "I'm an Iraqi"; then he'd say his tribe; and finally, maybe on the third or fourth try, they might identify themselves as Sunni or Shia. Now...
Yes, now…

Well, we can always blame it all on Saddam. That’s what mainstream media, liberal intellectuals and those anti-war movement policy makers are doing every day. It’s easy, uncontroversial and as she-Clinton knows, it brings votes, doesn’t it?

But these are just Once upon a time… fairy tales and I am just a blogger.

More soon. Meanwhile a FLASHBACK:
Freedom! Freedom! Democracy! Democracy! will write the Imperial historians, raping history as the barbarians have raped the Iraqi children. But those children know better. Four hyenas, the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel and Iran have destroyed a country that could have been a power in the region and a model for the Arab world. The vultures of the international community have been cooperating and watching the bloodbath waiting to share the rich carcass. The control of the energy resources is just part of the whole picture; Iraq had to be destroyed to allow the so-called reshaping of the Middle East. The notorious “political process” has been a formidable Trojan horse that forced the Iraqi People into a civil war. Far from being a failure, the main mission of this bloody project has been accomplished. Iraq as we knew it has gone, probably forever. God bless America…

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Anyone wonders why the world is in this sh*t?

Dear friends,

Here some recent updates from my blog. Just a few minor examples on how our dear liberal media have become the real obstacle for change and social justice. With the New York Times, The Independent, The Guardian or the Village Voice... who needs Fox News? And with the Homeland’s anti-war movement’s establishment and its necrophilic (but lucrative) relationship with the Democratic Party... anyone wonders why the world is in this sh*t?


Best wishes,

Gabriele

Iraq Body Count: SHAME ON YOU!!! - An appeal to the anti-war movement

The Village Voice, of course

Racism gets respectable on the Western press

BBC's math problem - an exchange with BBC's Paul Reynolds

Respectable Racism on UK liberal media - Migrationwatch

The Guardian's one way hypocrisy

The Independent's endless thirst for blood

The Independent's endless thirst for blood

Total military spending vs. total development spending in Afghanistan 2002-2006
As this chart illustrates, despite the extreme poverty in Afghanistan, the majority of spending by the international community is on military rather than development and poverty relief projects.



Dear Tristan Davies, Independent on Sunday Editor,
Dear Simon Kelner, Independent Editor,

Yesterday your leading article read:
"In Afghanistan, the problems are the inverse of those in Iraq. The mission of our troops can be achieved, where in Iraq it cannot. But we need more troops in Afghanistan not fewer. We report today further evidence of the overstretch of military resources caused by engagement in two combat theatres at the same time: the priority is to concentrate resources on the fight that is winnable."
The day before, Robert Fisk, your Middle East correspondent and arguably the most prestigious Independent's signature, had written:
"Abu Henry" says we may have to remain in Afghanistan for decades to protect Afghans from the Taliban. Our ambassador in Kabul - Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, KCMG, LVO, to be precise - apparently sees no contradiction in this extraordinary prediction. The Taliban are themselves mostly Afghans, and the idea that the British Army is in Afghanistan to protect the locals from each other is a truly colonial proposition. It's what we said about the Northern Irish in 1969. Anyway, I thought we destroyed the Taliban in 2001. Wasn't that the idea at the time? Isn't that what Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara, our new man in the Middle East - who will grace us with his first visit next month - said back then?
According to your own Middle East correspondent, the Independent supports “a truly colonial proposition” and that great correspondent appears to be just a beautiful mask to cover your truly horrific face.

On the same day your newspaper called for more troops in Afghanistan, this is what the Washington Post reported those troops already there were doing:
Civilians Die In U.S.-NATO Air Assault In Afghanistan
By Griff Witte and Javed Hamdard
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, July 1, 2007; A16
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, June 30 -- Just a week after Afghan President Hamid Karzai chastised international forces for being "careless," Afghan officials reported Saturday that possibly 100 or more civilians had been killed in a NATO and U.S.-led assault.
Last September the Senlis Council published “Afghanistan Five Years Later: The Return of the Taliban” (*)

That report informed us among other things, that between 2002 and 2006, the so-called international community had spent in Afghanistan 82.5 billions of US dollars in military spending and just 7.3 in development projects. Still, one year later, your paper can shamelessly call for “more troops in Afghanistan not fewer”, which sounds as the good, old advice: Kill Them All!

Shame on you!

I hope and pray that the souls of those thousands of hundreds of people slaughtered in Afghanistan and Iraq with the help of your active cooperation will visit your nightmares at night and help you to find back that humanity you seem to have completely lost.

With compassion,
Gabriele Zamparini
London

(*) Some excerpts from Senlis Council’s report, “Afghanistan Five Years Later: The Return of the Taliban”:

“After five years of intensive international involvement in Afghanistan, the country remains ravaged by severe poverty and the spreading starvation of the rural and urban poor. Despite promises from the US-led international community guaranteeing to provide the resources and assistance necessary for its reconstruction and development needs, Afghanistan’s people are starving to death. Afghanistan continues to rank at the bottom of most poverty indicators, and the situation of women and children is particularly grave. One in four children born in Afghanistan cannot expect to live beyond the age of five and certain provinces of the country lay claim to the worst maternal mortality rates ever recorded in the world. Yet, the local and international development community’s abilities to respond to Afghanistan’s many poverty-related challenges have been undermined by the United States’ and United Kingdom’s misguided focus on counter-narcotics eradication policies. As such, these two self-appointed lead nations on terrorism and counter-narcotics are jointly responsible for southern Afghanistan’s current hunger crisis.”


“Afghans’ anger at seeing no representatives from international organisations has only served in endearing the Taliban to the local people. The Taliban are often seen as doing their bit to help the Afghans, despite having much less money than the international community, while international troops are perceived as being in the country for their own purposes. Even those who do not want to turn to the Taliban are forced to do so in order to survive and support their families. After five years of no positive change, the overriding opinion is that this a war – originally supposed to “help” the poor people of Afghanistan – which only serves in making the rich richer, including all “foreigners”. With children dying, people starving and family livelihoods being destroyed, there is an urgent need for a complete rethink on the part of the international community if Afghans are no longer to live in extreme poverty.”


“The ousting of the Taliban regime five years ago was widely believed to mark a new era for Afghanistan. Plagued by decades of violence and poverty, the arrival of the international community heralded a bright future for Afghanistan, confirmed by speeches assuring that the Afghan people would forever be freed from insecurity and oppression. The United States claimed the removal of the Taliban as a humanitarian duty, and promised to deliver enduring freedom to the Afghan people. (…) With civilians being killed on a regular basis, Afghans are angry that the majority of international aid has been spent on the military purposes rather than poverty relief. Many believe that the military missions are misguided, having lost faith in the ability of the “foreigners” to bring stability to the country. A perceived lack of respect from international military troops has fuelled Afghans’ resentment towards the international community. International troops’ apparent unwillingness to study Afghan culture and co-operate with locals, has caused mass hatred of the “foreigners”. Some believe that the ongoing fighting in Iraq and recent clashes in Lebanon are proof that the West is attempting to re-colonise the Muslim world. Many Afghans are now looking to the Taliban for leadership, declaring that they will “die fighting the foreigners".”

The Guardian's one way hypocrisy

Dear Marine,

In your latest article on the Guardian you explore the contradictions
"between raising awareness and using people whom many know to be hypocrites to do so".
You conclude,
"If we are truly to live in a world where celebrities are the medium, then they should pay a little more genuine and practical heed to the message, or forfeit the chance to boost their record sales in front of a global audience of billions".
To the right of your article, on the Guardian website, I read:
"NO ORDINARY GARAGE WILL DO FOR THE NEW FIAT BRAVO"
On the top of the same page I read:
"SEAT AUTO EMOCION. WIN VIP TICKETS TO A BTCC RACE AND CHECK OUT OUR WRITERS' DRIVING SKILLS IN THE SEAT RACE DAY CHALLENGE"
I could go on...

Can't you see that the contradictions "between raising awareness and using people whom many know to be hypocrites to do so", as you wrote, can also be said, and with much more gravity and pernicious effects, for the Guardian?

As Media Lens recently asked Guardian's George Monbiot,
"Doesn't this make a mockery of the Guardian's claims to be responding to climate change? Is it really credible to expect a newspaper dependent on corporate advertising for 75 per cent of its revenue to seriously challenge the corporate system of which it's a part and on which it depends?"
To use your own words, don't you think that the paper you write for, the Guardian, "should pay a little more genuine and practical heed to the message, or forfeit the chance to boost their... sales"? I read in your Guardian’s profile that you “currently write[s] three columns a week for the paper: one general comment, one on sport and one on celebrity.” You could devote one “general comment” on this issue in the near future, maybe?

Thank you for your time and I look forward for your point of view.

Best wishes,
Gabriele Zamparini
London

Respectable Racism on UK liberal media - Migrationwatch

Dear Editor,

Thanks for reporting on the latest from Migrationwatch:
“Britain must withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights to protect the country from terrorism, it was claimed.”
It was particularly interesting to read Migrationwatch chairman Sir Andrew Green’s thought:
"[The European Convention on Human Rights] was drawn up 50 years ago in entirely different circumstances. We must now pull out of it and write our own laws to protect human rights for the majority."
Sir Andrew Green’s “perspective” is certainly a new milestone in the history of civilization.

Migrationwatch’s crusaders certainly know that Art 15 of the European Convention on Human Rights reads:
“In time of war or other public emergency threatening the life of the nation any High Contracting Party may take measures derogating from its obligations under this Convention to the extent strictly required by the exigencies of the situation, provided that such measures are not inconsistent with its other obligations under international law.”
But why Britain should stop at the European Convention on Human Rights and not withdrawing from the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment? Sir Andrew Green will probably disagree with this old convention as well, drawn up in entirely different circumstances. To protect human rights for the majority we shall of course disregard the Convention’s Art. 2.2,
“No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political in stability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture”.
Shall Britain also withdraw from the Charter of the United Nations? It was drawn up more than 50 years ago in entirely different circumstances and after all Britain has already violated it many times, most notoriously when it invaded Iraq, if we have to believe to the then UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan,
“[the invasion of Iraq] is not in conformity with the UN Charter, from our point of view and from the Charter point of view it was illegal.”
I wonder which kind of world - “to protect human rights for the majority” - Sir Andrew Green and his Migrationwatch would like us to live in?

We are far away from Benjamin Franklin’s wisdom,
“They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security”
and trapped instead in an Orwellian world thank to totalitarian propaganda manufactured by dirty minds using racism and xenophobia to control the population and go ahead with their own hidden agenda. Down with Big Brother!

Gabriele Zamparini
London

BBC's math poblem - an exchange with BBC's Paul Reynolds

Dear Paul,

I hope you’re well.

Thanks for your article, Iraq: Debate on the Baghdad surge

In your analysis there is no mention of the real subject of this story, the Iraqi people.

While I understand that your aim, as you stated at the beginning, was the “debate [that] is raging in Washington about whether the so-called surge of US forces in Iraq is likely to work”, I wonder if the real effects of this “surge” on the Iraqis could have been part of your analysis. After all we are not talking about some abstract experiment and the “surge” has concrete consequences on the lives (and death) of Iraqis.

Perhaps it would be not a bad idea to inform the readers with the point of view of Iraqis – as you know the vast majority of them do not want any foreign troops on their own country - and with some numbers, like the civilians killed as a direct consequence of the illegal Anglo-American invasion that, as you know, might have reached one million of human lives. As you know there are many other numbers that it could be useful to inform the readers with when discussing “whether the so-called surge of US forces in Iraq is likely to work”, like the millions of Iraqis displaced and the apocalyptic situation of a country that’s been annihilated since and because an illegal invasion by those same people who now are discussing “about whether the so-called surge of US forces in Iraq is likely to work”.

I hope you’ll take the time to consider if these points could be included in that debate in this as in future analysis.

Thank you for your time.

Best wishes,
Gabriele Zamparini


***

BBC's Paul Reynolds' reply:

You should read this

***


Thanks Paul.

I have just read that piece. But first, back to my original question.

In my 4 July email, my point was, and still is today: Why did not you mention the real subject of your story, the Iraqi people, in your analysis “Iraq: Debate on the Baghdad surge”?

Now, about the new piece you sent. Is this a joke?

It reads:
“The level of violence has not decreased, with attacks shifting away from places where US forces are concentrated, such as Baghdad and Anbar, into other, less defended provinces, says the BBC's Defence and Security correspondent Rob Watson.”
The violence comes from the Iraqis while the US forces are there to defend Iraq. Of course we trust “BBC's Defence and Security correspondent Rob Watson”.

The new piece, you suggested I should read, continues:
“During the seven-day period ending on 4 July, there were 617 violent deaths compared to 299 for the week before. As in the previous two weeks, most of those killed were civilians - 365 of them. There was also a big increase in the reported deaths of insurgents, up from 98 dead last week to 175. These figures are from the Iraqi Interior Ministry, whose figures are consistently lower than anyone else's estimates of casualties. The US military suffered 19 dead, bringing the total US toll to 3,586. More than 5,800 Iraqi police and recruits have been killed in the same period since 2005 - including 65 this week, according to the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, which quotes Pentagon figures.”
Why does this piece not include “the total” of Iraqi deaths but only “the total US toll” ? I believe that these two total, put next each other, tell the real story the BBC should go after:
- total US toll to 3,586
- total Iraqi deaths (estimated, of course) 1,000,000
Here just one of the many articles on the Iraqi deaths one can read on the alternative media but rarely, if ever, on the BBC:

Is the U.S. Responsible for the Death of Nearly a Million Iraqis?
by Robert Naiman


“You should read this” and maybe suggest it to “BBC's Defence and Security correspondent Rob Watson” too.

The last part in the new piece you sent me reads:
“One of the hospitals covered by the survey provides some grim details about the death toll. Al-Yarmouk received 10 limbs with the rest of the bodies missing, 22 victims who had been beheaded, 45 people killed by one car bomb alone in the al-Baaya district and the bodies of 13 people who had been shot in the head.”
I have no doubts that in Iraq the picture is even grimmer that what comes out from this line above. I can send you some graphic picture if you and the BBC like to publish them. But I can’t believe the BBC couldn’t find an hospital that received the thousands of innocent Iraqis slaughtered by the Anglo-American occupation. I can send you these pictures too, if you need them. I am sure that those hospitals could provide “some grim details about the death toll” too.

Finally, I am sure you and your BBC colleagues will be interested in what your Iraqi colleagues say. You know, just for the sake of impartiality.

“We all know now that the U.S. military is using the name of al-Qaeda to cover attacks against our national resistance fighters and civilians who wish immediate or scheduled withdrawal of foreign troops from Iraq," Hilmi Saed, an Iraqi journalist from Baghdad told IPS on the outskirts of Baquba.
After one million Iraqis slaughtered, 4 million displaced and a whole country destroyed, the BBC keeps echoing those lies that made all this not only possible, but inevitable. The show couldn’t really be more revolting.

Best wishes,
Gabriele