Posted on Wednesday, 27 January, 2010 By yours truly | TOOLS:Talk or Share
Ah, the good ol'e days.
I’m old enough to remember the televised Iran/Contra hearings long, long ago in the United States. Now in the United Kingdom the Iraq Inquiry seems a little like Déjà vu minus Oliver North’s hot secretary.
If the former is to offer any spoilers on the latter: Nothing much will come of it. Still, it’s interesting how the UK is at least willing to explore the illegality of the the invasion of Iraq while President Obama has more or less offered unqualified amnesty to the previous White House wrecking crew that set about demolishing Iraq without any legal or logical security rationale what so ever. So it goes.
As Bush’s prayer buddy Tony Blair is to give his account in the next couple of days, 38 Degrees is asking people in the UK to press Sir John Chilcot to not go light on the New Labour patriarch.
What question would you like Tony Blair to answer?Visit the 38 Degrees website to sign their petition and let the Iraq Inquiry know what you want him to answer.
Here are the questions 38 Degrees have put forth, with my own amendments in red.
Being that the reasons given for the invasion were widely known at the time to be based on missing or questionable evidence and misleading statements, what were you offered from the White House When did you first promised George Bush you’d back an invasion?
Since there was no evidence of a stockpile and quite a bit of publicly available evidence that there wasn’t one before you made your decison, When did you really realise Saddam Hussein probably didn’t have WMD?
To what extent Did you cover up advice that the war mightwould be illegal?
Given that there was no legal basis for the war, Why did you decide to ignore the anti-war protests by the British people?
Given the highly corrupt and illegal nature of what you’ve done, why shouldn’t you be in prison right now?
Yeah, they probably won’t get asked, much less with my amendments. Maybe Cherie can make a documentary about it some day. I can likely guess what the real answer would be regarding to the protests: why would you pay attention to protesters when you’re not in any danger of losing their support at the polls?
Posted on Monday, 15 December, 2008 By yours truly | TOOLS:Talk or Share
I could watch the first few seconds of this clip in a loop for hours. The only thing that could have improved it would be if the guy actually nailed him with one of his shoes. Though, had he pegged him, I’d be writing right now that it would have been better if he had brought soccer shoes with metal cleats instead. You can’t have everything, I guess. Still, he delivered George the news about what people in Iraq actually think of him. It’s an appropriate send off, and fairly polite considering what the U.S. has thrown at Iraq over time.
Posted on Saturday, 8 November, 2008 By yours truly | TOOLS:Talk or Share
The Top 5 list for things our gleaming new president
can do to prove to the world we aren’t imperial wankers
Photo by Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images
Barack Obama is “the goodest person we’ve ever had as a presidential candidate,” deemed Sarah Silverman. He is “our last hope of ending this country’s reputation as the asshole of the universe.”
And the U.S. populace is now in a drunken dance frenzy to a club remix of The Witch is Dead. That’s a good thing. Soak it up. Enjoy the moment. There’s a currently a collective sigh of relief heard around the world, even in places where people don’t expect large degrees of change. The achievement of an African American should be lauded.
I want the cynics among us to pause at least long enough to appreciate the historical significance of the incoming 44th president’s victory. I want the blind party-line enthusiasts to fess up how similar the candidates were to one another on most issues. And lastly, I want my independent-voting pals out there to honestly admit that while the differences were few, they translate into some clear divisions. And everyone should admit that they voted mostly because they were freaked out.
In 2004 I was hoping to watch the election from south of the border. A flash flood in California killed my car and cost me a bunch of money and put that dream to an end. I ended up cruising around the various election night parties of Olympia, WA, mooching free grub and brew as I went and watching people grow more and more drunk and depressed as Bush won another round. What a difference four years makes. I got to watch this election from abroad, living and working in the UK. Married, home-owning, kid having and wandering around with enough loose change to buy my own brews. And mostly I slept through the results.
Posted on Wednesday, 19 March, 2008 By yours truly | TOOLS:Talk or Share
In 1971, on the heels of the My Lai massacre, Vietnam Veterans Against the War organized the Winter Soldier Investigation.
More than 125 veterans testified about atrocities they had committed or had seen other U.S. soldiers commit. There’s a decent film about it here. Modeled on that Citizen Tribunal method, Iraq Veterens Against the War has conducted their own public hearing on the atrocities committed by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan. Strangely, outside of the scant though varied sources of Democracy Now (here and here) and Wired Magainze, I haven’t seen much coverage of this historic event by major media.
Incredibly honest, candid and not for the squimish (or, actually, especially for them) these are the stories from Iraq and anyone in favor of the ongoing war needs to be made to hear. The only problem I have with this is that it’s not at the Hague being used as testimony in a war crimes tribunal against the Bush Administration.
Posted on Sunday, 3 February, 2008 By yours truly | TOOLS:Talk or Share
Hurrah to the brave resdients of Brattleboro, Vermont, who are what I consider to be some of the last patriots left. They’re voting at a town meeting on whether President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney should be indicted and arrested for war crimes, perjury or obstruction of justice if and when they come to town.
Not likely that these two corporate-backed terrorists ever will, but it shows some real community back bone and how global issues really are important to small town America, which actually can make a difference. Now, there are some (such as the newspaper’s editorial board referred to in this link) who say American communities have no place in taking positions on where their nation is headed.
That, of course, is an incredibly un-American stance to take and carries the trait of parochial finger-wagging that plagues so much of corporate media. The volks in Vermont are now getting a taste of it as well.
The template has been set for other communities to replicate. It’s now up to everyone else to decide whether they want to be lumped with the tide of complacent goose-stepping cowards while the death toll in Iraq tops one million, or whether they want to join the rebellion launched last week in Brattleboro.
The Brattleboro Selectboard approved the measure last Friday. Voters vote on the resolution in March. Here it is:
Shall the Selectboard instruct the Town Attorney to draft indictments against President Bush and Vice President Cheney for crimes against our Constitution, and publish said indictments for consideration by other authorities and shall it be the law of the Town of Brattleboro that the Brattleboro Police, pursuant to the above-mentioned indictments, arrest and detain George Bush and Richard Cheney in Brattleboro if they are not duly impeached, and prosecute or extradite them to other authorities that may reasonably contend to prosecute them?
As an absentee voter still registered in Thurston County in Olympia, WA, I’d love to see a version of this text on my next mail-in ballot.
In the week in which General Patraeus reports back to US Congress on the impact the recent ‘surge’ is having in Iraq, a new poll reveals that more than 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have been murdered since the invasion took place in 2003.
Previous estimates, most noticeably the one published in the Lancet in October 2006, suggested almost half this number (654,965 deaths).
These findings come from a poll released today by ORB, the British polling agency that has been tracking public opinion in Iraq since 2005. In conjunction with their Iraqi fieldwork agency a representative sample of 1,499 adults aged 18+ answered the following question:-
QHow many members of your household, if any, have died as a result of the conflict in Iraq since 2003 (ie as a result of violence rather than a natural death such as old age)? Please note that I mean those who were actually living under your roof.
None: 78% One: 16%
Two: 5% Three: 1% Four or more: 0.002%
Given that from the 2005 census there are a total of 4,050,597 households this data suggests a total of 1,220,580 deaths since the invasion in 2003. Calculating the affect from the margin of error we believe that the range is a minimum of 733,158 to a maximum of 1,446,063
Please click on this link if you want a local perspective on these figures – a short interview with our pollster Dr Munqeth Daghir – http://195.158.192.26/munqeth/
Detailed analysis (which is available on our website) indicates that almost one in two households in Baghdad have lost a family member, significantly higher than in any other area of the country. The governorates of Diyala (42%) and Ninewa (35%) were next.
The poll also questioned the surviving relatives on the method in which their loved ones were killed. It reveals that 48% died from a gunshot wound, 20% from the impact of a car bomb, 9% from aerial bombardment, 6% as a result of an accident and 6% from another blast/ordnance. This is significant because more often that not it is car bombs and aerial bombardments that make the news – with gunshots rarely in the headlines.
As well as a murder rate that now exceeds the Rwanda genocide from 1994 (800,000 murdered), not only have more than one million been injured but our poll calculates that of the millions of Iraqis that have fled their neighbourhoods, 52% have moved within Iraq but 48% have crossed its borders, with Syria taking the bulk of refugees.
And for those left in Iraq, although 81% may describe the availability of basic groceries such as bread and fresh vegetables as “very/fairly good”, more than one in two (54%) consider them to be “expensive”.
Note: The opinion poll was conducted by ORB and the survey details are as follows:
Results are based on face-to-face interviews amongst a nationally representative sample of 1,720 adults aged 18+ throughout Iraq (1,499 agreed to answer the question on household deaths)
The standard margin of error on the sample who answered (1,499) is +2.5%
The methodology uses multi-stage random probability sampling and covers fifteen of the eighteen governorates within Iraq. For security reasons Karbala and Al Anbar were not included. Irbil was excluded as the authorities refused our field team a permit.
Interviews conducted August 12th – 19th 2007.
Full results and data tabulations are available at www.opinion.co.uk/newsroom.aspx
ORB is a full member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules
Detailed analysis (which is available on our website) indicates that almost one in two households in Baghdad have lost a family member, significantly higher than in any other area of the country. The governorates of Diyala (42%) and Ninewa (35%) were next.
The poll also questioned the surviving relatives on the method in which their loved ones were killed. It reveals that 48% died from a gunshot wound, 20% from the impact of a car bomb, 9% from aerial bombardment, 6% as a result of an accident and 6% from another blast/ordnance. This is significant because more often that not it is car bombs and aerial bombardments that make the news – with gunshots rarely in the headlines.
As well as a murder rate that now exceeds the Rwanda genocide from 1994 (800,000 murdered), not only have more than one million been injured but our poll calculates that of the millions of Iraqis that have fled their neighbourhoods, 52% have moved within Iraq but 48% have crossed its borders, with Syria taking the bulk of refugees.
And for those left in Iraq, although 81% may describe the availability of basic groceries such as bread and fresh vegetables as “very/fairly good”, more than one in two (54%) consider them to be “expensive”.
Note: The opinion poll was conducted by ORB and the survey details are as follows:
Results are based on face-to-face interviews amongst a nationally representative sample of 1,720 adults aged 18+ throughout Iraq (1,499 agreed to answer the question on household deaths)
The standard margin of error on the sample who answered (1,499) is +2.5%
The methodology uses multi-stage random probability sampling and covers fifteen of the eighteen governorates within Iraq. For security reasons Karbala and Al Anbar were not included. Irbil was excluded as the authorities refused our field team a permit.
Interviews conducted August 12th – 19th 2007.
Full results and data tabulations are available at www.opinion.co.uk/newsroom.aspx
ORB is a full member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules
“We are not — are we? — at the mercy of our political institutions. If we created them, we are responsible for them. We have the right and the duty to overhaul them, to change them.” — James Baldwin
“We are not — are we? — at the mercy of our political institutions. If we created them, we are responsible for them. We have the right and the duty to overhaul them, to change them.”