Not even in Ghana can you escape the US propaganda surrounding the final pull-out of troops (but not oil companies) from Iraq. They leave Iraq “sovereign and free”, a variety of thuggish looking and dull Americans have just told us.
But being in Ghana I probably see rather more balance on TV than I would in the UK. For example, while there is still no official body count from the war, there is an official count of those wounded. The Iraqi Ministry of Health states, officially, that over 3 million were maimed.
Even though the Iraqi healthcare system was damaged by a decade of sanctions before the invastion, on the eve of the attack there were still over twice as many functioning healthcare clinics and hospitals as there are today, and nearly five times as many doctors working in them.
You won’t see that on BBC or Sky.
@ Fedup,
You have actually what is tanspiring in the world – so I ask again:-
“What greater militaristic force does one want to witness in the world today than the use of the bomb by Christian America in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the repeated wars of aggression launched in the post-World War 11 era?”
“actually (accurately stated) what is tanspiring in the world.” – I should have said.
Courtenay Barnett,
Often going missing in ritual reverence of the good war “wwii”, is the fact that the amazing Winston was not a trusted public figure, and most of the populace of the time saw him as a dangerous opportunist, with less said about his personal life, and his rise to power the better. This fact was reflected in his defeat in the first post war elections.
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However those bent on “supremacy” will always find an excuse, and rationales galore. although reading; ” as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy…..raising fearless warriors at every step..” are eerily parallel to the lamentations of the British armoured brigade commander in Basra; “they (Iraqis) no longer are in fear of our armour”.
@Mary Looks like the line up for AQ has changed, it now says:
Jonathan Dimbleby presents a panel discussion of news and politics from Sir John Cass Red Coat School in Stepney, London with broadcaster and former Cabinet minister, Michael Portillo; poet Andrew Motion; veteran foreign correspondent and broadcaster, Dame Ann Leslie; and vice-chair of the Liberal Democrats’ National Policy Committee and Hacked Off activist, Dr Evan Harris.
Producer: Victoria Wakely.
Courtenay Barnett,
Exactly, WWII has been hyped as the good war, and the standards of good and evil have been set by this war, and to date the world relives that war on a daily basis. Further, often the current batch of “evildoers” in vogue are projected to be the continuation of the same evil of that war, somehow resurrected, and made current, thus the bandwagon of aggression rolls on.
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This is the elegant consequence of the rise of the plutocracy in US, that has been in progress since the 1825, with steady rise to power of the US oligarchs. Churchill was in fact bad for UK, and he was the man who sealed the end of the empire and handed it on a platter to his American Cousins!
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However, considering that world has already lived through the American Century, as well as the New American Century, we are at the last phases of this experiment that itself is caught in a rapid downward spiral, despite the last ditch attempts to breath some kind of longevity to this bankrupt notion.
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Although there are certain too sacred to be told to fuck off parties whom fully realising the fate of US is inextricably tied to their own fate. These are busy plotting to disengage from by causing further mayhem and destruction in the area, in an attempt to ensure their own survival. After all whence the only tool in the tool box is a hammer, then every problem in the world would take the shape of nail!
Thanks Dan. What a poor exchange. Dame Ann Leslie for John Pilger. I wonder what lies behind the change? Orders from on high? A mix up? Will we ever know?
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Thanks very much Macky. I am obviously ignoring same.
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Earlier I heard Hugh Sykes on the World Service. He has been an unusually honest reporter from Iraq throughout. He had alternating excerpts from Panetta’s dirge-like speech in Baghdad with its empty platitudes and interviews with Iraqi people whose lives have been greatly harmed by the war. The effect was powerful. To hear a blinded father sobbing because he could not see his daughters was heartbreaking. The programme ended with words from a obviously dissenting US soldier saying that he had found the Iraqi people to be family orientated, warm and friendly and quite unlike the image of them portrayed by the US media. The final sounds were from a military band playing God Bless America.
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The World Today
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/p00m3x5s 15.45 in
PS The introduction to the item referred to the war as a ‘9 year military mission’. This jarred.
Yesterday I went to my degree congregation at University of Birmingham after six years of part-time grafting. The thing that made me most proud was not the shaking of the Chancellor’s hand but a comment made by the introductory speaker the Pro-Vice Chancellor, Professor J K Heath, who spoke about reecnt research achievements. Dr Haifaa Jawad, though not mentioned by name, produced research to show how women women in Iraq have been suffering much more violence than before the war.
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http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/latest/2011/06/07JuneWomensufferingfromworstviolenceinhistoryofmodernIraq.aspx
Well done John.
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Well done too to James Blunt the singer. He was a Guards officer and comes from a military family. He could see the inhumanity and cruelty. Good video too.
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There are children standing here,
Arms outstretched into the sky,
But no one asks the question why,
He has been here.
Old men kneel and accept their fate.
Wives and daughters cut and raped.
A generation drenched in hate.
Yes, he has been here.
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And I see no bravery,
No bravery in your eyes anymore.
Only sadness.
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/…
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11799.htm
Rather than hoping to hear him speak over the waffle of types like Ann Leslie on AQ tonight, we can read instead this short interview with John Pilger.
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An Interview With John Pilger
‘Journalism, Not Truth, Is The First Casualty of War’
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By Karuna John
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December 15, 2011 “Morning Express” — WAR IS a well-produced reality show. Embedded journalism is the star cast. Yes, there are innocents dying, but why let that interfere with what the boss wants reported? Award-winning documentary filmmaker-journalist John Pilger is like the Censor Board in reverse. He hunts down secret footage and uses it as damning evidence, countering what war mongers want you to believe. His 2010 documentary The War You Don’t See had its Indian premiere in Delhi recently. Its footage of a US chopper firing on unarmed Baghdad residents and injured children being ignored as collateral damage raises questions about the media’s engage ment with war. Ironically, the journalists were conspicuous by their absence. For someone who has covered every major war of our times, even Pilger, 72, underneath his composed exterior, seemed disappointed. He tells Karuna John that journalists owe their loyalty to telling the truth. Period.
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30002.htm
Well done John. Well deserved, undoubtfully.
Few years back I came across the survey that showed that majority of Shias in Iraq preferred Saddam to the current Iraqi government and felt more secure under Saddam. I do not remember the source but convinced that this was true.
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@Mary
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As much as most of us want to be pacifist but certainly that at present no nation is secure without an army (Switzerland that serves as global money laundering organisation is one exception from this). Armies by their nature are inhumane and cruel, they are instruments of force backed politics. But without army no nation could fully exercise its sovereignity. Of course nations with strong armies quite often abuse this primary role of an army and use their army not to exercise sovereighnity but to project their power outside of their national borders.
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So in summary one might conclude that the problem is not in army itself BUT in the governments that use it inappropriately.
Uzbek In The UK, as much a problem as armies, is weapons. Tony Buckingham, who claims he has not been involved in mercenary activity since the nineties, has armed militias protecting Heritage Oil interests in Iraq and Libya. But more frightening still are unmanned weapons carried by drones with cameras locating a suspected enemy from the comfort of an office as though it is some kind of war game and not a human being. People who devise such things are sick.
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Mary, very moving song. Thanks.
@John Goss
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Totally agree with you on weapons. There is a brilliant phrase in Lord of War when Cage said that Kalashnikov is real WMD. The horror of that movie is that is based on real facts.
“I never thought I’d live to see the day when I trusted Russian state propaganda (Russia Today) more than the BBC. But here we are. I’d rather have half the truth than an eighth of it.”
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beyond that we are looking more like soviets than the russians ..
Wendy, I went to Russia in the Soviet days. It was all bureaucracy, a propost’ (form) for this and one for that, people carrying paper from one department to another and taking it back once it had been stamped. But I’ve noticed that is becoming more prevalent here. Sometimes you can’t find the right department for your enquiry. I’m sick of listening to piped music while I wait for someone to answer, and when they do it can be something like “You want ‘such and such’ a department. I’ll put you through.” “OK, thanks.” Then the phone goes dead. You give up in the end.
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What’s more disturbing is information gathering. The got it all from Russia. When they opened up the Soviet archives they held information on everybody. That’s where we’ve got it from.
Notice once again how silent our Governments are on the demonstrations in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood is not taking part in these protests, so you’d think we’d support the people on the streets who are mainly, it seems, secular democrats. Why are we silent on this? Is there a deal being brokered between the military and Muslim Brotherhood?
John Goss,
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“What’s more disturbing is information gathering. The got it all from Russia. When they opened up the Soviet archives they held information on everybody. That’s where we’ve got it from.”
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Exactly right,although the Soviets/Stasi could only dream of the technolgy and facilty of US/UK data-trawling capabilty these days.In the peculiar minds of espiocrats the world over everyone’s guilty of something,by degrees.Naturally this is not true at all but it reflects more their warped view of the world than anything else.It’s a paranoid bunker mentality that feeds on its own irrational fears.They really need to get out more-a desk being a very dangerous place from which to view the world.To paraphrase Harold MacMillan:Anyone who spends more than ten years in the wilderness of mirrors has long since probably lost their mind.
John Goss,
What do you know about “Echelon”?
I like your charitable outlook, alas the truth is “our” bastards were/are as venal and even more so than the Russians/USSR. However East Germany under Markus Wolf was in a league of his own when it came to getting one half of the nation to spay on the other, hence his purchase in US
Any unmanned, unannounced electronic system that is breaching countries sovereing territory should be liable to be shot down without reprisals, but will the UN dare to take such stance?
Ingo,
Do you honestly see that Wan Ky Moon to steel enough balls even to whisper “breaching countries sovereing territory” in his toilet whilst trying to iron out the wrinkles out of his skin post taking a dump?
Courtenay Barnett has it to rights. Still at least a token war crimes Tribunal has convicted Bush and Blair in Kuala Lumpur.No comment in any Media outlet here of course but again R.Tv did cover it.I gave up with the Brainwashing Corp: years ago and yes it is actually 2.5 million dead if you include the million starved to death by the sanctions.4 million either fled out side Iraq or displaced internally.As to D.U. the mind reels at the implications,Dr Chris Busby is worth cheking out.Route Irish by Paul Laverty is about the contractors,worth a look.Iraq will go on being a horror story for years but torturing Tony will go on pulling in his millions. On a lighter note is it not wonderful that the little fascist Harry Windsor is to return to shoot up the Afghans from an Apache,the Heroism of it .See my poem to him at www. freedomlite.org God rot them all.