Lest we forget

Just a few days ago Amnesty International called our attention on the Iraqi political prisoners:

Thousands of Iraqis detained by US forces are at risk of torture or even execution, following the ratification of a security agreement between the US and Iraqi governments. Under the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), which will take effect on 31 December, around 16,000 prisoners held by the US will be transferred to Iraqi custody.

There are about 16,000 Iraqis detained in Occupation-run prisons (and only God knows how many in the Quisling government's prisons). Yesterday the US occupation transferred to the puppets of the Green Zone 39 high-profile members of Saddam Hussein's regime who had been held in US-run prisons. "Their recent transfer is in recognition that the Iraqi criminal courts and prison systems have become sufficiently robust to safeguard and prosecute these individuals in accordance with the rule of law," the US occupation said.

Like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch doesn't agree with the US occupation; in a report released on Monday it said that Iraq's main criminal court was failing to meet basic international standards for fair trials and denounce the use of "torture or other unlawful methods"

At the beginning of December the United Nations issued a report on the Iraqi political prisoners. Reuters:

"The situation in Iraqi prisons was particularly acute, the U.N. Assistance Mission to Iraq said in a report, released ahead of the transfer next year of possibly thousands of detainees from U.S. military control to Iraqi authorities. Many detainees in Iraqi jails had been held for months or years without being charged, granted access to lawyers or even to a judge, the report said. Allegations of widespread torture and ill-treatment were of particular concern."

At least in this case, Amnesty, HRW and the UN have done their part. The media have given to this subject some attention. Unfortunately there's just silence on the progressive front, where, with some honorable exceptions, we continue to assist to the whitewashing of the monstrous puppet regime of Baghdad whose wire pullers in Washington and Teheran have been selling as the legitimate government of Iraq. If one thing is clear in human history, is that there has never been peace without justice.

Steele on the Moon

Jonathan Steele from the Guardian wrote yesterday an article (*) on Muntazer al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at Bush. I had sent him an e-mail earlier yesterday, asking to write about it (**) but that was of course not the reason Steele wrote his piece, or at least so I hope; I wouldn't like to be the one responsible for this other charade of journalism.

Jonathan Steele writes:

"The Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, has condemned Zaidi's action as an insult to a foreign guest, but Maliki - who, of course, has no influence over Iraqi's [sic] independent prosecution service - must know that a harsh sentence will only damage his own new-found reputation as the nationalist who managed to get Bush to agree to a withdrawal timetable."

We all know Iraq's "independent prosecution service", we have seen it on TV two years ago when the last president of Iraq was lynched, of course, independently. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the United Nations have all written long reports on Iraq's "independent prosecution service" but Steele seems to be on the Moon. And Maliki's "new-found reputation"? But this is nothing.

Steele writes at the end of his Guardian's piece:

"The protest that day in 2004 was over the shooting of a reporter and his cameraman from the Al-Arabiya TV station. (...) They were not the first reporters to be killed by the Americans in the year after the invasion, so their colleagues' indignation was not a sudden flare-up; it was more like a slow burn. Presumably, that was the case with Zaidi. Several dozen more journalists have died in the line of duty in Iraq since 2004. You can see why any journalist would be angry."

The entire world knows by now Muntazer al-Zaidi's words: "This is the farewell kiss you dog... this is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq".

Those words and those shoes were for the 1.2 million people slaughtered by the US-led war of aggression against Iraq and for all those left in a devastated country. Jonathan Steele, presumably, is just deceiving his readers by writing about the "journalists who have died in the line of duty". Muntazer al-Zaidi's was a J'accuse! for the Iraq genocide, a J'accuse! of an entire People against an ongoing genocide and the silence and hypocrisy around it. The entire world could understand those words, those shoes and their meaning; the entire world but Jonathan Steele, who seems to be on the Moon.

From the beginning all through the end, Steele's article is the perfect example of the condescending attitude of Western liberal intellectuals, a class totally isolated in its comfortable Ivory Tower to have completely lost the meaning of decency.

References

(*) Precedent for the shoe-throwing protest, Jonathan Steele, guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 16 December 2008 16.41 GMT

(**)

From: The Cat's Dream
Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2008 14:28:38
To: j.steele@guardian.co.uk
Cc: Media Lens editor
Subject: RE: Iraqi journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi

Dear Jonathan Steele,

A few weeks ago you wrote in the Guardian:

"The deal gives Iraq's national resistance almost everything it fought for (...) From the American point of view, the main thing the pact does is to allow the US to withdraw with dignity. No hasty Vietnam-style humiliation, but an orderly retreat from an adventure which was illegal, unnecessary, and a disaster from the moment of conception. Like most Iraqis, I am content with that." [link]

As you certainly know a few days ago Ali al-Dabbagh, spokesman for the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, said some U.S. forces could be needed for 10 years: "We do understand that the Iraqi military is not going to get built out in the three years. We do need many more years. It might be 10 years," Dabbagh said at a Pentagon press briefing. [link]

Iraqi journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi has shown the world how content most of Iraqis are. The Iraqi Resistance group "Jihad and Reform" reacted on the Iraqi journalist act saying: "This is the referendum [on the Security Agreement] you asked for, you saw it with your own eyes". Iraqis are demonstrating all over the country to ask the Green Zone puppets to free Muntazer.

Please, I'd like to kindly invite you to write as soon as possible in the Guardian about your fellow journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi.

He's been tortured by the Quisling Iraqi government and I believe he deserves all our support, especially by Western journalists.

Thank you very much for your attention and all the time you will dedicate to this urgent matter.

Best wishes,
Gabriele Zamparini

**************************
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Free Muntather al-Zaidi
Please Sign the Petition Now!

Suddenly, two shoes

A few days ago, writing about the Status of Force Agreement (SOFA) between the US and the Iraqi "government", Jonathan Steele wrote in the Guardian:

"The deal gives Iraq's national resistance almost everything it fought for (...) From the American point of view, the main thing the pact does is to allow the US to withdraw with dignity. No hasty Vietnam-style humiliation, but an orderly retreat from an adventure which was illegal, unnecessary, and a disaster from the moment of conception. Like most Iraqis, I am content with that."

The world could see how content Iraqis and Iraq's national resistance are when Muntazer al-Zaidi, an Iraqi journalist, shouted, "This is the farewell kiss you dog... this is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq" and threw at him his shoes during a news conference in Baghdad.

Iraqi Blogger Roads to Iraq reported yesterday:

The most important thing is that Iraqi Resistance group "Jihad and Reform" reacted on the Iraqi journalist act saying: "This is the referendum [on the Security Agreement] you asked for, you saw it with your own eyes":

"While we admire this courageous act and we promise him that his courage will be written with gold in the history pages, we hold the Government of the Green Zone, the occupation administration the full responsibility in maintaining the life of the hero and warn them of torturing him.

We also call upon all Arab and international organizations interested in human rights specialized in defending the freedoms and rights of journalists to work stand beside the hero journalist and demanding his release."

Iraqis protested at Bush's farewell visit on Sunday to Iraq with people throwing shoes at passing US military vehicles. Thousands of Iraqis continue to take to the streets all over the country to demand the release of the Iraqi journalist and protest the occupation of their land.

"The flying shoe speaks more for Arab public opinion than all the despots/puppets that Bush meets with during his travels in the Middle East," said Asad Abu Khalil, a popular Lebanese-American blogger and professor at Stanislaus University in California.

According to his brother, Muntazer al-Zaidi "hates the American material occupation as much as he hates the Iranian moral occupation. As for Iran, he considers the regime to be the other side of the American coin." [I'd add here for the Western public opinion that's been made obsessed about Iraqis' religious affiliation since the 2003 illegal invasion of the country, that Muntazer al-Zaidi is a Shiite]

The Iraqi journalist has "a broken arm and ribs, and cuts to his eye and arm". The sectarian Quisling gang of warlords and mafia hoods who've been pimping in the Green Zone for the past six years will never be able to forgive this Iraqi hero who's shown the world their infamy. For this reason he needs all our support.

Please, sign this petition and write to journalists and journalists' organizations, human rights advocates, your representative in your country's Parliament and European Parliament. To save one life is to save humanity.

Shoes for all!

When Muntazer al-Zaidi, an Iraqi journalist, shouted, "It is the farewell kiss, you dog" to Bush and threw him his shoes during a news conference in Baghdad, the curtain of hypocrisy fell and the ugly emperor stood naked in front of the world.

Those shoes however were not aimed only to a man who should be - by his own standards - hanged, together with his entire junta of mass murderers; the Iraqi hero hit to the face all those responsible for the Iraq genocide and its ongoing denial; an endless army of politicians, diplomats, generals, businessmen, journalists, intellectuals and pimps who've helped to carry out the crime of the century. Shoes for all!

Shoes for the United Nations that instead of protecting one of its members from the supreme international crime that organization has been founded to prevent, collaborated with the occupation and its crimes.

Shoes also for the lib-left intelligentsia, the anti-war movement's politburo, the human rights paladins and the court of eunuchs who have worked as gatekeeper of dissent and helped to sell the products of the crime of the century; the supporters of the "political process", of the sectarian Quisling government, of the militias of drillers and all those who rejoiced for the capture and lynching of Saddam Hussein and his government. Shoes for all!

Shoes for Human Rights Watch that contributed to the propaganda campaign that made possible the invasion of Iraq, rejoiced and praised the US occupation for the capture of its president and still keep denying the Iraq genocide.

Shoes for Iraq Body Count that's made possible the denial of the Iraq genocide by its perpetrators and their propaganda apparatus.

A shoe also for Juan Cole; in his Informed Comment blog the Western anti-war movement's icon and Middle East "expert" presented the al-Zaidi's heroic act juxtaposing two BBC articles:

If you search shoes and Iraq, here is how Google shows two BBC stories on December 14, five years apart (they came up together like this at the top of my search):

BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Iraqis celebrate Saddam capture
Dec 14, 2003 ... women ululated and crowds beat pictures of Saddam with shoes. ... where the Saddam statue was toppled at the end of the war, ...
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3317637.stm - 46k

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Shoes thrown at Bush on Iraq trip
Dec 14, 2008 ... President Bush's farewell visit to Iraq is marred by an incident in which two shoes are thrown at him during a news conference.
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7782422.stm - 8 hours ago

It's really a pity that Cole couldn't find a third BBC article about shoes on Google, The day Saddam's statue fell:

"Down, down, Saddam," said one man, frenziedly interrupting my piece to camera so we should see him use his shoe to repeatedly strike the face of the statue, which had come down a few moments earlier.

Of course in that case even Juan Cole should have explained his readers that that event, the pulling down of Saddam Hussein's statue, was a staged media event organized by the US occupation and its stooges. [Read also here]

Appalling, even for Western propaganda's standards. Appalling but not surprising. It was Juan Cole after all who supported and then justified the vicious military campaign against Fallujah, "there were very bad characters there". (Read also here)

It was Juan Cole who helped to sell the lynching of the legitimate president of Iraq even a few hours before that horror show took place.

Appalling but not surprising; Juan Cole has always been biased against the Sunni Iraqi community and helped to sell his readers the New Iraq.

Back to the brave Iraqi journalist Montadhar Al-Zaydi; he has shown to the world the emperor is naked. He's been now taken hostage in his own country by the sectarian Quisling government of the Green Zone. Not only should he be released immediately; he must be honoured by any decent human being as a hero. Sign a petition in his favour now!

Propaganda in the Time of Obama

Dozens of progressive and alternative websites have re-published Patrick Cockburn's appalling article originally appeared in CounterPunch a few days ago. As Jonathan Steele's article in the Guardian a few weeks ago, this Cockburn's article is so extreme one wonders if those alternative websites have become alternative to reality.

After selling Obama as the Anti-Bush and the Man of Change, the lib-left intelligentsia is now at work to depict the new planned phase of the imperial project in the Middle East and beyond as a debacle. We are asked to believe that Corporate America is retreating from Iraq or - to use Cockburn's words - that the U.S.'s "moment in Iraq is coming to an end".

For geostrategic reasons that should be obvious to anyone at this point, Washington needs to remain and consolidate its presence in that region called so vaguely Middle East. Corporate America's hegemony and its survival depend on the direct control of this part of the world, having in mind the rising of other major powers in the international scene, particularly China, Russia and the European Union.

Obviously the US planners never wanted to occupy Iraq with all their troops forever; all they needed to do was to install a puppet government, destroy the Iraqi nation, disintegrate the Iraqi state, crush any authentic national resistance and prepare the US permanent presence in the country.

The puppet government has been installed through that charade called "political process". We even got used to that ridiculous expression, Green Zone, the Quisling government's hideout.

The Iraqi nation has been destroyed through imported sectarianism and civil war that put Iraqis against Iraqis. Since the invasion, Iraqis have been called Shia or Sunni, Arabs or Curds, Muslim or Christian. More than 1.2 million Iraqis have been slaughtered and more than 5 millions have left their homes and become refugees.

The Iraqi state, once the most advanced state of the region, has been disintegrated through the infamous debaathification and other sectarian practices. After a massive propaganda campaign aimed at its moral lynching, the legitimate government of the Republic of Iraq has been lynched by the invaders and their collaborators. In the West, notorious human rights organizations, the lib-left intelligentsia and the anti-war movement's politburo have contributed to that propaganda.

The Iraqi national resistance has been crushed by the military occupation and the sectarian militias that operated undisturbed for many years under the Occupation's eyes, when not in joint operations with the invaders. Iraq teems with prisons, operated by the US occupation or by the sectarian Quisling government, where several thousands freedom fighters and ordinary Iraqis are being tortured, sexually abused and killed; among them women and children.

Meanwhile, the US planners have been working to establish their permanent presence in Iraq; they have been building several permanent military bases together with the biggest embassy in the world. As I wrote in my previous blog, the same day Counterpunch published P. Cockburn's article, Reuters reported, "Ali al-Dabbagh, spokesman for the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, said some U.S. forces could be needed for 10 years":

"We do understand that the Iraqi military is not going to get built out in the three years. We do need many more years. It might be 10 years," Dabbagh said at a Pentagon press briefing.

But besides what this or that puppet might say, one needs just to stop the flow of propaganda and think; if the US didn't respect the UN Charter and international law when they invaded Iraq, they will certainly not respect any meaningless agreement signed by its own Quisling government. To focus on the SOFA is just another diversion; the US plan, far from being a "total defeat", as Cockburn writes, has been completely successful. Mission accomplished.

The official lib-left intelligentsia must continue its real job as gatekeeper of dissent; its audiences, the most aware, active and willing to stop their governments from continuing to perpetrate crimes against humanity for the sake of elites' profit and power, must be controlled through "friendly" propaganda. When Obama's war machine is preparing to use all its bestial might against the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan and with an economic and financial crisis without precedent hitting millions of people, the public opinion in the West needs to be tamed once again.

The eunuchs have gladly renounced to their organs in change of a little place at the table of the gods, or maybe they are just happy for some falling crumbs.

Planet P. Cockburn

If you happen to live on Planet Earth, where a single country, Iraq, has been the main focus of "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today" - to use Martin Luther King Jr.'s words - for the past two decades, you may be interested to know what's happening in one of the most fascinating celestial bodies of the parallel universe of the mass-media.

Planet P. Cockburn is particularly interesting to the curious observer, because of its elliptical orbit around both state-corporate media and the alternative ones and because of its influence on people and events.

Appeared in the Counterpunch Galaxy, Total Defeat for U.S. in Iraq - It's All Spelled Out in Unpublicized Agreement, dazzles as a star: "America's bid to act as the world's only super-power and to establish quasi-colonial control of Iraq, an attempt which began with the invasion of 2003, has ended in failure."

As on its twin planet J. Steele of the Gardian Galaxy, on Planet Cockburn the U.S.'s "moment in Iraq is coming to an end"; a suicidal Corporate America, after investing billions of dollars in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, building all those permanent military bases and the biggest embassy in the world, has now signed a goodbye agreement and pushed the Quisling Iraqi government for its approval.

As an astral coincidence, the same day on Planet Earth "Ali al-Dabbagh, spokesman for the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, said some U.S. forces could be needed for 10 years":

"We do understand that the Iraqi military is not going to get built out in the three years. We do need many more years. It might be 10 years," Dabbagh said at a Pentagon press briefing.

Inviting the readers to see the results of another observation of this planetarium just a few days ago - particularly for the connections between Iraq and the escalation of the war against Afghanistan and the possible agreement between the US and Iran, not only on Iraq but on the Afghan front as well - here I'd like to call for your attention on two particular cosmic phenomena.

On Planet Cockburn, the Iraqi cholera outbreak finds its origin in "the purchase of out of date chemicals for water purification from Iran by corrupt officials". An observation of the same planet - this time in the Independent Galaxy - on October 10, 2008, found that "Cholera is endemic in Iraq". The universes are parallel but obviously facts develop in a different manner. On Planet Earth the New Scientist informed us in September 2007:

"A cholera epidemic has been on the cards since Iraqi water treatment plants were destroyed in the 1991 Gulf war. In 2003 the WHO [World Health Organization] 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."

Possibly on Planet Cockburn there is no New Scientist, no WHO and the UN embargo and the First Gulf War either never happened or have been drawn into some black holes.

The other phenomenon is about the Iraqi prisoners detained by US forces. On Planet Cockburn, "Some three quarters of the 17,000 prisoners held by the Americans are Sunni and they [leaders of the Sunni Arab minority] wanted them released or at least not mistreated by the Iraqi security forces." Note that word, "mistreated".

On Planet Earth, Amnesty International wrote:

Thousands of Iraqis detained by US forces are at risk of torture or even execution, following the ratification of a security agreement between the US and Iraqi governments. Under the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), which will take effect on 31 December, around 16,000 prisoners held by the US will be transferred to Iraqi custody.

On this 'mistreatment' read also this article published on Planet Earth.

Fantastic things happen on Planet Cockburn. In the Independent Galaxy on November 1, 2006, Baghdad was "under siege": "Sunni insurgents have cut the roads linking the city to the rest of Iraq". From Arbil, Northern Iraq, the siege of Baghdad looked so dramatic that people had "to live off water melon and bread" for weeks. In the following days and weeks I observed the Independent Galaxy, but there was no trace of that siege left. This observer could not detect that phenomenon in any other galaxy either.

On Planet Cockburn for years "the Most Powerful Man in Iraq" was Muqtada al-Sadr. On Planet Earth, that al-Sadr character (and his thugs), after being functional to the U.S. occupation, having fought against the Iraqi resistance, assassinated the last President of Iraq and his lawyers and carried out one of the most vicious ethnic cleansing in recent history, is now hiding in Iran only to surface from oblivion to organize some pathetic and poorly attended demonstrations against the loathed enemies where the bravest acts of resistance are the chants "NO NO USA - NO NO ISRAEL". I don't know on Planet Cockburn but surely on Planet Earth the US occupation must still be shaking with fear.

To be fair, Seymour Hersh has called Patrick Cockburn, "quite simply, the best Western journalist at work in Iraq today" and most of the progressive left in the West certainly agrees.

From my modest planetarium I can only try to reformulate in scientific terms a simple question I already asked this past May: Is Planet Cockburn a cosmic echo of the Big Bang?

Double standards

Governor Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois was arrested by federal authorities on Tuesday morning on corruption charges, including an allegation that he conspired to effectively sell President-elect Barack Obama's seat in the United States Senate to the highest bidder.

Now, that's funny. The White House has just been rent for the next four years for $ 750 millions and the tenant, far from being arrested, has become a hero. Double standards?

The plague and the eunuchs

To sell imperialism George W. Bush has used Freedom & Democracy; Barack Obama has promised change and change you will get. IPS reports:

WASHINGTON, Dec 8 (IPS) - A bipartisan task force of former top national security policymakers is calling on the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama to make the prevention of genocide and mass atrocities overseas a top U.S. foreign policy priority. In a report released here Monday, the group, which was co-chaired by former President Bill Clinton's Pentagon chief, William Cohen, and secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, argued that mass atrocities threaten core U.S. national interests and that the national security bureaucracy should be reformed to reflect that priority.

Imagine Jack the Ripper and Jack the Stripper calling for the prevention of rape and serial killings. But the article above deserves to be read in its entirety; it will make you cry.

In the next years we'll see the notorious humanitarian interventions spreading across the world as a plague; with Obama's smile and the progressive eunuchs' voices, it'll be a piece of cake.

In ancient traditions men were usually castrated in order to make them safer servants of a royal court. As tradition request, an army of eunuchs, of a special kind this time, populates Obama's imperial court. Our sophisticated times understand that a better servant is made not by cutting his sex but his/her thought organs.

Already withered by decades of mass propaganda, those organs have been finally removed thanks to a mass eunuch-ization campaign paid for by Corporate America. Cost: $ 750 million

In particular, liberal-leftist intellectuals and activists have found great relief by this operation, having their residual organs gone gangrenous after Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan; now they're finally singing lighter, liberated of that residual dead weight.

But while for the young generations the castration has surely been completely successful and they will sing with a clear, high voice in the years to come, the older ones seem to suffer of serious side effects and the result is a cracked voice esthetically ghastly.

The change is coming; God help us when faith silences reason.

Open letter to Dr John Sentamu, Archbishop of York

To The Most Reverend and Right Honourable Dr John Sentamu, Archbishop of York

In today's Observer you write:

"President Robert Mugabe was right when he said only God could remove him. That's exactly what happens. No tyrant lives for ever. No cruel regime lasts. God acts. And he is acting. An international chorus is at last being raised to bring an end to Mugabe's brutal regime. As cholera devastates a Zimbabwe already on its knees, our Prime Minister, our Foreign Secretary and the US Secretary of State have all called for an end to the regime of Mugabe. Now these voices must unite for a further call to bring an end to the charade of power-sharing that has enabled Mugabe to remain in office, assisted by his ruthless politburo."

Condoleezza Rice and Gordon Brown are among the main responsible for the slaughter of more than a million innocent children of God in Iraq and dozens of thousands in Afghanistan but in your view that very same God would be acting through their blood-stained hands. What a grotesque (and sexist) idea of God you must have to invoke Her name in this unholy farce. Or do you think those innocent human beings are children of a lesser god?

You quote Martin Luther King Jr. in your article, but did you ignore that it was that same Martin Luther King Jr. who called the U.S. government "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today"?

You write:

"The time has come for Mugabe to answer for his crimes against humanity, against his countrymen and women and for justice to be done. (...) As a country cries out for justice, we can no longer be inactive to their call. Mugabe and his henchmen must now take their rightful place in the Hague and answer for their actions. The time to remove them from power has come."

Instead of calling for just another war of aggression, another breach of the United Nations Charter, why didn't you call to bring to justice those leaders you name in your article, together with Tony Blair and George Bush? Iraq and Afghanistan have been crying out for justice for many years; shouldn't those war criminals take their rightful place in the Hague and answer for their actions?

Of course these are just rhetorical questions; being you the Archbishop of York, the second-highest-ranking cleric in the Church of England, because those same war criminals appointed you, it would make such a call an act of extremely bad taste.

But what does God have to do with it?