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There was a very acidic article in yesterday’s Independant (mirrored here) on the Arms fair taking place next week. Yes, it is that time of year where all the cowboys of the world can meet to talk guns’n’things - supported by more than £1,000,000 of tax payers money for security. Why the fuck do they need security by the police, these Guys have serious anti-riot gear at hand (including 6 BattleShips in the dock!!!)… Here are some exerpts from the article:

The last time this fair took place was two years ago, when it began on 11 September and carried on seamlessly, undaunted by events elsewhere. There must be people who still say: “I’ll never for the rest of my life forget 11 September 2001. That’s the day I sold three Apache helicopters to the Hungarian air force - I got pissed that night, I can tell you.” Though to be fair, when they heard 3,000 people had been killed, they probably thought: “Amateurs.”

If pressed, arms dealers may try the other approach, which is to claim that the tanks sold to Indonesia “aren’t used for repression”. Presumably they use them for rolling pastry. When it emerged that British Scorpion tanks were used by the Indonesian army to attack Aceh separatists, the British government explained that Indonesia had “promised” it wouldn’t. And how were we to know they’d break their promise? This government could sell Vlad the Impaler a truck full of impaling sticks, then say: “But he’s promised not to use them for impaling.”

If you claimed British Aerospace could launch a cruise missile attack in 45 minutes, you’d be surrounded by salesmen insisting it would only take 30 seconds. So they’re bang to rights.

One third of the world’s governments have been invited, and there’s great excitement at the possibility of deals being struck with regimes such as Syria, Turkey and Indonesia. The excuse offered to any moral objection is the old favorite: “If we didn’t sell them arms, somebody else would.” Which is perhaps a line of Defense the prisoners of Guantanamo Bay ought to try - “Oh, come on, if we didn’t blow up your embassies, somebody else would.”

Yes, finally back to the weblog, with rather uninteresting confirmation that contracts in Iraq to Haliburton were much bigger than previously officially estimated.

See enough $ figure to make an accountant orgasm here

Why can Bush get away with talking such crap. Well, this article gives some support to the idea that people have low expectation of Bush making any sense, and so fill in the gaps of logic themselves. Doesn’t that disturb anyone? The populace ignores the fact that Bush talks rubbish - how else do you describe the statement:

“And we gave him [Hussein] a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn’t let them in”?

And very few people complain or pick up on it. I listened to Bush a couple of days ago when he gave his press conference, and what an enormously confused and unintelligable meandering collection of words that was. Other Bush munchkins, like Rumsfeld and particularly Powell - are very eloquent and convincing (even if I am opposed to many of their assertions). But how can anyone support Bush - he is a clown. A clown with a big gun…

I haven’t written for a long time, the intertwined tendrils of life stopping me updating. I have many things to catch up on. First off, I missed writing about the retraction by The Guardian on the suggestion that Straw and Powell had a skeptical meeting over WMD evidence. The whole affair seems quite strange in that the retraction seems incomplete, and Straw’s denials were not related to the piece; as usual The Lincoln Plawg has much to say on the issue.

Secondly, an interesting poll by PIPA on US citizens perceptions after the war show that over a third of them thought the US had already found WMD!!! And 22% had believed that the Iraqis has used biological/chemical weapons during the war. Nice to see US citizens keeping well informed on the ‘true’ state of affairs (i.e. those dictated by official Government positions). The author of the poll “(see the questions here)”:http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/Iraq/Iraqqaire_5_03.pdf suggests people ” desire to reduce cognitive dissonance “ over the whole contentious issue, and is is so nice to see citizens dumbing down to make the Governments hard work spinning wars so much easier.

When the wind blows… The so-called “Waldorf transcripts”, made by an unknown diplomat over a meeting between Jack Straw and Colin Powell on Feb 5th 2003, suggest that both men were wary about the available evidence about Iraq’s WMD (see here for the Guardian article). This is yet another blast on the house of cards built in support of the war.

The wind just doesn’t die down does it? The ‘intelligence’ that the twisted evil™ Iraq monsters under the command of Arch-villain Saddam were so morally corrupt that they were going to use chemical weapons to defend Baghdad was also a load of old stinking horse shit.

Of course, now that the deed has been done, with the deaths of some 5-10’000 civilians, some 13’500-43’000 soldiers (who have parents and brothers/sisters, aunts and partners remember?), the long term deaths caused by unexploded ordinance, the destruction of the core bureaucratic infrastructure (158 of the 160 buildings were looted and burned), the looting of museums and libraries including priceless artifacts, the wilful vandalism by American soldiers of precious archeological sites, and the general profound human trauma that violence and war brings, Paul Wolfowitz has told us that, well, you know, the Bush Munchkins also did it to remove troops from Saudi Arabia. Couldn’t they just pulled troops from Saudi first?

And if one wants an independent enquiry in which the Government of the UK can be made accountable over this charade, then you may as well forget it. The committee which is the only authorised way to question the intelligence community, is accountable to Tony Blair and not Parliament, and Emperor Blair can veto its recommendations. Watch him duck, watch him dive, watch him spin - but you’ll never catch him…

If this is true, then simply fuck the US administration to hell and back

The transcript of a wonderful speech gave by Arundhati Roy can be found here. Here are some snatches:

U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft recently declared that U.S. freedoms are “not the grant of any government or document, but?.our endowment from God.” (Why bother with the United Nations when God himself is on hand?) So here we are, the people of the world, confronted with an Empire armed with a mandate from heaven (and, as added insurance, the most formidable arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in history). Here we are, confronted with an Empire that has conferred upon itself the right to go to war at will, and the right to deliver people from corrupting ideologies, from religious fundamentalists, dictators, sexism, and poverty by the age-old, tried-and-tested practice of extermination. Empire is on the move, and Democracy is its sly new war cry. Democracy, home-delivered to your doorstep by daisy cutters. Death is a small price for people to pay for the privilege of sampling this new product: Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy (bring to a boil, add oil, then bomb).

The last building on the ORHA list of 16 sites to be protected was the Ministry of Oil. It was the only one that was given protection. Perhaps the occupying army thought that in Muslim countries lists are read upside down?

Television tells us that Iraq has been “liberated” and that Afghanistan is well on its way to becoming a paradise for women-thanks to Bush and Blair, the 21st century’s leading feminists. In reality, Iraq’s infrastructure has been destroyed. Its people brought to the brink of starvation. Its food stocks depleted. And its cities devastated by a complete administrative breakdown. Iraq is being ushered in the direction of a civil war between Shias and Sunnis. Meanwhile, Afghanistan has lapsed back into the pre-Taliban era of anarchy, and its territory has been carved up into fiefdoms by hostile warlords.

Undaunted by all this, on the 2nd of May Bush the Lesser launched his 2004 campaign hoping to be finally elected U.S. President. In what probably constitutes the shortest flight in history, a military jet landed on an aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, which was so close to shore that, according to the Associated Press, administration officials acknowledged “positioning the massive ship to provide the best TV angle for Bush’s speech, with the sea as his background instead of the San Diego coastline.” President Bush, who never served his term in the military, emerged from the cockpit in fancy dress - a U.S. military bomber jacket, combat boots, flying goggles, helmet. Waving to his cheering troops, he officially proclaimed victory over Iraq. He was careful to say that it was “just one victory in a war on terror ? [which] still goes on.”

It was important to avoid making a straightforward victory announcement, because under the Geneva Convention a victorious army is bound by the legal obligations of an occupying force, a responsibility that the Bush administration does not want to burden itself with. Also, closer to the 2004 elections, in order to woo wavering voters, another victory in the “War on Terror” might become necessary.

The Washington-based Center for Public Integrity found that 9 out of the 30 members of the Defense Policy Board are connected to companies that were awarded defense contracts worth 76 billion dollars between the years 2001 and 2002. One of them, Jack Sheehan, a retired Marine Corps general, is a senior vice president at Bechtel, the giant international engineering outfit. Riley Bechtel, the company chairman, is on the President’s Export Council. Former Secretary of State George Shultz, who is also on the Board of Directors of the Bechtel Group, is the chairman of the advisory board of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. When asked by the New York Times whether he was concerned about the appearance of a conflict of interest, he said, “I don’t know that Bechtel would particularly benefit from it. But if there’s work to be done, Bechtel is the type of company that could do it.”

Well, the amazing saga of Clare Short’s position over the Gulf War has come to an end. She has managed to upset both the pro-war (through being clearly against the Iraq invasion), and the anti-war (through not resigning when she said she would) groups. I felt betrayed by her when she stood with the Government - her rebellion then would have probably secured another group of votes against the war (on what was already a massive revolt), but probably not enough to cause a vote of confidence in Tony Blair or (because of the war-mongering right wing support) - a lost vote. Maybe trying to make up for the damage to her anti-war position, she has launched a scathing attack on Tony Blair and the current mess that is Iraq. This is how she summarised in her resignation letter:

“As you know, I thought the run-up to the conflict in Iraq was mishandled, but I agreed to stay in the government to help support the reconstruction effort for the people of Iraq.
I am afraid that the assurances you gave me about the need for a UN mandate to establish a legitimate Iraqi government have been breached.
The security council resolution that you and Jack [Straw, the foreign secretary] have so secretly negotiated contradicts the assurance I have given in the House of Commons and elsewhere about the legal authority of the occupying powers, and the need for a UN-led process to establish a legitimate Iraqi government. This makes my position impossible.”

For all the flaws of the development process, she was a brilliant at her job as International Development secretary. She had hoped that post-Iraq War, that the UK Government could influence the US to open up to a more multilateral and responsible approach (rather naive, eh Clare?). She obviously hadn’t bothered reading very much about the crooks currently in the White House, or had hoped the American democratic process could temper the Bush Boys in their dirty game.

Perle has been accused AGAIN of a conflict of interest with his role on the Pentagon advisory board (he gave private seminars on how to profit from the war!). This is really getting a habit for poor Perle (see here for how his Libel suit againts all those bad journalists bothering him is going)…

On related news, the ever-sweet munchkin Rumsfeld seems to be in a similar boat to Perle who as director of his former company was involved in a $200million deal for a nuclear reactor with North Korea in 2000, yet is now trying to convice us that the very same regime is evil. Well, rummy boy, been dealing with ‘pure evil®’ incarnate have you, not really something an uprighteous Christian who pontificates about good and evil (and uses such speech to justify unleashing devestating wars) should really be doing?…

Completing the Munchkin-Kabal, it appears that a subsidiary of Cheney’s old firm Haliburton (who still pay him a suspected $1million annually) are actually operating oilfields in Iraq and have permission to ‘distribute the goods’ (i.e. sell the oil!). They have also been accused of running offshore subsiduaries to trade with ‘rogue’ states, and finally they have been paying millions of dollars in bribes to Nigerian officials.

Keep the good work up boys…

Nice to see the boys getting their pay in Iraq. The man chosen to lead the rebuilding of Iraqi agriculture is the former executive of the biggest grain exporting company in America. Oxfam considers it the equivalent of placing Saddam Hussein as chair of a human rights committe!!! There would have been many other candidates to choose from among the vibrant US NGO groups. We know the wolves have been at the carcass of the Oil industry, but it looks as if little else will be left after the bones are stripped clean anywhere else. The people of Iraq should have a say in how their economy is integrated into world markets, but the US obviously has better ideas. Being forced to march through the complex minefield of neo-liberal economics is not the only way Iraq can rebuild, but with a gun pointed at its forehead, Iraq has little alternative…

{conspiracy-theory warning!} I am being patient before my full out rant about the total lack of evidence for WMD. Yes, I would have assumed that the ‘thousands’ of tons of chemical and biological agents should have bee tripped over by now. But I think the US are patiently waiting, setting up some credible scenario of discovered weapons. I know this is all so ‘conspiracy-theory’ - but they can’t afford to not find weapons. A spectacular find will smoothly oil the justification for the war (future ones too). And as anyone knows, a good show needs good planning. They will hold off on UN inspectors, but bring them in once everything is set up just right, to try to bring a soupçon of respectability to the whole thing. The article in the Times yesterday was a little more forward in it’s many worries about this whole scenario:

“On Hoon’s account, the regime was organised and skilful enough to dismantle, transport and hide all these weapons beyond the detective skills of US forces, and yet so disorganised that it could not retrieve and deploy even one.”

The US/UK are desperately treading water at the moment, hoping to hold out until the big cruise ship (courtesy of the Ministry of Truth) comes and rescues them. How’s that for a cynical point of view?

[1] That’s weapons of mass destruction - not odd boxes of vials of out of date chemical agents, or unprepared shells, or pieces of old French Brie to use with slingshots, or whatever else they pass off as WMD…

I know that Robert Fisk can drive many pro-war supporters livid with rage. They find him graphic at an almost pornographic level, and claim his words are fatally skewed by his political perspective. I rarely see that; I find him sometimes prone to bluntly unsubtle writing, but it seems to come from a deep well of passion and anger from the things he sees that channels into his writing. He often writes as few others do, able to deeply sketch out the personal and the tragic from a situation. He is, at heart, a humanist; a perspective which in this age of military jargon and staid political analysis is so desperately needed. You don’t read Fisk to understand the geo-political details - but to feel the deep pain that such policies lead to in fellow human beings. This is something we got plenty of for the victims of September 11th, personal details that tore at the heart strings, but never got for the victims in Afghanistan and rarely get now for Iraqis killed by US-UK forces. Here is Fisk detailing the market bombing in Baghdad:

It was an outrage, an obscenity. The severed hand on the metal door, the swamp of blood and mud across the road, the human brains inside a garage, the incinerated, skeletal remains of an Iraqi mother and her three small children in their still-smouldering car.
Two missiles from an American jet killed them all - by my estimate, more than 20 Iraqi civilians, torn to pieces before they could be ‘liberated’ by the nation that destroyed their lives. Who dares, I ask myself, to call this ‘collateral damage’? Abu Taleb Street was packed with pedestrians and motorists when the American pilot approached through the dense sandstorm that covered northern Baghdad in a cloak of red and yellow dust and rain yesterday morning.
It’s a dirt-poor neighbourhood, of mostly Shia Muslims, the same people whom Messrs Bush and Blair still fondly hope will rise up against President Saddam Hussein, a place of oil- sodden car-repair shops, overcrowded apartments and cheap cafes. Everyone I spoke to heard the plane. One man, so shocked by the headless corpses he had just seen, could say only two words. “Roar, flash,” he kept saying and then closed his eyes so tight that the muscles rippled between them…

See also Jo Wilding here. Both articles are about the same piece of news, but Fisk’s writing elevates his personal description over the Guardian piece.

George Monbiot, in this article suggests that the US Government should be somewhat careful when they accuse Iraqis of contravening the Geneva convention:

This being so, Rumsfeld had better watch his back. For this enthusiastic convert to the cause of legal warfare is, as head of the defence department, responsible for a series of crimes sufficient, were he ever to be tried, to put him away for the rest of his natural life.

His prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, in Cuba, where 641 men (nine of whom are British citizens) are held, breaches no fewer than 15 articles of the third convention. The US government broke the first of these (article 13) as soon as the prisoners arrived, by displaying them, just as the Iraqis have done, on television. In this case, however, they were not encouraged to address the cameras. They were kneeling on the ground, hands tied behind their backs, wearing blacked-out goggles and earphones. In breach of article 18, they had been stripped of their own clothes and deprived of their possessions. They were then interned in a penitentiary (against article 22), where they were denied proper mess facilities (26), canteens (28), religious premises (34), opportunities for physical exercise (38), access to the text of the convention (41), freedom to write to their families (70 and 71) and parcels of food and books (72).

They were not “released and repatriated without delay after the cessation of active hostilities” (118), because, the US authorities say, their interrogation might, one day, reveal interesting information about al-Qaida. Article 17 rules that captives are obliged to give only their name, rank, number and date of birth. No “coercion may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever”. In the hope of breaking them, however, the authorities have confined them to solitary cells and subjected them to what is now known as ‘torture lite’: sleep deprivation and constant exposure to bright light. Unsurprisingly, several of the prisoners have sought to kill themselves, by smashing their heads against the walls or trying to slash their wrists with plastic cutlery.

The US government claims that these men are not subject to the Geneva conventions, as they are not “prisoners of war”, but “unlawful combatants”. The same claim could be made, with rather more justice, by the Iraqis holding the US soldiers who illegally invaded their country. But this redefinition is itself a breach of article 4 of the third convention, under which people detained as suspected members of a militia (the Taliban) or a volunteer corps (al-Qaida) must be regarded as prisoners of war.

Even if there is doubt about how such people should be classified, article 5 insists that they “shall enjoy the protection of the present convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal”. But when, earlier this month, lawyers representing 16 of them demanded a court hearing, the US court of appeals ruled that as Guantanamo Bay is not sovereign US territory, the men have no constitutional rights. Many of these prisoners appear to have been working in Afghanistan as teachers, engineers or aid workers. If the US government either tried or released them, its embarrassing lack of evidence would be brought to light.

Here is the Geneva convention for perusal. And here are some more detailed resources.

A photo of a Prisoner from Afghanistan shown by the Americans, along with the hypocritical Rumsfeld quote:

What an amazing and sobering day. Spontaneous anti-war happenings were occurring all over London. I arrived by about 2.30pm to be blocked by police at Holborn. A group of about 250 (mostly) Bengali Kids were marching through London (from the East End), on the way to Parliament Square, but the police obviously didn’t expect people to start congregating so early, and so rushed the grunts (low ranking police) to try to stop people marching. The police were in quite a state of disarray, not least because they were having to fight against children! The Bengali kids were amazing, really full of their rights to march, and horror at what was happing. They started surging towards the police, to their obvious shock. They started fighting (imagine these tiny 8-14 year old’s attacking police), and within 1-2minutes they broke through police lines. The police were stupid and reckless to have stopped the march to express our disgust at the Government.

The police had to hastily close off all routes to Parliament Square apart from one, and there were school children everywhere. This was at about 4pm. The atmosphere was wonderful, music provided my 2 mobile sound systems (on bikes), and the (now common) broad spectrum of the young, the old,
families, feminists, radicals, mild-mannered English, well the works… Everyone was so energised, and the feeling so unified. The kids started clashing with the police as they (police) were denying entry to another group, and they had (apparently) hit a Bengali girl. That was tense, and the police had decided to treat the kids just as they would any other, violence to keep their line. Quite shameful really, and it only antagonised the crowd more. As usual the police were enacting quite pointless crowd control policies (of course the front-line police are just following orders - but the Commanding Officers are often wholly inflexible[1]). I would never personally fight with anyone, but I can sympathise wholly with my fellow demonstrators. I also know the police are just following orders, but there is still a subtle issue about personal ‘responsibility’. And it is the case that the police can get away with exceptional amounts of brutality without ever being accountable[2], because the police themselves investigate police brutality (hmmm, hardly impartial!)

Concerning the police, a couple of days ago when Parliament was voting to go to war, we were outside the Houses of Commons (and the police had tried to break up the group), and I was with my friends Gabriele, Cecilia and Yolanda. As the vote finished and politicians were making their way out, They would walk through the protesters, and one of them bumped into my friend Gabriele, a police officer immediately came to him and warned him of not obstructing (although the politician had bumped into many of us as it was a ‘crowd’. So we moved out of harms way not to provoke them any more, and a few minutes later, the same police came up and warned Gabriele again, and again he was doing nothing (well, chanting ‘peace not war’ or something). Then another 3 police officer stood behind him, while the other was standing some way in front but staring him out, obviously trying to work him up. At this point we just left, as it wasn’t worth that kind of interaction. This is probably what (some) police do when they’re bored in what was an otherwise wholly peaceful gathering…


[1]e.g. On the night of the Parliamentary vote, 25 police officers blocked 5 demonstrators entry to the demonstration for over 2 hours! What a waste of resources…
[2] See here for information on a documentary outlining such brutality.

I feel so tired. The bombs are finally falling, and this disturbing process, the daily twists and turns, the optimistic hopes against the backdrop of inevitability, the measured rhetoric and passion on both sides, have come to a crashing halt. I am now being asked to ‘support our troops’ - but they are not mine in any way other than the taxes I have paid to fund them. They are enacting a policy that I believe is deeply flawed, and are responsible on an individual level for those they kill. They are doing their job, but ‘their job’ is to kill people - Why should I value the life of a British soldier more than the Iraqi conscript he is being paid in cash to kill?

I am not a pacifist[1], but this process of lies and deciet - the facts (propaganda) shown to be desperately fabricated - threats shown to be nothing more than smoke and mirrors, and the outright stupidity of many of Bush’s statements (and ever-changing goals) make this a deeply depressing and sad time. I have thought deeply on some of the more cogent arguments for War, and some have been/are worth considering . But the overall balance is so stacked by the transparent arrogance and mal-intent of Bush and his Boys, that this war can only be seen in the sick light cast by the chickenhawks running the show. They don’t give a shit about ‘liberation’, about ‘freedom’ , about ‘democracy’^[2]. They do care about total geo-political control

I hope those opposed to this war can gather their energy to make our opposition known. There are so many questions remaining. The issue of the Kurds and Turkey, the length Iraqis will hold out, whether the US will target Civilian installations like water processing as they did so callously did Gulf War MkI. Here is a report today suggesting that the US intelligence services fed misleading information to the weapons inspectors - one more small stone in the wall of belligerence and utter contempt the US administration built over the diplomatic process.


[1] Well, not intellectually anyway - emotionally however I find it almost impossible to become ‘violent’ - I can’t hit another human being even if I may think it would be the right thing to do. Of course given a desperate enough situation I’m sure I could be pushed.
[2] e.g. Kurds in Turkey, Palestinians in the occupied territories, using allies such as Kuwait & Saudi Arabia etc. etc. etc.

The ever lovable, tactful and delicate little Bush munchkin, Donald Rumsfeld, seems to dislike the constraints placed on the US by those horrible international treaties banning the use of chemical weapons in war time. Tsk tsk, poor munchkin…
Rumsfeld Suggests use of ‘Non-Lethal’ Chemical Agents

Some nice background on the current bidding for reconstruction projects in relation to a subsidiary of Haliburton, who is still paying a suspected $1million dollars annually to US vice-president Dick Cheney. Cheney, money making, and the war

Rather obviously (building on Bush’s previous lies), the evidence of Iraq trying to get uranium in the last few years to make a bomb is another load of outright fabrication:

Britain/US uses Fabricated Evidence against Iraq

The article suggests that there is no evidence suggesting that it was British/US intelligence services who were responsible, but that leaves me feeling rather cold. Why, exactly, would Niger (the country involved) fabricate evidence it was purposefully selling nuclear material to Iraq when it wasn’t? Surely the agent with the most to gain is the USA/UK, who benefits greatly from wave after wave of half-truths and outright lies propagating through media channels. Then, when the fabricated nature of the ‘facts’ are exposed, the west can simply claim it had no part in its fabrication (or the media just blanks it as ‘uninteresting’ news). So a small UN body can easily reveal flaws in information that the heavily funded and far more ‘connected’ intelligence services fail to? I think either out-right fabrication or a cynical faked ‘ignorance’ over the dubious sources is much closer the mark. The governments of the USA and UK have been desperately searching for anything as evidence, and this is just a further depressing marker of such propaganda.

Oh, and IAEA completely dismissed the repeated major accusations by Bush and Powell that Aluminium tubes were being purchased by Iraq to make centrifuges for a nuclear weapons program (see here).

Aren’t you simply delighted to hear that the British tax-payer picked up almost £1 Billion in military and civil credit sales losses from the Gulf War MkI. The article in the Guardian highlights those firms gleefully doing business with the Butcher of Baghdad with full complicity from the British Goverment (then under the Thatcher Junta). More amazing for me in my naive view of the world, is why we citizens have to pick up the pieces when big businesses wiling to deal with tyrants have their deals bomb. If I give all my savings to a known criminal hoping to make a bit of extra dosh, and he then runs with the money, will the Government cover me too? Money hungry and unscrupulous power-sharks (i.e. probably all of the military-industrial ‘complex’) must simply love these pure risk free opportunities - like something you see in the unclassified ads at the back of a dodgy investment magazine, except they are guaranteed to work…

Simon Tisdall has written an interesting opinion piece in the Guardian this morning about the complicity of war. Based on a super-condensed micro-history of US and global conflict, he suggests that many nations are playing to enhance their hand, to bluff one way hoping for a rich pay-off in another. Turkey has potentially won hansomely (in a financial sense), but others are still playing. It crystallizes a feeling I have over this situation in an nice (if limited) metaphor. The world (i.e. citizens, not rulers) watch on in this macabre and horrific game being played supposedly for their benefit. But, just like the Casino which never loses, the same will undoubtably happen with this situation, those most powerful will reap the richest rewards.

I find the human shields building up in Iraq fascinating. I am somewhat disappointed by the facile criticism one often hears about them (idiots supporting Saddam), as that collapses down the complex nature and substance of this endeavour (i.e. right or wrong, the human story unfolding interests me). This article reveals some information about one of them, with additional info on a few others. I would be too paralysed by doubts one way or the other over this complex mess to feel such absolute conviction, but I hugely respect their courage to follow through on their principles. I nevertheless feel that the US will simply bomb installations regardless of human shields, and that they will sadly die in vain. I really do hope I am wrong.

update: recent comments by General Franks suggest that human shields will make little difference…

Robert Fisk is in fine form in this article from the Independant. No specific focus, just the passionate railing that Fisk is best at.

Here they go again,
The Yanks in their armoured parade
Chanting their ballads of joy
As they gallop across the big world
Praising America’s God.

The gutters are clogged with the dead
The ones who couldn’t join in
The others refusing to sing
The ones who are losing their voice
The ones who’ve forgotten the tune.

The riders have whips which cut.
Your head rolls onto the sand
Your head is a pool in the dirt
Your head is a stain in the dust
Your eyes have gone out and your nose
Sniffs only the pong of the dead
And all the dead air is alive
With the smell of America’s God.

words: Harold Pinter | photo: Peter Turnley | sentiments: Robert Fisk

Chicago Council has voted 46-1 in opposition of a pre-emptive assault on Iraq. Apparently, they follow a number of other cities like San Francisco. It is a shame such news of grass roots opposition in the US is so sparcely reported about.

In related news, in an informal poll by Time Magazine (Europe) over who is the greatest threat to world peace, the United States is currently running on 81% percent of the vote! (219,085 votes cast). Drop in and lend your support to stop North Korea or Iraq from being so disgracefully shown up (they ARE evil rogue states after all…)

A nice cynical kick from an article on some more reasons to attack Iraq:

“Anxious to get on with the invasion of Iraq, a conflict in which the U.S. president has threatened to use nuclear weapons, Bush last week came up with a new reason to invade. “An attack from (Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein or a surrogate of Saddam Hussein would cripple our economy,” Bush told reporters at his Texas ranch. “Our economy is strong, it’s resilient, we’ve got to continue to make it strong and resilient. This economy cannot afford to stand an attack”. Why rely on the old tools of monetary and fiscal policy to shore up a stagnant economy when pre-emptive nuclear attack is quicker and more reliable?”
“It is one thing to argue that Iraq poses a threat to the survival of the U.S. and its allies (a case that has never been substantiated); but it is quite another to argue that the West has the right to kill tens of thousands of people in another country in order to keep the economy over here resilient.”
“Axworthy implies that by invading Iraq, the West would be doing the Iraqi people a favour. But he never explains how he knows this. How can he possibly know what most Iraqis would choose, given the options of continuing to live under Saddam or facing an imminent U.S. military attack in which members of their family might actually die? But then we’re getting a little off topic from the real issues - like what impact a U.S. invasion would have on consumer confidence, the turn-out at the mall and the overall resilience of the U.S. economy.”

See it here.

Although I sometimes have problems with some of Robert Fisk’s writing, there is a bullish piece in the Independant that raises a number of important points - particularly relating to Algeria:
bq. “But no American or British newspaper has dared to investigate another, almost equally dangerous, relationship that the present US administration is forging behind our backs: with the military-supported regime in Algeria. For 10 years now, one of the world’s dirtiest wars has been fought out in this country, supposedly between “Islamists” and “security forces”, in which almost 200,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed. But over the past five years there has been growing evidence that elements of those same security forces were involved in some of the bloodiest massacres, including the throat-cutting of babies. The Independent has published the most detailed reports of Algerian police torture and of the extrajudicial executions of women as well as men. Yet the US, as part of its obscene “war on terror”, has cosied up to the Algerian regime. It is helping to re-arm Algeria’s army and promised more assistance. William Burns, the US Assistant Secretary of State for the Middle East, announced that Washington ‘has much to learn from Algeria on ways to fight terrorism’”
p. Get it here…
p. [note: I find the reference to slitting babies throats particularly unsubtle writing - it stands out in the paragraph and seems a clear jouralistic ploy to appeal to the reader. Actually I find any reference to ‘children’ and ‘old people’ deeply problematic - as if raping an old woman is somehow more barbaric than raping a 20 year-old. Why do the deaths of children mean more than those of ‘normal’ adults? These are such stupid and facile sentiments, yet they pervade throughout these kinds of discourses.]

A nice summary article on the posturing and manipulation of the Bush Sr. administration for the gulf war (mk. I):
bq. “When Iraqi troops invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990, the first President Bush likened it to Nazi Germany’s occupation of the Rhineland. “If history teaches us anything, it is that we must resist aggression or it will destroy our freedoms,” he declared. The administration leaked reports that tens of thousands of Iraqi troops were massing on the border of Saudi Arabia in preparation for an invasion of the world’s major oil fields. The globe’s industrial economies would be held hostage if Iraq succeeded.
The reality was different. Two Soviet satellite photos obtained by the St. Petersburg Times raised questions about such a buildup of Iraqi troops. Neither the CIA nor the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency viewed an Iraqi attack on Saudi Arabia as probable. The administration’s estimate of Iraqi troop strength was also grossly exaggerated. After the war, Newsday’s Susan Sachs called Iraq the phantom enemy “The bulk of the mighty Iraqi army, said to number more than 500,000 in Kuwait and southern Iraq, couldn’t be found.”
Students of the Gulf War largely agree that Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait was primarily motivated by specific historical grievances, not by Hitler-style ambitions. Like most Iraqi rulers before him, Hussein refused to accept borders drawn by Britain after World War I that virtually cut Iraq off from the Gulf. Iraq also chafed at Kuwait’s demand that Iraq repay loans made to it during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. Administration officials seemed to understand all this. In July 1990, U.S. Ambassador to Baghdad April Glaspie told Hussein that Washington had “no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait,” a statement she later regretted.”
See the full article here.

I found it very interesting to see the following letter written to President Clinton in 1998 “(see here).”:http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm Co-signed by several of Bush’s current cabinet members (most notably Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz), it clearly states a pre-emptive attack on Iraq for ‘our interests’ was highly desired. I was, of course, aware of the long-standing positions of Wolfowitz and the other Hawks, but it reads so amazingly ‘transparently’: “It hardly needs to be added that if Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil will all be put at hazard.” I don’t know why Saddam’s ‘weapons-of-mass-destruction’ leave me feeling somewhat cold - maybe I should believe the media frenzy. I know that his Nuclear weapons capability is clearly over-propagandised. I also don’t buy into the caricature of Saddam as a foaming-at-the-mouth psychopath. He is a brutal dictator just as many other leaders in the middle-east. Why does he pose any more threat to ‘us’, unless, as the CIA themselves suggested, we back him into a corner. This whole thing makes me so very disappointed. What makes me truly scared, however, is the organisation this letter is written by. They are clearly concerned in maintaining total American world dominance through raising the already vastly inflated levels of military spending of the US, and an aggressive, arrogant and wholly ignorant preemptive foreign policy.

If the content of these comics weren’t so true, they may even be funny. They capture the absurdity and surreal nature of this awful situation. Subtle they are not, but they capture the latent driving force that nestles beneath the phoney talk of good vs. evil. Click on the picture to link to the site.

Walking around London a few days ago, I saw many Evening Standard (the London local newspaper) posters for their headline story “Saddam Close to A-Bomb”, and later overhearing people talking on the bus confirmed to me that this story has had a clear effect on reassuring people that war is a ‘good thing’. So, when I read an op-ed article by the bulletin of atomic scientists I was really disappointed. Now, I know (I do know) I should realise how easy it is to use propaganda to sway public opinion, but this personal experience gave me the inside-view of how directly it affects individual people’s views. It makes me truly disappointed, especially as I don’t suppose the alternate views expressed by these scientists will get to have anywhere near the same impact as the original scaremongering…