Obama's Grande Armada

Obama the Fraud named former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (also known as Bloody Madeleine) as his emissary at the international economic summit in Washington.

In 1996 Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: "We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?" - US Ambassador at the United Nations (soon to become Secretary of State) Madeleine Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price - we think the price is worth it." CBS - "60 Minutes", May 12, 1996

Obama the Fraud is leaning toward asking Defense Secretary Robert Gates to remain in his position for at least a year, according to two Obama advisers. The Wall Street Journal understands what it means:

"Like the president-elect, Mr. Gates supports deploying more troops to Afghanistan. But the defense secretary strongly opposes a firm timetable for withdrawing American forces from Iraq, and his appointment could mean that Mr. Obama was effectively shelving his campaign promise to remove most troops from Iraq by mid-2010."

Obama the Fraud wants to renew the U.S. commitment to finding al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. "We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al Qaeda. That has to be our biggest national security priority," Obama said during the presidential debate on October 7.

Osama has been probably dead for a long time now but that's irrelevant since Obama the Fraud is using the bogyman to escalate the massive crimes against humanity the US and the NATO have been committing in Afghanistan:

"It's time to heed the call... for more troops. That's why I'd send at least two or three additional brigades to Afghanistan... The terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 are still at large and plotting"

Obama the Fraud can count of course on the Western corporate media, Human Rights Watch and the silence-complicity of large sectors of the so-called "anti-war" movement whose "progressive" voices sailed volunteers with Obama's Grande Armada.

Obamania: a collective, frightening madness

Hangover. How long is it going to last? For some newborn babies, all their life:

The U.S. election has triggered a new generation of mini Barack Obamas with parents in Kenya and the United States naming their newborns after the new president-elect.

That's not a new phenomenon. Naming babies after saints, prophets, kings, popes and charismatic leaders is as old as the human civilization. Sometimes the babies live long enough to survive the fortune of their original. During the '30s of last century, in Germany and Italy the names Adolph and Benito were quite popular; the same for Joseph in Russia and around the world among Communism followers. More recently, people started to name their babies after show-business' celebrities, actors, singers, football players or just someone who appears on TV!

Back to Obama, in Uganda a cow was named after the US president elect:

"Why on earth would you call a cow after Obama?" I asked her. "Because I like this cow so much," she shot back. "Anyway, this cow reminds me of Barack Obama." Anita thought for a couple of seconds while Obama chewed the grass. "Obama is black like me, so maybe he'll respect us black people..."

Idolatry and hope. Since the dawn of the time, we humans create gods to explain what we can't through reason and repose in them our hopes. Cults and religions, gods and idols are as powerful today as they were thousands years ago. Sometimes our times can be much more irrational than our ancestors'.

The imperial cult in ancient Rome was essentially a propaganda tool focused on leaders, a cult of personality. After the emperor's death, the apotheosis of the emperor would strengthen this cult.

Fast-forward two thousands years and we are assisting to the apotheosis of Barack Obama, even before he sits on the imperial throne; miracles of our Global Village's propaganda.

There is no doubt that a black man at the White House has a huge impact full of historical, political and emotional meanings. The same would be true of course if Colin Powell or Condoleezza Rice had been elected. But as someone wrote, "The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons" - not the White House.

Barack Obama is young, handsome, charming and above all, he's cool; the perfect qualities for the modern cult of personality. We shall never forget however, empires don't elect presidents they select emperors. Corporate America - with its money and influence - has selected Barack Obama as next emperor of the US global empire.

The Obama Campaign got more than $ 660 millions and money is generally accepted as a medium of exchange. Or - as Ralph Nader wrote to Obama:

Far more than Senator McCain, you have received enormous, unprecedented contributions from corporate interests, Wall Street interests and, most interestingly, big corporate law firm attorneys. Never before has a Democratic nominee for President achieved this supremacy over his Republican counterpart. Why, apart from your unconditional vote for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, are these large corporate interests investing so much in Senator Obama? Could it be that in your state Senate record, your U.S. Senate record and your presidential campaign record (favoring nuclear power, coal plants, offshore oil drilling, corporate subsidies including the 1872 Mining Act and avoiding any comprehensive program to crack down on the corporate crime wave and the bloated, wasteful military budget, for example) you have shown that you are their man?

Mono-thought society. The corporate media have been joined by most of the progressive media in the celebrations of the new cult. Conservative and liberal intellectuals have been echoed by most of the progressive voices in a depressing, terrifying show of uniformity and banality. The very few, isolated voices of dissent have been silenced by hysterical cries and even leftists and anarchists are still shouting hymns to the new god.

If it's understandable that after eight years of the Bush junta our thirst for change and hope is overwhelming, the mood of these days it's frightening. It's frightening to see a complete absence of scepticism in so many progressive activists and intellectuals, even in front of the most evident facts, such as the people the US president elect has chosen for his administration, the closeness with Corporate America, the will to escalate the conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan or this peculiar "civilian service" Obama and his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, keep talking about.

If before the elections it was "the lesser of two evils", now that the elections are over it would have been sensible and honest to focus on the second term of that slogan, "evil". But those progressive intellectuals who promoted that slogan seem to have forgotten their own words (and their responsibility) and now are just pontificating about the "historic victory". The specter of historicism is once again poisoning our minds.

In its newsletter No. 1062 dated 06 November 2008, Stop the War UK "WELCOMES OBAMA'S VICTORY": "The Stop the War Coalition is delighted that Barack Obama has won the US Presidential election, in which millions of Americans rejected the politics of war and racism."

I have a dream. Barack Obama will escalate the massive crimes against humanity the US and the NATO have already been committing in Afghanistan for the past seven years. Pakistan will precipitate in complete chaos and possibly invaded. The Palestinians will finally mourn the death of their dream. Just wars and humanitarian interventions will flourish with Human Rights Watch giving all the assistance needed...

The English language is extremely rich of words. Delighted?

Delighted and united we stand then. The corporate media and their masters are delighted. With very few, isolated exceptions, the progressive media, the anti-war movement and its intellectuals are delighted. And the father of Obama's chief of staff, is delighted too:

In an interview with Ma'ariv, Emanuel's father, Dr. Benjamin Emanuel, said he was convinced that his son's appointment would be good for Israel. "Obviously he will influence the president to be pro-Israel," he was quoted as saying. "Why wouldn't he be? What is he, an Arab? He's not going to clean the floors of the White House."

Obama's chief of staff is the son of Benjamin Emanuel, "a pediatrician who helped smuggle weapons to the Irgun, the Zionist militia of former Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, in the 1940s. The Irgun carried out numerous terrorist attacks on Palestinian civilians including the bombing of Jerusalem's King David Hotel in 1946."

This is President Obama's chief of staff:

He remembers enemies well. The most celebrated anecdote about Emanuel was after the Clinton campaign, when he denounced the names of Democratic insiders who had sided with the other candidates. As Elisabeth Bumiller of The New York Times reported more than a decade ago: "Emanuel grabbed his steak knife and, as those who were there remember it, shouted out the name of another enemy, lifted the knife, then brought it down with full force into the table. 'Dead!' he screamed. The group immediately joined in the cathartic release: 'Nat Landow! Dead! Cliff Jackson! Dead! Bill Schaefer! Dead!'"

Indymedia Chicago provides some more info on this charming character: Local war-mongering anti-immigrant NAFTA-pusher named White House Chief of Staff

Since colors seem to have been the main factor of this show, you may have suggestions about the shirts' color for the upcoming Obama's militias. Which militias? Read here and here when the hangover is gone.

The looking-glass world. Fox News is so delighted about Obama's victory that's become the paladin of African-Americans and all the oppressed. Nader, on the other hand, after a life spent fighting Corporate America and defending the oppressed, is now accused to be a racist by Murdoch's henchmen.

"Under an Obama presidency those non Blacks who stand in opposition to Barack Obama's de facto pro Wall Street backers and their blood-sucking policies will be branded as racists and traitors, while those Blacks who oppose Obama's policies will be ignored and/or branded as fringe radicals and traitors" wrote a few days ago BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board Member, Larry Pinkney

Oliver Stone is delighted too:

"Bush was, I believe, the grandson of Richard Nixon in many ways. Now I genuinely hope that Obama can be the heir to John F Kennedy, who was a great spirit and to whom very strong goodwill was granted. I felt that in 1960 and I feel it now with Obama. The majority is rooting for him. He's good-looking. He has a beautiful family and people wish him well. He has that youth and that outsider feel, that leanness of mind and spirit. As with Kennedy, he carries the refreshing spirit of human freedom."

Planet Hollywood, in a far, far away galaxy, many light years from Planet Earth... On our Planet, during the JFK's administration: the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the building of the Berlin Wall, the Space Race, the Vietnam War... But he was young, charming, good-looking and with a beautiful wife, all important elements - today more than yesterday - to manufacture the American Dream.

War means business. Surfing some progressive, alternative websites these days, it would seem that Martin Luther King Jr. or William Edward Burghardt Du Bois or Malcolm X has become the new US president. Someone even drew parallels with the election of Nelson Mandela as president of South Africa. Waiting for the hangover to pass (hopefully soon! but don't hold your breath) we can be sure that President Obama will follow his predecessor and keep privatizing the war industry:

In the wake of Barack Obama's election victory many American private military and security contractors are wondering what their future will be under President Obama. It is probably better than they imagine. Recall that at the beginning of the year inveterate PSC critic Jeremy Scahill blasted Obama for being too sympathetic toward contractors. He reported that a senior foreign policy adviser of Obama's said that if elected, Obama would not "rule out" using private security companies like Blackwater Worldwide in Iraq. The adviser also said Obama does not plan to sign on to legislation that seeks to ban the use of these forces in U.S. war zones by January 2009, when a new president will be sworn in.

Considering that most of the so-called contractors (mercenaries) come from poor background and poor countries, what does this tell us about the "change we can believe in"?

The Obama mania is a collective madness induced by Corporate America, which was able to exploit our honest thirst for change, peace and social justice. Optimism is a warm feeling but can make us blind. Sooner we wake up from this dream and good-will people the world over realize that nothing has really changed and start to organise to make their voices really count, the better will be for the world. The victims of this rapacious global empire - from our brothers and sisters in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan to those living in our cities' poor neighborhoods - will suffer immensely because of our fantasies and celebrations. And be aware that from now on propaganda will be much more difficult to fight. On guard!

P.S. A few days ago Barack Obama apologised to Nancy Reagan:

"President-elect Barack Obama called Nancy Reagan today to apologise for the careless and off-handed remark he made during today's press conference. The President-elect expressed his admiration and affection for Mrs Reagan that so many Americans share and they had a warm conversation."

What a sweet picture, as American as apple pie. Maybe someone among the many Obama's Boys & Girls could remind Barack - as they call him - that more than a million Iraqis have been slaughtered by the US war machine and that country completely annihilated. Maybe he could find the time to apologise to the survivors and provide some justice and reparation... After all, he's been the candidate against the war, right? Wrong!

With respect to Iraq, Sen. Obama has conceded the main argument of Sen. McCain's campaign and said the so-called "surge" worked (despite significant evidence and analysis to the contrary). And he has vowed to keep soldiers in Iraq to fight counterterrorism. John Podesta, former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton who now leads the Center for American Progress, estimated this would take a 60,000 troop presence to achieve.

Moreover Obama "will not 'rule out' using private security companies like Blackwater Worldwide in Iraq" according to Democracy Now! correspondent Jeremy Scahill. And Obama did not plan on signing on to legislation that seeks to ban the use of such forces by the U.S. government by January 2009, according to one of his senior foreign policy advisors. (Democracy Now! 2/28/08). (This is one promise Obama unfortunately has kept, refusing to sign onto the Stop Outsourcing Security Act, introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont).

In an interview with Amy Goodman, Sen. Obama stated his intention of leaving 140,000 private contractors in Iraq because "we don't have the troops to replace them." He also stated the need to keep an additional "strike force in the region … in order to not only protect them, but also potentially to protect their territorial integrity." Summarizing the interview, Amy Goodman concluded that it sounded as if Obama "would leave more than 100,000 troops, close to 200,000 in Iraq. 'Troops' meaning U.S. soldiers and military contractors which some call mercenaries." (4/1/08).

Even concerning a possible timetable to withdraw troops from Iraq, Obama has diminished his promises. He now is committing only to "reducing the number of combat troops within 16 months," presumably to "bolster efforts in Afghanistan so that we can capture and kill bin Laden and crush al Qaeda." (Obama/McCain debate, 9/26/08).

What we know for certain, though, is when given a chance to commit to a complete withdrawal of troops from Iraq, Obama said "no." When Tim Russert asked him, during a debate in New Hampshire in September 2007, if he could promise having American troops out of Iraq by 2013, he would not do so.

From: What Do They Have to Do to Lose Your Vote?, The Trail of Broken Promises, By MATT GONZALEZ

If Barack Obama were a car, we would bring this fraud back to those who sold it to us.

Happy Halloween

How would you explain to an Afghani child that Obama is the lesser of two evils when he's going to escalate the massive crimes against humanity the US and the NATO have already been committing in that country for the past seven years?

"We're confronting an urgent crisis in Afghanistan... It's time to heed the call... for more troops. That's why I'd send at least two or three additional brigades to Afghanistan... The terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 are still at large and plotting"

The American people, brainwashed by the media and most of the American left, are sending a liar and his gang of war criminals into the White House, once again. But this time they are all happy and smiling; a big difference, for the years to come.

The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, the Economist... they all helped selling the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq and more recently the notorious bailout (read: extortion). Now they all are selling you the brand new product: Obama, the change we can believe in.

The "change" will be bipartisan, Obama threats. So you vote for Obama and get Bush's war secretary, Gates. The crowds are still happy and smiling after the pied piper Obama.

Mr. Change bought the White House with $660,000,000 used to brainwash the US/world audiences with smoke and lies. He's been even named Advertising Age's marketer of the year for 2008:

"I think he did a great job of going from a relative unknown to a household name to being a candidate for president," said Linda Clarizio, president of AOL's Platform A, the sponsor of the opening-night dinner attended by 750 where the votes were cast. "I honestly look at [Obama's] campaign and I look at it as something that we can all learn from as marketers," said Angus Macaulay, VP-Rodale marketing solutions

The best democracy money can buy... but the left is in coma and comes to life only to scream its outrage for Palin's wardrobe.

"If we are going into war, then all of us go, not just some" Obama declared a few weeks ago at the national service forum at Columbia University. I think of all those crowds now enthusiastically saluting the new deception; how many young people among them are going to be sent overseas to fight for Obama's friends' wars? I think of the indecent, guilty silence of much of the left, already at work to sugar the Just War(s). And I think of that Afghani child who's gonna be killed while the happy, ignorant crowds salute the new fuhrer. Happy Halloween.

Remember Remember the Fourth of November

"Everything has to change so that nothing changes." - Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa, Il Gattopardo

The color of money. Senator Barack Obama's campaign has now raised more than $600 million, almost equaling what all the candidates from both major parties collected in private donations in 2004.

Where do you think that awful lot of money comes from?

"Many of these large donors come from industries with interests in Washington. A New York Times analysis of donors who wrote checks of $25,000 or more to the candidates' main joint fund-raising committees found, for example, the biggest portion of money for both candidates came from the securities and investments industry, including executives at various firms embroiled in the recent financial crisis like Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and AIG. (...) More than 600 donors contributed $25,000 or more to [Obama] in September alone, roughly three times the number who did the same for Senator John McCain."

Endorsements, or the big orgy.

Colin Powell, one of the major war criminals with the blood of millions of innocent people on his hands, has endorsed Barack Obama who, in exchange, has endorsed war criminal Powell:

Obama told NBC television Monday that Powell was welcome to campaign for him and might have a place in his administration. He said Powell "will have a role as one of my advisers" and that a formal role in his government was "something we'd have to discuss."

The (ex)change we can believe in.

All the President's Men. Among Barrack Obama's godfathers there are: Warren Buffett, the world's richest man, George Soros (the multibillionaire Good Samaritan affiliated with the Council on Foreign Relations, International Crisis Group, Human Rights Watch, etc.), the diabolical Zbigniew Brzezinski, and the notorious media mogul Rupert Murdock with his nefarious empire. The list goes on and on.

No doubt there will be advantages to have a liberal emperor. Alan Dershowitz explains:

"The reason is because I think it is better for Israel to have a liberal supporter in the White House than to have a conservative supporter in the oval office. Obama's views on Israel will have greater impact on young people, on Europe, on the media and on others who tend to identify with the liberal perspective. Although I believe that centrists liberals in general tend to support Israel, I acknowledge that support from the left seems to be weakening as support from the right strengthens. The election of Barack Obama -- a liberal supporter of Israel -- will enhance Israel's position among wavering liberals. As I travel around university campuses both in the United States and abroad, I see radical academics trying to present Israel as the darling of the right and anathema to the left. As a liberal supporter of Israel, I try to combat that false image. Nothing could help more in this important effort to shore up liberal support for Israel than the election of a liberal president who strongly supports Israel and who is admired by liberals throughout the world. That is among the important reasons why I support Barack Obama for president."

Dershowitz is absolutely right of course. Not to mention Mr. Vice-President Joseph "I am a Zionist" Biden, the man in charge of the implementation of an old Zionist dream, the partition of Iraq and one of Obama's top foreign policy advisers, Madeleine Bloody Albright, the modern Herod who proudly claimed the responsibility for the massacre of half a million Iraqi innocent babies.

Empires don't elect presidents, they select emperors. The Empire's Establishment picked up an unknown politician and made of him a star to save itself and control the masses with the American Democracy Show. Casting a handsome, charming black man (yes! the Establishment played the race card. Remember? Everything has to change so that nothing changes) to cover the ugly face of a bloody, ruthless Empire, the ruling class plans to rebuild the illusion of a respectable civilization, the stars and stripes mythology, the American way. The media - owned by those who control the political process, the same people who control the economy and our lives - played marvelously the game and another Hollywood movie is brainwashing the four corners of the planet.

Killing hopes. A self-complacent politburo with its well-funded progressive think tanks and publications has once again participated in this colossal work of whitewashing and propaganda. The King is dead. Long live the King! No surprise of course. Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan have shown the intellectual and moral collapse of the Western Left, a phantom that continues its long march toward irrelevance.

Happy Independence Day Amerika

I read in New York Times:

American Flags as Big as Fields
On the field before the All-Star Game, Major League Baseball plans to assemble the largest gathering of Hall of Fame players in baseball history. And as fans salute their heroes, the former players will join the crowd in saluting the American flag — one that is roughly 75 feet by 150 feet, as long as a 15-story building is tall, spread horizontally over the Yankee Stadium turf.

If only Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels were alive!!! At least they had the good taste to use the work of an exceptionally gifted artist, Leni Riefenstahl. In today’s Amerika, all is needed is a big flag. But, as Howard Zinn reminds us, "There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people".

The Great Mirage

The British Medical Journal published a few days ago “Fifty years of violent war deaths from Vietnam to Bosnia: analysis of data from the world health survey programme”

In the study’s abstract, the conclusions read: “War causes more deaths than previously estimated, and there is no evidence to support a recent decline in war deaths.”

The lead researcher, Ziad Obermeyer, a research scientist at Brigham & Women's Hospital, in Boston, says:

"There is a notion in political thought that the number of deaths due to war has been declining in recent years," Obermeyer noted. "That is attributed to a lot of different things, but among them technological innovations like 'smart' bombs and different strategic priorities. This idea appears to be supported by media reports. But what we are finding is these reports are not a reflection of reality." Contemporary media reports of deaths are not to be fully trusted, Obermeyer added. "The reason we should be skeptical of media reports is that they are subject to political pressures and cannot always be verified," he said. "These numbers can be pushed up or down, depending upon what kind of political pressure is being exerted."

Now, compare and contrast this with what John Sloboda, executive director of the Oxford Research Group and founder of Iraq Body Count said on 17 March 2008 at “Is a Just War Possible?”, a conference held at Cumberland Lodge:

“How many people have died in Iraq since the 2003 invasion? No-one knows how many have died in Iraq, not even the governments concerned, because their efforts to find out have ranged from half-hearted to non-existent. (…) It has been largely left to citizen initiatives to enact the moral imperative here implied, such as the volunteer Iraq Body Count (IBC) project, which has accumulated details on nearly 90,000 publicly documented deaths to date. Last week (beginning 9 March), another 352 were added to that meticulously compiled total, built from day-by-day scanning of the outputs of hundreds of press and media sources. More imprecise, sample-based surveys carried out in different ways and at different times have provided estimates ranging all the way up to 1.2 million.
The sheer weight of numbers overwhelms and numbs us. As Joseph Stalin is believed to have said, “One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic”. Losing the details of individual victims behind anonymous and easily disputed “expert estimates” dehumanises them, and contributes to a growing indifference to the truth. Iraqi dead have simply “ceased to count” for many of us.” [PDF Link]

Mr. Sloboda could hardly be more misleading, could he? Iraq Body Count has been continuously quoted by the warmongers - Bush’s “30,000, more or less”, remember? - and the state-corporate media; even more disgracefully, IBC is also been the darling of the Western so-called anti-war movement, its think-tanks and alternative media. The hypocrisy is overwhelming!

Just two recent examples – among many – of this deadly hypocrisy.

Robert Fisk, known as the best British reporter, wrote a few days ago, “tens of thousands dead in Iraq”, when the best estimates tell us that the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, the Nuremberg’s supreme international crime, may have slaughtered well over 1.2 million Iraqi citizens.

Why does Robert of Arabia, the Middle East correspondent of the British Independent, keep deceiving his readers on the most important point of the most outrageous scandal of our times, the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq?

In a recent correspondence with Human Rights Watch, I was told: “We do not do any numbers on this, as it would be just guessing – no one really knows how many have died.”

Human Rights Watch’s hypocrisy is nauseating if only one considers the efforts they put for well over a decade in promoting the story of Saddam’s genocide against his own people. The propaganda is thick and repeated as a mantra; for a different take, here some material you may want to read:

A Glimpse of The Past: A War Crime or an Act of War?
Stephen C. Pelletiere – NYTimes

Report Suppressed: Iran Gassed Kurds, Not Iraq
Raju Thomas, Times of India

Saddam Hussein Did Not Commit Genocide
Jude Wanniski

What Happened at Halabja?
Jude Wanniski

In Defense of Saddam Hussein
Jude Wanniski

In Defense of 'Chemical Ali'
Jude Wanniski

Human Rights Watch had a leading role in the Empire’s propaganda to brainwash the public opinion both in the preparation for the invasion of Iraq (and after, in normalizing its occupation) and, more broadly, in selling the oxymoronic “humanitarian interventions”. Read for example:

Human Rights Watch in Service to the War Party

Lynching Saddam – Part 7: the Myth of Human Rights

Watching Human Rights Watch
Open Letter to Kenneth Roth, Executive Director Human Rights Watch

We live inside the Great Mirage, the most sophisticated illusion-machine ever created by humankind: a ruthless, immoral, greedy global empire of Anglo-American flavour, hidden behind a façade of liberalism and fake opposition. In these hours the machine is working to serve the next delusion, Barack Obama, with the complicity of the self-deluded Lib-Left, because – as an Italian wrote last century – "Everything has to change so that nothing changes".

The Anti-war.com’s Midsummer Night's Dream

The Anti-war.com’s Midsummer Night's Dream

To celebrate the summer solstice, Ivan Eland, the director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at the Independent Institute, wrote a romantic comedy published by Antiwar.com, titled “Lessons for Iraq from the Former Yugoslavia”.

Eland writes:

“Unfortunately, in the 1990s, violence during Yugoslavia's break up tended to be directly proportional to the ethno-sectarian diversity of the geographical entity. Slovenia – the most ethnically, religiously, culturally, and linguistically homogeneous of the former Yugoslav states – had the least violence during the disintegration. After a war of independence from Yugoslavia in 1991 that lasted only 10 days and killed only 70 people, Slovenia has flourished politically and economically. In contrast, in the more ethnically and religiously diverse Croatia, severe violence occurred in its subsequent war of independence. Even worse, the most ethnically and religiously heterogeneous piece of geography in the former Yugoslavia – Bosnia – had a brutal civil war with the worst atrocities committed in Europe since World War II.”

Like in every comedy, there must be some humor. Here you go:

“The Western powers, led by the United States, became involved and forced the parties into the uneasy Dayton peace accord. The primary reason that Bosnia has not exploded into renewed civil war since the 1990s is the Dayton accord's creation of a decentralized Bosnian state. Such a governing arrangement allows each group – the Serbs, the Croats, and the Muslims – to have autonomous governance and a veto over decisions by the weak central government. The structure is not perfect, but it has helped prevent further eruptions of ethno-sectarian carnage.”

In other words, the barbarians were helped by the generous Western powers who “became involved” to bring about peace. Of course that is exactly what happened; the NATO and the US’ role was precisely that one. No doubt about that!

For a “slightly” different reading of what happened then in Yugoslavia, please read: The Dismantling of Yugoslavia: A Study in Inhumanitarian Intervention (and a Western Liberal-Left Intellectual and Moral Collapse) written by Edward S. Herman and David Peterson

Now, back to the Anti-war.com’s Midsummer Night's Dream. Barbarians in Yugoslavia, barbarians in Iraq. Thank God the world can count on Uncle Sam and its many nephews, always so enlightened and generous of brilliant ideas. Eland gives us the solution for Iraq:

“Given Iraq's history of one group dominating the central government machinery – the Sunnis – and using it to oppress the other groups – the Kurds and the Shi'a – [ALERT: you’re reading PROPAGANDA] the groups will likely eventually fight over any significant central government power. Thus, to prevent an all-out civil war when the United States finally pulls its finger out of the dike and withdraws its military forces from the country, the power of the Iraqi government will probably have to be reduced to a weak confederation of autonomous regions based on voluntary tribal or ethno-sectarian associations. And even then, the best Iraq can probably hope for is uneasy stability – similar to that afforded to Bosnia by its weak confederation.”

Back to reality. The US illegal invasion and occupation is responsible for the Iraq genocide, including the sectarian violence and the ethnic cleansing occurred AFTER THAT INVASION. The myth [the bad Sunni oppressing Kurds and Shi’a] on which the Antiwar.com’s author builds his shameful proposal [the partition of Iraq], is just one of the many propaganda tools the Empire sold its ruthless adventure. [Just out of curiosity, have you noticed that since the 2003 US-led invasion-occupation of that country, Iraq’s citizens are not called Iraqis anymore but Muslims or Christians, Sunni or Shi’a, Arabs or Kurds? Interesting, isn’t it?].

This is the so-called anti-war movement in the West. The old Zionist dream, the partition of Iraq – probably the real, initial goal of the 2003 illegal invasion and occupation – is now sold to the brainwashed Western audiences with an antiwar label on it.

Of course it’s difficult to get rid of this white-man syndrome, especially the Anglo-Saxon variety; the very core of imperialism and colonialism, this racist idea that nourishes even in the best intentioned minds: teaching these inferior races how to live their lives and run their business. Ivan Eland and Antiwar.com should maybe consider if instead a better idea could be the partition of the United States of Amnesia. This planet (including the vast majority of the US citizens) would surely live much better. And in peace, at last!

HAPPY DAYS - Part I: Human Rights Watch's Amnesia

Part I - Human Rights Watch's Amnesia: An e-mail exchange with Human Rights Watch's John H. Biaggi - Acting Director Human Rights Watch International Film Festival

Dear John Biaggi,

I’m sure you’re very busy with the HRW Film Festival these days, but there is an urgent matter I’d kindly like you to consider.

I’ve just read in the Village Voice an article that reads:

The body count at the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival rivals any in Hollywood's summer shoot-'em-ups: 400,000 killed in Laos; 250,000 slaughtered in Chechnya; 40,000 murdered in Chad; 3,000 Chileans disappeared under Pinochet; 1,000 Lebanese felled by Israeli bombs. Now add Iraq to the equation—some 90,000 violent civilian deaths and counting, according to IraqBodyCount.org—and you have a serious accounting of carnage, both past and present, reflected at this year's 19th annual event. [The Political Is Personal at the Human Rights Watch Fest. Putting a human face on global atrocity. by Anthony Kaufman June 3rd, 2008]

From the article I don’t understand if the figures about Iraq taken from Iraq Body Count has been adopted by HRW or it was just an insert from the Village Voice’s journalist.

As you surely know, the best estimates indicate the real figure is likely in excess of one million dead. I’m sending here below some resources I hope can be useful both to Human Rights Watch Film Festival and to the press.

Thank you and good luck with the festival.

Best wishes,
Gabriele Zamparini

Useful resources:

Iraq: the Human Cost

Updated Iraq Survey Affirms Earlier Mortality Estimates

ORB Update on Iraqi Casualty Data

Answers to Questions About Iraq Mortality Surveys

Counting Iraqi Casualties -- and a Media Controversy

What is the real death toll in Iraq?

Iraqi deaths survey 'was robust'

***

Hi Gabriele,

All the figures in this article are entirely the journalists, not HRW figures. Thanks for pointing this out.

Regards,
-John

***

Hi John,

Thank you for your quick reply. I appreciate it, especially knowing how busy you must be in these days with the HRW film festival.

The Village Voice’s article is indeed misleading. I wrote to them but I didn’t get any reply.

If I can abuse of your time and kindness for just one more question, do you know if HRW has an official position on the death toll in the Iraq war? Or can you please tell me to whom I may ask this question within HRW? I really would appreciate your help a lot.

Thank you very much – and by the way, I’m truly a great admirer of your festival which I think is really the best, more intelligent film festival running today.

Best wishes,
Gabriele

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Hi Gabriele,

I’m asking around, will hopefully come back with a person here who can answer your question.

Thanks for the kind words about the festival!
-John

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Got a response. We do not do any numbers on this, as it would be just guessing – no one really knows how many have died.
-J

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Thanks John,

Sorry to bother you again with this, but I don’t understand. In 2006 a study was published in the British medical journal The Lancet. The Washington Post reported at the time:

Ronald Waldman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University who worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for many years, called the survey method "tried and true," and added that "this is the best estimate of mortality we have."

This viewed was echoed by Sarah Leah Whitson, an official of Human Rights Watch in New York, who said, "We have no reason to question the findings or the accuracy" of the survey.

"I expect that people will be surprised by these figures," she said. "I think it is very important that, rather than questioning them, people realize there is very, very little reliable data coming out of Iraq."

I sent you the the following important links in a previous e-mail:

Iraq: the Human Cost

Updated Iraq Survey Affirms Earlier Mortality Estimates

ORB Update on Iraqi Casualty Data

Answers to Questions About Iraq Mortality Surveys

Counting Iraqi Casualties -- and a Media Controversy

What is the real death toll in Iraq?

Iraqi deaths survey 'was robust'

Frankly, I’m really surprised by your reply. Is that the official position of HRW? This is quite a delicate matter, so I’d like to be sure I understand correctly.

Thank you again for your time and kindness.

Best wishes,
Gabriele

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The correspondence ends here since I haven't got any further reply from Human Rights Watch. But please stay tuned! More on Human Rights Watch and the Brave New Empire in HAPPY DAYS - Part II