iraq

The European Court of Human Rights condemned the so-called “five techniques” used by UK military and security forces during that period. It ruled that the techniques - hooding, wall-standing, noise, deprivation of food and drink, and sleep deprivation - were cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, banned under the European Convention on Human Rights. The British government gave “a solemn undertaking” to the court that the techniques would never again be used on British soil."

Human Rights Watch - Dangerous Ambivalence: UK Policy on Torture since 9/11

Never again on British soil, but we can solemnly undertake that you can ship it overseas and we shall turn a blind eye - especially if there are others who will do the actual dirty business...

... and other idiotic sayings.

'You can look back at this time and you can be very, very proud of what you have done',

Tony Bliar, flying into Basra to tell the troops they can be proud. (Dec. 2005)

'It's not that they're welcoming us because they're welcoming foreign troops, They're welcoming the fact of their liberation.'

Tony Bliar in April 2003

And what do the Iraqis say?

I went out to Russia in 1991 - still just the Soviet Union - certain that anyone who had not fought against, or stood up in some way against the regime was a collaborator. I went out partly to understand how a society of collaborators, collaborators on a mass scale, a scale of many millions - how it could exist. What was the mind of a collaborator like? How did they square their personal principles with what was happening around them? How did they excuse their failure to condemn the evil acts of the regime and their continuing participation in the structures set up by that regime - all essential to its continuing existence?

"I think it is one of the great tragedies of our time that so many people have died, so many people have been displaced and so many people face famine as a result of the events of Darfur."

It is, most certainly. According to (that well-known trusted source) the BBC, 'Some 200,000 people have been killed and 2m displaced in Darfur since 2003.' The BBC devotes video, audio and textual reports accompanied by photos to the protests being held today, with the message 'don't look away'. Gordon Brown is played over and over again on the World Service, sounding sober and sympathetic, in control.

What a tragic contrast with the total lack of attention given last week to a new poll by ORB, a respected polling company used and normally quoted by the BBC. A google search for 'bbc iraq poll orb' brings up just 2 polls quoted by the BBC: one asked British parents whether they would be happy for their son to join the army, and the second asked whether British troops were winning or losing the war. But the ORB poll that asked Iraqi citizens how many of their household had died since the invasion as a result of the violence has been almost totally ignored, as far as I can see.

That poll, conducted in August of this year, suggests that there have been 1,220,580 Iraqi deaths since the invasion in 2003. That is over a million deaths since the already sanctions-crushed Iraqis were invaded by the world's greatest military power (and its poodle).

The figure of a million roughly tallies with an estimate from Just Foreign Policy, based on the Lancet study (last October) and 'a rate of increase derived from Iraq Body Count'. Just Foreign Policy also reckon the death count is just over a million: 1,044,607 (to date). And the figure also tallies roughly with an estimate by Gideon Polya, a scientist and writer, in February of this year. He too used the Lancet study as a basis, and estimated that by February 2006, there had been over a million victims as a result of the invasion. 600,000 of those needless deaths, he estimates, were children under 5.

If 200,000 deaths and 2 million displaced is one of the great tragedies, what is a million deaths (or more) and 4 million displaced? What is it when those deaths have come about as a result of a pre-planned invasion, built on fabricated reasons and a deliberate policy of false propaganda? What is it when the invading poodle, the British Ministry of Defence states publicly that it "does not maintain records that would enable a definitive number of [Iraqi] civilian fatalities to be recorded."? And what is it when the British media keeps silent about 1 million deaths, pointedly ignores them, and presents the man who wrote the cheques for war as sober, sympathetic, in control?

Well - what would it be, if it had been Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, China or Iran who had invaded, unprovoked, through deceit, and for selfish gain, causing a million needless deaths?

"How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought."

Just for the sake of balance...

"A potential U.S.-led military action against Iraq would likely have profound humanitarian consequences for the Iraqi civilian population. Consistent with our established policy, Human Rights Watch takes no position on the legality or appropriateness of such a war. Yet we have concerns with regard to the manner in which it may be conducted."

Extraordinary. We take no position on a war that no international lawyer, with the exception of those hired by the occupying powers, regards as legal under international law. We are a renowned human rights organisation, but we have an established policy which is not to take a position on an unprovoked war of aggression by the world's greatest military power. Except to say that we have concerns with regard to the manner in which it may be conducted.

So, Human Rights Watch: can you conceive of a 'manner' in which the world's greatest military power might conduct this war of aggression peacefully? Can you conceive of an unprovoked war of aggression by the world's greatest military power which manages to avoid profound humanitarian consequences for the civilian population?

If so, you should tell the world. If not, why do you shy away from telling the world?

'The UK government has played a key role in developing the oil law, alongside the US government. There are serious questions regarding the appropriateness of the UK, as an occupation power, participating in policy discussions on the future of Iraq’s natural resources. While attempts have been made to describe the British role as “advice”, it is highly unlikely that Iraqi officials would treat it as neutral advice, to be taken or left, given the UK’s military position'

See this post for some of the details of the oil law, still being forced down the the Iraqi's throats. British citizens can - and should - urge their MP to sign EDM 1180, which 'calls on the Government to disclose to the House all representations it has made in relation to the oil law'. It appears they have been many.

Here are some of the more brazen attempts by the oil companies and the British government to bludgeon the Iraqis into submission:

• Passage of the law was made a condition of relief of the foreign debts accumulated by the Saddam Hussein dictatorship, during his wars, and through his personal enrichment. In November 2004, the Paris Club of wealthy creditor nations agreed to conditionally cancel 80% of Iraq’s debts to them in three stages: 30% immediately, 30% when Iraq entered into an International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme, and 20% following a satisfactory review by the IMF after three years of the programme. Iraq entered an agreement with the IMF in December 2005. The conditions included the passage of a law opening Iraqi oil to foreign investment, by the end of 2006.
• Future Iraqi oil policy was further developed under the Coalition Provisional Authority. During that time, former executives of multinational oil companies were appointed as senior oil advisers. Two of these advisers were paid by the UK taxpayer, and reported to the UK authorities in Iraq.
• Six oil companies collectively appointed lobbyists, the International Tax & Investment Centre (ITIC), to push for Iraq to offer long-term oil production contracts known as production sharing agreements. ITIC was advised by officials of the FCO and HM Treasury on their strategy for influencing Iraqi decision-makers.
• ITIC’s primary lobbying document, entitled Petroleum and Iraq’s Future, was sent to the Iraqi Minister of Finance in late 2004 by the British Ambassador to Iraq. According to ITIC, he “formally” submitted it to the Minister, implying UK endorsement of its contents...
• Since the completion of the first draft of the oil law in July 2006, British officials in both Whitehall and Baghdad have actively worked on the law. It was first seen by British officials in July, eight months before it was seen by members of the Iraqi parliament, who first saw it in March 2007.

(emphasis mine)

I am of course delighted that John Simpson appears to have experienced a personal epiphany, and now admits to having understood something that he apparently had failed to understand before (despite 40-odd years of war reporting and 2 insignificant daughters):

'It is that life itself is immensely valuable. Not just the lives of people who think and look and maybe worship like you and me, people who are attractive or well-educated or rich, people who are the right type of Christian or the right type of Muslim. All lives.'

A bit late for the 1/2 million Iraqi children whose lives were lost as a result of a brutal sanctions regime, under-reported, un-reported or dispassionately reported; a bit late for the 1 million-odd Iraqis whose lives have been lost as a result of the invasion - an invasion that Simpson reported with such dispassion and even-handed respect for all sides that warmongers were barely recognisable as warmongers. A bit late, too, for all those other millions (unattractive, poor, ill-educated) around the world who have been maimed, killed, starved, irradiated, or tortured as a result of policy decisions by the British Government (and others); and whose damaged or curtailed lives have been reported even-handedly, as matters of hard fact, impartially - if at all.

But still, maybe better late than never. Perhaps John Simpson would now like to ask the BBC to update his quote on their page about 'impartiality':

"During the war in Iraq, opinions were fiercely divided. Both sides were certain they were right. So, as journalists, we had to be very clear about our function. It's to give people the plain, unvarnished facts."

Or maybe not, since the quote bears no relation to reality before Simpson's epiphany either. He didn't give the facts: not unvarnished, not varnished, not at all. Nor did anyone at the BBC, except perhaps one person - and he was sacked. The war would probably not have happened if they had done so.

Watch this video!

Animation taken from http://www.ericblumrich.com. I've put one more up here, but have a look at his site: there are lots more, all as powerful as these.

Sometimes this world just seems too hard to understand. Too endlessly unjust. Too systematically, unceasingly unjust. Too endlessly rewarding of injustice.

Too hard to bear.

What would one want? For the unjust to suffer what they wreak on others? For Blair to have his children's limbs ripped off in front of his eyes? For Bush to watch his wife give birth to a deformed foetus, irradiated from single ghoulish eye to outsized toes with uranium shot from foreign tanks?

Of course not. But to see Blair given the first standing ovation Parliament has ever given a Prime Minister; to see the sycophantic press pack fall over themselves to write his ‘legacy’, his place in history next to Churchill and Lord Nelson; and to see him - this is what grates - in the role of ‘peacemaker’ in the Middle East, after all he has done to make war and wreak havoc there and all he has done to prolong and intensify the suffering of those who were only trying to lead their lives until he came along – that really grates.

And somehow, it grates even more, the thought that he might succeed. That through his bullying, duplicitous ways, backed up by US dollars or the threat of their withdrawal, backed up by the press pack who want only to shine in his glow, and backed up by British-made weapons hanging over the heads of anyone who dares to defy his line of ‘peace’ – he may just push through a compromise.

Why does that grate most of all? It shouldn’t: surely peace at any price is better than no peace. If a pushing, shoving, duplicitous and ambitious warmonger is the best way to ensure it – and I even wonder if it may be – then why complain.

The trouble is that then one wonders what on earth it’s really all about. Why on earth promote these gentle, caring, harm-free values if they only get you stamped on. Or shot up with uranium from a foreign tank.

Just suppose...

... that we were living in one of those 'rogue' states that human rights educators (and moral philosophers) love to latch on to - Hitler's Germany or Stalin's Russia. How would we as 'human rights educators' respond to that? What would be the values or the 'competences' we would think it important to try to develop?

Or just suppose that we were living in Gaza / Iraq / Chechnya / Afghanistan today - or any other place around the globe where life is almost not worth living. (How) would we respond to that as human rights educators? (Or is the question quite as idiotic as it sounds)

And now: just suppose that we are living in Israel / the UK / USA / Russia / or any other country actively or passively supporting terror around the world. How, as human rights educators, should we respond to that?

Or is that an idiotic question as well?

I genuinely don't know the answer. But I can't see how we are not troubled by it; and I am surprised that it almost doesn't seem to be a question that the HRE community discusses. There are media workers against the war, military families against the war, war veterans against the war, and a few teachers against the war. Where are the human rights educators against the war?

Our defence is that we are working for the long term: that we are teaching the values that will ensure we do not go to war again. But I am not so sure... I am not sure that we can afford to (or are entitled to) refuse to work for the short term, when things are as they are; and I am also not sure that the values we concentrate on in HRE are really those which are going to best ensure that future populations stand up to governments that carry out crimes against humanity.

I am reminded of a quote from Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela's wonderful book about Eugene de Kock ('Prime Evil') - 'A Human Being Died that Night':

De Kock and many of the apartheid government's operatives have said repeatedly that what kept them going - what sustained their zeal and conviction in the rightness of crushing the heads of thousands of black activists - was the tacit but powerful support they felt they were receiving from the beneficiaries of apartheid privilege - the polite churchgoers, the cultured suburbanites, the voters. It is at their feet that the responsibility for apartheid, ultimately, can be laid'.

No lesser crimes are being committed today: are we so very different in our cultured suburban educating?