Friday, March 30, 2007

Tormentors of Humanity

One contributor to an article below, "We are all Terrorists Now!", felt that my comments were over the top and polarised. In his own blog he asks the question, "ask yourselves what is the environment that makes educated people be so radicalised in their pessimism about their homeland?"

Tony's Tours

I am indebted to him for his caring attitude, a true Englishman from Yorkshire with an open mind and a generous heart willing to face the world as he finds it and to look for healing solutions. The world needs many more like Tony.

But, sadly for the world, there is another Tony. The one I just emailed at 10 Downing Street, suggesting to him a face-saving way out of the diplomatic mess he has created for himself through his pride and hubris. A man who never says sorry or ever admits to making a mistake. A wretched creature who betrayed his country by dragging it into a murderous war by telling us all a tissue of lies. That's the other Tony, a coward and an inveterate liar who tours the country in a bullet-proof vest inside a heavily armoured car wondering if his destiny could yet be at the hands of an assassin waiting for him somewhere around a dark corner.

This Tony doesn't seem to have any problem sleeping at nights, despite all the hundreds of thousands of innocents he and his desperado pal squatting in the White House (two elections stolen from under the very noses of the American people) are guilty of. Tony will always find a reason or an excuse to convince us he's a decent sort of chap.

When really he's nothing but a nasty little serial-killer who with his Texan pal have dragged us all into a Dantean Inferno. For what? For O-I-L, corrupt corporations like Bechtel and Halliburton and for the Weapons Industry. It's just like Vietnam which was meant for General Motors to make huge profits from. Only much, much worse. That's what Bush and Blair's "Freedom" is really about.

Nearly 40 years ago the Italian film-maker, Pier Paolo Pasolini, in an interview by PARIS MATCH, was asked whether he was afraid that fascism would return to Italy. He replied, "If you mean the pompous, strutting fascism of Mussolini's risorgimento, no. That's consigned to the past. But a new form of fascism could arise, the fascism of the consumer society."

He meant, of course, a new form of totalitarianism brought about by the state in the interests of the big multinational corporations like ... Bechtel and Halliburton. Well, guess what folks, Pasolini was right and we are now in the time of a consumer fascism where people are quite happily handing over their freedoms in the name of "Security" just so they'll be left in peace to carry on their endless credit-card consumer binge.

Ask yourself, how many people do you know would be prepared to take some form of direct action or go on strike to protest the mass killings of people in the Middle East or Somalia? How many of them would be prepared (supposing, of course, that they can) to write to their MP or Congressman protesting against the genocide their governments are conducting while trying to pretend it's all about freedom and democracy? I won't hold my breath while you're thinking of a reply.

If Tony Blair wanted to settle the Anglo-Iranian Maritime Dispute in a peaceable manner he's got a tool in international law that enables him to do so. The 1899 Hague Convention for the Pacific Settlements of International Disputes. Would he know about a 108-year old Convention, would his advisors in the Foreign Office? Do they care?

Or are they interested only in toadying-up to their paymasters in Washington DC? Getting up the arses of the Americans and staying there as ex-UK Ambassador to Washington, Sir Christopher Meyer, put it? The next few days and weeks will tell whether Blair cares more for the well-being of his 15 service people or the War Party's propaganda machine.

God forbid that the demonic Blair and Bush should escalate this affair into a full-blown nuclear blitzkrieg. If they do millions more innocents will die horribly and the whole world slide further down into the Pit of Hell. Then we shall see many, oh many, many more wake up in a radical, burning anger against these tormentors of humanity.

Now read "US & THEM" by William Bowles
(Banff & Buchan Constituency)

Dear Mr Salmond,


Many thanks for your latest replies of 28 and 29 March. I do very much appreciate the time you have taken as I have no doubt you have a very busy agenda, especially at times like these.

Anne Begg's insulting politicking is indeed disgraceful. I sympathise with you, as well, on having to face the lumpen tribalism of the Commons on issues where British pride has been dented as is currently the case.

I have no doubt that the RN personnel will come to no harm whatever and that they are being well-treated. On the other hand, the aggressive, threatening manner in which the US with the support of Blair is treating Iran is deliberately meant to isolate and intimidate.

The Iranians complain that the RN is constantly straying into their territorial waters. If that is the case, it is perfectly understandable that they react to constant provocations. This latest incident has taken place in disputed waters.

I, like many, simply do not believe Foreign Secretary Beckett's claims that the incident took place in Iraqi waters. Amongst others, ex-UK Ambassador Craig Murray believes the Foreign Office claim is a fake.

When the SNP spokesman, Pete Wishart, questioned Beckett the other day he was given the same old spin. All this only adds to the suspicions that Blair is deliberately using the incident to up the ante in anti-Iranian propaganda in order to manipulate public opinion prior to a first strike attack on Iran.

Craig Murray was just interviewed on BBC 24 Hours. He states that the British must get off their high horse and accept that the incident occurred in disputed waters.

If the UK Government is really interested in dealing with the issue in a legal manner, rather than using the incident to stoke-up anti-Iranian propaganda at the expense of the 15 detainees, it could invoke the 1899 Hague Convention for the Pacific Issue of International Disputes (see below). Perhaps the Foreign Office should be reminded of that?

Whether a US aerial attack on Iran takes place on 6 April, as the Russians believe, or sometime later it is quite clear that the Bush cabal, supported by his quisling in 10 Downing St., intend such an attack. This is something on which the UK media keeps very quiet.

Sometime ago you received a letter from Kim Howells in which he states that at that time the UK Government had received no requests from the US for the use of Diego Garcia as an attack base. As Diego Garcia is on lease to the US I'm not sure that such a request is to be expected or given. What is more to the point is that we should have a reassurance that, under no circumstances, would Diego Garcia or any other British territory be used as a base for attacks on Iran.

I know that the UK Government would not be prepared to give such an assurance. Nevertheless, an assurance should be demanded in the Commons if for no other reason as to embarrass and expose the Government and its complicity in US aggression. Few MPs would have the courage to challenge either the US or its quisling Blair and if they did they should expect to be shouted down by the Common's lumpen tribe. Few MPs, that is, other than the SNP or Plaid Cymru. That is the kind of action I had hoped you might take in a House full of cowards.

When I was a regional councillor in the Highlands I was always given a hard time in the Council Chamber. That concerned me not in the least because it was the people's interest that concerned me, not the prejudices of 51 'Highland gentlemen.' When we are so close to a nuclear war it is deplorable that not one of our MPs in the Commons would dare spell out that danger. That is the kind of action I had hoped you might be prepared to take. The people of the UK have no idea what they are being prepared for.

Yours etc.

CC Pete Wishart, SNP/Plaid Cymru Defence Spokesman
Professor Abbas Edalat, Campaign Iran.

Invoke 1899 Hague Convention for Pacific Settlement of International Disputes!
Both Iran and the United Kingdom are contracting parties to the 1899 Hague Convention for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes.Title III of the 1899 Convention created a procedure for the formation of international commissions of inquiry to investigate, ascertain and report on international differences involving neither honor nor vital interests, and arising from disputed points of fact that could not be settled by means of diplomacy (article 9). An International Commission of Inquiry is precisely what is called for here to resolve their dispute over the Sailors. Hence I would encourage everyone to pressure the Governments of both Iran and the United Kingdom to publicly invoke the 1899 Convention and request the immediate organization of such a Commission to de-escalate this crisis that could readily precipitate World War III. For more details on these Commissions with further references, see my book Foundations of World Order (Duke University Press:1999).
Professor Francis A. Boyle

Law Building
504 E. Pennsylvania Ave.
Champaign, IL 61820 USA
217-333-7954 (Voice)
217-244-1478 (Fax)
(personal comments only)
OFFICIALLY ME !!!: Iranian point of view...


Make no mistake about it, the USUK Anglo-Saxon Empire is softening-up public opinion for another big war.

All the lies, manoeuvring and nonsensical propaganda currently emanating from that inveterate liar, war criminal and sociopath, Tony Blair, over what increasingly looks like a manufactured provocation of the Iranians in disputed Gulf Waters is leading inexorably to War Talk and more mass murder.

Since January 2006 this writer has done what he could to warn folk of what the Bush-Blair warmongers are up to now.

The Brits are past masters at the devious use of lies, distorted facts and the manipulation of legal processes to inflict their imperial will on their victims. They have a long history of several centuries playing dirty games on an unsuspecting world. When it comes to turning reality upside-down it has to be said that the Brits are far better at telling lies and getting away with murder than their North American counterparts in Washington, DC.

I should know. I come from a colonial British family. Around the age of six, I remember my old man telling me about our family's history in what was then Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). He told me about how our small family tea and rubber plantation had contributed to the British War Effort in WWII when, instead of money, the British Government paid us all in War Credits, promising to exchange the credits for Sterling at the end of the war. We believed them.

My mother, bless her, did the patriotic thing and helped organize the collection of old pots and pans to turn into steel, much needed by the Mother Country for war production. In this she was no different to millions like her throughout the British Empire who did what they could to help Britain in her darkest hours against the Nazi hordes. They all mucked in, listened to Churchill and prayed that the Japs wouldn't invade. After a half-hearted air-attack, the Japanese lost interest and devoted themselves elsewhere.

After those dark days, Britain emerged victorious but impoverished and mortgaged up to the hilt to the United States. To help their export drive, the Brits devalued the £Sterling and when it came to the honouring of War Credits the money they paid their debtors was worth far less than the value of the products that had been supplied them.

Small family plantations like ours dived deep into debt, never to recover. The conclusion of this sad little story according to my father was, "Never trust the English." As all colonials know, including the Americans, only a fool would put their trust in the English. To put it another way: "White Man Speak with Forked Tongue."

So, you see, I was conditioned very early on to harbour a natural distrust of the English. But living in an English-speaking environment I soon enthusiastically embraced English culture, books, pop songs, comedy shows on the BBC World Service etc. It was only many years later, after my family had emigrated to England and I was an adolescent did I come across the duplicitous ways of the English mentality.

I was in my second year at Teacher Training College when I joined a friend in an anti-war demonstration at Grosvenor Square, London outside the US Embassy. Up until then I had believed all the media crap about the Vietnam War being a war to protect democracy against those evil reds, etc. Like most other middle class kids I believed it all. That is, until I saw the TV film of Kissinger's Operation Rolling Thunder when the skies of Vietnam and Cambodia turned black with B52 bombers bringing Apocalypse Now to their victims below.

That wasn't democracy. That was what the Nazis did, only worse. So I became politicized, I demonstrated, I smoked some grass, dropped a little Acid and saw the world from a very different perspective to anything I had seen before. Without knowing it, I'd dropped out.

It was enough to get me blackballed by my College administration. I hung on in, though, took my final exams and scraped a pass. I had to have that teacher's diploma: it was going to be my bread-ticket to another life, perhaps Canada, and away from this dingy little island to which my mother had brought me. My College couldn't stop me passing my exams. What it could and did do, however, was to use the kind of coded language that other employers understand to mean: "Don't give this guy a job. He's trouble."

Well, in those days, I was just a naive adolescent only just discovering the wicked ways of the world. It took me a couple of years to discover why I couldn't find work. I was blacklisted so I never got to Canada, ending up a Prisoner of Mother England. Anyway, that briefly is how I became a dissident in the West. I never chose it, life's circumstances, karma if you will, seemed to decide it for me.

I'm sixty this year and more of a dissident than I ever was as a young man, more radical, a deeper shade of red and totally intolerant of the capitalist system. When I did get work from time-to-time as a substitute teacher I took every chance I got to tell the kids the truth about the system into which they were being pushed-out into. I never lied, just ensured they heard the truth, hoping a handful of them would listen and seek the truth themselves. I always told them, "Listen to what I'm telling you but don't believe me. Check it out for yourself. It's the only way." I hope they did. That's what true education is supposed to be.

And that's what I'm doing here for the handful of folks who discover my blog. I'm trying to pass on the truth to you the best way I know. If what I say shocks or angers you, I'm sorry. It's just the way I find the world as it is at present.

I started this blog days after the 7/7 Bombings which I was convinced was a False Flag Operation manufactured by the British Secret Services against their own people. Nothing I have heard or seen since then has made me change my mind. On the contrary, it is clearer than ever that the British State uses its population in a cynical, manipulative, evil game to control it psychologically and to terrorize it into submission.

Governments are the people's worst enemy. No doubt about it.

What is going on as I write illustrates well how a lying, murderous clique of bastards (politicians) are doing everything they can to prepare the Brits and the rest of the world for another murderous war in the Middle East, this time using nuclear weapons.

I lie awake at nights, thinking about all the innocents little shits like Bush, Blair and their ilk have and will murder. If I could I'd strangle Blair and urinate on his face just like his soldiers have on innocent Iraqis and Afghanis. Well, allow me my angry fantasies please, it's better than getting depressed.

Make no mistake, my friends, these are the new Nazis of the 21st Century and they are going to drag us all into their gas chambers. They have so manipulated our minds with their incessant brainwashing that they have created a new artificial reality where everything is upside-down, a planetary Bushazzro world if you like.

As the British journalist Neil Mackay writes in his book, 'The War on Truth', the Bush-Blair Axis has so corrupted the world with its evil doctrines that we have all been dragged into their hell. "We're all terrorists now." We're both the victims and the persecutors. We've gone as low as we can go. Well, Mackay is a journalist so I can understand his cynicism. Perhaps he really meant the whoring Mainstream Media of which he is a part? Or did he mean every one of us who through our silence and inaction have given our stamp of approval to the murderers who pose as our leaders?

Never trust the Anglo-Saxons. Never trust a Politician. And keep your Crap Detector in good order 'coz they're a-comin' for ya.

Iran, World War III.

Thursday, March 29, 2007

By Vicky Short
27 March 2007






“For many it would be merely a question of political responsibility, but judicial actions in the US are beginning to emerge, as is the case of the verdict passed on one of vice-president Cheney’s collaborators, [I. Lewis Libby] which point in a different direction.”

“There is enough of an argument in 650,000 deaths for this investigation and inquiry to start without more delay,” he added.

Garzón then turns his scathing criticisms towards the former Spanish Prime Minister, José María Aznar, who followed British Prime Minister Tony Blair in supporting Bush’s war of aggression against Iraq.

“Those who joined the US president in the war against Iraq have as much or more responsibility than him because, despite having doubts and biased information, they put themselves in the hands of the aggressor to carry out an ignoble act of death and destruction that continues to this day.”

Aznar still defends the invasion of Iraq. He reluctantly admitted last month that he now knew Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, but added that “the problem was not having been clever enough to know it earlier.”

Garzón answers this in his article: “If he didn’t know enough, he should be asked why he didn’t act prudently, giving United Nations inspectors more leeway instead of doing the opposite in total submission and fidelity to President Bush.”

Fearful of the extension of the insurgency in Iraq throughout the Middle East and internationally, Garzón declares that “the North American bellicose action, and that of those who supported it, has determined or at least has contributed to the creation, development and consolidation of the biggest terrorist training camp in the world.... In some way, with a terrible lack of awareness, we have been and are helping this monster grow more and more and strengthened by the minute, so that it is probably invincible.”

Garzón has investigated everything from Basque terrorism to the March 11, 2004 Madrid train bombings, whose alleged perpetrators are currently on trial. He led the investigation into the rightist terror group Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación (GAL), whose creation was attributed to the Socialist Party (PSOE) government of the day. He also banned Herri Batasuna, the political arm of ETA—the first political party to be outlawed since the death of Franco in 1975.

Back in 1996 the Progressive Union of Prosecutors filed criminal complaints against the Argentine and Chilean military for the disappearance of Spanish citizens under the dictatorships that ruled them in the 1970s and 1980s. One year later, Garzón issued an arrest order that included Argentine Navy Captain Adolfo Scilingo, who made a televised confession in 1995 of “death flights” in which hundreds of detainees were thrown from airplanes to their deaths in the Atlantic Ocean. Scilingo was detained after travelling to Spain voluntarily.

Former Chilean President Pinochet was arrested during a medical check-up in London in 1998 based on a warrant issued by Garzón. For months the judge attempted to have the dictator extradited to Spain to be tried for heading the military coup in 1973 that overthrew the elected president Salvador Allende and the subsequent murder of thousands of students and workers. He has also signalled his intention to question Richard Nixon’s national security adviser Henry Kissinger about events in Chile, after declassified documents released by the US State Department and the CIA suggested that Kissinger was well aware of what was happening.

The fact that such a prominent international judicial figure openly speaks of bringing war crimes judgement against the leaders of the US, UK and Spain is an indication that the entire Iraq campaign is heading towards a disaster and a response to the mounting opposition around the world.

Yet his statement was given only the most cursory coverage by the media in the United States and internationally. No publication chose to make an editorial comment and most simply reproduced or slightly amended a Reuters report.

Such is the level of hostility to the Iraq war and occupation in Spain, however, that even sections of ex-Prime Minister Aznar’s Popular Party (PP) are publicly declaring that his attendance at the meeting in the Azores that supported Bush in his decision to invade Iraq was an error.

Reporting on their criticism, the right-wing newspaper El Mundo commented on March 20, “The PP should not continue avoiding an auto-criticism on Iraq.”

It continues that, although the present critics were in the main opposed to sending troops to Iraq at the time, today “even if only a few dare to say it aloud ... the vast majority in the PP accept in private that Aznar made a mistake. In his zeal to make Spain more of an Atlantic country, trusting Bush blindly, he only succeeded in fertilising the rank anti-Americanism of a sector of Spanish society, as well as neglecting the repercussions this would have on domestic affairs, which, as the new (PSOE) government is demonstrating, demanded more attention than our projection abroad.”

A few hours after the El Pais article by Garzón had reached the shops, the secretary of organisation for the PSOE, José Blanco, declared in an interview in Telecinco that someone had to pay the consequences for the decision to invade Iraq. And if Bush, Blair and Aznar were to be made legally accountable, then he would support this.

See Also:
For an international mobilization of workers and youth against the war in Iraq [22 January 2007]
[16 March 2007]

Read Original El País Article in Spanish

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

"Hey you! Don't blame me for killing your parents! Blame Bush! I'm only following orders! I'm a good guy really! " Cartoon by Latuff

Dahr Jamail on Free Speech TV Show "SourceCode"

In this 10 minute piece, Dahr Jamail gives an Iraq update with exclusive video from Iraq. He describes some of the origins of the "sectarianism" that the US corporate media is so apt to point to when discussing the violence in Iraq, and shows how the US has been involved in fueling the sectarian tensions.

Download Dahr's Videos Here

Monday, March 26, 2007

Four Years On: Remember the Fallujah Massacre

Colonialists Rushing to Global War to Save the Crumbling Empire

A searing critique of the New World Order's doom-laden new colonialism and a call for Islam to protect itself through the creation of a Khilafa (Caliphate).

Written by Abid Ullah Jan, Director of the International Center for Strategic Studies & Analysis and edited by Rory Winter.

More about the Book here

My Book Review will Follow Later

Tales of Iraq War comics

See Latuff's Blog

Sunday, March 25, 2007

The Unraveling of Another U.S. Race War: Iraq, Four Years Later
American Empire - The Imperial Psychosis
Wednesday, 21 March 2007

by BAR Executive Editor Glen Ford

Despite poll numbers that show more Americans want out of Iraq, peace activists should not expect a sea change in basic public perceptions of the U.S. "role" in the world. The debacle in Iraq can only be understood through the logic of (white) American Manifest Destiny and Imperial Racism. The supposed "mistakes" and "flaws" of a "dumb" policy are in fact symptomatic of a deep cultural malady: an inability to perceive non-white "Others" as human beings. Americans make enemies because their entire history has been to see Others as either The Enemy, or as their fawning protégés - but never as equals.

The Unraveling of Another U.S. Race War: Iraq, 4 Years Later

by BAR Executive Editor Glen Ford

"Americans simply want more efficient war - part of the compact they assume is embedded in national Manifest Destiny."

Malcolm X's days with the Nation of Islam (NOI) were numbered - and his time on Earth, as well - when in December, 1963, the then spokesman for Elijah Muhammad was asked his opinion of President Kennedy's assassination, the month before. Malcolm replied that Kennedy "never foresaw that the chickens would come home to roost so soon."

Malcolm was referring, not to specific crimes by John F. Kennedy, but to the manifold oppressions "white America" had inflicted on Black people through the centuries. Although necessarily coached in theological terms of "divine retribution" (language he would largely abandon after leaving the NOI, three months later), a collective indictment of white America for the nation's current and historical crimes was a staple of Malcolm's speeches. "The followers of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad religiously believe that we are living at the end of this wicked world, the world of colonialism, the world of slavery, the end of the Western world, the white world or the Christian world, or the end of the wicked white man's Western world of Christianity," said Malcolm, in a June, 1963 speech.

Malcolm X remains an icon among African Americans because he spoke the language of all-Black conversations, in which one is more likely to hear the pronoun "they" rather than "we" in discussions of U.S. military adventures abroad. "They are bombing the hell out of those people. They are trying to steal the oil. You know how they do."

"Conceived as a white man's empire from the very beginning, the American juggernaut fears only one earthly thing: defeat."

The African American experience reveals an "America" that was founded as a criminal project, in which every victory in the long saga of theft, genocide and mass enslavement is celebrated as a kind of renewable divine mandate by the direct or cultural descendants of the original white settlers. Black folks know "how they do."

The deformed worldview that evolved over centuries of crimes against "The Other" shaped the national personality of white America. It is a crippling vision, distorted by notions of race so deeply embedded as to require no direct articulation. Conceived as a white man's empire from the very beginning, with a God-given mandate for constant expansion as essential to the spread of "civilization," and perceiving itself as the embodiment of all "values" worth preserving on the planet, the mass-internalized American juggernaut fears only one earthly thing: defeat.

The polls show that Americans want to get out of the war in Iraq. That's only because they are losing.

CNN surveys show only 19 percent of Americans were "strongly opposed" to the Iraq war at the start, four years ago. Today, 46 percent feel strongly that the U.S. should withdraw at some near point in time. It would be a fundamental error, however, to assume that a sea change has occurred in white America's essentially imperial-racist worldview. (Black America overwhelmingly opposed the war from the beginning, as it has nearly every U.S. imperial bloodbath.) Rather, the 19 percent initial strong opposition to the invasion of Iraq mostly represents the fraction of Americans that is very uncomfortable with violation of other people's territory and sovereignty, unilateral acts of war (war against peace, a capital crime under international law), and armed rule of other peoples. Half of that anti-imperialist one-fifth of America, is Black. Vast majorities of white Americans have no principled or strong opposition to current expressions of Manifest Destiny - that is, they do not object to the concept of American super-national rights. But they hate losing: a keenly-felt national humiliation that must be erased, if absolutely necessary, by reluctant and bitter withdrawal.Fighters-Indian

This is the softest kind of anti-war feeling - in fact, it is not "anti-war" at all, but anti-defeat, such as increasing numbers of Americans felt during the latter stages of the Vietnam War, and growing numbers of Germans experienced after the debacle at Stalingrad. (I know it is verboten to compare anything "American" to the racism-fueled Nazi assault on a previous world order, but history provides no better linkage.)

"It would be a fundamental error to assume that a sea change has occurred in white America's essentially imperial-racist worldview."

The terms of this last-stage public debate on when and how to withdraw from Iraq - not that the Bush Pirates have any intention of leaving - shows that the American conversation remains firmly rooted in imperial entitlement. Thus, the war should be discontinued because its execution was "flawed" - meaning, the project was well-meant, but badly planned. Or, the war was a "mistake" - similarly well-intentioned, but at the wrong time and place. Happy future imperialist hunting. Or, the war was "flawed" (Barack Obama's diagnosis) - something that ever-innovative Americans can presumably fix in time for future wars against peace and world order.

Only a fraction of Americans come even close to the broader indictment delivered by Cynthia McKinney at last weekend's anti-war rally in Washington. By refusing to defund the war, the Democratic Party, she said, is:

"Complicit in war crimes! Complicit in torture!
Complicit in crimes against humanity!
Complicit in crimes against peace!"

However, even former congresswoman McKinney would not be greeted with enthusiastic applause at a mostly white gathering of American leftists if she told the whole truth: the Iraq war, and the wars that were to follow had the Bush mens' bubble not been punctured by fierce resistance to occupation, would be inconceivable in the absence of mass white American belief in the premises of Manifest Destiny/Racist Imperialism. It is for this reason that "anti-war" movements must always be put together nearly from scratch in the United States at every super-belligerent juncture. The popular base for anti-imperialism is quite small, and at least half-comprised of racial "minorities" - the very same "Others" against whom the U.S. has waged perpetual war, globally and domestically.

Public opposition to an attack on neighboring Iran is even softer than get-out-of-Iraq opinion - largely because the discussion centers on possible air strikes by the U.S. and/or Israel, rather than non-available U.S. ground troops. Masses of Americans would like to punish and pummel Iran ("The Other") for whatever reasons the Bush men concoct - as long as few U.S. citizens get hurt. If the attack occurs, we should expect an initial majority of Americans to grudgingly support it, conditioned on nonsense such as assurances that the action will be of short duration and not lead to an even wider war - and that not too many Americans will die.

American unwillingness to sacrifice large numbers of their own troops is the bane of George Bush's and his military planners' existence - but makes perfect sense in the context of the peculiar aspects of American Manifest Destiny. In this regard, Americans are nothing like Hitler's Germans, who were expected to glory in giving their lives for the Reich. The logic of the American national narrative is that each (white) American is precious - a unique gift to "civilization." As a result, U.S. military planners have long understood that "force protection" - the imperative to keep the troops as safe as possible - must be a fundamental element of strategy, for public opinion's sake. (Remember also, that the troops are part of the public, and expect the same consideration.) Fear of casualties is also at the heart of the so-called Colin Powell Doctrine of using overwhelming force to destroy every vestige of resistance at the onset of any mission. "Shock and Awe" is a logical derivative.

"Masses of Americans would like to punish and pummel Iran."

A built-in contradiction, once Shock and Awe is over, is that Americans so conditioned by expectations of safety on other people's lands are prone to kill every perceived threat among the occupied population. Since Americans are also conditioned to perceive racial and cultural "Others" as inherent threats - even when the "natives" are simply going about their business in their own neighborhoods - atrocities based on the doctrine of "force protection" are bound to occur with regularity. Indeed, U.S. troops, from the commanders on down, have a license to kill whenever they feel threatened. It's not even manslaughter: it's Other-slaughter, which doesn't count - either to the troops or to the masses of American citizens.

Remember that the Battle of Fallujah actually began when paratroopers of the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division (my old unit) occupied a school in one of the then-peaceful Sunni town's middle class (for Iraqi) neighborhoods, in April of 2003, at the beginning of the occupation. Unarmed demonstrators marched on the school to protest the Americans' ogling of Iraqi women through binoculars and alleged lewd gestures. The 82nd opened fire, killing 13 that day, including mothers and grandmothers in nearby houses, and then killed at least two more in a second peaceful demonstration at the school, a few days later. From then on, it was all downhill for the Americans in Fallujah - and for the 250,000 people of the city.

"Americans make enemies because their entire history has been to see Others as either The Enemy, or their fawning proteges - but never as equals."

In November, 2007, the Americans launched Operation Phantom Fury on Fallujah. Every resident who did not, or could not, flee was fair game for summary execution. The city, about the size of Birmingham, Alabama, was flattened, and its surviving former population scattered - an atrocity on the scale of Hitler's rampage through the mostly Jewish city of Lodz, Poland, in 1941.

This is not the individual fault of "the troops." It is a response of the American nation, a logical result of Manifest Destiny. Americans make enemies because their entire history has been to see Others as either The Enemy, or their fawning proteges. Clearly, they are unfit occupiers of Others, in Black Harlem or Brooklyn or Queens - or Fallujah. It's all "Indian Country," to them.

Yet another irony: The Pentagon violated a basic precept of Manifest Destiny by denying troops sufficient body and vehicle armor in Iraq, and in recent revelations of poor medical treatment for the wounded. But don't call such negative public reaction "anti-war." In large part, Americans simply want more efficient war - part of the compact they assume is embedded in national Manifest Destiny. Politicians who violate the compact do so at their peril. But they may kill Others at will.

Defeat Is Inevitable

Despite all the evidence to the contrary, an essential tenet of American Manifest Destiny is that mere proximity to Americans cannot help but win the hearts of foreigners: "If you get to know us, you'll love us." When this assumption was shattered at Fallujah early in the occupation and in other Iraqi population centers thereafter, the U.S. pulled back to its quickly multiplying "temporary" bases - virtual GI cities - to keep a lower profile.

It is testimony to the bankruptcy of the last-stage "surge" that U.S. troops are again being garrisoned in neighborhoods of Baghdad and other cities, where they may in fact be "welcomed" by some Sunnis, since the Americans are not hell-bent on ethnic cleansing (all the locals of whatever sect are "Hajis," anyway - what's the difference?), but will surely be hated in the longer term (except by Iraqi recipients of ever-escalating bribes).

"The Americans found themselves trapped in their own "democratic" propaganda, from which there is no escape."

The fact remains that the U.S. is now wedded to its "allies" among the Shia militia - an inevitable consequence of its own "rescue the poor Shi'ites from Saddam" public narrative as justification for the war. More importantly, at the beginning of the war the Americans had no available comprador class in Iraq willing to "front" for their interests in exchange for privileged position. In Vietnam, the French had a large Catholic minority that converted to the religion of Empire in the generations following the French incursion of the 1830s. The Americans in Iraq had only Ahmed Chalabi and other exile thieves and hustlers, but no social base. The Shia militias flexed their muscle, and the Americans found themselves trapped in their own "democratic" propaganda, from which there is no escape. That's the objective reality.

The American "reality" at the start of the war was quite different, the pure product of Manifest Destiny illusions. The "flaws," "mistakes" and dumbness that have made the American sojourn in Iraq a spectacle that is horrifying and at the same time (in a gallows humor way) hilarious to the world, are precisely what should be expected from the super-privileged ruling class of a people incapable of perceiving Others as fellow human beings. The "flaw" is fatal, and built into the culture.

Although appearing to be simple racist arrogance, the real contradiction in America's imperial ambitions lies in cognitive incapacity.

Before the Iraq invasion was even launched, the Americans snubbed their Turkish NATO allies by failing to ask permission to unload thousands of tons of equipment at a Turkish port, for transshipment to the border with Iraq, where a powerful wing of a U.S. pincer attack was to descend from the north, to ultimately meet up somewhere near Baghdad with U.S. Kuwait-based forces from the south. Apparently, to the Americans, Turks are just another brand of "hajis" who can be disrespected as non-persons with no claim to control over their national territory. The government in Ankara quickly halted the U.S. northern invasion of Iraq. The master plan was wrecked before it began. As a consequence, relatively small numbers of U.S. Special Forces and 173rd Airborne Brigade troopers had to be airlifted to assist Kurdish Pesh Merga militias to drive Saddam's troops out of the north of Iraq, ensuring that the Kurds would have mainly themselves to thank for the "liberation" of Kurdistan. Not part of the plan.

"The master plan was wrecked before it began."

As the Iraqi army in the north marched southward, defeated and compliant in their tens of thousands, it was announced that the national armed forces would be disbanded. What sane, lucid person would expect that these young men would bear their humiliation and marginalization passively, and not turn to resistance? The U.S. had used the defeated Japanese army to maintain security in Vietnam and Korea for a time after World War Two hostilities ended, rather than allow the "natives" to assert their own, sovereign authority. That's what practiced colonialists do, until they sort out who among the locals can be trusted. But the Americans don't think they are a colonial power - rather, they are benefactors, benign occupiers, bringers of civilization and "democracy." Such truths are self-evident. No need to consult the natives, or employ their defeated soldiers. Their worldview is inferior, not worth considering.

The apex (or nadir) of insanity occurred very early on, revealing the crazed nature of the American adventure in Iraq and the world at large. As newly occupied Baghdad burst into flames in the absence of security for the population or any ministry unconnected to oil or the Iraqi military, Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld spoke for all his peers. As I reported at the time, Rumsfeld's crazed worldview informed him that the riotous Iraqis were actually celebrating the U.S. arrival.

"One can understand the pent-up feelings that can result from decades of repression," said Donald Rumsfeld, smiling like a serpent and still drunk from the previous day's toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad. "They're free. And free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things."

Even a psychiatrist for the Sopranos would have great difficulty avoiding the conclusion that Rumsfeld was totally insane - as were the underlying premises of the U.S. aggression. However, all of the American "mistakes" that followed were of the same character, emanating from the same central source: a cultural flaw that prevents most white Americans from recognizing the humanity of non-European Others. The cognitively disabled can destroy the world, but they cannot rule it.

Can a people raised on the mother's milk of massacre, human slavery, and grand geo-resource theft break the habit? Yes, but only through the experience of Defeat: decisive and irrevocable. Nazi Germany, imperial Japan and colonial Europe were eclipsed and defeated, and became much better societies as a result.

As long as white Americans think of most of the planet as "Indian Country," they will continue to avoid their "Eureka Moment" - the point at which they accept the humanity of the rest of the species. Until then, the chickens - great flocks of them - will, as Malcolm said, come home to roost.

BAR Executive Editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford (at)

Saturday, March 24, 2007

Psycho U.S. 'Soldiers' Turkey Shoot Civilians in Iraq

"This video, shot in Ramadi by an American soldier, shows US Marines firing on anything that moves including civilians. This is interspersed by various obscene, bestial noises such as "wooohoooo" and "dude, I fuckin shot that guy up in the car!" I hear they're making real progress over there."


Nothing but Fascists

Ali Al-Sarraf, Middle East Online

Never in modern history has country been forced to pay for its death, torture, and destruction with its own money - its own oil revenues. Iraq has become a country where thieves are entrusted with its richness and where murderous gangs are entrusted with its security, says Ali Al-Sarraf.

March 23, 2007

The war on Iraq was not carried out on the basis of mere strategic interests. No strategies or interests could explain the level of death and destruction that Iraq had undergone ever since the Gulf War in 1991. If one were to assume that the US led invasion in 2003 is a continuation of that war, then Iraq could be said to have suffered more horrors than any country had, including the countries that were involved the WWII.

We are talking about at least two and a half million Iraqi civilians who had met their fate, where 750,000 of them were killed during the last four years. That figure represents 10% of Iraq’s population. In addition, you have over three and a half million Iraqis displaced (two million of them fled outside the country while the other1.5 million lost their homes and became displaced inside their own country). That is 14% of the population.

Even when the Nazis brought destruction to Europe during WWII, no country alone suffered such human losses. Although the Soviet Union at the time, who suffered the biggest number of victims, had lost 20 million lives (military and civilian), that figure represents only 10% of the population which was 197 million in 1941.

The tight sanctions that Iraq had faced for over 12 years were also unprecedented in modern history, affecting such basic needs as food and medicine. The aim of those sanctions was not only to strangle the country’s economy but also to pressure Iraqi society, too. The sanctions, which reduced many segments of the population into poverty, were meant to make the country easier to invade, after creating a public desperation for change. But it has also created internal resentments and divisions between the 'Haves’ and 'Have-nots’, which naturally led to organised crime and armed gang formations.

It was like some sort of a 'social nuclear bomb’. If you accept the findings of Johns Hopkins University team which estimated that 650,000 Iraqi civilians had died during the first three years of the US-led invasion, and compare that figure to the number of victims who have died by the Hiroshima bomb, then you could say that Iraq has suffered the effect of four nuclear bombs. Combining all the losses that Iraq has endured ever since 1991 as a direct result of US involvement, one could conclude that Iraqis would have witnessed more mercy had they been besieged and invaded by the Nazis.

Causing such genocide cannot be attributed to perusing interests only. The mass killings in Iraq, like the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, had been met with great indifference from citizens from around the globe (and not just their involved governments). Inaccurate media coverage has helped creating a sense of hatred in some societies against 'the other’.

The Nazis had their own ideology of superiority when they were committing genocide and ethnic cleansing, but the people of Iraq are facing destruction in the name of 'democracy’. After 12 years of sanctions that tore apart Iraq’s society, tight sanctions that even banned pencils from entering the country, causing the death of over one million children due to shortage of food and medicine, the US-led coalition started its war campaign.

But how could the peoples of the invading countries support such immoral bombardments? If you were fighting a 'dictator’ in the name of 'democracy’ then somehow it was made acceptable to endure the needless loss of so many innocent civilians. The cheapness of the blood of 'others’ is nothing new; just remember the millions of Germans calling out Hitler’s name as his forces commit crimes against humanity.

Instead of democracy, the US-lead has only built mountains of dead Iraqi bodies. Bodies that have become too many to even count accurately. Even the 'Iraq Body Count’ organisation, which gives the lowest estimates, has failed to keep up the count. As for the US military, they don’t have a figure for civilian deaths. In the words of General Tommy Franks, "We don’t do body counts."

Such indifference to the deaths caused as a direct result of the US-led invasion is not exclusive to the governments of the invading countries. Unfortunately, it is shared by many of the peoples of those governments. However, seeking self interest alone cannot explain the level of inhumanity involved, especially when many of those interests could have been served without shedding blood. Only in a system of fascism would such actions be tolerated, where hatred of the other holds priority.

During the 12 years of sanctions, Iraq’s oil production had been reduced to less than 1.5 million barrels a day (as opposed to its pre-sanctions 3.5 million) in the so called 'oil for food’ programme, causing a loss of about 262 billion dollars from the country’s oil revenues.

Under that inappropriately named programme, Iraq witnessed the death of half a million of its children. "We think the price is worth it", said the former US Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, when asked by the media if the lives of 500,000 Iraqi children dying because of the effects of sanctions is worth it.

Never in modern history has a country, who is also one of the founding members of the United Nations, faced such aggression under so many false pretexts. Even as one excuse after another for the war becomes exposed as a lie, the pubic insists on believing the next lie. We know now that there were no weapons of mass destruction, there were no links whatsoever between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, and the whole idea of regime change was not to bring about democracy. Even the human rights propaganda by the US has become a joke after the Abu Ghraib scandal (among many), and the rise of death squads and sectarian bloodshed under the nose of US forces.

After reducing Iraq’s infrastructure to 'ground zero', a state of lawlessness was encouraged. The result is a state of civil war where people are facing death, rape, or kidnapping for no other reason sometimes than having a certain name.

Never in modern history has country been forced to pay for its death, torture, and destruction with its own money - its own oil revenues. A country where thieves are entrusted with its richness and where murderous gangs are entrusted with its security.

Not even Iraq’s heritage has been spared. Instead of protecting the country’s museums, which is a legal obligation of occupying powers according to international law, former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, "Stuff happens" when asked about the chaos that has befallen the country’s institutions.

Ever since the US-led invasion, Iraq’s academics have been mysteriously targeted. Key figures in the county’s science and research fields, as well as other fields, have been assassinated with no claim of responsibility.

In whose interest must a country’s past, present and future be threatened in such violent manner? In whose interest were the Jews led to their death in Nazi camps? No one; because it is simply not about interests. The neo-fascism of our age goes far beyond some of the West’s leaders or their governments. It goes beyond the hidden biases of some of our so called 'free’ media. Neo-fascist sentiments have reached deep into the collective subconscious of Western societies. It is a new sense of 'social imperialism’ in which almost everyone, knowingly or not, is an accomplice and beneficiary.

During the times of Hitler, you would see Germans gathered in perfect cohesion, chanting slogans in fervour. Today, those who support fascist leaders do not make such an effort. They can simply show their support by going to the ballot and voting for them once every four years instead. What happens later, which could include genocide or torture, they would watch calmly on TV.

Ali Al-Sarraf is the Editor of Al-Arab Weekly and a former dissident of Saddam Hussein's regime. He can be reached at:

Wherever the USUK Corp. Go...

These days the USA imports everything from can-openers to TV sets and cars. However, what it and its sad little sidekick Britain are still past-masters at exporting is


Watch these contrasting videos (who's the real terrorist?) and read Ghali Hassan's article below. Then read Paul Levy. The time is way overdue for the whole world to wake up and see just who's turning our lives into a never-ending nightmare.

Blaming The Victims: Covering Up Terrorism In Iraq

By Ghali Hassan

19 March, 2007

A recent cover story in the Time magazine (March, 2007, Europe and Asia) by Bobby Ghosh, “Why They Hate Each Other”, aimed at removing the Occupation as the generator of violence against the Iraqi people, and portrays the violence as “Iraqis killing Iraqis”. This media distortion obfuscates the U.S. monopoly on terrorism and allows the U.S. to use Iraq as a laboratory for terror at the expense of the Iraqi people.

Nowhere in his story does Ghosh tell the readers that the militias and the criminals were the creation of the Occupation and that the violence is the only pretext left to justify the ongoing Occupation. Why Iraqis didn’t “hate each other” before the illegal invasion of their country is totally ignored by Western media and remains a mystery to most Westerners. It is important to remember that Time was the leading propaganda organ which promoted the illegal aggression against Iraq, and continues to play a vicious role spreading Islamaphobia around the world.

To get a clearer picture of what has been done to Iraq and to Iraqi society, it is vital to connect the nearly two- decades of Anglo-American violence against the Iraqi people. Violence has been the primary tool of U.S. foreign policy and its dealing with smaller defenceless nations. Indeed, history has shown that all nations who qualified for U.S. violence were defenceless nations inhabited by coloured, or nonwhite human beings.

From 1990 to 2003, Iraq was under 13-year genocidal sanctions enforced by the U.S. and Britain. The sanctions were the new weapons of mass killing the West used against innocent civilians. The sanctions were in fact a silent genocide that was deliberately used to target the most vulnerable of Iraqi society. More than 1.6 million Iraqis have died; a third of the victims were infants. In addition, the sanctions accompanied by weekly acts of terrorism by U.S. and British forces disguised as air raids to “enforce the no-fly zones”. The pretext for this long and silent genocide was (the non-existent of) Weapons of Mass Destructions (WMDs). As the perpetrators failed to break the will of the Iraqi people to survive, they initiated a war of aggression using the same concocted pretext as justification for war.

According to Robert H. Jackson, the Chief Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trial, "Any resort to war—any kind of war—is a resort to means that are inherently criminal. War inevitably is a course of killings, assaults, deprivations of liberty, and destruction of property. An honestly defensive war is, of course, legal and saves those lawfully conducting it from criminality. But inherently criminal acts cannot be defended by showing that those who committed them were engaged in a war, when war itself is illegal". (Nuremberg Trial Proceedings, 2nd Day, 21 November, 1945, pp. 145-146). Before the U.S-Britain illegal aggression, Iraqis were living in relative safety. Iraq posed no threat to any other nation. The primary objectives of the war were the imperialist domination of the region by the U.S. and support for Israel’s terror and Zionist policy in Palestine.

A short history is in order. At the outset of the Occupation, Paul Bremer, the U.S. Proconsul during the early phase of the Occupation, issued an order dissolving the Iraqi State and disbanding the Iraqi Army and Police in order to create lawlessness and chaos. Bremer then hand-picked expatriate collaborators – most of them involved in crimes and acts of terrorism against the State of Iraq – and beguiled others to form the ‘Iraqi Governing Council’ (IGC). The IGC was based on ethnic and religious affiliations, and most of its members had lived outside Iraq for decades. Bremer’s aim was to divide Iraqis according to religion and ethnicity, which made the Iraqi people shiver in their sleep. The IGC continues to function today under the name of the “Iraqi Government” without any real power, reminiscent of the Nazis-imposed Vichy regime in France.

Furthermore, the U.S.-drafted Iraqi “Constitution” is designed specifically to divide the country on ethnic-religious lines. The so-called “federation” is euphemism for the geographical divisions of Iraq. The “Constitution” relegated women’s rights to the Stone Age and denied them equality. Before the Occupation, Iraq had one of the most progressive Constitutions in the Muslim World.

In addition, the U.S. launched a campaign of terror and assassinations – as the U.S. did in every country it invaded or which backed its military junta. It all started with the “Debaathification”; a euphemism for a murderous campaign orchestrated by the occupying forces. U.S. Special Forces in collaboration with the Israeli Mossad agents trained the pro-invasion militias (the Kurdish Peshmerga, the SCIRI Badr Brigades and other U.S.-trained militias) and began a reign of terror targeting anyone with anti-Occupation tendency. Hence, the U.S. Occupation – enforced by more than 200,000 U.S. troops and other foreign mercenaries – is the roots of the violence and destruction in Iraq today.

The aim is to terrorise the population and force them into ethnic or sectarian enclaves, suppress the anti-Occupation voices and deprive the Iraqi Resistance of protection (by the population) and resources. The campaign is based in part on the U.S. previous terror campaigns in El Salvador in the 1980s and in the former Yugoslavia in 1990s, and on Israel’s targeted assassinations of Palestinian unarmed men, women and children. Thousands of innocent Iraqi professionals were murdered in cold blood, including scientists, prominent politicians, Iraqi intellectuals, military officers and doctors. Even religious leaders and women opposing the Occupation are not immune from U.S. terror. Remember, all of this is known to Western mainstream media, journalists, pundits and NGOs; however, they continue to propagate the myths of “sectarian violence” and “civil war”. (See, Notes).

As resistance against the Occupation continues to grow, the U.S. resorts to refocusing the violence on Iraqis in order to deflect responsibility and justify ongoing Occupation, the U.S. and Britain – supported by a racist and violent media – instigating insurrection (Futna) amongst Iraqis pushing one community against the other. Expatriate collaborators and U.S. agents are infiltrating the Resistance groups and anti-Occupation forces in order to provoke intra-communal strife using the civilian population as fodder for terrorism. At the same time they continue a reign of terror against the population. The goal is to use the violence as a pretext to continue the Occupation and at the same time mislead the public that there is no Resistance against the Occupation. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. There is a massive Iraqi national Resistance movement.

Since the invasion, the aggressors have been responsible for the death of approximately a million innocent Iraqi civilians – whose names will never be published by Time magazine – and the destruction of the entire Iraqi society and country. Of course, unlike the American soldiers who killed by the Resistance, the names of Iraqi victims will never be published. In addition, tens of thousands of Iraqis are enduring sadistic torture sexual abuses; rape and humiliation at the hands of U.S.-British forces in hundreds of U.S.-British run prisons throughout Iraq. The Iraqi people must be asking the question: “why they hate us” so much.

The case of the three Iraqi women (Wissam Talib, 31, Zainab Fadhli, 25, and Liqa Omar Mohammed, 26) awaiting imminent execution in a Baghdad’s prison after a fraud trial – condemned even by Amnesty international as unfair – is the most shameful and cowardly. The UN and the European Parliament should be ashamed for remaining silent.
Before the invasion and long after the Occupation, there were no bombs exploding in Iraq killing innocent civilians on religious pilgrimages. There were no “suicide bombers”. Resistance attacks were against U.S. force and their Iraqi collaborators. It all started during the Occupation when the Iraqi people refused to surrender to the Occupation and the U.S. began the search for pretext to continue the Occupation. Credible sources reveal that the U.S. and British forces are behind these attacks. A case in point was that in September 2005, Iraqi Police in Basra arrested two British soldiers (the SAS) disguised as Arab “terrorists” planting bombs in civilian centres. Further, most car bomb attacks on civilians were detonated by remote control, but propagated by the occupying forces and Western media as “suicide car bombs”. The aim is to distort the images of Muslims as having no value for human life, when the opposite is true.
Aided by a new breed of native informers, such as the Iranian Vali Reza Nasr (employed by the U.S. Defence department) who has become a household name in the West to confirm it to Westerners that the violence in Iraq is between “two factions of Muslims” and the U.S. is on benevolent “mission” with “good intentions”, Westerners have reacted to the violence in Iraq by labelling Muslims as “violent”. However, Westerners ignore that Iraqis have no history of killing other Iraqis because of ethnic or religious affiliations.

Despite all of this, and in addition to the daily suffering inflicted upon them by US forces, the Iraqi people remain strongly against the Occupation. An overwhelming majority of Iraqis want the U.S. to end the Occupation of their country and end the violence. The U.S. should take a lesson from Iraq’s history that no matter how barbaric it’s Occupation, the U.S. will fail to subject Iraqi to its Zionist agenda.

The Iraqi people, including small minorities, have lived together for centuries without significant problems. Only until Westerners (Americans and British) started to interfere and foment civil strife, violence started to occur. The current political infighting is the creation of the Occupation. It is between the pro-Occupation expatriate militias and the anti-Occupation forces, including the Iraqi people. It is aimed at terrorising the population and justifying ongoing Occupation.

Iraqis do not identify themselves according to ethnic and religious backgrounds. A fact recently acknowledged by George Bush himself when he admitted that he was not aware of Iraq’s ethnic-religious mix. This is the West’s way of discriminating and persecuting minorities. Religious sect was never an issue in Iraq before the invasion. There is no such thing as “Shi’ites majority” and “Sunnis minority”. Iraqi censuses never included religion and ethnicity. Saddam’s regime included all Iraqi minorities.

Few months after the invasion “the U.S. army issued a list of 55 wanted top Iraqi officials, starting with President Saddam Hussein; half of those senior officials were Shia …The Committee of Debaathification issued a list of 100,000 senior Iraqi Ba'athists who would not be allowed to enjoy governmental posts, 66,000 of them were Shia - so how is the Ba'ath party a Sunni party?”, a prominent Iraqi politician told the Arab media on December 19, 2006. I spent many long years in Iraq, and at no time felt that I belonged to some kind of religious sect.

Thanks to a campaign of distortion generated by the media, the U.S. is succeeding brilliantly at convincing the world that the violence in Iraq is “sectarian” and that the U.S. is simply acting as a “saviour” protecting the Iraqi people. Hence, the U.S. will end the Occupation when the puppet government is able to provide security. It follows that the U.S. will decide on security and withdrawal when the U.S. sees fit. The longer the violence continues, the Occupation will continue.

In fact according to the Pentagon own assessment (Pentagon's latest quarterly report on security in Iraq), the violence has increased dramatically “forcing as many as 9000 civilians to flee the country each month”. The report reveals that; “Although most attacks continue to be directed against coalition forces, with Iraqi civilians bearing the brunt of the violence”. It adds; “Weekly attacks in Iraq rose to more than 1000 during the period of late 2006 and average daily casualties increased to more than 140”.

On 12 March 2007 Vice-President Dick Cheney told supporters gathered at the pro-Israel Jewish lobby AIPAC's annual policy conference (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee Policy Conference) that withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq would endanger Israel, confirming that one of the motives of the illegal aggression against Iraq was to support Israel’s terror and enhance Israel’s Zionist policy in the Middle East.

Furthermore, the U.S. is also succeeding in using the violence and Iraq’s current position to pass a new “Hydrocarbons Law” (drafted by the U.S. and U.S. Oil Corporations, in collaboration with the IMF) at the expense of the Iraqi people, who were kept uninformed about the theft of their resources. It gives large oil companies (mostly U.S. Oil Corporations) control over Iraqi oil and relegates Iraq to the old colonial dictatorship. The “Law” not only deprives Iraqis of their resources, it infringes on Iraq’s sovereignty. Hence, the violence is deliberate and it is serving U.S. interest well.

Finally, The Anglo-American public (including the Anglo-Australian public) have moral responsibility to hold their leaders directly responsible for the mass murder of innocent Iraqi civilians. Failure to do so, they stand accused by many people around the world (Muslims and non-Muslims) for complicity in war crimes.

It should be borne in mind that the U.S. is using the and Iran’s non-existent weapon program and conflict in Dafur as a diversion to manipulate and keep the public in a state of fear, because it enhances the U.S. imperialist ideology towards global domination, as if the mass murder of innocent Iraqi civilians is not enough to satisfy Western elites’ thirst for blood. It is Paramount that the focus must be on holding the perpetrators accountable for their crimes and what happen to the Iraqi people in the last four years and avoid the media obfuscation of reality in Iraq.

The Time magazine’s cover story is of course based on Western distorted images of Muslims (and Islam) without any real presence in the Iraqi society. Like its previous stories on Iraq, the entire Time story is a distortion of reality, a pack of concocted lies designed to mislead the public and encourage greater violence against the Iraqi people. With propaganda organs like Time and journalists like Bobby Ghosh covering up terrorism, mass murder of innocent civilians will continue to be blamed on the victims.

Ghali Hassan is an independent writer living in Australia.


1. Max Fuller, Crying Wolf: Media Disinformation and Death Squads in Occupied Iraq; Also, Silence of the Lambs? Proof of US orchestration of Death Squads Killings in Iraq.
2. Ghali Hassan, Occupation and Sectarianism.
3. Peter Mass, The Way of the Commandos.

By Paul Levy

We live in a world where the deeper, underlying mythic patterns that have endlessly reiterated themselves throughout human history are incarnating and revealing themselves through world events for all who have eyes to see. As if in a timeless fairy tale, our species has gotten drafted into playing out roles in a vast, multi-dimensional process which is revealing itself as it acts itself out through us. Seeing the mythical, archetypal roles that are being unconsciously enacted in the world theater initiates a process of deep transformation, both within ourselves and the world at large.

In this mythical drama we find ourselves in, our planet has been pirated and co-opted by the figure of George Bush and his gang of robber barons, who have taken control of the most powerful war machine the world has ever known and are using it to accomplish their own self-serving agenda. They are in the process of taking us hostage in our own country and are using our homeland to plunder and terrorize the rest of the planet. In this cosmic drama we are all sharing, George Bush and Co. have gotten dreamed up to play out, in full-bodied form, the archetypal, mythical role of pirate, which is a figure that exists deep within the collective unconscious of humanity.

Instead of pirates of the Caribbean, however, Bush and Co. are pirates of what Buckminster Fuller called “spaceship earth.” In his book Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, Fuller pointed out how piracy has been one of the chief underlying factors shaping western history, and thus determining the way our world power structure has developed and still operates.

For example, in a truly ground-breaking expose that is easy to overlook because there are so many other administration scandals competing for our attention, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh in his latest article titled “The Redirection,” has uncovered that the Bush regime is covertly funneling funds earmarked for Iraq’s reconstruction into fomenting sectarian violence and igniting civil wars in the region. Their underlying intention is to create enough chaos so that they can reconfigure the Middle East and thereby achieve their geo-political aim of seizing the oil and natural gas reserves in the region. Please see This is truly a diabolical act of modern-day global piracy writ large on the world stage that is utterly perverse.

Pirates (and I am referring not to the romanticized Hollywood version, but to those who commit criminal acts of theft and violence against others, a.k.a., piracy) are symbolic of a macho, testosterone-driven pathological figure in the human psyche that, just like a bully, abuses power over others because they can. They pillage and murder simply because others can’t stop them, which is morally indefensible. Pirates are not merely criminally insane, they are morally insane. Pirates are truly sociopathic, as they have no conscience. They have become possessed by the power-drive of the shadow, which compels them to transgress and violate individuals’ (or nations’) boundaries. Pirates are driven to dominate and enslave others, as they act out the shadow of which they themselves are possessed. Pirates are symbolic of a virulent element in the human psyche which has become addicted to power and taken over by greed and lust for blood and booty.

Pirates are malignant narcissists, as they only care about their own masturbatory fantasies - they see the world as something they are entitled to loot and symbolically rape. They believe they can get away with murder – literally. Like a genuine sociopath, pirates lack the facility to empathically see through their victim’s eyes. Like a true predator, these privateers relate to others as objects from whom they can try to satisfy their never-ending hedonistic desire for pleasure. When pirates seize power, they do what is best for themselves, with no regard for anyone else – those who don’t support their dark vision get metaphorically “thrown overboard.”

Pirates symbolize the pathological figure of the predator who gets fed and even energized by doing violence to others. Pirates are an incarnation of the role of perpetrator or abuser, as they are the initiators of aggression based on their own insatiable blood-lust. Pirates are symbolic of the murderous insanity of the separate self, as in their marauding violence they are completely and utterly asleep to our interconnectedness.

Pirates are embodiments of the pathological aspect of our species that is susceptible to joining into lawless gangs so as to prey on and steal from those who are weaker. Because of the fact that these gangsters always configure themselves into groups, they are like organized crime syndicates. Pirates operate outside the restricting laws of conventional bureaucracy, as they live by a different set of rules than everyone else. They are true outlaws, as they live outside the law.

If it sounds like I am describing George Bush and Co., it is because Bush and his henchmen are unconsciously possessed by, and therefore embodying and pathologically acting out on the world stage the mythical, archetypal role of pirate. Pirates are symbolic of the archetypal quality of “evil”, one of whose inner meanings, etymologically speaking, is to “transgress boundaries”. Bush and Co. have become instruments for darker powers to incarnate themselves into our world. The figure of pirate is an archetypal, mythic image that re-presents and symbolizes a darker, sick, sadistic and self-destructive part of ourselves.

It is like we are on a ship that Bush and Cheney have hijacked (the word “plane hijacker” in French is “pirate de l’air”; we can thus call Bush and Co. “pirate de la planete” – planet hijacker). They literally hijacked – stole – both the 2000 and the 2004 elections. When these planetary pirates – and those that support them - took over our country, it was as if they perpetrated a political coup, hijacking our ship of state, and in so doing many people fell under their spell such that they barely noticed. In a form of mass mind-control, part of their coup was to take over the mainstream media in such a way so as to put out propaganda aimed at convincing people that no hostile takeover had even taken place. Bush and Co. are modern-day corporate pirates in possession of the most cutting edge mind-control technology the world has ever known.

Bush and Co. have “captured” our nation – and “captivated” the minds of millions of our populace – brainwashing people by playing on their fear. We must recognize our complicity in allowing these depraved warlords to rule over us, otherwise we are unwittingly serving and supporting them as if they are our masters. Their power over us depends upon our being dis-connected from each other as well as from ourselves. We play right into their hands if we believe ourselves to be so disempowered. Their worst nightmare would be for us to connect with our intrinsic creative power as well as each other.

Having seized control of our country, they have emptied the coffers of our national treasury, and enlisted our nation into serving their barbaric ends. We need to recognize the extent of the Bush regime’s utter criminality. In a universal court of law, those committing piracy are considered to be “hostis humani generic”, a Latin term which translates as “enemies of humanity.” In essence, pirates like Bush have declared war against humanity, who they hold in contempt.

From the dreaming point of view, whose logic is not linear but synchronistic, it is not a coincidence that Bush is a member of “Skull and Bones,” which is the very symbol of piracy. Nor is it an accident that pirates are “carousers,” which Bush was for the majority of his life and still is, just in disguised form. It is like Bush is on a weekend bender that has lasted over six years, and the world is his crime scene.

If it sounds like I am “blaming” Bush and his administration, I say “yes”, I am blaming them - I am blaming them for immoral, criminal acts which they are guilty of perpetrating on humanity and for which they deserve to be blamed. It is a huge mistake to be one-sidedly identified with the expansive, overly spiritual new-age point of view that there’s no one to blame, that we are all responsible. Yes, on one level, we are all co-creating and dreaming up this universe together, which is to say we are all complicit in different ways in what is playing out and there is no one to blame. But to be fully identified with this absolute point of view is to marginalize that from another very real point of view, relatively speaking, there are people who are perpetrating violence and abuse onto others. It is the most compassionate thing to do at these moments of abuse to not pretend the violence is something other than what it is.

One of the unconscious, shadow sides of the well-intentioned spiritual, progressive and liberal movements is to be hesitant to cast blame when it is the very skillful and enlightened response which is called for. Those who are perpetrating violence have a name and an address. This doesn’t mean we don’t love them, and have compassion for them, and forgive them. It does mean, however, that we stop them from perpetrating further abuse if we are able and hold them accountable for their actions. People who are compulsively enacting violence in the world will not stop voluntarily, they are literally crying out for and dreaming up other people who are courageous enough to set a boundary and stop their out of control and ultimately self-destructive behavior.

It is important for us to realize that Bush and Cheney are only the front-men for the organized crime syndicate of pirates which they serve and represent. Bush and Cheney are merely actors in a grand play. It is important to get in focus the roles they are playing. We can pick our own metaphors (criminals, mad, ignorant, fascists, possessed by demons, etc), whichever one works for you is fine. The point is for us to get into focus and “see” the evil that Bush and Cheney are actually doing; this is the last thing they want.

Sometimes clearly seeing what is happening is the very act which spontaneously activates and mobilizes effective action. Bush and Co. have a distinct advantage if we don’t recognize their predator-like nature. We can’t possibly be able to meet their challenge unless we clearly discern what we are up against. The more of us that see the danger confronting us the better, as we can then creatively join forces in a way which actively empowers us to successfully meet the crisis we are facing.
