The tip of the iceberg

The tip of the iceberg
by Gabriele Zamparini

"All science requires mathematics. The knowledge of mathematical things is almost innate in us. . . . This is the easiest of sciences, a fact which is obvious in that no one's brain rejects it; for laymen and people who are utterly illiterate know how to count and reckon." - Roger Bacon (c. 1214-c. 1294), English philosopher, scientist. Opus Maius, pt. 4, ch. 1 (1267)

Part One - The two important questions Znet’s Michael Albert refuses to respond

Once again, and in spite of all my numerous, kind invitations to keep this debate public, ZNet’s co-founder and co-editor Michael Albert chose to reply to my piece, Alice in Wonderland – ZNet and the art of numbers, privately and again kept defending ZNet’s political-editorial line while refusing to answer my two simple questions.

I have presented what I believe are two very serious cases of propaganda. They are not about opinions or little importance issues. These two cases are about the most objective facts human beings can understand: numbers.

But Albert seems not to get the difference between numbers and opinions and in his view a debate on these issues is just “silliness”, “desire to disagree, and nothing more”, therefore he invites me to “step back”, whatever that means.

Michael Albert is a well-known and well-respected activist and intellectual with much power within the alternative, leftist scene. I am nobody. Is that enough for him to be right no matter what and treat others with much arrogance and contempt? With the due respect for Albert and his history, that's not enough for me to “step back”.

Albert writes me that he doesn’t “want to criticize [me] publicly” and that this “controversy… is only in [my] mind”. From the many comments I got both in private and in public, it seems more a devastating pandemic.

Once again, I encourage Michael Albert to publicly criticize me, my silliness and my mind and in doing so, I invite him once more to answer the following two questions, which is all I wanted from the beginning. In extreme synthesis and having in mind my previous articles available on this blog:

1) Since the total lack of IBC’s scientific credibility and IBC’s frenetic activism in discrediting the Lancet’s, why does ZNet keep considering IBC, its figures and the whole operation a credible humanitarian project? Why couldn’t ZNet even publish a decent, fair correction instead of that insulting farce that once again has hidden the real extent of the horror inflicted upon the Iraqi people?

2) Since the total lack of credible sources in ZNet’s frequent contributor Munir Chalabi’s article, Political Observations on Sectarianism in Iraq, published originally on ZNet on 24 January 2007, why don’t both Chalabi and ZNet provide some reliable sources for those Chalabi’s number claims that, at the present, appear to be just sectarian propaganda?

Part Two - Meanwhile in the New Iraq...

While ZNet’s frequent contributor Munir Chalabi was giving those numbers without any serious, reliable source, and so helping and justifying that very same propaganda that permitted the war of aggression against a defenseless country, and while he was making parallels between Hitler’s Germany and Saddam’s Iraq, portraying the Baathists as the incarnation of Evil, those Baathists, Sunni and Shia alike, Muslim and Christian alike, were hunt, tortured and killed by the US Occupation, its puppet government of sectarian warlords taking orders from their Iranian masters, the sectarian pro-Iranian militias, especially the Badr Brigades and the Mahdi Army, and yes, with the help of Iran as well.

This Baathist-hunt in occupied Iraq has been part of a ferocious ethnic cleansing against Sunni, and a vicious, systematic mass murder campaign against nationalists, the Iraqi resistance and its sympathizers (or those perceived as such), Palestinians (while IRAN claims to be seriously concerned for the faith of the Palestinian People, the backed Iranian militias operating in Iraq have been hunting and killing the Palestinians of Iraq. Read also here), against gay… and whoever doesn’t conform to the “New Iraq”.

Just a few weeks before the Chalabi’s article appeared on ZNet, one could read “90% of Iraqis feel the situation in the country was better under Saddam Hussein”. And we shall not forget that those 90% of Iraqis were using as a comparison a country already devastated by the criminal first Gulf War, a 13 year long genocidal embargo and the longest aerial bombardment since WWII. The fair comparison of course should be between today’s New Iraq and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1990.

Part Three – Selling the New Iraq to the Western progressive public opinion

In these four years, many alternative media, anti-war activists and organizations, influential leftist intellectuals and Orientalism experts have been siding with that sectarian faction put in power by the Occupation and supported by Iran, helping to sell to the Western progressive public opinion the “New Iraq” and its so-called political process, that sectarian Trojan horse used by the Anglo-America-Iranian occupation to transform Iraq into a wilderness.

The disgracefully opportunistic United for Peace and Justice got to the point to welcome criminal Puppet Maliki, the head of a sectarian, death squad government of traitors, war lords and psychopaths.

Much of the so-called “anti-war” movement and many among its intellectuals had been discrediting the Iraqi resistance to the US occupation long before Phyllis Bennis came out with that Orwellian masterpiece of racism, arrogance and ignorance, helping to dehumanize and demonize the enemy and making it a fair target.

But of course, if one supports the so-called “political process” and the criminal puppets of the so-called “Iraqi government”, it becomes then impossible “making sympathy with resistance fighters a demand of our movement”, as Bennis et al. know perfectly well.

And while the Iraqi fighting in their own country against the vicious violence of the Anglo-American occupation are depicted as terrorists by opportunists who use the words “peace and justice” to have a career in the anti-war business, the mamma mia anti-war movement never stopped praising, justifying, protecting, excusing the mass rapists, mass torturers, mass murderers – in other words, our boys and girls in uniform.

While hiding and ignoring facts, reports and the many requests for help coming from inside Iraq, too many subjects have been spreading sectarian propaganda that helped to reduce Iraq in the state it is today. Too many have been in the forefront in supporting the infamous "political process", its criminal puppets and psychopaths while ignoring or downplaying the role that those puppets and psychopaths were having in the ethnic cleansing and sectarian mass murder campaigns.

Part four – Iraq for dummies

Just a few more words on that so-called "political process". Not only were those celebrated “free elections” - sold as a milestone on the road of the Western way of freedom and democracy - an obscene farce in a country occupied by foreign powers and whose population has been terrified by foreign troops and sectarian militias. Those were not even political elections but an extraordinary and very successful mean to generate sectarian and ethnic divisions by stressing sectarian and ethnic lines and make them the bases for the “New Iraq”. The results followed consequently.

If you have some trouble to figure out what really happened in Iraq with that “political process”, just imagine China invading and occupying the USA with the help of North Korea. After bombing and destroying the US and its infrastructures from New York to Los Angeles and making millions of deaths, the Chinese and North Korean Occupation forced the Americans to vote on the following "political" lines: Protestants, Catholics and African-Americans.

Meanwhile powerful sectarian armies led by religious figures, the K.K.K. and some other white supremacist militias take care of the American security together with the Chinese and North Korean armies.

Meanwhile, back in China and North Korea, the anti-war movement supports that political process, is silent on – when not clapping to – the lynching of the legitimate US President and the US government and welcome the new puppet American President installed by China.

Meanwhile those Americans fighting the Chineese and North Korean occupation of their own country without the help of anybody - because obviously the abominable UN had already recognized the new US puppet government installed by China and North Korea - those Americans are imprisoned in concentration camps, tortured, raped, sodomised (even American children) and accused to be terrorists by China, North Korea, their mainstream media and much part of the Chinese and North Korean anti-war movement.

[My apologies to the Peoples and the Governments of China and North Korea]

Conclusions

Iraq has become a complicated puzzle whose many, bloody pieces are all linked together. Those numbers at the center of my two simple questions to ZNet and Michael Albert are just the tip of the iceberg. The whole story is hidden under an ocean of lies and propaganda.

Once again, people are entitled to their own opinions but not their own facts. I look forward to receiving precise answers to those two precise questions. Iraq is no more, the winners are engaged in the usual business of re-writing history but thank God numbers are still numbers.


References

Dissent this! - Part 1: ZNet between numbers and parallels, Gabriele Zamparini, The Cat’s Blog, 30 January 2007

Once upon a time in Iraq… A Nobel Peace Prize for the Anglo-American Peacekeepers?, Gabriele Zamparini, The Cat’s Blog, 17 July 2007

Once upon a time in Iraq… Money makes the world go around, Gabriele Zamparini, The Cat’s Blog, 23 July 2007

The Guardian vs. ZNet – a case study for Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, Gabriele Zamparini, The Cat’s Blog, 14 August 2007

Alice in Wonderland – ZNet and the art of numbers, Gabriele Zamparini, The Cat’s Blog, 20 August 2007

Even I question the 'truth' about 9/11

Even I question the 'truth' about 9/11
by Gabriele Zamparini

As it was easily predictable, Independent’s Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk’s latest column, Even I question the 'truth' about 9/11 , generated a mixture of deafening silences, sarcastic responses and the usual choir of accusations of conspiracy theories.

In Bravo! Mr. Fisk - Robert Fisk and 9/11, praising Robert Fisk's courage, I quoted Gore Vidal, "Apparently, 'conspiracy stuff' is now shorthand for unspeakable truth."

This is what Gore Vidal had to say on those 11 September 2001 events. [Quoted from my documentary XXI CENTURY and book American Voices of Dissent]

GORE VIDAL: The United States is not a normal country. We are under... we are a homeland now, under military surveillance and military control. The president asked the Congress right after 9/11 not to conduct a major investigation as it might deter our search for terrorism wherever it may be in the world. So, Congress obediently rolled over. . . I remember Pearl Harbor. I was a kid then, and within three years of it I enlisted in the Army. That’s what we did in those days. We did not go off to the Texas Air Force and hide. I realize the country has totally changed, that the government is not responsive to the people either in protecting us from something like 9/11, which they should’ve done, could’ve done, did not do. And then when it did happen, to investigate, investigate, investigate. So, I wrote two little books. One called Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, in which I try to go into why Osama bin Laden, if it were he or whoever it was—why it was done. Then I wrote another one, Dreaming War, on why we were not protected at 9/11, which ordinarily would’ve led to the impeachment of the president of the United States, would allow it to happen. They said they had no information. Since then, every day the New York Times prints another mountain of people who said they had warned the government, they had warned the government. President Putin of Russia; he had warned us. President Mubarak of Egypt; he had warned us. Three members of Mossad claimed that they had come to the United States to warn us that some time in September something unpleasant might come out of the sky in our direction. Were we defended? No, we were not defended. Has this ever been investigated? No, it hasn’t. There was some attempt at the mid-term election. There was a pro forma committee in Congress, which has done nothing thus far. What are we? Three years later. This is shameful. The media, which is controlled by the great conglomerates which control the political system, has done an atrocious job of reporting. Though sometimes good stories get in. I’ve worn my eyes out studying the Wall Street Journal, which, despite its dreadful editorial policies, is a pretty good newspaper of record, which the New York Times is not. If you read the Wall Street Journal very carefully, you can pretty much figure out what happened that day. At the time of the first hijacking, according to FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] law, it is mandatory, within four minutes of hijacking, [that] fighter planes from the nearest airbase military base go up to scramble; that means go up and force the plane down, find out who they are, find out what’s happening. For one hour and fifty minutes, I think it was, no fighter plane went up. During that hour and twenty minutes, we lost the two towers and one side of the Pentagon. Why didn’t they go up? No description from the government, no excuse. A lot of mumbling stories, which were then retracted, and new stories replaced them. That, to me, was the end of the republic. We no longer had a Congress, which would ask questions, which it was in place to do, of the Executive. We have a commander-in-chief who likes strutting around in military uniform, which no previous commander-in-chief ever did, as they’re supposed to be civilians keeping charge of the military. This thing is surrealistic now, and it is getting nastier and nastier. This government is culpable, if nothing less, of negligence. Why were we not protected, with all the airbases [and] fighter planes up and down the eastern seaboard? Not one of them went aloft while the hijackings took place. Finally, two from Otis Field in Massachusetts arrived at the Twin Towers. I think at the time the second one was hit. If anybody had been thinking, they would’ve gone on to Washington to try and prevent the attack on the Pentagon. They went back to Otis, back to Massachusetts. So, I ask these questions, which Congress should ask, does not ask; which the press should ask. But it’s too frightened. Also, in perpetual war for perpetual peace; that’s another question that goes unanswered. The head of the Pakistan Secret Service was in Washington a week or so before 9/11. While he was there, and it was just a ceremonial visit with the head of the CIA, they work together. And he sent back word to Islamabad for one of his henchmen to wire $100,000 to Mohammed Atta in the United States, which was duly done. The FBI—I think it was the Wall Street Journal, that’s where I got this story from—only said American Secret Services found out about this. They complained to the Pakistani government. What is the head of your Secret Service in Washington telling to send $100,000 to a guy that we now know was the lead hijacker just a week before 9/11? Times of India published the whole story. The Wall Street Journal did a pretty good version for them. Now, shouldn’t that be examined? Wouldn’t Congress be interested in what this guy in Washington, meeting with all of our top secret people, says? “Okay, send him $100,000”? Not one more word. Not one more word. Now, in a country with any curiosity, in a public that was informed of anything, there would be a great deal of outcry. I couldn’t imagine this happening in England. There’d be questions in Parliament. Papers would be full of it until it was solved. This couldn’t happen in Italy, which dearly loves a conspiracy, or Germany. In the United States everybody listens to 19th-century FOX TV News, in which a bunch of loons just scream and scream and scream. And with each scream they tell another lie. How are we ever going to have an informed citizenry? Which means, then, how can we have an informed election?

No, I don't have conspiracy theories to offer or to defend but even I question the 'truth' about 9/11

Bravo! Mr. Fisk - Robert Fisk and 9/11

Bravo! Mr. Fisk - Robert Fisk and 9/11
By Gabriele Zamparini

"Apparently, 'conspiracy stuff' is now shorthand for unspeakable truth." - Gore Vidal

On this blog I have criticized the Independent Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk many times for his elitist, biased opinion on the Internet and his blindness on the role of the British corporate media, including his beloved Independent, in generating that vicious propaganda that makes those crimes against humanity that Fisk courageously reports not only possible but inevitable.

Every time I have acknowledged he’s a great reporter, an excellent writer and a decent, brave man. This brave man I want today praise for his courage shown in his latest Independent column, Even I question the 'truth' about 9/11

“Let me repeat. I am not a conspiracy theorist. Spare me the ravers. Spare me the plots. But like everyone else, I would like to know the full story of 9/11, not least because it was the trigger for the whole lunatic, meretricious "war on terror" which has led us to disaster in Iraq and Afghanistan and in much of the Middle East.”

After so many journalists, writers, commentators, intellectuals and activists have closed the gates of dissent on the official “truth” on those terrorists attacks in 2001, Fisk’s words must be welcomed by all those who reject nutty conspiracy theories but still believe skepticism has a paramount role in our lives and in our society.

Bravo! Mr. Fisk.

***

Read also what Gore Vidal had to say about those 11 September 2001 events

***

FOR A DIFFERENT POINT OF VIEW, PLEASE READ: Britain's 9/11 "Truth Movement" – Who's Responsible? by Alex Doherty

e-mail to the Independent RE: al-Sadr interview and the official spokesman for al-Sadr's denial

RE: Independent's interview to al-Sadr and denial coming from Sheikh Ahmed al-Shibani, the official spokesman for al-Sadr's office in Najaf

***

Dear Editor,

Once again, today too I’ve tried to find in your newspaper something on that denial about the Muqtada al-Sadr's interview the Independent gave so much space on Monday. Nothing. Not even two words on that denial coming from Sheikh Ahmed al-Shibani, the official spokesman for al-Sadr's office in Najaf.

Do you confirm that interview (in this case the official spokesman for al-Sadr's office in Najaf is a liar who denigrated your newspaper) or you deny that interview (in this case the liar is not the official spokesman for al-Sadr's office in Najaf).

In both cases, I believe the Independent’s silence on this delicate, important matter, won’t suffice to restore credibility to your newspaper.

Kind regards,
Gabriele Zamparini
London

Madness Planet

Madness Planet
By Gabriele Zamparini

The Scholars for 9/11 Truth’s website runs a new fascinating press release:

The "Mission Accomplished" Fiasco. Saddam was dead, but killing him was illegal, Scholars maintain.

The promising start reads:

“James Fetzer, the founder of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, has announced his finding that "Mission Accomplished" had to be modified to conceal that, even though Saddam Hussein had been killed, it was an illegal act and therefore had to be suppressed. (…) While taking out Saddam and liberating Iraq have often been cited as the official mission of US forces after the alleged existence of WMDs was exposed as fraudulent, it now appears that the capture, trial, and death of "Saddam" was yet another fraud, a hoax perpetrated by substituting one of his doubles for the deceased. According to Fetzer, the evidence of the use of a Saddam double is abundant and compelling.”

Why not? After all, with one million Iraqis slaughtered, four millions displaced, a death-squad puppet government run by imported corrupted warlords maneuvered by the US, UK and Iran, we, the audience, do have the right to have some fun, don’t we? So, let’s roll!

First of all we need a great actor who looks like Saddam, acts like Saddam, talks like Saddam, and willing to get an Oscar (to the memory) to die like Saddam.

Then we need a country, Iraq, where people are so damned stupid to be unable to recognize their own president.

Of course, all the other codefendants in the lynching of Saddam Hussein need to be completely blind, deaf and unable to identify the man they were so familiar with. Wait a minute. Gotcha! They must have been all doubles. What a cast!

When people wake up from this conspiracy nightmare it wouldn’t hurt to reflect on the difference between skepticism and madness. And this indecent madness is frankly revolting.

An Independent hoax

An Independent hoax
by Gabriele Zamparini

On Monday, the Independent published an exclusive interview with Muqtada al-Sadr.

The Independent’s article is really enlightening. “The young nationalist cleric heads Iraq's largest Arab grassroots political movement” the Independent tells us among other interesting things.

Too bad that interview seems to be an hoax.

The independent Iraqi news agency Aswat al-Iraq reported:

Sheikh Ahmed al-Shibani, the official spokesman for al-Sadr's office in Najaf, denied that Sadr had given an interview to the British newspaper The Independent on Monday.
"The interview published by the paper was fabricated and groundless. His Eminence (Sadr) has never granted this paper any interviews," Shibani told VOI by telephone.
"We will sue any newspaper, TV station or web site that publishes fabricated news about His Eminence Muqtada al-Sadr or his office," affirmed Shibani.

It comes to mind Independent’s Robert Fisk’s wisdom. The great reporter, who recently wrote, “I despise the internet. It's irresponsible and, often, a net of hate. And I don't have time for Blogopops.", some time ago said:

“So people in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, South Africa, the United States, Canada and many other places, are finding that a British journalist can write things they can't read elsewhere but which must have considerable basis in truth because otherwise it wouldn't appear in a major British paper.”

Alice in Wonderland – ZNet and the art of numbers

Alice in Wonderland – ZNet and the art of numbers
A public reply to a private, preposterous defense
By Gabriele Zamparini

“Can you do Addition?” the White Queen asked. “What's one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one?”
“I don't know,” said Alice. “I lost count.” [Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass, Chapter IX, Queen Alice]

PART ONE – ZNet and Iraq Body Count

ZNet’s co-founder and co-editor Michael Albert chose to reply to my last piece privately and kept defending that article and ZNet’s editorial choice to not correct what he calls a “minor error”. In his emails, Albert gives preposterous arguments to sidetrack this debate completely off the rails. While I’m glad Albert at least and at last decided to voice his point of view, I would have preferred he had done so publicly, for this is not a “ridiculous Iraq Body Count bickering”, as Albert’s close friend Brian Dominick wrote me long time ago while he was trying to help IBC’s hectic efforts to discredit the Lancet’s and the few people who were trying to highlight this perverse propaganda mechanism that corporate media and IBC have been generating.

I will keep this debate public, for the main point is fighting against lies and propaganda and helping to create and support that awareness through which only we can hope to build a different, better world. When I write public I mean… on my own blog and a few other websites that still dare to defy that strange version of “solidarity” known in the real world as omerta.

Disgracefully most of the so-called alternative media seem still to obey to that perverted idea of “solidarity”, claiming to prefer to point its own lenses toward the “enemy” and the “real issues”. As a result too often the alternative media echo the mainstream media circus when it offers that grisly show of castrated lions roaring from behind bars of their own self-censorship.

On December 2005, replying to a question in Philadelphia, US President George W. Bush said:

“How many Iraqi citizens have died in this war? I would say 30,000, more or less, have died as a result of the initial incursion and the ongoing violence against Iraqis. We've lost about 2,140 of our own troops in Iraq.”

It was December 2005. One year earlier the first Lancet’s had been published and immediately buried together with its findings, those 100,000 Iraqi killed in the first year and half alone of the US-led war of aggression, the supreme international crime for which the major Nazi war criminals were hanged in Nuremberg.

Iraq Body Count (from where those “30,000, more or less” came from) got then the official blessing of the man responsible for that carnage and the definitive endorsement of the state-corporate media worldwide.

While IBC and its many friends were busy with press releases, media interviews, articles, e-mails, etc. etc. etc. to discredit the Lancet’s and those few voices asking uncomfortable questions, most of the so-called “anti-war movement”, starting with United for Peace and Justice, “the largest coalition of peace and justice organizations in the U.S.”, kept using the amateurish organisation IBC’s figures and ignoring, misrepresenting and downplaying the findings of the only scientific study conducted by the world leaders in the field of epidemiology and published as peer-reviewed scientific papers in the world's leading medical journal. [For some more details read here]

When in October 2006 the Lancet published the second study conducted by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, IBC increased its efforts to discredit it.

At this point, Brian Dominick - one of the main members of Michael Albert’s ZNet’s family - who had been very busy in sending emails 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”, went public on Media Lens message board in support of Iraq Body Count and its new efforts to discredit the Lancet’s and those few voices.

One million Iraqi deaths later, why can’t Michael Albert and the other ZNet’s editors even make a normal correction on such a grave matter? How can Albert call it a “minor error”? Why are there so few people complaining and voicing outrage?

I guess that solidarity and compassion toward the Iraqi people together with respect for the truth and for our readers should come before any other kind of consideration. What if ZNet had published an article with a grave error concerning the reputation of Noam Chomsky (for example a misquotation or a fact invented or misrepresented)? Would have ZNet waited five days and many people’s emails before correcting that error? Would have ZNet considered the will of the author before correcting that error? Would have Michael Albert called it a “minor error”? I don’t think so.

Of course it’s not the same.

The IBC’s figures - downplaying the carnage in such a shameful way - have tragic consequences for millions. But those millions can’t protest with ZNet.

In a world where sanity had prevailed, this “incident” would have never raised as a problem. Mistakes happen and they should get corrected, especially when they mean the death and the sufferance of so many human beings. Errare humanum est, perseverare autem diabolicum, dear Michael.

Since the total lack of IBC’s scientific credibility and IBC’s frenetic activism in discrediting the Lancet’s, why does ZNet keep considering IBC, its figures and the whole operation a credible humanitarian project?

I would have hoped that ZNet had been in the front line to fight against this propaganda that makes the carnage in Iraq not only possible but inevitable. I wonder if those one million lives had been Americans (civilians or soldiers), maybe ZNet’s sensitivity would have been different? Surely ZNet’s politics would have been different.

PART TWO – ZNet and Sectarian Propaganda

On 24 January 2007 ZNet published an original article by Munir Chalabi, Political Observations on Sectarianism in Iraq.

On 30 January 2007 I questioned that ZNet-Chalabi’s article in my Dissent this! - Part 1: ZNet between numbers and parallels

In that piece, I wrote:

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.”

In that article, I questioned both ZNet and Chalabi, “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”.

On 17 July 2007, in Once upon a time in Iraq… A Nobel Peace Prize for the Anglo-American Peacekeepers? I asked again ZNet and Chalabi:

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.

That reply has yet to come.

Conclusions

It seems that ZNet is playing with numbers to better spin its own politics.

The megaphone for the post-modern anti-war movement, the mamma-mia anti-war movement , the quisling anti-war movement, the sectarian anti-war movement, and for all those "Americans who, terminally naive, still believe the Democratic Party is theirs", even ZNet should be entitled to its own opinion but not its own facts.

The Guardian vs. ZNet – a case study for Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman

The Guardian vs. ZNet – a case study for Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman
By Gabriele Zamparini

As everybody else I fell in love with the classic Manufacturing Consent, the propaganda model proposed by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky almost twenty years ago, as soon as I read it.

The following I believe is an interesting case I would like to submit to the attention of my readers, including Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman.

The Guardian

"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]

After an email exchange with Guardian’s James Sturcke, the author of this article and George Monbiot, I have issued an Action Alert on Thursday, July 19, 2007 and another one on Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Siobhain Butterworth, the Guardian’s Readers’ Editor, finally replied on Monday, July 30, 2007

In spite of her disgraceful argumentation and outrageous conclusion, the Guardian’s Readers’ Editor at least acknowledged in her article the findings of the study published on the Lancet, “The email lobby prefers the Lancet research which estimated that by July 2006 more than 650,000 civilians had died”.

ZNet

“And dead Iraqis there are. An estimated 68, 347 and 74,753 Iraqi civilians have died as a result of the military intervention, according to the log of reported deaths kept by Iraq Body Count. In the chaos of occupation and civil war, this is invariably a conservative figure.” [We Are All Living on Planet Hiroshima, Mark T. Harris, ZNet, August 07, 2007]

I started to email daily Mark T. Harris, ZNet’s Michael Albert and other activists and intellectuals on Wednesday, 8 August 2007. Other people have emailed in the following days. [You may read all my correspondence with Harris and Albert here]

After four days of emails, ZNet’s Editors added the following note at the bottom of Harris’ article:

[ZNet Editors Note: A Media Lens letter to the author points out "Iraq Body Count (IBC) does not record numbers of 'Iraqi civilians [who] have died as a result of the military intervention'. That would include figures for deaths from disease, malnutrition, infant mortality, accidents due to collapse of infrastructure, etc. IBC only records Iraqi civilians who have died as a result of violence, and of these only deaths that have been reported by mostly Western media that are mostly unable to function in Iraq." They go on to point out that the article does not mention the "peer-reviewed science of the 2004 and 2006 Lancet studies produced by some of the world's leading epidemiologists at Johns Hopkins and published in the world's leading science journal." End note.]

At that point of course Harris’ article was not on the TOP PAGE of ZNet anymore (after 5 days...) and the damage had already been done. But still the lucky reader now would have to use all her imagination to know that those corpses are 1 million and not 70,000.

Conclusions

That so-called ZNet’s correction is first of all a vulgar insult to those 1 million Iraqis killed by the Anglo-American invasion and ZNet Editors should be ashamed of themselves. But this is just the simple opinion of a blogger. So I offer this case study to Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman and my other readers.

Does Juan Cole consider Iraq US’ territory?

Dear friends,

Juan Cole writes in today’s blog entry:

Sunni Arab guerrillas are targeting civilian airlines in the US.

I went to the link provided and I read a NYT article titled:

Pilots Say Missile Was Fired at Airliner in Northern Iraq

Also this article doesn’t say anything about the “Sunni Arab guerrillas”.

But the question is: Does Cole consider Iraq US’ territory?

Hopefully Middle East expert Juan Cole will pay more attention to what he posts on his blog or he will not be invited anymore to give talks at the US State Department

Below, two more items about the expert

Best wishes,
Gabriele

“I’m reminded of Juan Cole’s short-lived campaign in favor of bombing civilians in Iraq in order to get American troops out while keeping the oil (yes, that was the argument!).”
Insanity by Xymphora

Juan Cole: the anti-Sunni beat goes on.
Iraq today's Comments Section

***

UPDATE: Juan Cole has now completely deleted that news item from his blog. Not corrected, deleted. Cole! Cole! Cole! It's because of bloggers like you that we have a bad name

email to The Advocate RE: “Gay artist burns antique $60,000 Koran”

Dear Editor,

RE: “Gay artist burns antique $60,000 Koran”

It seems to me this news item would be more suitable for a manual of clinical psychiatry than for a magazine whose title would suggest it advocates for tolerance and inclusiveness.

There is nothing “gay” or “artistic” or “revolutionary” in this stupid and irresponsible act. Freedom of expression of course entitles everybody to express his/her own ideas, even when these ideas are reactionary and themselves expression of that hate mentality they claim to fight against.

One just wonders if this is another sign of the advanced state of putrefaction of the gay liberation movement in particular or the American totalitarian culture in general.

Kind regards,
Gabriele Zamparini
London

ZNet, Iraq Body Count and that omerta on the left

UPDATE 3: Reply from ZNet's Michael Albert and further exchange

Michael Albert's reply:

Hi,

We don’t see everything on common dreams, and even when we do, we don’t rerun it all…very rarely in fact…If naiman sends to us, it will go up, of course. I think you are right about the good timing, though, so perhaps you could suggest to him that he send it our way?

***

As Suggested by Michael Albert, this is my email to Robert Naiman:

Dear Robert Naiman,
CC Dear Michael Albert,
CC Dear Mark Harris,

I am forwarding you an exchange with ZNet’s Michael Albert on Iraqi deaths caused by the US-led war of aggression.

As you can read below, Albert agrees this may be a good timing to republish your article - Is the U.S. Responsible for the Death of Nearly a Million Iraqis? - (or maybe an updated version?) on ZNet.

I believe this would be particularly useful to contrast that media-government propaganda campaign aimed to minimize the horror inflicted by the Anglo-American invasion and occupation of Iraq. That propaganda campaign has been very successful through the delegitimization of the two studies published on the Lancet and their consequential disappearing from media reports. As always, the public must be kept ignorant.

Disgracefully IBC bas been actively contributing to this delegitimization for the past three years, with press releases, media interviews, articles, e-mails, etc.

It was really shocking to see on ZNet an article highlighting those IBC’s figures and completely ignoring the Lancet’s.

The vast majority of the population in the US and UK (to limit to those countries having the major responsibilities for these atrocities upon the Iraqi people) has no idea of the extent of the horror. In 1990 Iraq was a modern, quite developed country with the best schools, hospitals, public services, infrastructures. All over the Middle East people use to send their children to study in Iraq, a country that had defeated illiteracy according to UN agencies.

After the first Gulf War, a 13 year long genocidal embargo, the longest aerial bombardment since WWII and now this new Empire’s adventure, the war of aggression for which the major Nazi war criminals were hanged in Nuremberg, Iraq doesn’t exist anymore as a country. Iraqi Freedom has transformed it into a graveyard.

For these reasons, every single time we have the chance to talk and write about this war, I believe it’s important to mention at the very least those Lancet’s studies and that one million of innocent human beings slaughtered because of the mental illness of a bunch of lunatics in Washington and London.

I would be very grateful if you could send your article or an updated version of it to ZNet.

Thank you

Best wishes,
Gabriele Zamparini

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


UPDATE 2: New e-mail to ZNet's Michael Albert and Mark Harris: happy birthday and ONE MILLION more to come!

Dear Michael Albert,
CC. Dear Mark Harris,

Today Mark Harris’ article celebrates its forth day of life on ZNet TOP PAGE and the following paragraph remains unchanged:

“And dead Iraqis there are. An estimated 68, 347 and 74,753 Iraqi civilians have died as a result of the military intervention, according to the log of reported deaths kept by Iraq Body Count. In the chaos of occupation and civil war, this is invariably a conservative figure.”

On Media Lens message board I could read the exchange between Media Lens’ Editors and Mark Harris

In that exchange, Harris writes,

“Please keep in mind that this was an op-ed piece written by me without editorial review by anyone, other than whoever reads submissions for ZNet”.

By the way, I have been trying to find in ZNet website the following article published on Wednesday, July 11, 2007 by CommonDreams.org but I couldn't find it.

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

This is a very important article and I am sure ZNet must have republished it. Maybe I missed it?

If ZNet hasn’t published it yet, maybe this could be a good timing for publishing it?

In this forth day, please let me wish ZNet and Harris’ article happy birthday and ONE MILLION more to come!

The Spirit of Resistance Lives!

Gabriele Zamparini


UPDATE: Znet, Iraq Body Count and the launching of Darfur Body Count website (please, see previous exchange below)

Dear Michael Albert,
CC. Dear Mark Harris,

Since ZNet has still on its TOP PAGE Harris’ article with the following paragraph unchanged:

“And dead Iraqis there are. An estimated 68, 347 and 74,753 Iraqi civilians have died as a result of the military intervention, according to the log of reported deaths kept by Iraq Body Count. In the chaos of occupation and civil war, this is invariably a conservative figure.”

I was wondering if you could circulate the following press release I received just a few days ago:

For immediate release. Launching of Darfur Body Count website

With the usual propaganda coming from the state-corporate media, I believe it’s important to keep ZNet’s progressive readers seriously informed.

Thank you

In solidarity,
Gabriele Zamparini

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

Dear friends,

This is an e-mail I sent to Mark T. Harris and ZNet's Michael Albert about an article published by ZNet. That article ignores completely the magnitude of the genocide inflicted upon the Iraqi people by the Anglo-American invasion and occupation. The ZNet article simply refers to the inherently unreliable and obviously incomplete figures provided by Iraq Body Count.

ZNet is not new in this shame of burying the truth about the Iraqi deaths. You may read some details here

It's not only the liberal media and ZNet has proved it. Maybe it's time for someone to write an update to the classic Manufacturing Consent?

But on the "left", silence has become the most distinguished characteristic of this strange idea of solidarity. The word 'omerta' is surely a better choice.

Best wishes,
Gabriele Zamparini

Dear Mark T. Harris,
CC. Dear Michael Albert,

In We Are All Living on Planet Hiroshima, published by ZNet, you write:

“And dead Iraqis there are. An estimated 68, 347 and 74,753 Iraqi civilians have died as a result of the military intervention, according to the log of reported deaths kept by Iraq Body Count. In the chaos of occupation and civil war, this is invariably a conservative figure.”

Could I ask you why you decided to quote the figures from IBC and ignored the studies published in the Lancet?

The figures coming from Iraq Body Count – an amateurish organisation presenting inherently unreliable and obviously incomplete figures - are NOT an estimate but a COUNT made upon some reports in English language media. This is a methodology which is not accepted by any professional epidemiology or statistic scientists.

There is no controversy whatsoever in the world scientific community on that study published on the Lancet’s, a study conducted by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, world leaders in the field of epidemiology, and published as peer-reviewed scientific papers in the world's leading medical journal.

So much so that on March 26 the BBC reported:

President Bush said: "I don't consider it a credible report." But a memo by the MoD's Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Roy Anderson, on 13 October, states: "The study design is robust and employs methods that are regarded as close to "best practice" in this area, given the difficulties of data collection and verification in the present circumstances in Iraq."

The Lancet’s (please, see below the study’s summary and its link) was published last year and by now there could be arguably 1,000,000 Iraqi deaths as a result of the Anglo-American invasion. Please read this article:

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

I hope to get a reply and/or you to correct that paragraph in your article.

I would also be interested to know what ZNet and Michael Albert have to say on this issue, after ZNet’s members have done an invaluable job in supporting IBC against the Lancet, science and the truth. This is not a detail and I see the shame of burying the truth continues.

Great job Michael & friends!

In solidarity,
Gabriele Zamparini
London

Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional cluster sample survey
The Lancet, Volume 368, Number 9545, 21 October 2006

Summary

Background

An excess mortality of nearly 100000 deaths was reported in Iraq for the period March, 2003–September, 2004, attributed to the invasion of Iraq. Our aim was to update this estimate.

Methods

Between May and July, 2006, we did a national cross-sectional cluster sample survey of mortality in Iraq. 50 clusters were randomly selected from 16 Governorates, with every cluster consisting of 40 households. Information on deaths from these households was gathered.

Findings

Three misattributed clusters were excluded from the final analysis; data from 1849 households that contained 12?801 individuals in 47 clusters was gathered. 1474 births and 629 deaths were reported during the observation period. Pre-invasion mortality rates were 5·5 per 1000 people per year (95% CI 4·3–7·1), compared with 13·3 per 1000 people per year (10·9–16·1) in the 40 months post-invasion. We estimate that as of July, 2006, there have been 654965 (392979–942636) excess Iraqi deaths as a consequence of the war, which corresponds to 2·5% of the population in the study area. Of post-invasion deaths, 601027 (426369–793663) were due to violence, the most common cause being gunfire.

Interpretation

The number of people dying in Iraq has continued to escalate. The proportion of deaths ascribed to coalition forces has diminished in 2006, although the actual numbers have increased every year. Gunfire remains the most common cause of death, although deaths from car bombing have increased.

***

Mark Harris' reply:

Gabriele,
Thanks for sharing this information with me. I can't disagree with it. When I wrote my article, I used the IBC figures as a kind of bottom line for verifiable civilian deaths caused by U.S.-led military forces. But, of course, the Lancet study is significant and deserves to be referenced, too.

Best,
Mark Harris
Bloomington, IL

My reply:

Thanks Mark, I do appreciate your reply.

Well, yes, I guess that since the scientific methodology tells us that there could be 1 million Iraqi killed because of this illegal aggression, 70,000 can be easily defined as “bottom line”. The fact remains: you haven’t mentioned the peer reviewed study and its devastating findings but preferred this “bottom line” coming from an amateurish organisation presenting inherently unreliable and obviously incomplete figures. Why?

Will you correct your article using the Lancet’s findings?

If you like to use both, Lancet’s and IBC - and since the reader could be a little disoriented by the GAP – will you explain your readers that there is no controversy in the scientific world on the Lancet’s? As I wrote you, even the BBC wrote:

President Bush said: "I don't consider it a credible report." But a memo by the MoD's Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Roy Anderson, on 13 October, states: "The study design is robust and employs methods that are regarded as close to "best practice" in this area, given the difficulties of data collection and verification in the present circumstances in Iraq."

So I’d expect an article on ZNet to have at least the same standards of the BBC.

I look forward for your reply. As you can easily imagine, this is a very important issue that cannot be emphasized enough.

Best,
Gabriele
PS I will CC this exchange to the same people I sent my original email.

The Mamma Mia Anti-War Movement

One day while I was in a bunker in Vietnam, a sniper round went over my head. The person who fired that weapon was not a terrorist, a rebel, an extremist, or a so-called insurgent. The Vietnamese individual who tried to kill me was a citizen of Vietnam, who did not want me in his country. This truth escapes millions. - Mike Hastie, U.S. Army Medic - Vietnam 1970-71

Is it a perfect resistance? No. How could a resistance be pretty when the occupation is so brutal and ugly. The senseless violence inflicted upon the Iraqi people by the occupation results in a violent response. It was no different when the Algerians fought the French to a standstill in the early Sixties of the last century. When a leader of the Algerian resistance was asked why they often bombed cafes and killed civilians, he replied: 'Give us planes and helicopters and then we will only target French troops.' - Tariq Ali

Today ZNet offered its progressive readers two interesting articles; one by Cindy Sheehan and the other one by Amy Goodman. Good articles. They make sense and light important aspects of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I can only hope that people reading these two articles can also remember (better: guess) that there are 1 million Iraqi killed by this illegal, immoral war of aggression and a country completely destroyed.

The same with Afghanistan, where, day after day, the US and its allies keep slaughtering children, women, innocent people and these heroic actions of our boys and girls go unreported by mainstream media but also by many among the so-called alternative ones. Meanwhile what is called the anti-war movement’s policy makers close their eyes on that front, the just war.

What is called the "anti-war movement" doesn’t even consider to use the word “resistance” while we are presented, day after day, with the compassionate side of patriotism. As US peace movement’ spokesperson (by the way, by whom and when she was elected?) Phyllis Bennis recently wrote, “I don't think we gain strength by making sympathy with resistance fighters a demand of our movement.”

But that sympathy is always granted to the mass murderers, our troops.

I guess our boys and girls in Iraq and Afghanistan must feel comforted by so much sympathy. It probably helps them to better carry on the carnage.

About the Iraqi resistance (ops, pardon, insurgency) Phyllis Bennis writes, “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.”

Once again, with few noble exceptions, Bennis' Orwellian words met the silence of leftists, activists and intellectuals. Freedom of speech anyone?

Phyllis Bennis can keep fighting for the Mamma Mia anti-war movement. On my blog, I can still use that old common sense coming from the history of the Italian Resistance to Fascism and against the Nazi occupation of my country. From that common sense, this is my point of view:

- I do not support our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan

- I consider those troops mass murderers

- Nobody forced them to go there and kill, rape, torture innocent people nothing had done to them or their countries

- If they are old enough to rape, torture and kill, if they are aware of what they are doing there, then they are surely old enough to refuse to keep doing it

- I have sympathy and compassion for all the suffering victims of this madness, including those veterans who come back home with their lives destroyed. But I am disgusted by what is called the anti-war movement’s double standards. My sympathy, solidarity and compassion go first of all to the Iraqi and Afghan children, women and innocent human beings whose lives have been tortured, maimed, killed, destroyed by those mass murderers, “our troops”

- I give all my sympathy to the Iraqi and Afghan resistance movements. They are fighting for their land in their land and that’s all we need to know. If we have to use an abused word, they are the real heroes. Not those mass murderers who fly their fat asses on those expensive death toys and drop tons of bombs upon homes, mosques, schools and hospitals. If they want my sympathy, they need first to get home and get home now. They don’t need their mummy’s permission to do that. They are adults with a conscience. They just need to use it and refuse to keep the butchery going. The anti-war movement’s hyper protective attitude toward “our troops” is immoral and counterproductive.

- This “anti-war movement” is a disgrace.

For immediate release. Launching of Darfur Body Count website

For immediate release. Launching of Darfur Body Count website

London, 4 August 2007 – An interdisciplinary experts team has decided to start a new human security project, Darfur Body Count (DBC).

The figures currently used by world leaders, United Nations and mainstream media are taken from epidemiological studies that, in the team’s view, are quite problematic and there is considerable cause for scepticism regarding those estimates.

DBC will maintain and update the world’s only independent and comprehensive public database of media-reported civilian deaths in Darfur.

Following the extraordinary successful example of Iraq Body Count, DBC’s team is composed of an Ornithology researcher, two Astrology and Horoscopes practitioners, a trumpeter, three lecturers in Pop and Rock music and a retired Chef and father of two.

The position of Executive Director is currently open. The candidate must be trained as a research psychologist with knowledge in popular English Middle Age music.

As followers of Iraq Body Count’s methodology, DBC will shortly make available a new generation of web counters people may easily incorporate on their websites and blogs. As corporate media interest wanes and the issue of civilian deaths is pushed further off the mainstream agenda, people’s website will be able to continue headlining the human cost in Darfur.

It is likely that many if not most civilian casualties will go unreported by the media. That is the sad nature of war.

DBC hopes to repeat the successes of its inspiration, Iraq Body Count, and to find the same hospitality granted to IBC by the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, BBC, Channel 4, ITN, SKY, Independent, Guardian, Times, etc.

Our website will be soon available. Meanwhile we are available for interviews, comments and TV shows and welcome journalists and media professionals’ interest at any time.

Pro tempore Darfur Body Count’s Executive Director
Gaius Lucilius

References:

- Exchange of letters with Iraq Body Count on Johns Hopkins study estimating 650,000 Iraqi war dead

- Media Lens’ exchange with a reader

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

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