Bombs would fall under other circumstances, but when influential rabbis call for the total annihilation of the Palestinians the world watches without blinking

By Saleh Al-Naami
Source Al-Ahram Weekly

"All of the Palestinians must be killed; men, women, infants, and even their beasts." This was the religious opinion issued one week ago by Rabbi Yisrael Rosen, director of the Tsomet Institute, a long-established religious institute attended by students and soldiers in the Israeli settlements of the West Bank. In an article published by numerous religious Israeli newspapers two weeks ago and run by the liberal Haaretz on 26 March, Rosen asserted that there is evidence in the Torah to justify this stand. Rosen, an authority able to issue religious opinions for Jews, wrote that Palestinians are like the nation of Amalekites that attacked the Israelite tribes on their way to Jerusalem after they had fled from Egypt under the leadership of Moses. He wrote that the Lord sent down in the Torah a ruling that allowed the Jews to kill the Amalekites, and that this ruling is known in Jewish jurisprudence.

Rosen's article, which created a lot of noise in Israel, included the text of the ruling in the Torah: "Annihilate the Amalekites from the beginning to the end. Kill them and wrest them from their possessions. Show them no mercy. Kill continuously, one after the other. Leave no child, plant, or tree. Kill their beasts, from camels to donkeys." Rosen adds that the Amalekites are not a particular race or religion, but rather all those who hate the Jews for religious or national motives. Rosen goes as far as saying that the "Amalekites will remain as long as there are Jews. In every age Amalekites will surface from other races to attack the Jews, and thus the war against them must be global." He urges application of the "Amalekites ruling" and says that the Jews must undertake to implement it in all eras because it is a "divine commandment".

Rosen does not hesitate to define the "Amalekites of this age" as the Palestinians. He writes, "those who kill students as they recite the Torah, and fire missiles on the city of Siderot, spread terror in the hearts of men and women. Those who dance over blood are the Amalekites, and we must respond with counter-hatred. We must uproot any trace of humanitarianism in dealing with them so that we emerge victorious."

The true outrage is that most of those authorised to issue Jewish religious opinions support the view of Rabbi Rosen, as confirmed by Haaretz newspaper. At the head of those supporting his opinion is Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, the leading religious authority in Israel's religious national current, and former chief Eastern rabbi for Israel. Rosen's opinion also has the support of Rabbi Dov Lior, president of the Council of Rabbis of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), and Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, the chief rabbi of Safed and a candidate for the post of chief rabbi of Israel. A number of political leaders in Israel have also shown enthusiasm for the opinion, including Ori Lubiansky, head of the Jerusalem municipality.

There is no dispute among observers in Israel that the shooting in Jerusalem three weeks ago that killed eight Jewish students in a religious school was pivotal for Jewish authorities issuing religious opinions of a racist, hateful nature. The day following the Jerusalem incident, a number of rabbis led by Daniel Satobsky issued a religious opinion calling on Jewish youth and "all those who believe in the Torah" to take revenge on the Palestinians as hastily as possible. A week following the operation, a group of leading rabbis issued an unprecedented religious opinion permitting the Israeli army to bomb Palestinian civilian areas. The opinion is issued by the "Association of Rabbis of the Land of Israel" and states that Jewish religious law permits the bombing of Palestinian civilian residential areas if they are a source of attacks on Jewish residential areas. It reads, "when the residents of cities bordering settlements and Jewish centres fire shells at Jewish settlements with the aim of death and destruction, the Torah permits for shells to be fired on the sources of firing even if civilian residents are present there."

The opinion adds that sometimes it is necessary to respond with shelling to sources of fire immediately, without granting the Palestinian public prior warning. A week ago, Rabbi Eliyahu Kinvinsky, the second most senior authority in the Orthodox religious current, issued a religious opinion prohibiting the employment of Arabs, particularly in religious schools. This religious opinion followed another that had been issued by Rabbi Lior prohibiting the employment of Arabs and the renting of residential apartments to them in Jewish neighbourhoods. In order to provide a climate that allows Jewish extremist organisations to continue attacking Palestinian citizens, Rabbi Israel Ariel, one of the most prominent rabbis in the West Bank settlement complex, recently issued a religious opinion prohibiting religious Jews involved in attacks against Palestinians to appear before Israeli civil courts. According to this opinion, they must instead demand to appear before Torah courts that rule by Jewish religious law.

Haaretz newspaper noted that what Rabbi Ariel was trying to achieve through this religious opinion has in fact already taken place. The first instance of such a court in Kfar Saba ordered the release of a young Jewish woman called Tsevia Teshrael who attacked a Palestinian farmer in the middle of the West Bank. And there are Jewish religious authorities that glorify killing and praise terrorists, such as Rabbi Yitzhaq Ginsburg, a top rabbi in Israel who published a book entitled Baruch the Hero in memoriam of Baruch Goldstein, who committed the Ibrahimi Mosque massacre in 1994 when he opened fire and killed 29 Palestinians as they were performing the dawn prayer in Hebron in the southern West Bank. Ginsburg considers his act "honourable and glorious".

The danger of these religious opinions lies in the fact that the religious authorities issuing them have wide respect among religious Jewish youth. And while only 28 per cent of Israel's population is religious, more than 50 per cent of Israelis define themselves as conservative and grant major significance to opinions issued by Jewish religious authorities. According to a study conducted by the Social Sciences Department of Bar Elon University, more than 90 per cent of those who identify as religious believe that if state laws and government orders are incongruous with the content of religious opinions issued by rabbis, they must overlook the former and act in accordance with the latter.

What grants the racist religious opinions a deeper and far-reaching impact is the fact that for the last decade followers of the Zionist religious current, who form nearly 10 per cent of the population, have been seeking to take control of the army and security institutions. They are doing so through volunteering for service in special combat units. The spokesperson's office in the Israeli army says that although the percentage of followers of this current is low in the state's demographic makeup, they form more than 50 per cent of the officers in the Israeli army and more than 60 per cent of its special unit commanders. According to an opinion poll of religious officers and soldiers supervised by the Interdisciplinary Centre Herzliya and published last year, more than 95 per cent of religious soldiers and officers say that they will execute orders from the elected government and their leaders in the army only if they are in harmony with the religious opinions issued by leading rabbis and religious authorities.

Wasil Taha, Arab Knesset member from the Tajammu Party led by Azmi Bishara, says that these religious opinions lead to the committal of crimes. He mentions religious opinions issued by a number of rabbis in mid-1995 that led to the assassination of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin at that time. "If that's what happens when religious opinions urge attacks against Jewish leaders such as Rabin, what will the situation be like when they urge attacks against Palestinian leaders and the Palestinian public?" he asks. "We, as Arab leaders, have begun to feel a lack of security following this flood of religious opinions, and we realise that the matter requires a great deal of caution in our movements as we are certain that there are those who seek to implement these opinions," he told Al-Ahram Weekly.

Taha dismisses those who ask about the role of the government and Israeli political cadre in confronting these extremist religious opinions. "The ministers in the Israeli government and the Knesset members compete to incite against the Palestinian public and don't hesitate to threaten expulsion of the Palestinians who live on their land in Israel and carry Israeli citizenship outside of Israel's borders, just as former deputy premier Avigdor Lieberman and representative Evi Etam did," Taha said. He notes that Palestinian citizens within Israel have begun to take extreme precautionary measures since the issue of these religious opinions, including security measures around mosques and public institutions and informing officials of public demonstrations so that members of Jewish terrorist organisations can be prevented from attacking participants. Taha holds that the sectors of the Palestinian population most likely to be harmed by these religious opinions are those living in the various cities populated by both Jews and Palestinians, such as Haifa, Jaffa, Lod, Ramleh and Jerusalem.

Palestinian writer and researcher Abdul-Hakim Mufid, from the city Um Fahem, holds that the religious opinions of rabbis have gained major significance due to the harmony between official rhetoric and that of the rabbis. Mufid notes that official Israeli establishments have not tried to confront the "fascist" rhetoric expressed in these religious opinions even though they are capable of doing so. "Most of the rabbis who issue tyrannical religious opinions are official employees in state institutions and receive salaries from them. And the state has not held these rabbis accountable or sought to prohibit the issue of such opinions," he told the Weekly.

Mufid points out that when the official political institution is in a crisis, the Zionist consensus behind these religious opinions grows more intense, and offers as an example the religious opinions relied upon by Rabbi Meir Kahane in the early 1980s to justify his call to forcefully expel the Palestinians. Mufid adds that Israel in practice encourages all those who kill Palestinians, and points to the way that the Israeli government dealt with the recommendations of the Orr Commission that investigated the Israeli police's killing of 13 Palestinians with Israeli citizenship in October of 2000. The government closed the file even though the commission confirmed that the police had acted aggressively towards the Palestinian citizens. Mufid suggests that what makes the racist rhetoric the rabbis insist upon influential is the silence of leftist and liberal voices, and the lack of any direct mobilisation against it.

The true scale of Iraq’s rape and destruction

If you’re a US Citizen, ask yourself one important question with reference to Iraq:
Have you ever heard of Bremer’s 100 orders?

If the answer is "no" then you don’t understand the true destruction of Iraq.

But Bremer’s 100 orders destroyed Iraq’s economy not just for years but for decades to come. It undid some historical things dating back ten thousand years. I wish that was an exaggeration, but it’s not.

Iraq is home to the oldest agricultural traditions in the world. Historical, genetic and archaeological evidence, including radiocarbon dating of carbon-containing materials at the site, show that the Fertile Crescent, including modern Iraq, was the center of domestication for a remarkable array of today’s primary agricultural crops and livestock animals. Wheat, barley, rye, lentils, sheep, goats, and pigs were all originally brought under human control around 8000 BCE. Iraq is where wild wheat was once originated and many of its cereal varieties have been exported and adapted worldwide. The beginning of agriculture led inexorably to the development of human civilization.

Since then, the inhabitants of Mesopotamia have used informal seed supply systems to plant crops, suited to their particular environment. The saving and sharing of seeds in Iraq has always been a largely informal matter. Local varieties of grain and legumes have been adapted to local conditions over the millennia. While much has changed in the ensuing millennia, agriculture remains an essential part of Iraq’s heritage. Despite extreme aridity, characterized by low rainfalls and soil salinity, Iraq had a world standard agricultural sector producing good quality food for generations.

According to the Rome-based UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), 97 percent of Iraqi farmers in 2002 still used saved seed from their own stocks from last year’s harvest, or purchased from local markets.

(Source - Global Research)

So the scene is set. In 2002 things have been unchanged for centuries. Why break a system that worked? Then Bremer came along with the answer: We’ll break a system that works for Iraq, because doing so will generate profit for America.

Bremer wasn’t the first choice for the job. In the aftermath of invasion, the Coalition Provisional Authority was originally led by Lt General Jay Garner, who had plans to actually help Iraq by trying to direct the CPA to give control back to Iraqis as soon as possible and hold elections as soon as was practically possible. Alas for Lt General Garner, the Bush administration didn’t want this. Lt General Garner was summarily sacked from the role within a month, and Paul Bremer appointed to the job.

Bremer, under orders from the administration and it’s corporate masters, began systematically destroying any chance the Iraqis had of putting their country back together, in what has since become known as Bremer’s 100 orders. In one hundred orders, Bremer set about the destruction of ten thousand years of working economy in Iraq.

Even now it’s extremely difficult for an interested party reading an article like this to get a straightforward list of all 100 orders and what they do, so for the sake of clarity we will focus on a few of the most destructive orders.

Order No. 39 allows for: (1) privatization of Iraq’s 200 state-owned enterprises; (2) 100% foreign ownership of Iraqi businesses; (3) 'national treatment’ - which means no preferences for local over foreign businesses; (4) unrestricted, tax-free remittance of all profits and other funds; and (5) 40-year ownership licenses", wrote Antonia Juhasz, a project director at the International Forum on Globalization in San Francisco (LATimes, August 05, 2004).

Now one might argue that quite a number of Western states already do things this way, and that wouldn’t be inaccurate. However, Iraq has never done things that way, and neither have any of it’s neighbors. The state ran everything prior to 2002. In combination with the crippling sanctions that had been imposed on the Iraqi people by the United Nations when it was accepting as fact the lies the Bush administration was telling about WMD, this meant that suddenly anyone could buy anything in Iraq, but the Iraqi people who SHOULD have been first on the list were broke, and couldn’t afford to buy anything. So it was all sold to other countries, on 40 year ownership licenses that prevent this damage from being undone until 2042 at the very soonest. With NO requirement to re-invest in Iraq, no tax to pay and very few limits, this opened up the Iraqi economy to completely unfettered competition from foreign investment. The only block to this Republican Utopia was that the Coalition Provisional Authority granted the licenses, which of course they made sure that they punished the countries unwilling to back them in war, and rewarded those that did back them. Since the "Coalition of the Willing" to all intents and purposes only consisted at that time of the US and the UK this meant that the bulk of these 40 year licenses were granted to US companies. In other words, not only could the Iraqi people see a military occupation, but they could also see their commerce being taken over for the next 40 years by a corporate occupation.

From the same article quoted above:

"Order No. 17 grants foreign contractors, including private security firms, full immunity from Iraq’s laws. Even if they, say, kill someone or cause an environmental disaster, the injured party cannot turn to the Iraqi legal system. Rather, the charges must be brought to U.S. courts".

So we not only have foreign companies able to buy all the commerce and 50% of the banks in Iraq, and not being obliged to employ Iraqis to run it, but anyone they DO employ to run it becomes immune from Iraq’s laws, owing to being a foreign contractor. And even worse, they can employ their own armed "private security" - which Blackwater USA were immediately offering as a ’service’ - which is also immune from any kind of prosecution. This led to the situation we’ve seen on YouTube where armored vehicles escorting foreign contractors are driving along Iraq’s streets smashing any Iraqi car that gets in their way to one side. They don’t have to obey the law. It’s a two tier society, and they’re the upper tier. (and yes, I know that video clip starts with an excerpt from the film "Aliens" but that excerpt just shows the mindset of the drivers). In ANY OTHER COUNTRY, America included, NOBODY would be allowed to just ram vehicles out of the way - yet Bremer has allowed that in Iraq, for the next 40 years, and there’s no shortage of Blackwater USA macho Rambo’s prepared to do it.

"Orders No. 57 and No. 77 ensure the implementation of the orders by placing U.S.-appointed auditors and inspector generals in every government ministry, with five-year terms and with sweeping authority over contracts, programs, employees and regulations".

There is to be NO change, and these orders reinforce that. There is to be NO going back to having things run by the Iraqis, for the Iraqis. That’s not the way corporations want things done. Iraq is to be a safe haven for corporations to do whatever the hell they like, when they like, to who they like. And anyone who gets in their way is a terrorist.

Now we come to the worst order of all. Order 81. Again from Global Research:

Order 81 deals specifically with Plant Variety Protection (PVP) because it is designed to protect the commercial interests of corporate seed companies. Its aim is to force Iraqi farmers to plant so-called "protected" crop varieties 'defined as new, distinct uniform and stable’, and most likely genetically modified. This means Iraqi farmers will have one choice; to buy PVP registered seeds. Order 81 opens the way for patenting (ownership) of plant forms, and facilitates the introduction of genetically modified crops or organisms (GMOs) to Iraq. U.S. agricultural biotechnology corporations, such as Monsanto and Syngenta will be the beneficiaries. Iraqi farmers will be forced to buy their seeds from these corporations. GMOs will replace the old tradition of breeding closely related plants, and replace them with organisms composed of DNA from an altogether different species, e.g., bacterium genes into corn. In the long run, there won’t be a big enough gene pool for genetic viability.

It should be noted here that Monsanto have deep connections to the Bush administration. They also create a special genetically modified grain seed that works well with their own brand of pesticide, because part of its genetic modification is an immunity to the toxins in that particular pesticide. Unfortunately, nothing else is immune, and the pesticide ruthlessly poisons ANY other plant life except the genetically modified grain. Also when the pesticide is absorbed into the soil, the fields it was deployed in won’t grow any other crop but the Monsanto GM grain until the pesticide’s effects diminish - by which time anyone trying to reverse the usage of Monsanto products would long since have gone bankrupt.

If a large international corporation developed a seed variety resistant to a particular Iraqi pest, and an Iraqi farmer was growing another variety that did the same, it was illegal for the farmer to save his own seed. Instead, he is obliged to pay a royalty fee for using Monsanto’s GMO seed.

Upon purchasing the patented seeds, farmers must sign the company’s technology agreement (Technology User Agreements). This agreement allows the company to control farmers’ practices and conduct property investigation. The farmer becomes the slave of the company.

Order 81 ignores Iraqi farmers’ old traditions of saving seeds, and using their knowledge to breed and plant their crops. It also brutally disregards the contributions which Iraqi farmers have made over hundreds of generations to the development of important crops like wheat, barley, dates and pulses. If anybody owns those varieties and their unique virtues, it is the families who bred them, even though nobody has described or characterized them in terms of their genetic makeup. If anything, the new law — in allowing old varieties to be genetically manipulated or otherwise modified and then "registered" — involves the theft of inherited intellectual property, the loss of farmers’ freedoms, and the destruction of food sovereignty in Iraq.

Like U.S. farmers, Iraqi farmers will be "harassed for doing what they have always done." For example, Iraqi farmers can be sued by Monsanto, if their non-GMO crops are polluted by GMO crops planted in their vicinity. The health and environmental consequences of GMO crops are still unknown. GMO-based agriculture definitely encourages monoculture and genetic pollution. Moreover, this will further increase the already polluted Iraqi environment as a result of tens of thousands of tons of 'depleted’ uranium dust, napalm, chemical weapons, and phosphorous bombs.

Farmers will also be required to buy fertilizers, herbicides and insecticides, against plants disease. Iraqi farmers will be required to pay royalties for the new seeds and they will be forbidden from saving seeds. In other words, Iraqi farmers will become agricultural producers for export, a recipe for the introduction of hunger in Iraq, not unknown in many developing countries.

Evidence shows that Western "bio-prospectors" have been using indigenous genetic material taken from their traditional owners. It is this kind of looting or "biopiracy" that is contributing to the destruction of farmers in the developing world, because they have lost control of what they sow, grow, reap and eat.

(Source: Seeds of Destruction)

When you consider the destruction done to Iraq by Bremer’s 100 orders you start to see why the unemployed, angry, penniless Iraqi people are so upset at the occupation. You start to see why when someone like Sadr comes along and promises a return to old values, that’s so tempting. You can see why Maliki absolutely HAS to stop other parties that might run on a "get the occupier out" ticket from competing against him in elections. In researching this article I alternated between tears and anger at what I was finding.

Before I close - this shameful state of affairs, although instituted by the Bush administration, was tacitly condoned by the ENTIRE REST OF THE WORLD who have just stood by and let this happen without objection. They share the blame. They share the responsibillity. What has happened to Iraq is not the fault of one nation, but the fault of a failing of nations and nobody should point fingers at other people without accepting some of the blame themselves. How this blatant illegal occupation has been allowed to rape and destroy a nation is a thing that everyone, everywhere should be disgusted about.

In Lebanon, the majority of the civilians do not want a civil war; however, that was the case back in 1975 and they were dragged to a civil war.

The current politicians are practicing a process what is called: demobilization. This means all non-party affiliates are de-activated due to the lack of availability of alternatives or options to impose the over-all populations' voice on the politicians. Henceforth, the destruction of alternative aka space to function in opposition to the political parties' duet singing of 14th of March and the Opposition.

More to the point, activists who oppose the war are suffocated by the demolition forces of 14th of March and the opposition. They can't do nothing, and personally someone may wonder if they agreed with each other to cripple the activists from expressing their opinions. This becomes very much apparent when riots break out between party affiliates and the shooting takes place. In fact, the immigrants who left Lebanon in the quest of seeking a better life are the same victims of these politicians (partly because of those, and partly due to the Israeli aggression and foreign interventions). Those who are left immobile are given with the choice to choose: 14th of March or Opposition? Usually the question, my dear readers comes as follows: choose the worse of the two. In fact, they are both worse than each other. There is no country in the world currently that celebrates: "Our martyrs and their martyrs" more bluntly than our melancholic parties who promise us doom and destruction by the hands of the "Other Coalition".

With the progressive forces crippled, there is no space to be active at all. In fact, a person would simply watch TV rather attempt to change the reality. Political apathy has reached it's maximum when in 2005 the voting turnabout throughout Lebanon was barely 50%.

As a matter of fact, if a new player or a third force would rise to oppose both coalitions, they will surely agree against them. This we witnessed when Hezbollah and the Lebanese Forces allied with each other against Aoun and his ex-Syrian buddies back in 2005. Then the lunatic general marginalized to a second force as an extension of 8th of March to become the new second line = the Opposition. Probably the majority of those who would vote for ex-war criminals and current business corrupted elites would do so because they would fear that the other would for their "scary alliance from foreign lands" (be that the USA or Iran). This means due to lack of activism and progressive (and real democratic) movements, a lot of the voters would simply vote as what they against what they view as the "invaders" to the "lesser evil".

The stalemate is on-going, while few civil society activists are attempting to maximize the odds. The majority of the Proletariat are de-activated in Lebanon. As the deadlock between the two corrupted forces of Lebanon continues, more people flee the country (due to security, possible a second war with Israel, lack of good economy, or a higher degree).

The arena remains for the Elites (the self-proclaimed Sect-Defenders) and their followers who refuse to wake up to the reality that they are all corrupt.

MFL

The Fall Of America

Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues
Thursday, April 10, 2008

Everyone says that the 9th of April was the fall of Baghdad...And this Arab Woman says the 9th of April was the Fall of America.

At the gates of Babylon the Great, you are still struggling, fighting away, chasing this or the other, detaining, bombing from above, filling up morgues, hospitals, graveyards and embassies and borders with queues for exit visas.

Not ONE IRAQI wishes your presence. Not ONE IRAQI accepts your occupation.

And don't give me that shit about your democratic process and elections. You brought the whores from Iran to rule on your behalf and pimp for their Persian motherland.

You are small players in a game that still eludes you...the Iraqi Game is far greater and bigger than all of your strategies. You have lost in Iraq, you have been totally defeated - Politically, psychologically and economically...

Your tanks, your weapons, your artillery, your jets are nothing for us, for we are RESILIENCE and we are RESISTANCE.

You keep hiding in your camps and your Green Zone with the few Iraqi prostitutes who are willing to work for you. They don't represent us. They represent your brothel. And their days are numbered...just like yours.

Over 600'000 armed men; soldiers, mercenaries, contractors, intelligence, security, spies add to them the sectarian death militias that you have armed, add the Mossad, the Peshermgas of the Zionist Kurds, add the ghettoes you built and where you segregated us, add the millions dead and exiled and maimed...And you still CAN'T CONTROL IRAQ.

Got news for you motherfuckers, you will NEVER CONTROL IRAQ, not in 6 years, not in 10 years, not in 20 years...

You can strategize and manoeuver all you want. Your DEFEAT is obvious, evident, glaring...

You have signed your own death warrant at the gates of Babylon, now face your own agony.

Five years on and not one heart and not one mind bears to see any of your stinking boys.

You have brought upon yourself the hate and the curse of all Iraqis, Arabs and the rest of the world...

At the gates of Babylon will be your total demise, and our total VICTORY. This, I promise you, America.

Long Live the Glorious, Valiant Iraqi Resistance. Long Live Iraq.

and ...

FUCK YOU AMERICA.

By Dr. Kingsley Dennis

Introduction

The Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges once famously wrote of a great Empire that created a map that was so detailed it was as large as the Empire itself. The actual map itself grew and decayed as the Empire itself conquered or lost territory. When the Empire finally crumbled, all that remained was the map. In some sense we can say that it is the map in which we live; we occupy a location within a simulation of reality. Although semanticists say that 'the map is not the territory', within this digitised age the territory is increasingly becoming the map and the separation between the physical and the digitised rendition is blurring. In this context, to 'know the map' gives priority to intervene upon the physical. In recent years many of us have been scrambling to get 'on the Net' and thus be 'mapped'; within a few years we may find that living 'off the Net' will no longer be an option.
--

It is my argument that the future direction of present technological emergence is one that seeks to go beyond networks; rather it is towards ubiquitous technologies that offer a complete immersive (or rather 'sub-mersive') experience of a digitised environment. With networks there is always the possibility of moving into the grey and illusive areas in-between. These are the areas where the networks do not, or cannot, cover; neglected zones of poverty and risk, and insecure zones of warlord regions, and smuggling zones. With immersive technological mapping there may one day be no 'spaces in-between'; the distinction between 'in' and 'out' dissolved; boundaries melted away under the digital gaze. In this article I argue that the US military-industrial complex is attempting to gain full dominance over the complete information spectrum, including dominating the electro-magnetic spectrum and the Internet, in order to gain full total coverage for purposes of containment and control.

Moving Towards Full Spectrum Dominance

As is now well-known, in 2002 the US Pentagon's DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Project Agency) responded to the alleged lack of intelligence data after the September 11th attacks by establishing the 'Total Information Awareness' office, commandeered by John Poindexter1. According to Poindexter's own words,
"We must be able to detect, classify, identify, and track…This is a high level, visionary, functional view of the world-wide system…The mission here is to take the competing hypotheses from the analytical environment and estimate a range of plausible futures. The objective is to identify common nodes, representing situations that could occur, and to explore the probable impact of various actions or interventions that authorities might make in response to these situations." (Poindexter, 2002)
The latest program in this surveillance project is the Space Based Infrared System (called SBIRS High) that aims to track all global infra-red signatures as well as, what is termed, 'counterspace situational awareness' (Dinerman, 2004). The 80s 'Star Wars' missile defence project of Reaganite US security policy has been craftily converted into intercepting today's 'enemy': not necessarily rogue missiles, but information and domestic 'earth-bound' security. The US military also has in operation the IKONOS remote sensing satellite, which travels at 17, 000 mph 423 miles into space, circumnavigating the globe every 98 minutes, with a 3-foot resolution capacity. Such satellites belong to the private company Space Imaging Inc, who work for the military due to US law that restricts the US government operating upon their own soil (Brzezinski, 2004). Also, the US military RADARSAT satellite uses radar to see through clouds, smoke and dust. The US National Security Agency (NSA) utilizes top of the range KEYHOLE-11 satellites that have a 10-inch resolution, which means headlines can be read from someone sitting on a bench in Iran, although this resolution remains officially unacknowledged (Brzezinski, 2004).

As an example of more distributed and networked 'industrial/civil surveillance', many bridges within North America have acoustic sensors and underwater sonar devices anchored to the base of the bridges to check for the presence of divers, to prevent anyone from placing explosives on the riverbed. These devices are then linked to a central hub for monitoring information feedback. Such post 9-11 fears have led to the setting up of USHomeGuard, a private company established by Jay Walker (founder of Priceline.com), which utilises over a million webcams to watch over 47,000 pieces of critical infrastructure across the US, eg; pipelines, chemical plants, bridges, dams. These webcams are monitored continuously by observers working from home (Brzezinski, 2004). Crandall sees this as a part of the emerging 'contemporary regime of spectacle…machine-aided process of disciplinary attentiveness, embodied in practice, that is bound up within the demands of a new production and security regime' (Crandall, 2005). This operational practice, as Crandall sees it, confirms a 'codification of movement' and 'manoeuvres of strategic possibility', and leading to a 'resurgence in temporal and locational specificity' (Crandall, 2005). This is directly related with the US military construction towards an agenda of complete coverage: in their terms, 'full spectrum dominance'2. In 1997 the Chief of Staff of the US Air Force predicted that within three years 'we shall be capable of finding, tracking, and targeting virtually in real time any significant element moving on the face of the earth' (cited in Crandall, 2005).

Perhaps a little premature yet it appears that the US military-industrial machine is attempting to enclose the global open system; to transform it and enmesh it within a closed system of total information awareness; to cover, track, and gaze omnisciently over all flows, mobilities, and transactions. It is a move towards a total system, an attempt to gain some degree of mastery over the unpredictability of global flows through the core component of dominating informational flows. As part of this project the US military are currently establishing a linkage of satellites into what has been dubbed the military 'Internet in the sky', which will form part of their secure informational network named as the Global Information Grid, or GIG (Weiner, 2004). First conceived in 1998, and now in construction, $200 billion has already been estimated as a cost for both the hardware and software (Weiner, 2004). This war-net, as the military also term it, forms the core of the US military's move towards appropriating network-centric warfare (Arquilla and Ronfeldt, 2001a; Arquilla and Ronfeldt, 2001b; Dickey, 2004; Weiner, 2004). The chief information officer at the US Defense Department was noted for saying that 'net-centric principles were becoming “the centre of gravity” for war planners' (Weiner, 2004). Some of the names of the military contractors involved in this project include Boeing; Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard; IBM; Lockheed Martin; Microsoft; Raytheon; and Sun Microsystems (Weiner, 2004). As part of this complete coverage – or 'full spectrum dominance' – the US military hopes to be able to communicate and control an increasing arsenal of unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) and unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), integrated into what they are calling the 'Multimedia Intelligent Network of Unattended Mobile Agents' (Minuteman). This in turn is part of a larger military project on Intelligent Autonomous Agent Systems (Science-Daily, 2002).

Recently, a document entitled Information Operation Roadmap was declassified by the Pentagon and made public by the National Security Archive on January 26, 2006. According to this document the term 'information operations' includes

The integrated employment of the core capabilities of Electronic Warfare, Computer Network Operations, Psychological Operations, Military Deception and Operations Security, in concert with specified supporting and related capabilities, to influence, disrupt, corrupt or usurp adversarial human and automated decisions-making while protecting our own. (DoD, 2003: 22)

The document continues by outlining how the US military needs to secure a future electromagnetic capability 'sufficient to provide maximum control of the entire electromagnetic spectrum, denying, degrading, disrupting, or destroying the full spectrum of globally emerging communication systems, sensors, and weapons systems dependant on the electromagnetic spectrum' (DoD, 2003: 61). Clearly, the recommendation here is for developing, and extending, current capabilities in order to have full and complete dominance over all globally emerging telecommunications and their hardware.

This shift in military affairs involves re-strategizing informational systems toward what the military see as a 'transformational communications architecture' to 'help create a nimbler, more lethal military force to which information is as vital as water and ammunition' (Dickey, 2004). Brig. Gen. Robert Lennox, deputy chief of the Army Space and Missile Defense Command, describes the military vision as 'one seamless battlefield, which is linked without the bounds of time or space, to knowledge centres, and deployment bases throughout the world' (Dickey, 2004). Beginning in 2008 the US Navy plans to replace its Ultra High Frequency Follow-On satellite network with a Mobile User Objective System which will provide voice and data communications through wireless hand-held receivers as part of the Global Information Grid (GIG). The 'Internet in the Sky' that will form part of the GIG will consist of both AEHF and TSAT satellite programs (Dickey, 2004). Each AEHF satellite has the capacity to serve as many as 4,000 networks and 6,000 users at once; and the proposed TSAT satellites are claimed to be ten times more powerful than the AEHF. These proposals are currently underway as part of the US's 'revolution in military affairs' to develop not only a superior battlefield information network but also to 'extend the information grid to deploy mobile users around the globe, creating a new capability for combat communications on the move' (Dickey, 2004). As for the new generation of surveillance satellites launched since 2005, when these systems are fully operational the elite military complex will be able to gain precise information not only upon alleged 'enemies' but also upon the movements of almost any individual upon the planet, at almost any time, anywhere. The complexity of security communications and sensitive information is being targeted within military strategy in an effort to enclose all; to survey the full spectrum of an open system in a bid to collect and contain. In short, to transform the unknown into a known closed system: the containment of the complex global system. This also can be seen within the security of complexity, circulation, and contingency.

Dillon considers that this 'global security problematic' is concerned with the circulation of everything as in 'a systemically interdependent world everything is connected or, in principle, is able to be connected, to everything else' (Dillon, 2005). For Dillon, circulation shifts the new global security problematic 'from a “geo-strategic” into an “ecological” problem characterised by the escalatory dynamics of complex interdependencies' (Dillon, 2005). The challenge of global security in this context lies in the contingency between calculability and doubt. Dillon further sees this as being behind the trend in US military affairs towards the complexity sciences: 'the fascination of military-strategic science in the United States especially with complexity, chaos, nonlinearity and the new science of life introduced by the digital and molecular revolutions has proclaimed as much since the early 1990s' (Dillon, 2003).

Security and power relations now clearly transcend traditional geo-political boundaries. Security is both socio-technical and biometric, with the security problematic becoming increasingly virtual and codified, ordered with attempted control of disorder (Dillon, 2003). The militarization of complex global open systems has serious implications for issues of civil liberty, and notions of the surveillance state.

Such domains of complex interdependencies are radicalising, in a militaristic sense, information, communication, command, control, and surveillance. The internal/external circulation and flows characteristic of open systems (whether informational or physical) are under interrogation from Western hegemonic, specifically US, military strategies in an attempt to close them down, plug-up the pores of flows and to blanket-coverage all potential contingencies. These are the operations of clandestine strategies that seek to contain the unpredictable and to map all physical-digital movements and traces.

Emerging technologies that 'locate' and 'trace' present a world where 'every object and human is tagged with information specifications including history and position – a world of information overlays that is no longer virtual but wedded to objects, places, and positions' (Crandall, 2005). Such meshing of the physical and the digital through the medium of sentient communicators is what is foreseen here as steering towards a digitally-rendered global system vulnerable to control via a technical-military elite. This scenario is exactly that as envisioned by ex-US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski. Brzezinski, in his 'Between Two Ages : America's Role in the Technetronic Era' (1970), put forward the concept of a future 'technotronic era' whereby a more controlled society would gradually emerge, dominated by an elite unrestrained by traditional values. Brzezinski wrote that 'Power will gravitate into the hands of those who control information' (Brzezinski, 1970: 1), adding that surveillance and data mining will encourage 'tendencies through the next several decades toward a technocratic era, a dictatorship leaving even less room for political procedures as we know them' (Brzezinski, 1970: 12). By gaining control over informational technological communications Brzezinski outlined how this could help achieve control and order over the public:
"Unhindered by the restraints of traditional liberal values, this elite would not hesitate to achieve its political ends by the latest modern techniques for influencing public behavior and keeping society under close surveillance and control." (Brzezinski, 1970: 252)
Also important to consider is that many military technologies become appropriated and absorbed into civil technologies. For example, by 2003 a quarter of all rental vehicles at US agencies used some form of GPS tracking: not only for driver-location but also for the rental agency to know where the car has travelled, and its speed. Also, cars with speakerphones can be enabled from remote devices in order to listen in and eavesdrop on occupants in a car under surveillance, as has been utilized by police forces in the US (Brzezinski, 2004). This type of digitalised surveillance at-a-distance can have serious implications upon increasingly surveyed, tracked, and mapped social practices. It also suggests that technically-based northern 'societies' are being manoeuvred towards a surveyed and sensored, or synchronic society

Sensoring the Ecosphere: The Coming of a Synchronic Society?

The development of increasingly sentient 'smart' environments will go some way towards creating a more systemic relationship of interconnections and interdependencies between humans, objects/machines, and locality. This possibility has led some commentators to speak of an emerging cybernomadic landscape (Saveri, 2004). Here, the emphasis is on an embedded sensory world that will influence and fundamentally alter social practices. Such a cybernomadic landscape has been defined, in a recent IFTF report, by three primary forces of physical-digital fusion; the augmented self; and digitally catalysed masses (Saveri, 2004: 2). Similarly, De Rosnay sees this future as a form of symbiotic humanity: 'each person functions as a node in this hypernetwork. Symbiotic humanity is both the totality of the network and one of its elements; it exists through the network and the network exists only through it' (de Rosnay, 2000: 143). In all cases it involves networking with, utilizing, and interacting with objects, something which futurist and author Bruce Sterling refers to as a 'synchronic society':

A synchronic society generates trillions of catalogable, searchable, trackable trajectories…Embedded in a monitored space and time and wrapped in a haze of process, no object stands alone; it is not a static thing, but a shaping-thing. (Sterling, 2005: 50)

And a 'shaped-thing' may in the future rely upon more efficient and ubiquitous radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, now often euphemistically termed as arphids. These RFID tags can be networked into a global system of positioning and identification:

Your arphid monitors are hooked into the satellite based Global Positioning System. Then your network becomes a mobile system of interlinked objects that are traceable across the planet's surface, from outer space, with one-meter accuracy, around the clock, from pole to pole. (Sterling, 2005: 92)

A physical-digital augmented environment interlinked with objects is, as Sterling states, based upon identification. Objects, as well as individuals, need to be identified, both in their object-self identity as well as in their positions. And yet this shift is not limited towards individuals or objects; it also extends into Nature and the ecosystem.

The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently announced that it considered today's computer maps of the Earth to be inaccurate. Investment has been put into producing better computer generated terrain maps of the Earth using both radar and laser scanning (Piquepaille, 2005), with a future view for placing radio-towers on the moon or Mars3. These updated moves towards securing a military full spectrum dominance incorporate the latest known developments in smart sensors whereby complex computerised devices at the miniature, or even nano level, will be able to 24/7 monitor ecological, social, and/or biological environments and people:

These new computers would take the form of networks of sensors with data-processing and transmission facilities built in. Millions or billions of tiny computers — called 'motes', 'nodes' or 'pods' — would be embedded into the fabric of the real world. They would act in concert, sharing the data that each of them gathers so as to process them into meaningful digital representations of the world. Researchers could tap into these 'sensor webs' to ask new questions or test hypotheses. Even when the scientists were busy elsewhere, the webs would go on analysing events autonomously, modifying their behaviour to suit their changing experience of the world. (Butler, 2006a)

Such a scenario, if realised, would drastically alter the material and social fabric of the living world.

Deborah Estrin, director of the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing in Los Angeles, California, sees 'the sensor-web revolution as an important thread in a grander tapestry of global monitoring, which involves billions of dollars being poured into projects to monitor the continents and oceans' (Butler, 2006a). For example, upcoming projects include:
The $200 million EarthScope project from the NSF: 3,000 stations are to be erected that will 'track faint tremors, measure crustal deformation and make three-dimensional maps of the earth's interior from crust to core. Some 2,000 more instruments are to be mobile - wireless and sun- or wind-powered - and 400 devices are to move east in a wave from California across the nation over the course of a decade' (Broad, 2005)
The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) is to be established at an estimated cost of $500 million. The plan is for a coast-to-coast NEON to 'involve perhaps 15 circular areas 250 miles in diameter, each including urban, suburban, agricultural, managed and wild lands. Each observatory would have radar for tracking birds and weather as well as many layers of motes and robots and sensors, including some on cranes in forest canopies' (Broad, 2005)
The 'Interagency Working Group on Earth Observations', backed by the National Science & Technology Council within the Executive Office of the President, US, has recently published their Strategic Plan for the U.S. Integrated Earth Observation System (IWGEO, 2005). Their vision is to discover, access, collect, manage, archive, process, and model earth geological data in order to better forecast such flows as weather, energy resources, natural resources, pre and post-disasters, as well as a host of other integrated processes. In their words: 'The Earth is an integrated system. Therefore, all the processes that influence conditions on the Earth are linked and impact one another. A subtle change in one process can produce an important effect in another. A full understanding of these processes and the linkages between them require an integrated approach, including observation systems and their data streams' (IWGEO, 2005: 47)
The report Strategic Plan for the U.S. Integrated Earth Observation System (IWGEO, 2005) discusses a vast range of geological integrated monitoring systems. However, a caveat here is necessary, for the above projects towards environmental mapping contain shades of a western geographical imagination.

Cartography, as a pioneering navigational science and art, has long been used for validating colonial expansion, Imperial incursions, and for designating western territorial trophies. The geographical imagination is continually formed as residues of knowledge build one upon the other as images become re-appropriated for geo-political agendas. The western global imagination has participated in the de-centring of global geographies in past centuries, and may again be party to later digital formations of knowledge gathering and geo-strategies of dominance and power. As with the Plan for the U.S. Integrated Earth Observation System which aims to monitor, track, catalogue, and forecast global processes and movements, geographical spaces will be subjected to a US-centric digital gaze. Denis Cosgrove views such a gaze as 'implicitly imperial, encompassing a geometric surface to be explored and mapped, inscribed with content, knowledge and authority' (2001: 15).

Emerging technologies in information-sensoring indicate an authoritarian, predominantly military, strategy for Earth monitoring. Increasingly, relationships between humans/devices/environments are being merged, or steered, towards a new construction of social life - one that embeds the individual, as a digitally-rendered identity, within a global informational 'grid-lock'.

If such an irreversible shift is made towards digitally-rendered societies this would arguably 'lock-in' a form of monitored control society. With such predictions of an increasingly sensored and enmeshed global system it is difficult to see how living 'off the Net' will be a choice in the near future.

Conclusion

As this article has argued there are both overt and covert strategies within the US military-industrial complex towards securing full spectrum dominance over global information flows, which include dominating the electro-magnetic spectrum and the Internet. Increasingly western technological societies are moving towards developing sensored environments whereby information is processed on individuals as well as securing geographical data. This suggests a future whereby in order to move legitimately an individual will be subjected to a complex network of informational tracking and verification. This will undoubtedly see an increased militarisation of the civil sphere. Such a re-configuration of the social, through increased dependency upon physical-digital systems, will inevitably involve various structural relations of power. For example, individuals not deemed 'worthy' will be denied the right of movement through digitally-controlled spaces. This is not to imply that all acts of social passage will necessarily be uncomfortably noticed by the general legitimised user. It is likely that in-built strategies of marginalisation will be increasingly 'normalised' as part of shifting social practices: a regular state of affairs within a twenty-first century beset by manipulated terror in-securities.

Further, there are indications that these entwined and embedded information flows will seek to incorporate not only the physical and digital, but also the biological. In other words, each unit of information will be sought to be coded and therefore 'secured' under a full spectrum dominance agenda. Goonatilake (1999) sees this as moving towards a meta-communications environment that will merge human/genetic, cultural, machine as information codes and which will serve as information carriers:

The future will thus result in intense communications not only between machines and humans, but also with genetic systems so that information in the three realms of genes, culture and machines will result in one interacting whole. The three for all purposes would be interacting as one communicating system. (Goonatilake, 1999: 197)

We may soon be moving towards a momentous shift, perhaps the most important paradigmatic shift our current civilization has ever witnessed: a transformation into a digitally contained and controlled global environment.

This leaves the future vulnerable to extreme possibilities. Already there has been much Internet 'chatter' about the potential this offers for 'exotic' containment and control practices, including the possibility that a space-based, armed communications network is capable of beaming electromagnetic pulse technology upon virtually any chosen spot on the Earth. The potential here for mass mind control strategies is severely worrying and unnerving.

As we move towards the second decade of the twenty-first century we come increasingly close to a crossroads. One path indicates a move towards a deep and entrenched militarisation of the civil sphere where control and containment are the order of the day; the other path leads towards increased civil participation, engagement, and empowerment. It is perhaps a choice between global emancipation or complete global grid-lock

Layla Anwar
An Arab Woman Blues, April 5, 2008

Did I ever tell you about my trip to the USA ? But that was ages ago...
That was when I still considered you somewhat (and do underline somewhat) of human beings...of course that has changed drastically, since...

Well, I had the misfortune of visiting your country. Friends told me that I was about to experience a very "sophisticated city" on the East Coast...

I had known Europe and I was sure "your sophisticated city" was much of an exaggeration. But I played along and promised myself to keep an open mind...

I found absolutely nothing sophisticated about you. I found then, and am sure it's gotten worse since -- I found a very shallow, ignorant, stressed out, aggressive, brash, brazen, jaded, apathetic, uncultured, empty, hollow, violent people...

Your streets were violent, the energies you gave off were violent, your urban structure was breeding ground for violence...and your "sophisticated" food sucked...It was an awful trip. I could not wait to leave...

I was feeling so anxious there, with all your nasty vibes, I actually borrowed some money from an acquaintance, changed the departure date which cost me nearly another plane ticket, and left earlier than scheduled...And what a relief it was !

But this is not really what I wanted to tell you. What I really wanted to share with you was an "incident" that happened in an elevator in one of your "sophisticated cities"...

I was in that elevator with a friend. And we were heading towards the 25th floor of some building whose architectural design was an insult to the Skies...

Standing next to us, was an Amercian couple with their very young daughter, she must have been around 5 or 6. A cute little girl wearing denim dungarees and with a head full of ginger colored curls...she looked adorable.

I smiled at her and spoke to her "you're a cute little girl. And my, what lovely curls you've got" I then patted her head and told her parents..."you have lovely little girl, bless her." in my typical Middle Eastern fashion.

The parents frowned, and the mother briskly pulled her daughter towards her, in a defensive manner...and they left the elevator a few floors before us.

My friend said abruptly "Layla you should never do that again!"
This friend has been living in the US for donkey years...poor thing.

Do what ?!

You should never pat children here

Why not ?

They consider that child molesting.

Oh! for God's sake, give me a break , you can't be serious...it was just a show of affection for a child.

I am serious, you should never do that again, otherwise you'll get yourself in trouble here...

I was truly shocked...and thought to myself, what kind of perverted people are these, when even talking or joking around with a child can be misconstrued as sexual molesting ?

Then I remembered that I was in a very "sophisticated city." A city where everyone is politically correct, weighing their sentences and hiding tons of hypocrisy behind them...

I remembered I was in a "sophisticated city" where everyone tried so hard to look "sophisticated", hiding their neurosis, anally withholding feelings, masking their constipated minds behind rhetoric, jargon and garbage made self-help psychology...

I remembered that I was in a "sophisticated city" where aggressivity is repressed behind some sort of "sophisticated civilized" behavior, making everyone even more aggressive... chronically -- short tempered, irritated, angry and always whining...

Many years later, these "sophisticated" people invaded and occupied my country in the name of "civilized Freedom"...

Everything I knew to be true about you lot, was further confirmed during your unwanted, unwelcomed "visit" to Iraq.

In Iraq, the true, uncensored, unadulterated, unfiltered, face of America shines through...

This emotionally anally retentive people, this ignorant mentally constipated people, this arrogant, aggressive, profoundly dishonest people, this Godless, morally depraved people -- showed their true faces in Iraq.

This people who are oh! so politically correct, who take great pains in debating if a sentence is sexist or racist.. when words like black or white are quickly changed to caucasian or afro-american...otherwise it's oh! so blasphemous...

This deeply hypocritical, puritanical lot, who consider the word "fuck" to be a repulsive, foul, coarse, word prohibited for those below the age of 18.

This disgusting, repugnant people who see sexual abuse and molestation everywhere because they are abusive and molesters themselves...

This people with their "brave boys and girls" in Iraq.

And the video below exposes only the tip of the iceberg...

And by the way, I don't agree with the sentence in it that says you've "gone insane"...

You're not insane, you're simply a deeply racist (even the colored ones amongst you), perverted, immoral, hideous lot.

In Iraq, all of your true faces and colors have been unmasked for the World to witness and History to record.

Thank you M for theVIDEO

http://arabwomanblues.blogspot.com/
http://arabwomannews.blogspot.com/

Of War Crimes

By Ghali Hassan

”The colonial invasion of Iraq and the ugliest of lies of the lie machine that propagated and justified these barbarous acts will forever remain among the greatest and unpardonable crimes against humanity.” — Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero of Spain, 20 May 2005.

Five years after the U.S.-Britain initiated unprovoked aggression against the Iraqi people, U.S. leaders and their allies commemorate the mass atrocity of Iraqi civilians with empty rhetoric and the usual outright lies reserved especially for similar occasions.

Five years of illegal and murderous Occupation, the Iraqi people continue to endure an unimaginable suffering under the highest form of tyrannical dictatorships. Credible surveys estimated at least 1.3 million innocent Iraqis — the majority of them women and children — have been brutally murdered in cold blood, making the Iraq’s Genocide the biggest single mass murder of modern time. Almost every Iraqi family has lost at least one close relative. The mayhem is continuing in an endless genocide waged by the world's largest and most offensive military machine, almost entirely against defenceless population.

In addition, some 2.5 million have fled Iraq to neighbouring countries, and another 2-3 million Iraqis are “internally displaced”. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have bee wounded and hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, including thousands of women and children, are languishing in militias and U.S.-run prisons and torture centres throughout Iraq. They are subjected to horrific torture and abuses of human rights. Thousands more have simply disappeared in a systematic campaign of terror.

Recent reports by Western NGOs, including Amnesty International (AI) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (CICR) concluded that the situation in Iraq is disastrous. According to AI report; “Hundreds of Iraqis are being killed every month in the pervasive violence, while countless lives are threatened every day by poverty, cuts to power and water supplies, food and medical shortages, and rising violence against women and girls”. The U.S Occupation has imprisoned women and denied them their equal human rights. According to Iraq’s Ministry of Education, more than 70 percent of girls and young women are no longer attending school or college. The literacy rate for women, once the highest in the region, is now among the lowest as families fear risking kidnapping and rape by sending girls to school. Women who once went out to work stay home. Meanwhile, more than 1 million women have been displaced from their homes, and millions more have become widows and are unable to earn enough to eat.

Furthermore, the decision of the U.S.-installed puppet government, or Iraq’s Vichy regime, to submit to the World Bank dictates and end the rationing of food system to poor families (the brainchild of Saddam Hussein which was lauded by the UN as the ‘world’s most effective tool to prevent hunger’ and has saved millions from starvation) has increased the rates of malnutrition among families with no income, women, children and the elderly. ‘Depriving Iraqis of the only lifeline they have left will make them more vulnerable and is likely to generate more insecurity inside Iraq’, commented Kristele Younes of Refugees International.

The education system, once the envy of people in the region is nearing collapse. Hundreds, if not thousands of academics, including teachers and professors from universities across Iraq have been murdered, in a systematic campaign targeting Iraqi professionals in order to destroy the Iraqi nation. At least 3000 academics have fled the country Schools and universities are barely functioning. Some one million children have stopped attending primary school and only half of those who completed primary school continue with their education. As a result of the invasion and the murderous Occupation, there are an estimated 4.5 million orphans in Iraq, 500,000 of them are homeless. Some 250,000 refugee children in neighbouring countries are denied their right to education (UNESCO).

The CICR warned that the humanitarian situation in Iraq remains among the most critical in the world today. ‘Iraq’s 27 million populations have no functioning drinking water and 80 percent lack basic sanitation’. Electricity supply has become as scarce as drinking water, affecting the operations of hospitals and health care centres. The CICR report says Iraq’s healthcare system is now in its worst shape ever and on the verged of total collapse. Of 34,000 doctors living in Iraq in 2003, 12,000 have migrated and more than 2,000 have been murdered. Is there another way to destroy a country?

A report by Oxfam International found a dramatic increase in malnutrition among Iraqi children. The report estimated 28 percent of Iraqi children are malnourished, compared to 19 percent before the 2003 invasion. More than 11 percent newborn babies were born underweight in 2006, compared with 4 percent in 2003. The combination of malnutrition and lack of water, along with deteriorating sanitary conditions, places Iraq among countries with the highest rates of infant mortality. Cholera which was non-existence before the invasion is now ravaging the country.

In the city of Fallujah, a once vibrant city before the invasion, Dr. Kamal Al-Ani of Fallujah Hospital told Islam Online; “Every day 20 children die here, seven in this very room”. The Hospital lacks “drugs, fuel, electricity, generators, a water treatment system, oxygen and medical equipment”, he added. The city remains destroyed as it was in 2004, when it was savagely attacked and destroyed by U.S. forces indiscriminately killed thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians.

Despite this enormous atrocity, a highly deceptive and misleading report, The Iraq Commission Report, published recently by the British think-tank, Foreign Policy Centre argued that: “Whilst much has been achieved by the coalition in ending the regime of a brutal dictator and the holding of elections, it is now clear that the initial, over ambitious vision of the coalition can no longer be achieved in Iraq” [1].

Firstly, nothing has been “achieved” that is beneficial to the Iraqi people. Saddam Hussein is replaced by an illegal and murderous foreign military occupation. The U.S.-staged elections were a farce designed to manipulate public opinion and justify an illegal aggression and the occupation of a defenceless nation. Secondly, to argue that the Anglo-American’s “over ambitious vision can no longer be achieved” is evident that the aggression was the result of well-planned strategy to permanently destroy Iraq as a nation for the “convergent ambitions of the Neocons, or Neo-fascists in Washington and the extreme far-right regimes of Israel”, wrote John Pilger.

Five years after the illegal invasion, the objectives of U.S. imperialist strategy in Iraq remain the same; (1) the division of Iraq into smaller fiefdoms (colonial dictatorships), dependent on U.S. military presence and serving U.S.-Israel Zionist interests in the Middle East, including control over Iraq’s oil resources; and (2) the permanent destabilisation of the region – openly called “creative chaos” – through ongoing U.S.-Israel political interference and state-sponsored terrorism. In fact the U.S. refusal to withdraw its troops from Iraq and the illegal construction of military bases throughout Iraq, including the world’s largest CIA station (‘U.S. Embassy’) in central Baghdad are just the obvious factors. The Washington Post reported (March 07, 2008), that the Bush Administration will use the 2002 vote in Congress authorising aggression against Iraq to keep indefinite U.S. forces in Iraq and to be at war in Iraq forever with no limitations.

No where in the Iraq Commission Report do the “authors” explain that the destruction of Iraq is based on outright lies and false pretexts (Centre for Public Integrity). And that the U.S. and British empty rhetoric about ‘rebuilding Iraq’ is part of the post-invasion propaganda in order to justify the illegal invasion and the ongoing occupation of the country.

Even those expatriate Iraqis (who allege to have opposed the government of Saddam Hussein) working for the Occupation are contemplating the good days under the late president. “The country would be better off if Saddam Hussein was still in power”, said one expatriate who entered Iraq on the back of U.S. tank. With them they brought into Iraq a culture of corruption and crimes unheard of in the country’s history before the invasion.

The puppet government proved to be incapable of looking after the interests of the Iraqi people. While the main players in the puppet government are trying to give the impression that normality is returning to Iraq and that they are in charge, the reality on the ground is far different. Iraq is occupied by more than 160,000 U.S. troops and at least 180,000 foreign mercenaries. Decisions are made by the US. Administration and the Occupation.

The role of the puppet government is to serve the Occupation and legitimise U.S. military presence. It is kind of a U.S.-manufactured façade. It is an extension of the Occupation, not a sovereign entity. Hence, it has no legal right to negotiate on behalf of the Iraqi people and request the ongoing presence of U.S. troops in Iraq. We know that the overwhelming majority of the Iraqi people, including more than half of the ‘legislators’ in the puppet government are demanding the full withdrawal of U.S. forces and foreign mercenaries from Iraq.

Completely discredited by the Iraqi people and isolated, the puppeteers have to maintain symbiotic/parasitic relationships with the Occupation in order to survive. They are happy to continue the status quo than address the political situation on the ground and serve the interests of the Iraqi people. So, the U.S. is happy to play the racist-colonial card of “Iraqis are not ready to govern” spewed by the Anglo-American leaders trying to justify the Occupation.

Meanwhile, the so-called Bush’s troop “surge” – an extra 30,000 troops and 500 percent increase in airstrike on population centres – has been a tactical propaganda success for the U.S. Administration. The media played its faithful and deceptive role in this propaganda campaign which aimed at manipulating American public opinion. A according to a study by the Pew Research Centre Project for Excellence in Journalism, ‘the decline in U.S. news coverage from Iraq, particularly accounts of daily attacks, coincides with improved public opinion about the war just as the 2008 presidential campaign heads to an early showdown’ in Iowa.

Although violence against Iraqi civilians has increased with hundreds of Iraqis killed every month, Western media continue to distort facts on the ground and spread misinformation. In February alone, at least 800 Iraqis were killed, a 33 percent increase from January. There are almost no independent journalists in Iraq, and many who dared to tell the truth have been murdered. The U.S.-created violent environment made Iraq the last resort for independent journalists and allows the mainstream media to dictate and control the news from Iraq to fit their audiences.

A global Western propaganda of disinformation and mind control, led by the BBC, CNN and their variants, have managed to normalise the atrocity in Iraq and removed it from Western consciousness by deliberately not reporting or underreporting the number of Iraqi killed by U.S. forces and their collaborators. Even if reported, Iraqis are always reported to have been killed by “suicide bombers” or by ‘al-Qaeda’. With a satiable appetite to enforce Western racism, the BBC presents Arab (Iraqi) lives as being far less worthy than those in the West, and allows U.S. forces to commit crimes in deep silence. It is the same old racist-colonial cliché of “Arabs killing Arabs” that has become the BBC distinct label.

The Bush’s “surge” proved to be a disaster for the Iraqi Capital, Baghdad. The ethnically-mixed city is now a collection of ghettos. The once cohesive communities of Baghdad are now divided from each other by concrete walls and military check-points. Thousands of Iraqis (mostly young men) were taken prisoners and held without charges. The propagated “fall” in the death rate of Iraqi civilians - if it is true –, is due partly to the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad and to the fact that more than a million residents have fled the city to escape the violence.

As I have pointed out several times in the past, it is well-established that the violence in Iraq is a U.S.-made and U.S. controlled violence to suit the U.S. agenda. Form the sadistic torture of Abu Ghraib to the mass murder of innocent civilians in Baghdad, Baquba, Fallujah, Haditha etc., the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq is the biggest human rights atrocity and the greatest humanitarian disaster in the history of modern warfare. The contempt for human lives cannot be clearer than in occupied Iraq. According to Maj. Gen. Eldon Bargewell; U.S. soldiers and U.S. marines think, "Iraqi civilian lives are not as important as U.S. lives, their deaths are just the cost of doing business, and that the marines need to get 'the job done' no matter what it takes”. As I write these lines, U.S. forces have committed another massacre in the city of Baquba. Some 30 Iraqi civilians, including at least 15 people of a single family, have been killed in separate incidents, according to the Deutsche Presse Agentur.

The U.S. response is the usual. Every time U.S. forces bombed a house and knowingly massacred innocent Iraqi civilians, they justify the crimes as “al-Qaeda safe house legitimate target”. Every time U.S. troops and their collaborators killed Iraqi civilians, the U.S. military and Western media falsely claimed that ‘al-Qaeda’ had taken responsibility for the massacre.

The exaggerated presence of ‘al-Qaeda’ terrorism in Iraq is simply a well-orchestrated Western propaganda designed to distort the images and blacken the name of legitimate Iraqi Resistance movement. The primary aim is to associate a legitimate Iraqi self-defence and liberation struggle with terrorism. By doing so, the U.S. and the U.S.-installed puppet government are deliberately misleading the world by denying the existence of the Iraqi Resistance and claiming to fight ‘al-Qaeda’ terrorism in Iraq. It is important to know that the Iraqi people have the legal and legitimate right to resist this genocidal Occupation by all means available to them, including armed resistance.

From the outset of the invasion and subsequent Occupation, terrorism is used as an instrument to advance U.S. imperialist agenda, despite lack of any hard evidence to link Iraq to terrorism (e.g., ‘al-Qaeda’). It is a useful tool not only to justify aggression, but also to frighten and scare the population at home. The creation of ‘al-Qaeda’ phantom in Iraq is a case in point. It is used to justify rejection of any demand for U.S. troop’s withdrawal from Iraq, and increase repression at home.

A full withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq would reduce the violence, and would lead to gradual reconciliation among Iraqis, as reported by media sources and shown in consistent polls from Iraq. A recent poll found that the majority of Iraqis (86 percent) in the Province of Basra, the second largest city in Iraq, rightly accused the British of fomenting violence and creating chaos by encouraging criminal gangs and militias to prey on the local population. Only 2 percent of Iraqis in Basra believe the occupying British forces provided security. Indeed, violence in Basra dropped by 90 percent after British occupying troops withdrew from the city to Basra Airport last year.

Furthermore, citing a study by focus groups conducted for the U.S. military, Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post reported recently that; “Iraqis of all sectarian and ethnic groups believe that the U.S. military invasion is the primary root of the violent differences among them, and see the departure of ‘occupying forces’ as the key to national reconciliation”. According to DeYoung, the study adds that; ‘the current strife [U.S.-generated violence] in Iraq seems to have totally eclipsed any agonies or grievances many Iraqis would have incurred from the past regime, which lasted for nearly four decades -- as opposed to the current conflict, which has lasted for five years.’ The report provides very strong evidence that; “A sense of ‘optimistic possibility permeated all focus groups . . . and far more commonalities than differences are found among these seemingly diverse groups of Iraqis’” [2]. So, the pretext that the U.S. is in Iraq “to prevent” civil war is an outright lie. It is the presence of U.S. troops which prevents peaceful reconciliation between the different Iraqi communities.

There has never been a civil war in Iraq. With longstanding national and cultural traditions, Iraqis share common beliefs and values, and have shown the capacity to live together peacefully free of U.S. oppression. The U.S. aim is to incite divisions among Iraqis and justify the ongoing illegal Occupation of Iraq. As long as the Iraqi people were too divided to resist the Occupation effectively, the Occupation and the looting of Iraq’s oil wealth will continue. A united, sovereign Iraq and an advanced Iraq is to the benefit of Iraqi people and the stability of the region.

The Occupation-generated violence is political, not sectarian. The creation, financing and arming of different militia groups by the U.S. to do the Occupation’s “dirty work” has nothing to do with religion. Religion is used by each militia group to achieve its aim. As I pointed out earlier, by inciting Iraqis to fight each other (fratricidal killing), the U.S. aim is to protect the Occupation. Indeed, the deliberately-induced brutality of these thugs towards Iraqi detainees intended to instil fear among Iraqi civilians and gives the occupying forces a human face. Bribed and coerced by the U.S., these militia thugs (e.g., ‘Awakening Forces’ or ‘Concern Local Citizens’) are not fighting ‘al-Qaeda’; they are fighting among themselves and protecting the Occupation. Hence the decline death rates of U.S soldiers in the last few months.

Finally, while millions of people opposed the war on the Iraqi people in 2003, the last five years there has been no genuine moral opposition to the ongoing U.S. genocide in Iraq. The West-orchestrated campaign of Islamophobia and anti-Muslims hatred has contributed to moral erosion in Western societies. Western leaders would not be able to commit war crimes on such scale and get away with it were it not for the apathy and equanimity of their people. One assumes they share responsibility. After all, George Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard were re-elected while their armies were engaged in an illegal and murderous war against Iraqi people.

According to the Nuremberg Charter, to initiate a war of aggression is, very simply, the “supreme international crime”. As rightly stated by Francis Boyle, a Professor of Law at the University of Illinois; “In international legal terms, the Bush Administration itself should now be viewed as constituting an ongoing criminal conspiracy under international criminal law in violation of the Nuremberg Charter, the Nuremberg Judgment, and the Nuremberg Principles, due to its formulation and undertaking of aggressive war policies that are legally akin to those perpetrated by the Nazi regime”. By initiated unprovoked aggression against Iraq, U.S. leaders have grievously violated the Nuremberg Charter.

If Westerners judge the war of aggression against the Iraqi people by the same standard laid-down by the Nuremberg Tribunal – not the policy of complete silence–, the current president of the United States, George Bush and his accomplices have committed the same unpardonable crimes against humanity for which the Nazis were tried and hanged. There can be no peace without justice.


Notes:

[1] The Foreign Policy Centre (2007).The Iraq Commission Report. London, UK: Author.
[2] Karen DeYoung (2007, December 19). All Iraqi Groups Blame the U.S. invasion for Discord, Study Shows. Washington Post. Retrieved March 20, 2008.