Business as usual - Iraq Body Count, Human Rights Watch and that empire-building business

Business as usual
Iraq Body Count, Human Rights Watch and that empire-building business
By Gabriele Zamparini

Iraq Body Count, a “divisive” issue

The list of Iraq Body Count’s supporters is getting longer by the day. Just three examples may help you to get the picture:

- The Weekly Standard - the voice of the Neo-Con in Washington and whose Editor, William Kristol, is also Chairman of the Project for the New American Century – used IBC to attack actor and anti-war activist Tim Robbins

- The Washington Post used IBC to attack MoveOn.org

- The right-wing American Spectator used IBC to attack Codepink

While the mainstream media are continuing to use figures provided by the website Iraq Body Count (IBC) to sell the public a number for total post-invasion deaths of Iraqis that is perhaps 5-10% of the true death toll, too many “on the left” and within the so-called “anti-war movement” keep being silent when not openly defending Iraq Body Count and attacking those who have been trying to highlight this bloody scandal. It’s a “divisive” issue, they say. One day maybe genetics will tell us why these people always happen to be born “on the left” but till then one is free to speculate on the real reasons behind such a shameful behavior.

Amerika and its allies are responsible for GENOCIDE in Iraq. This thought may be unpleasant to many but removing it from that little open debate we are still allowed to have just add to the already rich genocide denial business. As Edward S. Herman recently wrote:

"It should also be noted that there is a systematic “genocide [or holocaust] denial” when it comes to treating Western-based genocidal operations, but this is invisible because the West does it. The most prominent illustration at present is the U.S. and “coalition of the willing” mass killing in Iraq. The million Iraqi deaths from the “sanctions of mass destruction” of the 1990s is unmentioned in Samantha Power’s ludicrous treatise on genocide (“A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide), just as she fails to deal seriously with the Indonesian massacres in East Timor. The U.S.-coalition invasion-occupation of Iraq from 2003 has added another million to the Iraqi toll, but the idea that this is “genocide” is inexpressible in the U.S. mainstream media, which is focused on the more politically convenient killings in Darfur—attributable to a Western target, the Arab government of the Sudan, hence subject to the invidious word genocidal. This is implicit but real denial, which follows from the political basis of naming and concern."

So far, too many on the “left” and within the so-called “anti-war movement” have been reluctant - and I’m being polite here - to inform the vast majority of the population on the real extent of the carnage inflicted upon the Iraqi people. That too is real denial.

60 Minutes of shame: Afghanistan and the Amerikan’s efforts “to win the Afghan people”

The hypocrisy is unbearable. CBS News, one of the major brainwash networks in Amerika, plays the compassionate soul, with the help of puppet Karzai and an “old friend” of this blog.

CBS News reports:

“After six years, the liberation of Afghanistan has become a triumph without victory. The fighting is the greatest it has been since the beginning of the war and more civilians are dying. In fact, 60 Minutes was surprised to hear this: while the enemy has killed hundreds of civilians this year, a similar number of civilians have been killed by American forces. With relatively few troops there, the U.S. and NATO rely on air power. The number of civilians killed in air strikes has doubled.”

And then the cherry on the cake:

“60 Minutes wondered whether civilian deaths are undermining the effort to win the Afghan people.”

Translation:

“60 Minutes wonders if killing civilians is bad to us”

CBS News’ correspondent Scott Pelley asked Amerika’s puppet Karzai:

"Why are so many Afghan civilians being killed by U.S. forces?"

The puppet replied:

"The United States and the Coalition Forces are not doing that deliberately. The United States is here to help the Afghan people. The Afghan people understand that mistakes are made. But five years on, six years on, definitely, very clearly, they cannot comprehend as to why there is still a need for air power".

The Afghan people understand indeed, since the Afghan Resistance is now winning a war of liberation of their country invaded and occupied by the Amerikan Empire upon lies and preposterous excuses. Of course the high price paid by the people of Afghanistan is all on our consciences.

But let’s go back to the CBS’ 60 Minutes of shame.

"Of course the Taliban are killing civilians too, targeting them deliberately. By contrast, 60 Minutes watched American airmen calculate how to minimize civilian casualties with the choice of timing, weapon, and direction of attack."

To make this compassionate point, the CBS’ correspondent gets the help of an “old friend” of this blog, Mark Garlasco, Senior Military Analyst at Human Rights Watch.

"I don't think people really appreciate the gymnastics that the U.S. military goes through in order to make sure that they're not killing civilians," Garlasco points out.

"If so much care is being taken why are so many civilians getting killed?" Pelley asks.

"Because the Taliban are violating international law,” says Garlasco, “and because the U.S. just doesn't have enough troops on the ground. You have the Taliban shielding in people's homes. And you have this small number of troops on the ground. And sometimes the only thing they can do is drop bombs.”

Have you appreciated this perfect waltz? Maybe you should read it again and this time you may be interested to know that before landing at Human Rights Watch, Marc Garlasco was Senior Intelligence Analyst at the Pentagon and, as such, he "recommended thousands of aimpoints on hundreds of targets during operations in Iraq and Serbia [and] also participated in over 50 interrogations as a subject matter expert”. If you want to know more - and there is more to know indeed - click here.

Business as usual indeed!

Action Alert: BBC’s fairy tales, genocide denial and how to win the lottery!

UPDATE: BBC News Online has corrected its article [See Action Alert below]

The original paragraph read:

“That contrasts starkly with the 100,000 or so civilians dead, four million refugees inside and outside Iraq, 4,141 coalition soldiers who have died and the cost to the UK of well in excess of £5bn.”

The new paragraph now reads:

"That contrasts starkly with the several hundred thousand dead and injured Iraqis, four million refugees inside and outside Iraq, 4,141 coalition soldiers who have died and the cost to the UK of well in excess of £5bn."

While I welcome the improvement, this is NOT enough. The BBC News article still doesn't mention the relevant studies on the subject, namely the ORB poll and the Lancet's. Please, keep writing the BBC to the email addresses below.

***

Action Alert: BBC’s fairy tales, genocide denial and how to win the lottery!
by Gabriele Zamparini

"England’s always gotten credit for having invented hypocrisy" once said Gore Vidal. Nobody knows better than the BBC whose News website presents its readers with a masterpiece of this fine art:

How did the US come to invade Iraq with no post-war plan for governing Iraq - and how much did Tony Blair know of the matter? John Ware reports in the first of two articles linked to a new TV series.

A frequent Media Lens Message Board’s contributor, John Hilley, made this excellent comment that encapsulates the BBC’s fairy tale:

One for the gallery.

A classic illustration of the 'good warmonger - bad warmonger' BBC version of Iraq, replete with Ware's feigned gravitas and a cast of self-serving denialists (ie, Powell's ex aide, Colonel Larry Wilkinson, Sir Christopher Meyer et al) lining up to denounce 'the crazies' and telling of their stern warnings about the 'problems of occupation'.

A model example of liberal revisionist propaganda posing as cutting-edge reportage.

BBC’s John Ware writes:

“That contrasts starkly with the 100,000 or so civilians dead, four million refugees inside and outside Iraq, 4,141 coalition soldiers who have died and the cost to the UK of well in excess of £5bn.”

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) must of course deny the Iraqi genocide the British government is co-responsible for. This genocide denial business is really a piece of cake for the BBC (among others) can safely rely on the meticulous count of the British Iraq Body Count.

The reality must be suppressed and the readers-viewers-voters-taxpayers are presented with all the news that’s fit to print, which do not include:

- a recent Opinion Research Business (ORB) study suggesting a total of 1,220,580 deaths as a result of the conflict in Iraq since 2003 (ie as a result of violence rather than a natural death such as old age).

- the studies conducted by the world leaders in the field of epidemiology and published last year as peer-reviewed scientific papers in the world's leading medical journal, the Lancet; [link PDF]

- Please, see also:

1) IRAQ BODY COUNT: “A VERY MISLEADING EXERCISE” by MediaLens
2) Iraq: Genocide by all definition by Gideon Polya
3) US Genocide in Iraq by Ian Douglas
4) None Dare Call It Genocide by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
5) and my two latest blogs:
- Iraq is still the issue - Part 1: Waiting for the partition
- Iraq is still the issue - Part 2: Amerika’s New Iraq - The Quiz

What can you do?

You may write to the BBC and ask them to correct the article above and to make sure to give their readers/viewers the correct information in the future, starting with John Ware’s new TV series.

Please, write to:

BBC’s John Ware - John.Ware@bbc.co.uk

BBC News Online Editor Steve Herrmann - steve.herrmann@bbc.co.uk

Head of BBC TV News Peter Horrocks - peter.horrocks@bbc.co.uk

BBC News Director Helen Boaden - helenboaden.complaints@bbc.co.uk

Head of the BBC Programme Complaints Unit Fraser Steel - fraser.steel.01@bbc.co.uk

General complaints to the BBC can be submitted via this form

P.S.

On 20 September 2007 the Toronto Star informed us:

"The death toll could be twice our number, but it could not possibly be 10 times higher," he [John Sloboda, professor of psychology at Keele University, and a co-founder of IBC] told me, referring to the other studies.

How can a professor of psychology who collects Iraqi deaths through media reports possibly know what the death toll in Iraq could be?

Since Professor Sloboda seems to be an expert in prophecies and oracles, you may want to write him and ask for numbers to win the lottery. Good luck!

Iraq Body Count’s John Sloboda - john@sloboda.fsnet.co.uk

Please, always maintain a calm, rational and polite tone.

P.P.S.

Yesterday, the AP reported on a series of protests in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles and other U.S. cities. The AP reads:

Our signs are limp from the rain and the ground is soggy, but out spirits are high," said Bal Pinguel, of the American Friends Service Committee, one of the national sponsors of the event. "The high price we are paying is the more than 3,800 troops who have been killed in the war in Iraq."

Vince Robbins, 51, of Mount Holly, N.J., said there needed to be more rallies and more outrage.

"Where's the outcry? Where's the horror that almost 4,000 Americans have died in a foreign country that we invaded?" Robbins said. "I'm almost as angry at the American people as I am the president. I think Americans have become apathetic and placid about the whole thing."

Why do these two anti-war Americans focus on the “high price” America is paying? Do they know about the 1.2 million Iraqis slaughtered because the US-led war of aggression against their country? Do they know about the 4.5 million Iraqis who have become refugees? Where is the outcry indeed?

Iraq is still the issue - Part 2: Amerika’s New Iraq - The Quiz

Iraq is still the issue - Part 2: Amerika’s New Iraq - The Quiz
By Gabriele Zamparini

After Iraq is still the issue - Part 1: Waiting for the partition, let's now take a Quiz on the new Amerikan Frankestein, the New Iraq of puppet Maliki.

1) Who said - about the killings of 15 women and children in a US ground and air assault in a Sunni area northwest of Baghdad - “We are in a war against those diabolical and wicked groups; therefore during military operations there might be innocents killed. The victims are an unavoidable matter in fighting al Qaeda".

a) George W. Bush
b) General Petraeus
c) Hillary Clinton
d) Gordon Brown
e) none of the above

Click here to read the answer

2) What’s the percentage of Sunni inmates detained by the U.S. in Iraq?

a) 20%
b) 38%
c) 45%
d) 73%
e) none of the above

Click here to read the answer

3) Iraqi Shiite leaders Muqtada Al-Sadr and Abdel Aziz Al-Hakim announced a truce between their rival movements on October 6. Where was the truce signed?

a) Sadr City – Baghdad
b) Green Zone - Baghdad
c) Najaf
d) Basrah
e) none of the above

Click here to read the answer

4) In August IPS reported:

Militia from the Shia organisation Badr have taken over the police force in Diyala province north of Baghdad, residents say. The government led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is believed to have backed such infiltration (…) Sectarian tensions between Sunni and Shia Muslims has grown amidst Iraqi government policies seen as supportive of Shias. Maliki is from the Dawa Party backed by Shia Iran. In Baquba, 50km northeast of the capital, and capital of Diyala, residents say the Shia Badr Organisation, the armed wing of the politically dominant Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC), has been dominant in the province since the early months of the occupation. The Badr Organisation managed to fill leadership positions in city and province, while Sunni Iraqis remained largely unrepresented. In this set-up, many sectarian killings have been carried out by the Badr Organisation, often under cover of the local police, residents told IPS. The SIIC and the Dawa Party of the Prime Minister are politically affiliated. Maliki is secretary-general of the Dawa Party, and spent time in exile in Iran after leading insurgent groups against former president Saddam Hussein. (…) A Sunni man held prisoner inside the central prison for Diyala province spoke with IPS on condition of anonymity. "There were more than 250 prisoners with me in the prison…”

How many Iraqis were Sunni among those 250 prisoners?
How many Iraqis were Shia among that prison’s staff?
Who controlled the entire Iraqi police department for Diyala province?

Click here to read the answers

5) Independent journalist Nir Rosen interviewed by Amy Goodman:

“Iraq has been changed irrevocably, I think. I don’t think Iraq even -- you can say it exists anymore. There has been a very effective, systematic ethnic cleansing of Sunnis from Baghdad, of Shias --from areas that are now mostly Shia. But the Sunnis especially have been a target, as have mixed families like the one we just saw. With a name like Omar, he’s distinctly Sunni -- it’s a very Sunni name. You can be executed for having the name Omar alone. And Baghdad is now firmly in the hands of sectarian Shiite militias, and they’re never going to let it go.”

Always Nir Rosen, writing recently in the Boston Review,

“Al Sadr is now considered the most powerful man in Iraq; his militia, the Madhi Army, controls much of Iraq’s security forces and is largely responsible for sectarian attacks against Sunnis. (…)

In Damascus I met Hamid al Hitti, a tall, well-dressed and groomed man with a thin mustache. A former businessman, Hamid was the unofficial representative of Dr. Saleh al Mutlaq, leader of the Iraqi National Dialogue Front, the fifth-largest political party in the Iraqi National Assembly. The Front represented a relatively secular Sunni nationalist movement that opposed the occupation and warned against the "genocide" Sunnis were facing. I had last interviewed Dr. Saleh in the spring of 2006 in his office in Baghdad on the day he had buried his brother Talal, who had been kidnapped and slain. When I met Hamid he was on the phone with an Iraqi whose visa had expired. "Don’t go to the immigration office," he was saying, "you will be deported immediately. Let me make a few phone calls."

Hamid, who had previously worked for the Front in Jordan, was trying to help the Iraqi refugee community as well as coordinating the delivery of aid inside Anbar Province with humanitarian organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross. He expressed gratitude to the Italian Red Cross for being "very helpful with people who can’t get to hospitals for security, sectarian, or economic reasons." Hamid had also helped open a refugee camp in the town of Hit for Iraqis fleeing the American siege of Ramadi. "The minister of health is from the Sadrist current," Hamid explained, referring to Muqtada al Sadr, "and unfortunately he is sectarian and he prevents aid and supplies from coming in." He maintained that the Ministry of Health neglected Sunni-dominated provinces. He also complained that "militias," meaning Shia militias, controlled the Iraqi Red Crescent Society. (…)

Chaima Abdul Qader, from the Baghdad Jadida district, had fled In November 2006 with her husband and two children, her parents, her two sisters, and her brother and his wife. They are Sunnis. They had received a letter with anti-Sunni slurs giving them 48 hours to leave. "The problems started right after Samarra," she said. After letters were sent to Sunnis one neighbor went to the local Sadrist office to complain. He was kidnapped and the next day they found his body in a garbage dump. "We were like brothers before," she said of Sunnis and Shias, adding, "all problems come from Iran."

Suham Abdul Rahman, a Sunni from Baghdad’s Baladiyat district, said the Mahdi Army had killed most of the Sunnis in her neighborhood. Her husband was dead but she had come with her three children, her son’s wife, and their children. "They didn’t give death threats, they just killed people right away," she said. They owned a house in Baghdad, but after they left the police broke into it and stole everything. "The police is Mahdi Army," she told me, "It won’t get better," she said. (…)

For the Q&A jump to Question 16

6) The President of a Middle East country endorsed a plan to divide Iraq into three ethnic regions. He said, "I think the resolution passed by the [US] Senate is a very good one". Whose country is this guy President of?

a) Israel
b) Turkey
c) Iran
d) Syria
e) none of the above

Click here to read the answer

7) Who told to the Reuters:

"Fear rules the streets now. We cannot speak our minds, people are not allowed to oppose them. They would immediately disappear or get killed. (…) we are believers, but at the same time we like to live our lives and we like freedom (…) It is the Islamist Shi'ites who are ruling Iraq. Their victory was a curse for us (…) We are suffering from two occupations - America and Iran. We have told American officials this and we have met some of them, but they are not listening to us"

a) a Sunni Iraqi member of the Iraqi Parliament
b) a Sunni Iraqi member of the Iraqi resistance
c) a Christian Iraqi fled to Syria
d) a Sunni Iraqi religious leader
e) none of the above

Click here to read the answer

8) In 1959 the Iraqi government amended the Personal Status Law. Article 118 came into being as part of the Iraqi constitution and it gave the women of Iraq the most progressive of all Arab and Islamic women's rights legislation. Now Liberated Iraq has Art. 41. "This is a mockery for us, when you speak about freedom," said Hanaa Edwar, who heads the Iraqi Amal Assn., a human rights group opposing Article 41. "There will be no choices for women if a man makes a decision that he wants to live a certain way. Step by step, we will end up in a religious state". The Basra police commander, Maj. Gen. Abdul Jaleel Khalaf, said "There are gangs roaming through the streets . . . pursuing women and carrying out threats and killing because of what the women wear or because they are using makeup". How many women have been killed in Basra last month by gangs enforcing their idea of Islamic law?

a) 2
b) 6
c) 10
d) 13
e) none of the above

Click here to read the answer

9) IPS recently reported :

“God knows how we could send our kids to school this year," Um Mohammed, a mother of five in Baghdad told IPS. "Our financial situation is the worst ever and the prices are way too expensive for the majority of Iraqis to afford. I might have to keep some of them at home and send only two." (…) "The educational system in Iraq is destroyed and we are suffering all kinds of difficulties," said Hassan, a school headmaster in Baghdad who spoke on condition that his last name and the name of his school would not be used. "There will be a shortage of desks, blackboards, water, electricity and all educational supplies – as well as a critical shortage in the number of teachers this year." Teachers, like other Iraqis, have fled the country because of threats from sectarian death squads. Some were evicted from their areas and moved to others inside Iraq for sectarian reasons.

IRIN recently reported ,

“The Iraqi Ministry of Education has warned of the possible low attendance of pupils at schools in the coming year, saying it expects at least a 15 percent drop compared to previous years. Parents have blamed the government for the poor protection of their children and many have opted to keep them at home. (…) According to Leila [Leila Abdallah, a senior official at the Ministry of Education], there has been a 54 percent increase in exam failure rates compared to previous years. She said many students had not sat the last exams as they had been forced by violence to flee their homes for safer areas. (…) "We are having serious difficulties getting teachers. Most of them are leaving their jobs after being threatened by militants or insurgents," Leila at the Ministry of Education said.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) representative Roger Wright said in the October 2004 report: "Iraq used to have one of the finest school systems in the Middle East.” Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was awarded the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) prize for eradicating illiteracy in 1982.

Do you know which prize UNESCO gave to New Iraq this year?

Click here to read the answer

10) In May 2003, then Iraqi Proconsol Paul Bremer issued two sweeping orders: one outlawed the Baath Party and dismissed all senior members from their government posts; the other dissolved Iraq's 500,000-member military and intelligence services. In November 2003, Bremer established a Supreme National Debaathification Commission to root out senior Baathists from Iraqi ministries and hear appeals from Baathists who were in the lowest ranks of the party's senior leadership. The party's foremost leaders--some 5,000 to 10,000 individuals--were not permitted to appeal their dismissals. Four years later militias belonging to Shiite religious factions in southern Iraq are still conducting a murderous campaign to exterminate over 4,000 former members of the Baath Party.

True or false?

Click here to read the answer

11) A Human Rights Report of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI) released in January reads,

"Islamic groups and militias have been known to be particularly hostile towards homosexuals, frequently and openly engaging in violent campaigns against them. There have been a number of assassinations of homosexuals in Iraq".

The UNAMI Human Rights Office

"was also alerted to the existence of religious courts, supervised by clerics, where alleged homosexuals would be 'tried,' 'sentenced' to death, and then executed".

Independent journalist and human rights activist Doug Ireland reported in January ,

“The Badr Corps - the military arm of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the country's most powerful Shiite political group - launched a campaign of "sexual cleansing," marshaling death squads to exterminate homosexuality, following a "death to gays" fatwa issued in October 2005 by the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the 77-year-old chief spiritual leader of all Iraqi Shia Muslims, to whom the SCIRI and the Badr Corps owe total allegiance. Late last year, the Badr Corps - whose members up until then had been paid their salaries by Iran - was integrated into the Iraqi national police under the Ministry of the Interior, and its death squad members now have full police powers and wear police uniforms, which they don to carry out murders of gays. Death squads of the Mahdi Army, the armed militia under the control of fundamentalist Shia cleric Moqtada al Sadr, have also carried out assassinations of gays.”

"The U.S, and other allied forces are doing nothing to stop the massacres of any ordinary Iraqi, not to mention the homosexuals, the most unpopular portion of Iraqi society under the new evil regime," Ali Hili, a 34-year-old Iraqi exile now living in London, recently said. Hili, who launched Iraqi LGBT in late 2005 "after hearing about the killing of so many of my friends", also said, “Homosexuality was generally tolerated under Saddam. There certainly was no danger of gay people being assassinated in the street by police. Since his overthrow, the violent persecution of gays and lesbians is commonplace. Life in Iraq now is hell for all LGBT people; no one can be openly gay and alive."

Wissam Auda was a member of Iraq’s Olympic tennis team. Do you know what happened to him?

Click here to read the answer

12) The New Scientist reported:

"A cholera epidemic has been on the cards since Iraqi water treatment plants were destroyed in the 1991 Gulf war. In 2003 the WHO reported that the UN trade embargo had prevented repairs and as a result. Now one of these outbreaks seems to be spreading out of control."

Would you drink this glass of water?

13) “Iraqi and visiting doctors, and a number of news reports, have reported that birth defects and cancers in Iraqi children have increased five- to 10-fold since the 1991 Gulf War and continue to increase sharply, to over 30-fold in some areas in southern Iraq. Currently, more than 50 percent of Iraqi cancer patients are children under the age of 5, up from 13 percent. Children are especially vulnerable because they tend to play in areas that are heavily polluted by depleted uranium”, wrote in January 2006 Abel Bult-Ito, an associate professor of biology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Can you picture Depleted Uranium?

14) Not only are children detained in New Iraq’s jails but they are also raped, tortured and burned there. Who’s responsible for those jails?

a) The United States
b) The United Kingdom
c) Blackwater
d) Al-Qaida
e) none of the above

Click here to read the answer

15) Amnesty International reported, “Immediately after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, Palestinians began to be targeted for various forms of ill-treatment, intimidation, death threats and abduction…”. Who is “responsible for gross human rights abuses against civilians, including abduction, hostage-taking, torture and unlawful killing, including the murder of people they have abducted”?

a) Al-Qaida
b) U.S. death squads
c) U.K. death squads
d) Iraqi insurgents
e) none of the above

Click here to read the answer

16) Again, independent journalist Nir Rosen:

The numbers tell that story. "First the minorities left Iraq," a UNHCR official told me, "now we get Sunnis targeted by Shia militias." Until February 2006 the Sunnis and Shias were proportionally represented among Iraqi refugees registered with the UNHCR. But one month later the number of Sunnis shot up, far exceeding all the others. Although Iraq’s Shias are said to compose 65 percent of its population, in January 2007 more than three times the number of Sunnis (3,144) were registered than Shia (901). The next month it was four to one. Ninety-five percent were from Baghdad. And because only those Iraqis in grave need approach UNHCR, even these numbers vastly underestimate the crisis.

According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), an estimated 60,000 people are being forced to leave their homes every month due to the continuing violence in Iraq. According to the UNHCR how many Iraqis have been forced to leave their homes since 2003?

a) 500,000
b) 1,500,000
c) 3,000,000
d) 4,000,000
e) none of the above

Click here and here to read the answer

17) According to a February 2007 AP poll, the average American believes approximately 9,900 Iraqis had died as a result of the war. How many Iraqis do you think have been killed as a result of the US-led invasion and occupation of their country?

a) 80,000
b) 150,000
c) 500,000
d) 1,000,000
e) none of the above

Click here to read the answer

Acknowledgement: This Quiz could have never been possible without the generous contribution of the so-called international community, starting with the pathetic United Nations and its grotesque International Criminal Court, those human rights groups that are in the empire-building business, that excellent Western propaganda apparatus composed by “the media” and the intelligentsia Joseph Goebbels would be proud and many other actors (and there are really too many to mention here) who played a first, second or third role in the annihilation of Iraq. Hopefully the Western citizenry has enjoyed the show so far, after all that show has been possible only because of the leaders and representatives we have elected and the tax-money we have paid to them. Thank God we got Democracy!

Action Alert: e-mail to Sweden's Government on Stockholm’s migration court's ruling about Iraqi asylum seeker

Dear friends,

Stockholm’s migration court has ruled authorities are legally entitled to return an asylum seeker to Baghdad, arguing the situation there does not constitue armed conflict. The 51 year-old man is to appeal the ruling to Sweden’s highest migration court.

Please, find below an email I sent to the Prime Minister of Sweden and the Sweden's Minister for Justice, Minister for Migration and Asylum Policy, Minister for EU Affairs and Minister for Foreign Affairs.

Please, click here to find the contact forms to send an e-mail to the above Sweden's Government's officials.

Thank you

Best wishes,
Gabriele Zamparini

***

Dear Fredrik Reinfeldt, Prime Minister of Sweden
Dear Beatrice Ask, Minister for Justice
Dear Tobias Billström, Minister for Migration and Asylum Policy
Dear Cecilia Malmström, Minister for EU Affairs
Dear Carl Bildt, Minister for Foreign Affairs

I have read on SR International – Radio Sweden’s website the following news:

Stockholm’s migration court has ruled authorities are legally entitled to return an asylum seeker to Baghdad, arguing the situation there does not constitue armed conflict. (...) Explaining the court’s line, officials said while militias, terrorist groups and criminality were common, there was no organised resistance movement, and as such, there was no legally defined war in the Iraqi capital.

Assuming this incredible Stockholm’s migration court’s ruling did really happened and it’s not a bad joke, with all the due respect, as an European citizen and a human being, I want to protest in the strongest possible way against it.

The Iraq war, that war that according to the Stockholm’s migration court would not constitue armed conflict, has already resulted in the deaths of 1.2 million of human beings, 4.2 million refugees and the complete annihilation of Iraq.

According to Uppsala University (Sweden), Department of Peace and Conflict Research, this is the Definition of Armed Conflict:

An armed conflict is a contested incompatibility which concerns government and/or territory where the use of armed force between two parties, of which at least one is the government of a state, results in at least 25 battle-related deaths.

The definition has been published in Appendix 2 in our articles in Journal of Peace Research 1993–2001, for instance, in Wallensteen, Peter & Margareta Sollenberg, 2001. ’Armed Conflict 1989–2000’, Journal of Peace Research 38(5): 629–644.

The separate elements of the definition are operationalized as follows:

(1) Use of armed force: use of arms in order to promote the parties’ general position in the conflict, resulting in deaths.
Arms: any material means, e.g. manufactured weapons but also sticks, stones, fire, water, etc.

(2)25 deaths: a minimum of 25 battle-related deaths per year and per incompatibility.

(3) Party: a government of a state or any opposition organization or alliance of opposition organizations.

(3.1)
Government: the party controlling the capital of the state.

(3.2)
Opposition organization: any non-governmental group of people having announced a name for their group and using armed force.

(4) State: a state is
(4.1) an internationally recognized sovereign government controlling a specified territory,
or
(4.2) an internationally unrecognized government controlling a specified territory whose sovereignty is not disputed by another internationally recognized sovereign government previously controlling the same territory.

(5) Incompatibility concerning government and/or territory the incompatibility, as stated by the parties, must concern government and/or territory.
(5.1) Incompatibility: the stated generally incompatible positions.
(5.2) Incompatibility concerning government: incompatibility concerning type of political system, the replacement of the central government or the change of its composition.
(5.3) Incompatibility concerning territory: incompatibility concerning the status of a territory, e.g. the change of the state in control of a certain territory (interstate conflict), secession or autonomy (intrastate conflict).

According to the SR International – Radio Sweden’s website’s article, “the 51 year-old man is to appeal the ruling to Sweden’s highest migration court.”

I hope the Sweden’s highest migration court will rule according to justice, common sense and that high respect for human rights Sweden is so rightly well known in the world.

Thank you for your time.

Respectfully,
Gabriele Zamparini
London

Iraq is still the issue - Part 1: Waiting for the partition

Iraq is still the issue - Part 1: Waiting for the partition
By Gabriele Zamparini

The brave boys and girls in Amerikan uniform did it again. This time, flying their fat asses on helicopters and fighter jets, they bombed the suburb east of Baghdad Madinat al-Thawra (City of the Revolution), now known as Madinat al-Sadr (Sadr City). You may see in this photo gallery women and children among the victims of such a heroic action. Support "our" troops!

A few weeks ago Scott Ritter wrote an interesting analysis on the priorities of the US anti-war movement, Iraq Will Have to Wait

(…) Of the two problems (the reality of Iraq, the potential of Iran), Iran is by far the more important. (…) The antiwar movement in America must make a strategic decision, and soon: Contain the war in Iraq, and stop a war from breaking out in Iran. The war in Iraq can be contained simply by letting war be war. There is no genuine good news coming out of Iraq. There won’t be as long as the United States is there. As callous as it sounds, let the war establish the news cycle, and let the reality of war serve to contain it. The surge has failed. Congress may not act decisively to bring the troops home, but it is highly unlikely that Congress will idly approve any massive expansion of an unpopular war that continues to fail so publicly. (…) The highest priority for the antiwar movement in America today must be the prevention of a war with Iran. (…) Sadly, there really is no alternative for the antiwar movement: Put opposition to the war in Iraq on the back burner and make preventing a war with Iran the No. 1 priority, at least until the national election cycle kicks in during the summer of 2008. (…)

Of course Iraq has been “waiting for” since 1991, when the first Anglo-American war of aggression against that country violated the Geneva Conventions and other international covenants all around (that means massive war crimes and crimes against humanity against the people of Iraq). Ritter certainly knows all this very well: at the time he was a Marine Corps intelligence officer and served as a ballistic missile advisor to Stormin' Norman, General Norman Schwarzkopf, the commander of the so-called Coalition Forces in that war.

In Iraq Will Have to Wait, Scott Ritter writes, “The war in Iraq can be contained simply by letting war be war.” I don’t have any qualifications to write about war containments and other war strategies, let alone the Ritter’s qualifications above. But I wonder the meaning of the word “containment” for a war of aggression (the supreme international crime) that’s already resulted in the deaths of 1.2 million of human beings, 4.2 million refugees and the complete annihilation of that country. Ritter’s article is very long but nowhere I could find these data, I guess of some importance for any realistic analysis.

As Les Roberts and Gilbert Burnham wrote recently,

“How can military and civilian leadership comment intelligently about security trends in Iraq, or if any security policies are working, if they are not detecting most of the 5000+ violent deaths that occur per week? Can American plans for the future of Iraq be respected within Iraq if they do not openly address the toll that they imply?”

This should be kept in mind also by all those opposing the Amerikan war machine and it’s frankly very odd (to say the least) that one has to campaign continuously to try to make not just the state-corporate so-called media to inform about the real extent of the Iraqi carnage but also within the anti-war movement and the so-called “left” and it’s also very odd (to say the least) that in spite of the apocalypse unleashed upon the Iraqi people, just a very few voices dare to talk openly of genocide whereas the majority of commentators, analysts, journalists, intellectuals and even some peace activists and anti-war campaigners prefer the safer notions of “mistake”, “error”, “misjudgment”.

The British Oxford Research Group (ORG), “an independent non-governmental organisation and registered charity” whose executive director, John Sloboda, is also the co-founder of Iraq Body Count, recently published its 2007 International Security Report. The ORG’s press release reads [PDF LINK]:

After six years, the ‘war on terror’ has failed to achieve its aims and has, instead, played into the hands of al-Qaida. (…) Occupying Iraq has been a grievous mistake (…) report author, Professor Paul Rogers argues “it will still take at least 10 years to make up for the mistakes made since 9/11.” (…) Commenting on the launch of the report, Paul Rogers said “Western countries simply have to face up to the dangerous mistakes of the past six years and recognise the need for new policies.” (…)

This is the same “criticism” coming from the liberal media, progressive think-tanks, and most of the Western intelligentsia whose “point of view” has become a classic in post-modern political discourse: it’s bad to us. [Even former Emperor Bloody Clinton called the Amerikan invasion of Iraq “a big mistake” while Emperor Bloody Bush said mistakes were made in planning for the Iraq invasion.] Invading and occupying defenseless countries, slaughtering millions of innocent people, raping, torturing, plundering… all this and more become “mistakes” in the sanitized language of our maîtres à penser.

Was it a misjudgment the invasion of Poland and the rest of Europe by the Nazi Germany? And the Holocaust, was it a mistake? Probably that was the point of view of some Nazi planners and intellectuals when they saw the first signs of defeat. Again, the “it’s bad to us” point of view.

The reality is, there has been no mistake. For the past seventeen years, Amerika has been wiping Iraq off the map. If repetition works for propaganda (and it does work indeed) maybe will it also work for the truth?

After the first war of aggression against Iraq in 1991 [between 142,000 and 206,000 Iraqi deaths directly attributable to that war], a thirteen-year long embargo [well over 1 million Iraqi deaths directly attributable to that UN-made (read, US & UK) genocide], the longest aerial bombardment in history [how many Iraqis were killed in those notorious, illegal No Fly Zones?], finally Amerika illegally invaded and illegally occupied Iraq in 2003.

“Clearly the original U.S. goal of establishing a pro-American secular free market-oriented democratic government is now considered unreachable”, stated recently Stephen Zunes, Foreign Policy in Focus’ Middle East Editor, aka the Anti-War Left.

Was the original U.S. goal “establishing a pro-American secular free market-oriented democratic government” in Iraq? Who can seriously doubt about that, after it’s been stated so many times by the Amerikan Emperor, the entire Amerikan imperial court, the British vassal, the United Nations’ puppets, the propaganda apparatus known as “the media” with its liberal intelligentsia, human rights groups and now echoed by influential segments of the so-called anti-war movement and the "left"? Clearly that was the “original U.S. goal” in Iraq, was it not? Of course, there have been a few mistakes. Errare humanum est…

Since the first Amerikan war of aggression in 1991 Iraq has been contaminated with radioactive weapons, that notorious depleted uranium cause of cancers and birth defects. Due to its long half-life (4.46 billion years) depleted uranium has transformed Iraq into a wasteland forever, a radioactive genocide. [Please find more information on Depleted Uranium on the Traprock Peace Center website]

After a thirteen year long genocidal embargo, the Amerikan humanitarianism unleashed Iraqi Freedom and the Anglo-Amerikan barbarian hordes have plundered, slaughtered, stolen, raped and tortured a defenseless country that had never attacked the United States, that did not have any weapons of mass destruction, that did not have any ties to al-Qaida, that had no connection to the September 11 attacks. Amerikan planners annihilated the secular Iraqi state and illegally captured, illegally trialed and illegally assassinated the legitimate president of Iraq and other members of the Iraqi Government. A horrifying show made even more grisly by the coarse laughs and silences among Western intellectuals, human rights groups and that disgraceful organization known as the United Nations.

“One can only rejoice at the capture of Saddam Hussein. Few people are more deserving of trial and punishment. U.S. forces deserve credit for arresting the deposed dictator so that his crimes can be presented and condemned in a court of law, rather than arranging to kill him in combat”, stated then Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, the powerful organization that had worked so hard to prepare the public mind to the inevitable invasion and occupation of Iraq and that’s been working even harder to rape international law with the abominable concept of the so-called humanitarian intervention (Amerikan humanitarianism, useless to say).

In Iraq, the barbarians played all their dirty games to foment ethnic divisions, starting with the notorious “political process”, a formidable Trojan Horse that forced the Iraqi People into a civil war. We all remember how those purple fingers were sold to the world as the milestone of Freedom and Democracy, Amerikan style. Far from being a failure, the main mission of this bloody project has been accomplished; Iraq as we knew it has gone, probably forever.

As with the oil reasons and the Zionist plans for the Middle East, none of the above may of course be discussed openly and the so-called "public discourse" [monopolized by that propaganda apparatus that goes under the innocent but misleading name, “the media”] must be dominated with WMD, "war on terror", Saddam's crimes, freedom, democracy and all the news that's fit to print for the sophisticated minds of our enlightened countries worshipping the goddess Hypocrisy. Re-writing history is the usual business of the victors, so one should not be surprised by all the sweet treats – used to keep the baby public at bay – keep falling from the Amerikan sky: the original goal was establishing democracy… the surge has failed… too many mistakes… and it will be like that, one magical Hollywood’s special effect after the other, till the partition of Iraq in the near future, under the aegis of the United Nations as soon as she-Clinton gets back into the White House.

But for Scott Ritter, Iraq Will Have to Wait and the anti-war movement must “put opposition to the war in Iraq on the back burner”. It comes to mind an article written by the excellent Felicity Arbuthnot in March 2006, Earth Calling Scott Ritter. A very good reading.

On the other hand, maybe Scott Ritter is right and the antiwar movement should indeed “put opposition to the war in Iraq on the back burner”. After all, that same anti-war movement has long ago put opposition to the war in Afghanistan “on the back burner” - the “just war” has always been a very “divisive issue”. It seems the Afghan resistance didn’t mind though and far from being waiting for Godot, it’s now winning a war of liberation of their country invaded and occupied by the Amerikan Empire upon lies and preposterous excuses. Of course the high price paid by the people of Afghanistan is all on our consciences. Can we put them “on the back burner” too?

Amerika has committed any imaginable and unimaginable crime and violated any possible law, human, natural or divine. As already Yugoslavia and then Afghanistan, Iraq has been just another “peace dividend” paid with interests to the collapse of the Berlin Wall; the end of history indeed, at least for the millions of people Amerika crashed under its violent boots on the march for planetary hegemony.

The disheartening thing is that too many people still believe (or pretend to believe) it’s just Bush and his abominable junta and things will get just fine when she-Clinton is crowned Amerikan empress next year. A few, more progressive voices are instead warning of the perils of fascism. It could happen here is the title of an essay published on the Monthly Review. An American friend, commenting on that article, wrote, “the authors' use of the subjunctive 'could' clearly needs to be revised -- because it already has happened here”. As a great American historian told me a few years ago, “compared to the American Empire, even the Roman Empire may be said to have been something in the nature of a tea party”.

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Don’t miss the second part of Iraq is still the issue, a quiz on the new Amerikan Frankestein, the New Iraq of puppet Maliki, the head of a sectarian gang of terrorists, mass murderers and war lords co-responsible for the Iraqi bloodbath - that puppet Maliki the anti-war movement was so excited to welcome in the United States in the summer 2006.

It’s insanity, stupid! - Al Gore and that Nobel Peace Prize

It’s insanity, stupid!
Al Gore and that Nobel Peace Prize
By Gabriele Zamparini

The Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore opened a heated debate: was it right to award a mass murderer and war criminal? This is a curious question that certainly would have a meaning in a sane world, certainly not in ours. A few days ago, commenting on this blog about this ordinary episode of folly, I wrote that Al Gore was

“(…) a top war criminal that in a sane world would be hanged or imprisoned for life. But we are not living in a sane world – just in case someone wonders – and it’s not the first time that a war criminal and mass murderer has been rewarded with the Nobel Peace Prize.”

On CounterPunch, Alexander Cockburn wrote,

“When Gore goes to get the prize [… he] should be forced to march through a gauntlet of widows and orphans, Serbs, Iraqis, Palestinians, Colombians, and other victims of the Clinton era.”

These words give exactly the value of the Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore. Unfortunately Cockburn mixes this argument (that I share totally) with his skepticism (just to use an euphemism) about the man-made climate change and – in my opinion – this other argument risks to delegitimize the main point of Cockburn analysis.

The problem is not the topic, climate change, whose consequences are of so huge importance to jeopardize the very survival of life on this planet. I personally welcome the Nobel Peace Prize to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But I think there is a problem when a Nobel Peace Prize goes to a war criminal and mass murderer. This problem I believe is called insanity.

Always on Cockburn’s CounterPunch, Jan Oberg, director of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research in Lund, Sweden, wrote,

“The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize - particularly the part to Al Gore - is a populist choice that cannot but devalue the Prize itself.”

I don’t know how much value and prestige (another word used by the author in his article) the Nobel Peace Prize has, probably it depends on whom you ask. Who knows how the East and the South of the world see this Prize given from the North and the West to "one of them", and one who has the blood of millions of innocent lives on his hands? It seems more like the West celebrating itself, another Oscar one could say, just in Scandinavian flavour.

Maybe the problem comes when the word "peace" is separated from the word "justice" in a world that completely forgot the meaning of the latter while the word “peace” is used by ruthless mass murderers. Signs of sanity could be still seen when the Nobel Prize was given (for Literature) to (among others) Fo, Saramago, Pinter - as in the past to Sartre and Russell. That sanity coming from the West paying attention to its own critical voices rather than five people, appointed by the Norwegian parliament, deciding what peace is and who should be rewarded with a prize for it.

It’s frankly difficult to understand what Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, Desmond Tutu, the 14th Dalai Lama and the likes have in common with Al Gore, Jimmy Carter and Henry Kissinger, (or Menachem Begin, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin for that matters). It’s difficult to understand the meaning of this year Nobel Peace Prize given while the genocide in Iraq is completely ignored by the same world that now celebrates the new laureate [who’s much responsibility for that genocide as well]. It’s difficult to understand it but it’s certainly not the only sign of insanity.

It’s difficult to understand the meaning of the U.S. Congressional Resolution, calling to recognize the Armenian genocide committed a century ago while that very same US Congress is responsible, now and here, for the Iraq genocide and the carnages in Afghanistan and Palestine and while the Native Americans are still waiting for their genocide to be recognized.

It’s difficult to understand why a British historian should be sentenced to prison in another European country for his opinion on facts happened sixty years ago when in the same days the government of his country is co-responsible, here and now, for the genocide of the Iraqi people and the carnage in Afghanistan.

It’s difficult to understand why we should have an organization called United Nations when that organization, year after year, has done just the opposite of what its Charter states.

And with all the due respect for the man and his highly valuable teaching, it’s very difficult to understand why the 14th Dalai Lama, already Nobel Peace Laureate, decided to accept the Gold Medal from that same US Congress responsible for the Iraq genocide and for the carnages in Afghanistan and Palestine (among many, many, many other places).

It’s difficult to understand the insane world we live in and probably not understanding it is the only sign of sanity we can count on.

P.S.

Dr. Gideon Polya, an Australian scientist, has just published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007; 220 pages, 24 tables; ISBN 1921377051)

Polya ends the preface to his book with this line:

“Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity. We cannot walk by on the other side.”

Probably that’s also the only way to keep our own sanity.

A Nobel Peace Prize in the 2008 Circus for the White House?

A Nobel Peace Prize in the 2008 Circus for the White House?
By Gabriele Zamparini

Bill Clinton's former vice president Al Gore has won (together with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) the Nobel Peace Prize "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change"

This Nobel Prize will hopefully help to focus time and resources into the battle against Climate Change. But there could be another side effect of this Prize in the short term. Will Al Gore run now for the White House in 2008?

As vice president during the Clinton era, Al Gore did certainly share all the responsibility for the huge crimes against humanity his administration inflicted upon millions of people on this planet. Just let’s remember the genocidal UN embargo and the illegal bombing of the notorious No Fly Zones in Iraq; and then Sudan, Yugoslavia and many other places where Uncle Sam has always been terrifying millions of people with its ugly arrogance and deadly violence. In 1991, before becoming vice president, Al Gore was one of ten Democratic Senators who voted in favor of the first Gulf War. This is just a very brief biography of a top war criminal that in a sane world would be hanged or imprisoned for life.

But we are not living in a sane world – just in case someone wonders – and it’s not the first time that a war criminal and mass murderer has been rewarded with the Nobel Peace Prize. Al Gore has now joined the Pantheon where Jimmy Carter and Henry Kissinger already gave a shivery accent to the word “peace”. But it could be the first time that a war criminal and Nobel Peace Prize laureate run to become the new Amerikan Emperor. He would certainly be no worse than the narrow-minded, wicked she-Clinton or the frightening, opportunist Obama and with much blood already on his hands and a Nobel Peace Prize in the Oval Office, hopefully Al Gore would use some restraint as head of the deadliest war machine in history.

Al Gore won the popular vote in the US Presidential Election in 2000 and if it had not been for little George’s father’s friends at the Supreme Court – who illegally hijacked those elections and illegally appointed George W. as the White House’s resident – the history of these latest eight years could have been much different. Afghanistan, Iraq, the “war on terror”… and who knows, maybe even 9-11 would not have the meaning it has today.

Nobody knows if Al Gore will run or if he will once again give up. He doesn’t seem to be much of a fighter, at least judging from what happened in 2000 when he preferred to concede than to fight a system he was very much part of, a system that left the majority of the American voters disenfranchised and the world in the crazy, bloody hands of a despicable, little man and his psychopathic friends.

Until the new Nobel Laureate decides and tells the world about his intentions for the 2008 Circus, she-Clinton must be having very unpleasant dreams. Poor Hillary! She had to swallow Monica’s blowjob in front of the world to get where she stands today and now this damned Nobel Peace Prize could ruin everything… Isn’t that enough to urge Al Gore to run in 2008? Run Al. Run!

[UPDATED] e-mail to Foreign Policy In Focus RE: Iraq Body Count's counter

Dear John Feffer, co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus
Dear Emira Woods, co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus
Dear Emily Schwartz Greco, media director of Foreign Policy In Focus

I have noticed that on your website, on the page “IRAQ IN FOCUS”, you display the Iraq Body Count’s counter

Shouldn’t be more appropriate to display instead:

* the studies conducted by the world leaders in the field of epidemiology and published as peer-reviewed scientific papers in the world's leading medical journal, the Lancet; [link PDF]

* the recently published ORB poll suggesting a total of 1,220,580 deaths as a result of the conflict in Iraq since 2003 (ie as a result of violence rather than a natural death such as old age)

The British media watchdog Media Lens recently wrote:

IBC only collects records of violent civilian deaths reported by two different (mainly Western) media sources operating in Iraq. Epidemiologists report that this type of study typically captures around 5 per cent of deaths during high levels of violence, such as exists in Iraq. By contrast, the Lancet studies provide figures for all deaths - violent and non-violent, civilian and military, reported and unreported. [The Media Ignore Credible Poll Revealing 1.2 Million Violent Deaths In Iraq, SEPTEMBER 18, 2007 ]

And:

The mainstream media are continuing to use figures provided by the website Iraq Body Count (IBC) to sell the public a number for total post-invasion deaths of Iraqis that is perhaps 5-10% of the true death toll. [MEDIA ALERT: IRAQ BODY COUNT: “A VERY MISLEADING EXERCISE”, October 3, 2007]

Gilbert Burnham, MD and Professor of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Les Roberts, Associate Professor at the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health recently wrote:

Not wanting to think about civilian deaths in Iraq has become almost universal. The average American believed approximately 9,900 Iraqis had died as a result of the war according to a February 2007 AP poll. Unfortunately, recent evidence suggests that things in Iraq may be one-hundred times worse than Americans realize. (...) There are now two polls and three scientific surveys all suggesting the official figures and media-based estimates in Iraq have missed 70-95% of all deaths. The evidence suggests that the extent of under-reporting by the media is only increasing with time. [Ignorance of Iraqi death toll no longer an option, Les Roberts and Gilbert Burnham]

Patrick McElwee and Robert Naiman of Just Foreign Policy recently wrote:

The best estimate indicates that more than a million Iraqis have been killed as a result of the invasion and occupation. It is reasonable to suppose that if politicians and news media in the United States were forced to confront this reality, pressure for the end of the war would increase dramatically, and cavalier discussions of new military actions in Iran and Pakistan would be less likely. [Is the U.S. Responsible for a Million Iraqi Deaths?, Patrick McElwee and Robert Naiman]

If I may give an unsolicited advice to your webmaster, a very easy and quick way to update your page “IRAQ IN FOCUS” would be to replace the Iraq Body Count’s counter with the Just Foreign Policy’s counter you may find here

Please, let me know if you need any further information.

Thank you for your time

Kind regards,
Gabriele Zamparini
London

***

REPLY FROM John Feffer, co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus

Dear Gabriele Zamparini:

I came across your open letter to FPIF on the web (http://uruknet.info/?p=m37113&s1=h1). Perhaps you sent the letter to an address that I don't use any more. In any case, I didn't receive it earlier.

The information in the letter is very useful. We're always looking for ways to improve our coverage of the Iraq War. So when our staff person who focuses on Iraq work is back from vacation, we will certainly evaluate whether to replace the Iraq Body Count with a different estimate of civilian casualties.

Thanks again for head's up.

all the best,
John Feffer

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MY REPLY TO John Feffer, co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus

Thanks John,

I sent that e-mail to this same address but I’m sorry you didn’t receive it before I published it on my blog. We shall thank Uruknet for providing such an helpful service.

I’m very glad I could be of some help.

Best wishes,
Gabriele Zamparini

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Related article: Stephen Zunes and “the original U.S. goal of establishing a pro-American secular free market-oriented democratic government” in Iraq

Stephen Zunes and “the original U.S. goal of establishing a pro-American secular free market-oriented democratic government” in Iraq

Stephen Zunes and “the original U.S. goal of establishing a pro-American secular free market-oriented democratic government” in Iraq
By Gabriele Zamparini

In a revealing interview, Stephen Zunes, Foreign Policy in Focus’ Middle East Editor, recently stated,

“Clearly the original U.S. goal of establishing a pro-American secular free market-oriented democratic government is now considered unreachable.”

Clearly that was the “original U.S. goal”, was it not?

Foreign Policy In Focus, a "Think Tank Without Walls", is a project of the Institute for Policy Studies whose fellows includes Phyllis Bennis, a famous leftist intellectual and activist who works closely with United for Peace and Justice.

All this seems much like those beautiful Chinese boxes; but the content is far more interesting, of course. So we have the Foreign Policy in Focus’ Middle East Editor, who’s also an associate editor of Peace Review, stating that “the original U.S. goal” in Iraq was “establishing a pro-American secular free market-oriented democratic government”. Now, one has just to add that this is supposed to be the American progressive, leftist, anti-war intelligentsia. God help us all!

Curiously, I had written about Stephen Zunes and Phyllis Bennis last year in July, in a blog titled Not only Fox News. Those were the times of the war of aggression of Israel against Lebanon, do you remember?

By the way, Foreign Policy in Focus’ website still displays on its Iraq in Focus’ page the notorious Iraq Body Count’s counter. But don’t bother to ask... they are certainly working on it. Are they not?

P.S. Just out of curiosity, I googled "Stephen Zunes" and it came out - among other things - this article written by Edward S. Herman. It's a good reading!

UPDATED - Some replies to my latest Action Alert RE: Antiwar.com [and a final surprise]

UPDATED - ANTIWAR.COM CHANGED ITS PAGE "Casualties in Iraq - The Human Cost of Occupation"

Dear friends,

please find below a few replies to my latest ALERT RE: Antiwar.com

Best wishes,
Gabriele Zamparini

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Dear Editors,

Re: Iraqi Excess Deaths Since 2003 Invasion.

Having come across the correspondence between yourselves and Mr Zamparini, I am disturbed that Iraq Body Count is the benchmark for Iraq excess deaths on your excellent website. The Lancet Report, now over a year old, by two world renowned epidemiologists, estimated up to one milliuon excess deaths, as you will be aware. These are violent deaths, However, additionally, as Dr Gideon Polya points out, quoting UNICEF for the child mortality data:
'The post-invasion NON-VIOLENT DEATHS total 0.7 million (as estimated from UN Population Division data) to 0.8 million (as estimated from UNICEF under-5 infant mortality data as per "Layperson's Guide to Counting Iraq Deaths": http://mwcnews.net/content/view/5872/26/). The TOTAL post-invasion excess deaths amount to 1.5 million to 2.0 million (see "Iraq: Genocide by all Definition. Bush's Iraq war. 2 million excess deaths": http://mwcnews.net/content/view/17066/42/).'

Non-violent deaths of course, includes the water borne diseases, resultant from the deliberate destruction of Iraq's water supply in 1991 and which since its further decimation in 2003, the world's greatest army is unable - or unwilling - to repair. Lack of medication and medical equipment is another huge problem, with just $135 per head, per annum, allocated by the occupiers, in Iraq for medical treatment (US nearly $7,000, but in life, as in death, Iraqis, the people of 'the cradle of civilisation', have become non-people, at the hands of the most youthful country on earth.)

It has to be said that the seventy to eighty thousand deaths figure, would be only several months trawling round a few morgues, if one looks at their figures from their forensic experts and the data they produce, with photographs of the unidentified dead, should relatives turn up at a later date. Of course also, there is the unquantifiable - attacks like Falluja, Tel Afar, Ramadi, Najav and many, many more, where the bombardement was such that people were burying their dead in their gardens, yards and even a hotel car park reported in Najav, taking over one hundred dead and becoming a buriel ground.

Your exclusive use of the IBC figures allows politicians to escape accusations of what can only be described as a holocaust. Up to two million deaths in four and a half years in the name of 'we the people', deaths of those who have neither threatened nor harmed us, the majority of whom, as with the embargo years, were too young to even know they were Iraqis and that was why they were and are, dying and being killed.

Might I add, on a different note, that your extraodinarily abusive emails to Mr Zamparini, hardly underscored your website title, 'Antiwar.com'. They gave more the impression of 'Worldwar3.com'. Way to go folks. We may not always agree in the anti war movement, but we usually manage to pull in the same direction, without rabid mouth foaming.
I cannot remember who it was who wrote: ' To the living, we owe courtesy, to the dead, we owe only the truth'. Indeed.

In peace,
Yours faithfully,
Felicity Arbuthnot

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dear anti war movement. Hope you are able to update your page to show the right number of the human cost in iraq.

i am an iraqi women i am so surprise how you forget to update your information about the iraqi human cost which as you know its over a million lost their life till now!!!!

thanks and many regards

mimi

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[An email exchange between Antiwar.com and Caryll Faraldi, one of my readers]

For your info: antiwar and IBC copy of e-mail correspondence. I initially e-mailed antiwar because of your relevant postings on Uruknet:

Re Iraqi civilians body count:

Why are you giving figures for these deaths that have reliably and objectively been estimated to represent some 5% to 10% of the true figure? You know - or should know - that data from the Iraqi Body Count is used by warmongers and apologists. How can you be taken seriously as an anti-war website when you minimalize the bloody civilian carnage of Iraq since the illegal invasion? I refer you to Information Clearing House, Uruknet and Stop the War\'s websites along many others.

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Eric Garris wrote:
We have reported on the surveys that were done, and have links to them on our site. We report IBC as well as the alternatives, we don\'t believe in restricting the information.

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Caryll Faraldi wrote:
http://antiwar.com/casualties/index.php#count

Thank you for your reply. Since I wrote to you I have been reading revealing e-mail between Gabriele Zamparini and others and you and others from antiwar.com.
The point seems to be that while you might report on the reputable surveys that are done and have links to them on your website, the informed know about them and the unreliability of the methodology of the Iraqi Body Count.
Today I simply did a straightforward search for your website plus Iraqi civilian casualties. I was directed to the website given above which, as you well know, prominently gives the figures from the Iraqi Body Count for 'reported civilian deaths' and cites its website only. I did not follow through all the sources and links, but those that I checked were more concerned with occupying forces' casualities.
The question is: why do you 'report' on the The Lancet etc. surveys but do not give them in the 'relevant sources and links' and direct only to the IBC website?
With all respect, you are restricting information.
Caryll Faraldi.

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Eric Garris wrote:

We are doing a redesign and a change in presentation for the casualty pages. I hope we will have them done in a week or so. Please check back with me.

***

Thank you for your last e-mail.

I will check your relevant pages from time to time this month and come back to you when they have been redesigned and comment accordingly.

Caryll Faraldi.

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[An article by Dr Gideon Polya]

Mainstream anti-Semitic Iraqi Holocaust Denial

I greatly appreciate the humanitarian persistence of UK journalist Gabriele Zamparini (e.g. see “The Cat’s Blog: http://www.thecatsdream.com/blog/2007/10/action-alert-why-is-antiwarcom-hiding.htm) in exposing the refusal of the Iraqi Holocaust-ignoring and now Iraqi Holocaust-denying Anti-war.com and Iraq Body Count to publish the authoritative estimates of about 1 million post-invasion excess deaths in Occupied Iraq, these persons relying instead on notoriously under-estimating “news report tallies” indicating (currently) 75,000-81,000 violent Iraqi deaths (see Iraq Body Count: http://www.iraqbodycount.org/ and Anti-war.com: http://antiwar.com/casualties/) .
This is what top US epidemiologists, Professor Gilbert Burnham MD (Professor of International Health at the World’s top Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health) and .Professor Les Roberts (Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health) have to say about this (see: http://www.countercurrents.org/burnham230907.htm), QUOTE:

“News report tallies [i.e. Iraq Body Count and thence Antiwar.com] suggest some 75,000 Iraqis have died since the US-led invasion. A study of 13 war affected countries presented at a recent Harvard conference found over 80% of violent deaths in conflicts go unreported by the press and governments... There are now two polls and three scientific surveys all suggesting the official figures and media-based estimates in Iraq have missed 70-95% of all deaths. The evidence suggests that the extent of under-reporting by the media is only increasing with time. Being forthright about the human cost of the war, perhaps over a million deaths to date, is in our long-term interests.”

As compared to the roughly 80,000 violent deaths asserted by Anti-war.com and Iraq Body Count, below are 7 authoritative estimates from 6 authoritative, independent data sets indicating about 1.5-2.0 million post-invasion Occupied Iraq excess deaths (avoidable deaths, deaths that should not have happened) including 0.7-0.8 million non-violent deaths due to deprivation (despite horrendous endless war conditions and over 4 million Iraqi refugees, and in gross violation of the Geneva Convention, the war criminal US Coalition only permits a total annual per capita Occupied Iraq medical expenditure of $135 as compared to $2,560 (UK), $3,123 (Australia) and $6,096 (the US); WHO data: http://www.who.int/countries/irq/en/ ) (see: “Iraq: Genocide by all Definition. Bush’s Iraq War. 2 million Iraqi excess deaths”: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/17066/42/).

As of September 2007, excess deaths (avoidable deaths, deaths that should not have happened) in post-invasion Iraq total:

(1) 0.7 million non-violent excess deaths (from conservatively UNDER-estimated UN Population Division data: http://esa.un.org/unpp/);

(2) 0.8 million non-violent excess deaths (from estimating post-invasion under-5 infant deaths from UNICEF (http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/iraq.html) and dividing by 0.7) (see “Layperson’s Guide to Counting Iraq Deaths”: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/5872/26/);

(3) 1.0 million excess deaths (using data from The Lancet published in 2004; see: http://www.jhsph.edu/refugee/research/iraq/sdarticle.pdf);

(4) 1.0 million excess deaths (including 0.8 million violent deaths; using data from The Lancet, published in 2006; for references see: http://www.thelancet.com/webfiles/images/journals/lancet/s0140673606694919.pdf );

(5) 1.1 million excess deaths (including 0.8 million violent deaths; from using data published in The Lancet in 2006 and using Iraq’s impoverished but peaceful neighbors Syria and Jordan for a comparative mortality baseline);

(6) 1.2 million violent excess deaths (from the UK ORB survey: http://www.opinion.co.uk/Newsroom_details.aspx?NewsId=78); and

(7) this totaling 1.5 million – 2.0 million violent plus non-violent post-invasion excess deaths in Occupied Iraq (see: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/17066/42/ ) .

Laypersons and scientists alike will have to decide who to believe, 1.5 million -2.0 million million post-invasion violent and non-violent excess deaths (according to the data from world’s top medical epidemiologists, the UN Population Division, the United nations Children’s Fund, the World Health Organization and the top UK polling and market analysis company ORB) VERSUS 75,000-81,000 violent deaths (as reported Iraq Body Count, Anti-war.com and lying, racist, war-mongering, holocaust-ignoring and holocaust-denying extreme right-wing, Bush-ite mainstream media and politicians).

Of course the carnage is even worse than this. It is estimated that the total excess deaths in the Bush I and Bush II Asian Wars (in Occupied Iraq and Occupied Afghanistan and including the US-backed Israeli wars and occupations in Lebanon, Syria and Palestine in the last several decades) amount to 8 million (see: “United State Terrorism. 8 million Deaths & media Holocaust Denial”: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/17139/42/ ).
The US Alliance Occupier countries are STILL involved in both active genocide and passive genocide in the Occupied Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan Territories - see the recently published “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (editor. Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney 2007: http://shop.abc.net.au/browse/product.asp?productid=164365 ; and especially “Australian Complicity in Iraq Mass Mortality” by Dr Gideon Polya, also found at: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s1445960.htm ) and “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007): http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ and http://mwcnews.net/content/view/1375/247/ ).

The Bush Asian Holocaust death toll of 8 million exceeds that of the Jewish Holocaust, the WW2 Nazi German-inflicted Jewish Genocide (6 million deaths, 5 million murdered and 1 million dying from deprivation) and that of the largely un-reported, “forgotten”, man-made, British-inflicted Bengali Holocaust (Bengal Famine, Bengali Genocide) of World War 2 British India (4 million excess deaths) (see: (see “Global avoidable mortality”: http://globalavoidablemortality.blogspot.com/ ; “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 1998): http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ and “Body Count”: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ; Mason, C. (2000), A Short History of Asia. Stone Age to 2000AD (Macmillan, London); Gilbert, M. (1969), Jewish History Atlas (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London); Gilbert, M. (1982), Atlas of the Holocaust (Michael Joseph, London).

There are 300 million Arab Semites in the World and a total of 1.5 billion Muslims whose core culture is Semitic-origin Islam. The Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians , Iraqis and Afghans subject to war and occupation by US state terrorism (USST), US-Israeli state terrorism (USIST) and Israeli State Terrorism (IST) in the Bush Wars are ethnically and /or culturally SEMITIC.

Denial of the World War 2 Jewish Holocaust (6 million victims, including 1 million deaths from deprivation) are reasonably accused of anti-Jewish anti-Semitic Holocaust that is punished by 10 years in prison in Austria and lengthy custodial sentences in some other European countries. Steadfast Mainstream media and politician IGNORING of authoritative estimates of horrendous excess deaths in the Iraqi Holocaust (3.9 million excess deaths since 1990, 2 million excess deaths since 2003) can be reasonably described as anti-Arab anti-Semitic Holocaust Denial.

We are obliged to inform everyone we can of these horrendous abuses of Humanity.

Dr Gideon Polya, Melbourne, Australia

Dr Gideon Polya published some 130 works in a 4 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds" (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London, 2003). He has just published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/1375/247/ ).

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[Finally the surprise]

ERIC GARRIS, Webmaster/Managing Editor Antiwar.com, replies to my latest alert

He starts with some "creative writing" when he writes, "I told you we were working on revising it!". He never told me that, on the contrary... Well, for those interested, my exchange with Antiwar.com is here

Nevertheless, the promise that they are (now) "working on revising it" is good news to be welcomed.

Looking forward to see the changes...

Best wishes,
Gabriele Zamparini

From: Eric Garris
Date: Sun, 07 Oct 2007 19:30:22 -0700
To: info@thecatsdream.com
Subject: Re: ACTION ALERT: Why is Antiwar.com hiding the Iraq Genocide?

I told you we were working on revising it! Sorry we don't do exactly what you say as quickly as you want it.

UPDATED A NEW E-MAIL FROM ERIC GARRIS, Webmaster/Managing Editor Antiwar.com

On 10/8/07 6:09 PM, "Eric Garris" wrote:

In spite of your inability to communicate in a productive and
respectful manner, we have made some initial changes and are planning
to further address your "suggestions."

If you have any other polite suggestions, I would be happy to address
them if provided in a constructive and respectful manner.

Here are the current pages as revised.
http://antiwar.com/updates/
http://antiwar.com/casualties/

MY REPLY TO ERIC GARRIS, Webmaster/Managing Editor Antiwar.com

Thanks Eric,

I will take a look and I will come back to you.

But since you wrote, please allow me to ask you why you stated to one of your correspondents, David Wearing, the following:

"As I explained numerous times to Gabriele, we are working on a revamping of the casualty pages, probably done in the next week or two. That was not sufficient for him, and he chose to attack us in a public press release."

You know perfectly well that you have never told me anything like that in our correspondence. The first time you wrote me about the changes was when you replied to my latest Action Alert.

From: Eric Garris
Date: Sun, 07 Oct 2007 19:30:22 -0700
To: info@thecatsdream.com
Subject: Re: ACTION ALERT: Why is Antiwar.com hiding the Iraq Genocide?

I told you we were working on revising it! Sorry we don't do exactly what you say as quickly as you want it.

Even then you stated, “I told you we were working...”. But actually you did not!

Now, your correspondent accused me publicly to lie. You know that I have published all our correspondence on my blog. And when you sent me your email after my latest ACTION ALERT, I have published it again on my blog too.

I would appreciate you could make clear all this with your correspondent, since lying is NOT among my many faults.

Thank you.

Sincerely,
Gabriele Zamparini
London

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Well done! I welcome the changes and congratulate with Antiwar.com

ACTION ALERT: Why is Antiwar.com hiding the Iraq Genocide?

ACTION ALERT: Why is Antiwar.com hiding the Iraq Genocide?

The best estimate indicates that more than a million Iraqis have been killed as a result of the illegal US-led invasion and occupation. The average American believed approximately 9,900 Iraqis had died as a result of the war according to a February 2007 AP poll. The mainstream media are continuing to use figures provided by the website Iraq Body Count (IBC) to sell the public a number for total post-invasion deaths of Iraqis that is perhaps 5-10% of the true death toll.

Antiwar.com’s page Casualties in Iraq - The Human Cost of Occupation includes a big Iraq Body Count’s banner and other IBC references, however that page does NOT include:

• the studies conducted by the world leaders in the field of epidemiology and published as peer-reviewed scientific papers in the world's leading medical journal, the Lancet;

• the recently published ORB poll suggesting a total of 1,220,580 deaths as a result of the conflict in Iraq since 2003 (ie as a result of violence rather than a natural death such as old age).

In these past three years many people have written to Antiwar.com about this issue without receiving any reply.

A few days ago I had an e-mail exchange with the Antiwar.com’s staff. Please, I invite you to read this exchange, where you'll also find much more information on this very important issue. [Click here]

In spite of Antiwar.com’s abusive e-mails and their unwillingness to an open debate with its readers, from their e-mails it would seem that their position is that the Antiwar.com page "Casualties in Iraq - The Human Cost of Occupation" refers exclusively to Iraq Body Count and not to the Lancet studies and the ORB poll because, as they wrote me, Antiwar.com published the latter "WHEN THEY WERE NEWS":

Of course, we also ran the news about the Lancet/Johns-Hopkins studies of 2004 and 2006 WHEN THEY WERE NEWS in 2004 and 2006. [e-mail from ANTIWAR.COM'S Editorial Assistant Scott Horton]

Curiously, this seems to be one of the reasons used by the state-corporate media. For example, the BBC wrote me back in October 2005:

“Thanks for your email. We did cover this report in detail when it was released - see link below. The figures it details are now around one year old where as those produced by Iraq Body Count are continually updated.”

I have also received this e-mail from Dr. Gideon Polya [click here]

Please, write to Antiwar.com and ask them to update their page, Casualties in Iraq - The Human Cost of Occupation, with references to the Lancet Studies and to the new ORB poll.

The contact information for Antiwar.com’s staff is avalable on this page, right column.

PLEASE NOTE: It would seem the staff at Antiwar.com may get easily quite abusive, unfriendly and impolite. Please, always maintain a calm, rational and polite tone and don’t let their eventual rudeness divert you from the real issue at stake. If you want, please send a copy of your e-mail to me at: info@thecatsdream.com

UPDATE - ANTIWAR.COM CHANGED ITS PAGE "Casualties in Iraq - The Human Cost of Occupation"

An e-mail from Dr. Gideon Polya RE: Antiwar.com

I have received the following e-mail from Dr. Gideon Polya

Dear Gabriele, I have been writing in vain to Antiwar.com for years but they still insist on grossly under-reporting Iraq War Indigenous Iraqi deaths. Please feel free to re-publish, disseminate my 5 October 2007 letter to Antiwar.com below. Best regards, Gideon Polya

The top UK market research company ORB has recently reported 1.2 million post-invasion VIOLENT DEATHS in Occupied Iraq, this being consonant with an estimate of 0.8 million VIOLENT DEATHS (as of October 2007) from top American medical epidemiologists from Johns Hopkins and Columbia, published in the top medical journal The Lancet and endorsed in a public letter by 27 top medical experts. However UN agency data also indicate 0.8 NON-VIOLENT post-invasion Iraqi excess deaths yielding a total death toll of 2.0 million post-invasion excess deaths - vastly greater than the "Iraq Body Count" estimate of circa 70,000 - that is instantly discredited by a simple inspection of the UNICEF website (see: http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/index.html) that indicates 122,000 under-5 year old Iraqi infant s deaths ANNUALLY - 90% avoidable and due to Occupier war crimes, specifically the non-provision of life-sustaining requisites unequivocally demanded of Occupiers by the Geneva Convention.

The total death toll in the Bush Asian Wars (Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon) now totals 8 million (EI