by Mutadhar al-Zaidi

In the name of God, the most gracious and most merciful.

Here I am, free. But my country is still a prisoner of war.

Firstly, I give my thanks and my regards to everyone who stood beside me, whether inside my country, in the Islamic world, in the free world. There has been a lot of talk about the action and about the person who took it, and about the hero and the heroic act, and the symbol and the symbolic act. Continue reading →

As US combat troops redeployed to the outskirts of Iraqi cities on June 30, well-staged celebrations commenced. The pro-US Iraqi government declared “independence day” as police vehicles roamed the streets of war-weary Iraq in an unpersuasive show of national rejoicing. US mainstream media joined the chorus, as if commemorating the end of an era.

Meanwhile, top US administration and army officials cautioned Iraqis of their own recklessness. “Biden Warns Iraq About Reverting to Sectarian Violence,” read a New York Times headline. “What will it take to make a good exit from Iraq?” inquired a Kansas City Star analysis. But missing from news headlines and commentary was any indication of direct US responsibility for the genocide that has befallen Iraq. Continue reading →

Featured Post for 05-/22-05/28:

“It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it”

I recalled this statement while I was reading a very powerful look at the My Lai massacre that took place during the Vietnam War. The depravity of humanity gone mad is revealed in this account and one would think that we would never again commit such atrocities. But the powers that be convinced us that we should put it behind us and move on. And now it seems we have repeated the depravity again in Iraq.

Is it true that our future is shaped by what and how we react to events and realities of the present? Have we gone even deeper into depravity since My Lai? And if that is true, what did we not do that would have kept us from drifting into an open acceptance of torture and unjustified bloodletting today? If the future we get IS up to us, what failures of our past determine what we leave for our children today? Continue reading →

Iraqis are still dying while under the oppression of 150,000 American soldiers, but there is some HOPE, even though there have been no withdrawals. Barack Obama promised in February that “By August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end.”

Up to 50,000 troops would remain under the agreement the Bush administration had to be left with no other option except to sign to leave by January, 2012, which nicely coincides with the start of Obama’s possible second term. Continue reading →

The Iraqi war was brought against an innocent people who had nothing to do with 9/11, the war was unnecessary to effect regime change, it was ginned up by lies of those who sought a war to open a new profit line, and it is just one of the seven wars that was planned in the early ninety’s, to aid the American Neo-Con vision of Empire in the Middle East. FULL ARTICLE

Dear Mr. President,

Shakespeare said it best: ” The fault dear Brutus, is not in our stars….. But in ourselves.”

The fault, Mr. President, in our present situation, is ‘ not in our stars… But in our stripes.’

The American stars are something to be proud of, sir. Represented by the stars on our flag, they stand for truth and justice for all. It seems to me, that the stripes that are represented on our flag, now stand for the stripes worn by our detainees , and for the stripes that we force other nations to wear when we dominate them. Continue reading →

As the six year anniversary of the war in Iraq, this is the day to protest!  Talk to your local news media about why humanity is in mourning over the US occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and why they must end.  And, talk to them about this news:

• The Obama administration is considering spreading the “war on terror” deeper into Pakistan, beyond the tribal areas, and into the city of Quetta. The New York Times says the chances of civilian casualties are very high should the US risk igniting mass protest against this violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty. However, the risks for the Obama administration of not expanding the war is great, from the standpoint of perpetuating the American mission to control the Middle East.
• The growing use of unmanned drones, piloted from trailers in the US, to attack homes of “insurgents” in Afghanistan and Pakistan, could also lead to spreading opposition in those countries, as the civilian death toll grows.  But adding more US troops to Afghanistan, as we have already been warned by Secretary of Defense Gates, will bring more US casualties.

Take a look at the Afghanistan fact sheet for help in talking to people about why Afghanistan is not “the good war.”

Barack Obama captured the soul of the Democratic Party when he denounced the American invasion of Iraq as a violation of international law and the United Nations Charter, based on faulty and manipulated intelligence about weapons of mass destruction. His election to the presidency proved that the voters trusted him to end the war as he promised.

While Americans are grateful that this six year old war will soon be over, they wonder at the delay in pulling our troops from Iraq. More than 4000 Americans have been killed; more than 30,000 have been wounded in this war generally regarded as a mistake. Our military leaders say that we should leave “responsibly.” What does that mean? Responsible to whom? To the Iraqis, whose public wants us to leave at once? To the corrupt Iraqi government whose leaders want us to stay as long as we supply the dollars? Continue reading →

Barack Obama said last Tuesday night to Congress, ” I will not allow terrorists to plot against the American people from safe havens halfway around the world. We will not allow it.”

I wonder how people in the Middle East felt hearing that, having been bombed as if they are terrorists for most of this decade, either directly by US planes, or with US made weapons, as in Gaza?  An Iraqi in Sikrit, said, “In fact, the US forces achieved one thing: That is destroying Iraq … We hope that the US soldiers will leave our country sooner rather than later in order to put an end to the bloodiest pages in Iraq’s history.” Continue reading →

Is there anyone left out there who hasn’t been sucked into TV Land – British (or American) style – who can still attest to life devoid of the culturally (politically) requisite 3.75 hours of daily TV watching, or 26.25 hours per week? It’s worth noting that Deborah Orr tells us within her below article, published in today’s Independent newspaper, that these figures only include broadcast television, not watching DVDs, films in cinemas, YouTube or other internet-broadcast content. FULL ARTICLE