Saddam Hussein Executed

Saddam Hussein was this morning executed via a sham trial . See this opinion of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention declaring the "trial" a violation of international law.

Of course the real tragedy here is not the death of a mass murderer, but the fact that he was not fully and properly tried and held to account for all of his crimes. What's particularly galling is that the "trial" was effected by those who had been complicit in the dictator's worst atrocities. The victims deserve better than this.

Site changes

There’ll be a couple of changes to this site over the next few days, hopefully to make it a bit more user-friendly.

The main change is the replacement of the “links” section on the homepage with a new “info” section. The first new feature within that will be the entry below, which recommends a few particularly good websites for further information on the topics I’ve been writing about for the last couple of years. This entry will be permanently linked to from the info section on the homepage.

A lot of blogs have a seemingly endless list of other blogs and websites on the sidebar, which doesn’t seem particularly helpful to me. No information’s given on any of them, so why would you choose to visit one out of any of the other scores of sites listed? Hopefully my list will be a bit more useful. I’ll limit my recommendations to the sites I rate the highest, and give a brief description as well. More changes at the weekend.

Useful links

There's a vast wealth of information on world politics available on the internet. I couldn't begin to namecheck all the best sites, but this is a short selection of those I find most helpful in my own research and writing. If you want to know more about the subjects discussed on The Democrat's Diary then cast your eyes over the list below and click on the links to explore further.

Asia Times
Authoritative analysis of international relations, security and economic issues across Asia.

Amnesty International
Global human rights watchdog that compiles and catalogues abuses from around the world. A mine of information.

Christian Aid
Campaigning third world development charity whose publications provide analysis and information on global poverty and the role played by the West.

Conflicts Forum
Run by two eminent, experienced and knowledgeable security and international affairs experts, Conflicts Forum aims to facilitate dialogue between the West and political Islam in the Middle East, especially over Israel-Palestine. They give some first-rate analysis on the nature of groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, and the wider political context they operate in. An extremely worthwhile project.

Human Rights Watch
Like Amnesty, a global human rights watchdog that compiles and catalogues abuses from around the world. Also a very useful source of information.

Juan Cole
The blog of US Middle-East expert Juan Cole has become the first stop of the day for thousands around the world who want to understand what’s happening in that region. Cole rounds up the news from the western and the regional press and gives his expert analysis on events as they occur. A daily personal tutorial on Middle Eastern current affairs. Essential.

Medialens
Whilst I sometimes have my criticisms of Medialens, its still the case that if they didn’t exist someone would have to invent them. Their realtime analysis of the behaviour of the British liberal media is always thought-provoking, and spot-on 95% of the time. On the two most important aspects of Western Iraq policy – sanctions and the post-invasion death toll – they’ve done some truly invaluable work.

Naspir
The Network of Activist Scholars of Politics and International Relations, of which I'm a member. Naspir promotes politics and international relations scholarship that supports non-violent action against oppression. It has members around the world and across academic disciplinary boundaries; scholars, students, non-academic activists and interested citizens, with theoretical, empirical and/or campaigning interests.

Noam Chomsky
If Juan Cole’s essential on the Middle East, Chomsky’s just essential full stop. The most insightful critic of western power alive whose work also constitutes a treasure trove of information and ideas for further reading. This site pulls together interviews, articles, book chapters, audio and video covering his whole career of political dissent.

The Nation
Comment and analysis on the US political scene.

Paul Rogers
Here, British security expert Paul Rogers gives a monthly briefing on global security issues, from a UK-US angle. His columns for Open Democracy are also worth a visit.

Tom Dispatch
In depth and highly readable comment and analysis from a selection of top quality US writers. All drawn together by Tom Engelhardt – a superbly talented and insightful writer himself, who often adds his own contributions.

War on Want
Same as above on Christian Aid. Good campaigning third world development charity and a great source of information.

War In Context
Daily selection of the best news and analysis of the “war on terrorism” from the world’s press.

ZNet
Based in the US, but the exceptionally good left-alternative comment and analysis they offer is really from a global perspective. There’s lots of good stuff here that you probably wouldn’t find anywhere else. The “another world is possible” movement at its best.

Gerald Ford

US Middle East expert Juan Cole, favourably compares former President Gerald Ford - who has passed away - to the current administration in the White House.

One of the few rays of hope coming out of the last few years is the possibility that the ruthless, imperialistic nature of western power has now been decisively revealed, and that it will henceforth be recognised and dealt with as such by those who had previously mistaken it for something else (i.e. the virtuous force it pretends to be).

The flipside of this is the danger that the tactical changes made by the current set of imperial managers have been so dramatic that the differences between them and their predecessors may be taken to be qualitative, or more substantive than they actually are. By extension, future administrations that can successfully present themselves as substantively different from the present one will be free to carry on the standard imperial pattern, with the recognition of the reality of what’s happening put safely back in the box (step forward Barak Obama?).

Gerald Ford appears to have been a sensible and pragmatic, rather than a reckless and ideological imperialist. Since these differences affect policy, they’re non-trivial. But the commonalities are non-trivial as well, so I make these observations to augment rather than contradict what Juan says in the post linked to above.

Ford signed off on and materially supported the Indonesian invasion of East Timor - commencing immediately after his 1975 visit to Jakarta - which went on to wipe out about a quarter of the East Timorese population.

The Suharto regime had committed, ten years earlier, what the CIA described as “one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century” when it exterminated hundreds of thousands of opponents upon coming to power. Given the record, the potential human cost of backing the invasion of East Timor will have been very clear to Ford. But the national security threat posed to the US by less than a million East Timorese peasants was obviously an urgent danger which he felt compelled to address.

With respect to the Middle East policies Juan focuses on, it appears that Ford was prepared to take a tougher line with Israel. But a tougher line in the interests of living up to basic moral obligations or in terms of managing an imperial alliance? The former seems to me to be the more important consideration (though both are of course relevant topics of academic interest for us).

Juan quotes Newsweek saying that Arab states were expressing a “willingness to accept the existence of the state of Israel if it withdrew from all occupied Arab territories”.

Yet despite this opening, the Ford administration, according to the Facts on File quotes Juan gives, “was attempting to block anti-Israeli resolutions before the Security Council” and had promised Tel Aviv that it would “oppose any attempt by the U.N. Security Council to impose a peace settlement in the Middle East”. These “anti-Israel” impositions presumably consisted of the demand that Israel return to its 67 borders, which everyone knows, still, is the only basis for meaningful peace (and justice). That blocking of a peaceful and just settlement continues to this day. How much bloodshed and misery could have been avoided if Ford’s White House had taken a different path?

All powers are ruthless and all compensate by projecting a virtuous self-image. And while the US is no different, its own self-image is a particularly seductive one, to the point where current crimes can be readily seen as a fall from grace, rather than as part of a long established pattern. The differences between Ford and Bush II are real enough, but they have their limits.

Interesting exchange with Medialens

Medialens campaign to highlight bias in the mass media, applying the Propaganda Model developed by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman to reports in UK press and television news.

The Propaganda Model is one of those essential analyses which, whether read here in depth and in action, or here in an abridged version, can really illuminate one’s understanding of the world around us, let alone the political economy of the mass media.

I've had an interesting debate with the editors of Medialens on an instance where I don't believe they've applied the Propaganda Model as successfully as they might have. They issued a "media alert" on coverage of the death of General Pinochet where they took the writer and commentator Isabel Hilton to task. My view was that there are far more deserving targets for their efforts than Hilton, that actually her writing's pretty useful and that its pretty crude and unhelpful to simply consign her to the catagory marked "corporate propagandists".

Its interesting to see how the debate unfolds and the points that the editors and others make. The thread starts here. Have a read.

Ahmedinajad and Holocaust Denial

Time magazine's Tony Karon has an excellent and thoughtful piece on the Iranian Holocaust conference over at his blog, 'Rootless Cosmopolitan'.

Sample quote:

"Ahmedinajad ought to pay attention to one particular guest, a Palestinian lawyer from Nazareth called Khaleed Mahameed, who runs a small Holocaust exhibit at his office in Nazareth, and argues that it is essential that the Palestinians understand the Holocaust because in it lies the root of their own suffering. Addressing the Israelis on the basis of an understanding of their experience was essential for the Palestinians to make progress in their own national struggle, he argues. He was invited to the conference after writing to Ahmedinajad telling him that the Holocaust was an historical fact that should not be questioned, and that doing so only played into the hands of right-wing Zionists. Indeed, the Zionist establishment doesn’t quite know what to make of Mahameed, because he’s directly challenging Ahmedinajad at the same time as making clear that the Holocaust has been abused in order to justify suffering inflicted on the Palestinians. That’s how a Palestinian Mandela would put it — the Holocaust, in fact, is part of the legacy of suffering that is the common history of Israel and the Palestinians."

Read the rest, and bookmark the site. Karon's analysis is always insightful, informed and sharply written. Highly recommended.

Michael White and the Lancet

The "Lancet report" into excess mortality in Iraq, which suggested that 655,000 Iraqis may have died as a result of our invasion in 2003, needs no introduction from me.

Michael White is an assistant editor of the Guardian, and was previously political editor for 16 years. He's a senior figure in the paper at the left-hand edge of the political mainstream in the English-speaking world.

Given who he is, its particularly worrying that he's taken the stance he has on the Lancet study; basically questioning the integrity of the scientists who produced it and saying that its results seem wrong compared to what the media's reporting - its a flimsy argument to say the least, and I've been debating it with him.

First, here's his article which, though not aimed at the study, takes a swipe at it. Here's my first comment taking him up on it. Here's his response to various comments, including mine. Here's my reply, here's his reply to me, and here are my two replies, which is where it stands just now. (maybe its easier for you to scroll down from his article than clicking on all of this. up to you).

The problem with White taking this view is that people like him are in a position to bury the report by deeming it "controversial", and here on the basis of not very much. Judge for yourselves, but it seems to me that White can't really defend his position when called on it. Now if the Lancet study was right, or close to being right, we're talking about half a million deaths, that we helped to cause, which will end up being ignored on the basis of some decidedly faulty thinking and a bit of innuendo. Try explaining to an Iraqi whose lost a loved one in a war we started that, as far as we in Britain are concerned, their loss never happened.

And as I say, White's paper is at the left-hand edge of the political mainstream in the English-speaking world.

Iraq's future

"Children in Iraq are some of the most deprived in the Middle East, according to a report released by the United Nations children's agency (Unicef) on Monday. Using under-five mortality rates as a critical indicator of the wellbeing of children, the report ranked the country 33rd worst in a global survey of 190 countries.

"...child mortality is closely tied to high levels of malnutrition, poor access to health services and mothers' lack of education. The cost of war and conflict, in terms of lost lives, displacement, and setbacks to development, continues to be high, as is particularly evident in Iraq, oPt [the occupied Palestinian territories] and Sudan," said Wolfgang Friedl, Communication Officer for Unicef Middle East and North Africa.

In Iraq, women and children suffer far more than their male counterparts, according to NGOs and rights groups such as the Baghdad Centre for Human Rights Studies.

According to the Iraqi Ministry of Health, in years since the US-led occupation of the country began in 2003, children have become more vulnerable to diseases as Iraq's infrastructure has deteriorated, the economy has collapsed and supplies are limited.

"Thousands of children are displaced nowadays without medical support. Diarrhoea and dehydration have become common diseases among them and with a lack of medicine, what could be considered acute before is chronic today," Ahmed Waleed, media officer at the Ministry of Health, said. "The numbers presented by UNICEF show the critical condition the health system is in today in Iraq."

Iraqi boy Hudhar Zein, 11, is worried about his future. Since sectarian violence forced his family to flee their home in April 2006, he has lived in increasingly miserable conditions.

"Sometimes we need to divide the only available bread with six members of my family because we don't have money to buy more. I had to leave my school because my father cannot afford notebooks and pencils. And changing house from month to month makes it harder to stay in the same school," Zein said, adding that his father had recently lost his job.

"You cannot imagine what is like to see your six-year-old sister sick and at risk of dying because your family has no money to buy medicine for her. And [even if we had money] the hospital says it ran out of medicine a month ago," Zein added.

Despite the grave situation for children in Iraq, oPt and Yemen, Unicef's Friedl said that other countries in the region have improved conditions remarkably. "Child mortality varies greatly between Arab countries due to political instability and economic development. In fact, no other region in the world records such a vast contrast with respect to child mortality," he said.

Friedl added that the Middle East as a whole has shown an "impressive decline" in infant mortality - from an average of 81 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1990 to 56 in 2004. The region also reduced under-five mortality rates over the past decade by two thirds."

IRIN: "Children suffer most in Iraq, says Unicef report"

Also, for the sort of close-up insights into life as an Iraqi that you almost never get from the western media, see "'Today Is Better than Tomorrow', Iraq as a Living Hell", by Dahr Jamail.

The Good Die Young

Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte.

Born 25 November 1915 - died 10 December 2006.

Iraq Study Group Report

The Iraq Study Group's report on future US policy in Iraq came out today.

The US aim in Iraq was to set up permanent military bases and a dependent client state at the heart of the world's energy producing regions, and to then enjoy the resulting step-change in strategic power over its rivals.

Millions of us opposed the US-UK invasion and oppose the occupation now, not because it was a "tragic mistake", "a miscalculation", or because "they didn't have an adequate plan post-invasion". We opposed it because invading another country to impose your will upon it, and to enhance your ability to impose your will on others, is immoral in the most fundamental sense. It is a direct contradiction of every principle of liberalism and democracy that the west imagines it stands for.

So while the political class gazes in awe at the blue-ribbon study group's findings, ready to praise the grandees and their sensible views etc etc, remember one thing - this is a change in imperial tactics and nothing else.

I've yet to read the report, so let me test my analysis by first taking a wild guess (tell me if I'm wrong) and predicting that there will be no mention, none, of a total withdrawal of all troops and an abandonment of all bases in Iraq - which is what 90%+ of the "democratised" Iraqis want. We don't hear much about what Iraqis want, but when it comes to their country, what they want is the beginning and the end of relevant discussion. The rest is nothing but an admission that we have no interest in, nor any understanding of democracy whatsoever.

Now we can talk about tactics all we like. We can criticise the manager of a football team, Wehrmacht generals can quibble over whose fault it was that Operation Barbarossa failed, but if we want to raise ourselves above that level and actually take responsibility for the bloodbath we've created in Iraq then we're going to have to look someway beyond the likes of James Baker.

Nuclear Britain

Something quickly on the Government announcement that it'll be replacing the UK's "Trident" nuclear weapons system.

The NPT obliges us as a nuclear state to work towards total nuclear disarmament. The UK’s justification for renewing Trident, that we need nuclear weapons in an uncertain world, is to say that we will always retain nuclear weapons, whatever the circumstances, because the circumstances may always change.

In other words, by using this justification, the UK has declared its intention to remain a nuclear power in perpetuity. It has therefore declared NPT to be a dead document as far as it is concerned.

This is bad for security.

Firstly, we now have zero credibility when it comes to telling non-nuclear states not to go nuclear. We have declared the NPT a dead document so they have no reason to abide by it.

Secondly, and more importantly the more states there are with nuclear weapons, and the longer nuclear weapons exist, the higher the likelihood that a situation will arise, inadvertently or otherwise, where they are used, with a holocaust resulting. Former Soviet systems, practically on hair triggers, are apparently in an ever-worsening state of disrepair. One wrong move, one misinterpreted action, could lead to the worst calamity the world has ever seen

The sensible thing to do in the interests of security is therefore to take the NPT seriously and work multilaterally through mutual security guarantees to steadily draw down the world's collective nuclear arsenal.

But this isn't about security. It’s about the geo-political leverage you get from borrowing some nukes from the US and then pretending you're a big shot on the international scene (which includes being prepared for first use – a genuinely disgusting policy).

All in all, another pathetic display on the world stage from New Labour's Britain, which would be merely laughable if it wasn't so profoundly dangerous.