Iraq Reverting to Police State.

In The Shock Doctrine Naomi Klein convincingly shows that the US following the 2003 invasion had no desire for Iraq to become a democracy and it was only by mass protests (that the western media ignored) that the Iraqis got democratic elections. Well Iraqis have been doing mass protests throughout the Arab Spring, albeit for improved conditions and not regime change. Again the western media have studiously ignored it, Iraq is "liberated" and "democratic" so to report on protests would show how inaccurate all their previous reporting has been. Even more depressingly US trained Iraqi security forces are cracking down on the free press within the country.

It would seem that the US is attempting to make Iraq into the puppet dictatorship they always wanted it to be. Though to be fair as Chomsky pointed out the US will endeavour to return all the rebellious countries in the region to client dictatorships.

Vindication for Mr Greenwald.

Hot on the heels of Glenn Greenwald's article that highlighted the fact the Democratic party doesn't have a progressive agenda the Texas Democratic party is strongly considering having the General who oversaw Abu Ghraib run for an open Senate seat.

And now; some Propaganda Model news.

A hagiography was originally a biography of a saint listing all their positive virtues and painting them in the best light possible, subsequently it has come to mean a highly positive portrayal of a person, usually in print.

The propaganda model would suggest that if an event that is negative to US interests occurred and it could not safely be ignored then it will be belittled, diminished and "spun" to lessen its' impact on US policy as much as possible.

The Wikileaks document release last week was just such an event and I betcha can't guess what happened. It is consistently fascinating to me (though unsurprising) that the NYT is held up as an example of extremely liberal journalism when it is such an obvious and blatant establishment supporter. The reasons for things being such is simple and twofold: 1)It is to keep the Overton Window (do note the depressing fact right wing uber shill Glenn Beck has tried to co-opt the term just as he has tried to co-opt Martin Luther King's actions) in the very right wing place it is currently, American political discourse will stay right wing as long as people think what the NYT offer is in any way left wing. 2) To people who want to be left wing and suchlike but aren't that well informed (what with how subservient the US media is and all) will read the NYT and unknowingly consume right wing propaganda.

Glenn Greenwald while at no point referring to the propaganda model (Chomsky is Haraam in American mainsteam political discourse) does a very good job of showing how the reaction to this release of information by Wikileaks is a case study of just how the propaganda model works. Greenwald draws some solace from the fact people are questioning just how in the pentagon's pocket the NYT writers were and I suppose to an extent it is. But if nearly of ample evidence of just how blatantly Burns and his ilk lied about Iraq and Afghanistan is only now drawing some criticism rather than hair teared out outrage it would seem that the Propaganda Model is functioning well enough for the elite and US interests.

A case study of a corrupt occupation.

John Dolan is one of the good ones. He is a bitter and pessimistic man but such are the wages of speaking truth to power. People far better informed than me have suggested he has a further curse, he is an unrecognised artistic genius, doomed like Van Gogh or Nietzsche to have his literary work recognised only after his death. I mean sure you can be high minded and stuff but I'd imagine all things being equal those with gifts would like to be recognised in their lifetime, especially by young attractive people and rich people of any shape size or colour. I mean damn, who wouldn't?

He was one of the main people behind The Exile and is still an occasional contributor to The Exiled. While he did a lot of good work under his own name his most popular stuff was probably when he posed as http://exiledonline.com/cat/war-nerd/>The War Nerd where he did quite probably the best analysis of modern conflicts you're likely to read, stripped of jingoism and bolstered with the context we're seldom provided with. To actually make a living, for the powers that be make sure dissent isn't profitable, he worked in academia all over the world until a few years ago while at the University of Victoria he was fired for encouraging students to criticise George Monbiot. Now I'm not sure of the specifics and since I like Monbiot I'd like to hope he didn't personally push for the dismissal but who knows. He wrote of the trials of extreme poverty in North America and one can thus understand how he came to be employed at the corrupt right wing institution that is the America University of Iraq.

He got fired after working there for little over a year but he experienced enough to write a lengthy article about how messed up the place was. I feel little need to criticise a formerly destitute man for selling out in order to eat. The way things work you either sell out or start off rich enough not to need to worry about an income, the game is rigged. Indeed the concept of selling out seems to me to mean you get nice and rich off of betraying your ideals but you don't go into academia to get rich (except maybe if you're an American sports coach):


Bear that in mind when reading the article for if an institution like a university which one generally wouldn't associate with a bonanza of graft ("suck on it losers, I got three of my monographs bought by the library!") you can begin to guess how terrible the corruption and fraud is in occupation institutions that are associated with fabulous wealth. That is not to say the American University of Iraq is simply a cautionary hint to the wider Iraq situation, it the people who are paying considerable amounts of money to learn there are being shafted by the cronyism and blind right wing ideology touting of a faculty so cowed and intellectually timid as to no longer really be able to call themselves academics.

Still when it comes time to bomb Iran we will likely sell the Kurds out to gain Turkish support, and dead Kurds wont need universities.

Nelson Mandela: Cool Guy.

Nelson Mandela angrily addressed a UK cabinet meeting in 2003 strongly opposing Tony Blair's decision to invade iraq. Nice to know some leaders aren't totally awful.

Breaking Month old news ahead of nearly everyone.

I really should have my finger more on the pulse and check everything more regularly than I do so I have to apologise that I'm linking this video a month after it was posted:


So yes, those rumblings that Wikileaks is at least tacitly approved as a leak point / dumping ground for getting info out there in overwhelming bulk seem somewhat more plausible but I feel it more likely the novelty of the wikileaks phenomena is what prevents the media from ignoring it as they are so doing with the medical survey of Fallujah.

The Patrick Cockburn article mentioned by Chomsky can be found here. Fun quotes:

Dr Chris Busby, a visiting professor at the University of Ulster and one of the authors of the survey of 4,800 individuals in Fallujah, said it is difficult to pin down the exact cause of the cancers and birth defects. He added that "to produce an effect like this, some very major mutagenic exposure must have occurred in 2004 when the attacks happened".

Yes of course the pacification of Fallujah occurred in 2004.

US Marines first besieged and bombarded Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad, in April 2004 after four employees of the American security company Blackwater were killed and their bodies burned. After an eight-month stand-off, the Marines stormed the city in November using artillery and aerial bombing against rebel positions. US forces later admitted that they had employed white phosphorus as well as other munitions.

Hmmery, the same white phosphorous that was used by the Israelis during Operation Cast Lead(page 21, paragraph 48)? Still the Palestinians and Iraqis deserved it eh Amber?

He added that the US commander who ordered this devastating use of firepower did not consider it significant enough to mention it in his daily report to the US general in command. Dr Busby says that while he cannot identify the type of armaments used by the Marines, the extent of genetic damage suffered by inhabitants suggests the use of uranium in some form. He said: "My guess is that they used a new weapon against buildings to break through walls and kill those inside."

Oh well, all those assurances DU rounds were completely harmless before and during the invasion were wrong, boy are those advocates' faces red (with the blood of Iraqi children) now!

Researchers found a 38-fold increase in leukaemia, a ten-fold increase in female breast cancer and significant increases in lymphoma and brain tumours in adults. At Hiroshima survivors showed a 17-fold increase in leukaemia, but in Fallujah Dr Busby says what is striking is not only the greater prevalence of cancer but the speed with which it was affecting people.

The residents of Fallujah should be grateful the Coalition of the Willing freed them from the oppression of genetic orthodoxy and allowed Iraq to become a future centre for Oncology research. And by doing all this the west has certainly been saved from vague threats to their way of life or something.

Again apologies I'm only posting this a month late but at least I'm beating most of the mainstream media I guess.

Edit Whoops forgot to add this feature by Democracy now about it. http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/29/patrick_cockburn_on_missing_billions_in

A detailed narrative of how US Troops raped a 14 y/o girl and killed her family

The title says it all really, the article, an extract from a book about a platoon stationed in a dangerous part of Iraq early on in the occupation, details how four soldiers carried out the act and to an extent examines why they did it.

The usual defence of a few bad apples will likely be applied and it certainly has more merit as an argument than it did in defence of the top down tolerated abuse of prisoners in detention centres in Iraq such as Abu Ghraib (though it is noteworthy some of those who did not commit the crime didn't feel compelled to report their later knowledge of the incident to superiors) rape and cold blooded murder are not official US tactics in Iraq or Afghanistan (JSOC notwithstanding), this ain't Vietnam kids.

That to me is irrelevant, the reality of war is that horrifically unpleasant events combine with periods of complete boredom to adversely affect people. In addition those who are awful people to begin with can take advantage of the confusion and their relative power within a conflict zone to do awful things. The deification of Troops means neither appropriate questions are asked nor appropriate oversight is given to the activities of these young, often disturbed young men in unstable and chaotic parts of the world. Maybe most soldiers are nice people (well nice trained killers) but the fact remains that when you inflict armed conflict and invasion upon a country, no matter how noble your rhetoric, you are opening the door to this kind of event. As a civilian majority we need to be much more aware of this and much more cautious to endorse military intervention given the amount of suffering this will inflict upon the civilian population of the countries we choose to invade.

Vocal critic of Iraq war blamed for Iraq war.

Clare Short who gave a barnstorming account to the Chilcot Inquiry has been blamed by her former deputy Sally Keeble who said Short "hampered aid efforts". However given Short resigned from the cabinet weeks after the 2003 invasion (and had been misled by Blair into sticking around that long) and Ms Keeble only left government when Labour lost power on May 6th one has to question who was more complicit and more to blame for this. Ms Keeble also lost her seat on that day and likely will be wanting to impress the powers that be so she'll be selected for a winnable seat come next election, attacking a vocal critic would likely do that.

Then again if this is the extent of the revenge of blairites she has gotten off lightly, Robin Cook resigned before the Iraq war started and gave the only speech in the commons ever to recieve a standing ovation. Two years later he was dead, to quote wikipedia:

In early August 2005, Cook and his wife, Gaynor, took a two-week holiday in the Highlands of Scotland. At around 2:20 pm, on 6 August 2005, whilst walking down Ben Stack in Sutherland, Scotland, Cook suddenly suffered a severe heart attack, collapsed and lost consciousness. A helicopter containing paramedics arrived 40 minutes after a 999 call was taken. Cook then was flown to Raigmore Hospital, Inverness. Gaynor did not get in the helicopter, and was left to walk down the mountain. Despite efforts made by the medical team to revive Cook in the helicopter, he was already beyond recovery, and at 4:05pm, minutes after arrival at the hospital, was pronounced dead. Two days later, a post mortem revealed that Cook died of hypertensive heart disease.

Now of course its likely his death was natural causes but given Dr David Kelly's "suicide" one can't help but wonder. More to the point while one is generally willing to accept Blair was co-architect of the deaths of over a million Iraqis the idea he'd conspire to kill a single white person seems almost unthinkable, do we truly subconciously privilege our skin colour so much?

British firm deliberately poisons Iraqi Children

A British chemical firm bribed Iraqi officials so as to keep them buying a lead based petrol additive which has been banned since the 70s in the west. The consequence of inhaling lead fumes to for children is decreased intelligence and increased hyperactivity. Truly the people of Iraq should be grateful for us freeing them.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jun/30/octel-petrol-iraq-lead