"The Worst Place I Have Been in my Life"

Photographer Ben Hodson recently complied a large (6m x 3m) photo-montage out of 3,000+ individual photos from the inside of one of the cells from Amna Suraka prison in northern Iraq. The result is currently on display in the UCMK gallery in Milton Keynes, UK.

The prison was used extensively by Sadaam Hussein's government and includes cells and torture chambers. The artist spent an extended time documenting the inside of the "worst place I have been in my life."

Iraq: Amna Suraka photomontage by Ben Hodson from ATP Media on Vimeo.






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The War Your Don't See

The War You Don't See trailer from John Pilger on Vimeo.

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Tony Blair Doesn't Speak for Me When He Speaks of God

Image via Wikipedia

For the benefit of my four-and-a -half regular readers, and those others who stumble here unintentionally, here's my take on the Tony Blair-Christopher Hitchens debate taking place this week at the Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto on the question, "Is religion a force for good in the world?"

As a Christian believer myself (I hope I am a real one, converted to Christ from a secular background) it may be assumed that I will be pleased to support Mr Blair's case for God.

But I am not.

For a start, I do not support "religion" as a whole, as if the essence of Buddhism is essentially the same as the essence of Christianity, as the essence of Islam, etc.

They are not all the same. Any superficial consideration of the matter will reveal that religions vary greatly, from the brutal sun-worshiping religions of pre-Colombian America, to the Salvation Army, the Catholic crusades, and the nature-worshiping Druids. Lumping them all together and assessing whether they are "good" or not seems analogous to lumping together one-state Marxism, participatory multi-party democracy and market-anarchism, and asking whether or not "politics" is a force for good.

Clearly, the devil in such a question is in the detail.

More significantly, however, is my objection to the participation of Tony Blair in such a high-profile debate. Although I am unqualified to comment on the reality of his Christian faith, and would not presume to do so, I am sure of this: the action of invading Iraq in 2003 set in motion a chain of events which, by 2010, has had catastrophic results for the Christian churches in Iraq - including the Roman Catholic wing of the church to which Tony Blair converted in 2007.

Christians are required to exercise discernment in their lives, and part of this discipline includes an assessment of the consequences (the "fruit") of a course of action, not only its abstract theoretical dimension. The fruit of the invasion of Iraq for the Christian believers in that nation has been to make them significantly more vulnerable to brutal attack and persecution than was the case before 2003.

The murderous Jihadists who cut off the heads of church leaders in Iraq, and who blow themselves up inside churches, were not committing these acts inside Iraq before the invasion. The same tragic story is unfolding in Pakistan, where Jihadists forced out of Afghanistan by NATO forces, have added to the volatile religious and political mixture in the country and have increased their violent attacks upon Christians and their churches.

The professing Christian Tony Blair, as Prime Minister, was a prime mover in these terrible events which have unleashed such harm onto the church, not to mention the wider non-Christian population. President Bush, also a professing Christian, was of course the senior partner in this folly.

In light of such harm that has been caused, to those the Bible encourages me to see as members of my extended spiritual family, I cannot passively accept that the man who helped to create the conditions which have allowed such suffering to the church, should be accepted in any way as a spokesman for "the faith" that we both profess to share, or for "faith" in general.

There was a time in history when a warrior-ruler who professed faith would be taken kindly but firmly in hand by a bishop and led on a path of repentance and humility. The phenomenon of a king abdicating in order to enter a monastery was not an uncommon occurrence in the pre-modern era. Today, the path for such a man appears to consist of book deals, speaking tours, six figure salaries and endless justifications for indefensible actions which have had catastrophic consequences.

Would it be too much to ask for Mr Blair to choose to lower his personal profile, to repent of his presumption in acting as apologist for God, and to head the words of the ancient prophet:

He has shown you, O man, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.

Micah 6:8

Or to heed the words of the prophet Jeremiah:

Stand at the crossroads and look;
ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
and you will find rest for your souls.

Jeremiah 6:16

In the meantime, as a Christian, I can accept Tony Blair as a repentant sinner, if that is what he is. I am one too and God knows my own need of forgiveness. But I cannot identify with Mr Blair's role as a religious apologist and, not for the first time, I am reluctantly left to say of his actions, "Not in my name."

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Related articles

• Tony Blair to debate Christopher Hitchens on religion (ctv.ca)
• Blair v. Hitchens: Is religion a force for good or ill? (theglobeandmail.com)
• Blair v. Hitchens poll (scienceblogs.com)

Remembering the 2003 Protests Against the Iraq Invasion

We Are Many from Amir Amirani on Vimeo.

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A Spiritual Legacy of the Iraq War

Image by jimforest via Flickr

One of the (unintended?) results of the US and British-lead invasion of Iraq has been to catch indigenous Iraqi Christians up in the post-invasion violence and turmoil, in particular and targeted ways.

According to the Assyrian International News Agency, "During the reign of Saddam Hussein, the estimated 1.4 million Christians - many of them Chaldean-Assyrians and Armenians, with small numbers of Roman Catholics - were generally left alone if they didn't oppose the government and they lived in relative peace with the country's Sunnis and Shiites."

Since 2003, by contrast, "Christians specifically were targeted by Church bombings and assassination attempts owing to a perceived association with the aims and intentions of the occupying forces", according to Dr. Kristian Ulrichsen, an Iraq expert at the London School of Economics.

Low-lights of this targeting of Iraqi Christians have included:

• a wave of attacks on church buildings in 2004

• the beheading of a priest in Mosul
  

• the murder of 40 Iraqi Christians in January 2009

• the killing of 10 Christians in Mosul in the run up to the March elections.

With up to half a million Christians having fled the country, says Ulrichsen, "There's a real possibility that 2,000 years of settlement by Christian communities in Iraq is in danger of near-total extinction."

Source

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Related articles

• Iraqi Christians flee homeland even as war fades (reuters.com)
• Bishop Andraos Abouna: Priest who worked with Iraqi Catholics in London and war-torn Baghdad (independent.co.uk)
• Iraqi Christians fleeing persecution (greenreview.blogspot.com)

Widows: They Haven't Gone Away

For Christians living in the economically developed world, the Biblical emphasis on caring for "widows" is one that we tend to rapidly contextualise away from its traditional and literal meaning.

Our line of reasoning goes something like this:

1. there aren't that many widows around today and those that exist tend to be elderly
2. the state (shaped in part, we claim, by centuries of Christian influence in the west) is now the main provider of care to widows
3. the equivalent person in our culture to the widow of biblical times is a) the single mother or b) the victim of sex trafficking.

No doubt such contextualisation has its place, but recent research reveals that, internationally, the plight of widows remains significant.

The Loomba Foundation, of which Cherie Blair is a patron, has this week launched a new report showing that 115 million widows around the world live in extreme poverty. Prejudice, mistreatment and exploitation are common among this section of the global population.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the countries with the largest number of widows broadly reflect those with large general populations - China (43 million widows), India (42 million) and the United States (13 million). Indonesia, Russia and Japan have a total of 24 million between them and there are around 245 million widows worldwide.

Widows in Afghanistan (2 million) and Iraq (3/4 of a million) are, according to the report, among those in the most difficult circumstances. The irony of this fact cannot be missed, both countries having been invaded by the orders of the British government while Mrs Blair's husband was prime minister.

The report also highlights the suffering of over 500 million dependent and adult children of widows, many of whom are severely affected by homelessness, poor health, economic and sexual exploitation and violence.

It is notable that both the old and new testaments place the care of widows at the heart of the responsibility of God's people. The church in Jerusalem, the first church to come into existence, ran a daily food distribution service to widows within its community, supported by the generous giving of its members. Deuteronomy 10 is typical of this Biblical emphasis:

For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the alien, giving him food and clothing.

Whereas many Christians in the west will continue to try and apply the Biblical commands to their specific cultural circumstances, it is worth remembering that "real" widows remain a significant part of the global population and, as in Biblical times, are at the sharp end of economic need.

How to Create More Terrorists

The following video, which I cannot yet embed, shows an American helicopter gun-ship killing a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad in 2007.

Those killed included two staff members of the Reuters news agency. Two children were also seriously wounded in the attack.

Reuters has been trying without success to obtain the video under America's Freedom of Information Act. On April 5th, the classified video was released by WikiLeaks.

Watch it here and watch American forces recruit more members for al-Qaeda.

Warning, the video is very graphic and disturbing.

Between 2003 and 2009, 139 journalists were killed in Iraq. Professor Scott Lucas at Enduring America has some immediate reaction to the video here.

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Be Careful Who You Change Your Money With

Ever searched for a term in google and stumbled upon a site other than you one you expected and had always used?

Unsuspecting searchers run this risk with the popular XE.com online currency converter, described as "the world's most popular currency site" when they google the term "xe". That's because of the recently formed company known as "XE" which provides a rather different service from currency conversion for tourists and businesses.

The other xe company, based in North Carolina, describes its services as International Training, Mobility and Logistics, Innovative Technologies and Professional Resources.

Further light is shed on what these terms include when digging into the sight a little and discovering references to antenna systems, high-tech surveillance equipment, weapons and armor, armored vehicles and a list of current vacancies with the company which include Firearms and Tactics Instructor, Aviation Project Director and Navy Instructor (part-time).

XE is, of course, none other than the old Blackwater security firm, banned by the government of Iraq earlier this year after its involvement in the killings of 11 civilians in Baghdad's Nisur Square on September 16, 2007. Renamed XE this year, a move which had nothing at all to do with its similarity to one of the Internet's most visited sites, the company continues to provide over 900 contractors to the US State Department for various operations.

The XE company is one of the most prominent examples of the growing trend towards the outsourcing and commercialization of war.

And if that weren't bad enough, they don't do currency conversions.

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Now the Government Wants my Phone Number

On the draft application form for the national ID cards - may the plan be cursed - that the government is determined to introduce at a cost to the tax payer of billions of pounds, applicants are required to provide "a contact telephone number."

That's a strange request, since the ID cards - curse them - will not contain the bearer's phone number, nor will it be stored on the national database.

This rather begs the question as to why the government should require these phone numbers, which, let it be understood, are not subject to the same regulations concerning privacy and security that will govern the cursed database and ID cards themselves.

I cannot bring myself to believe that the collection of these phone numbers will have anything to do with the government's other big database initiative - to collate all of our phone and internet records, all in the name of national security. Nor can it have anything to do with the money that can be made by selling on these numbers to private sector companies.

Sir Ken McDonald, recently retired Director of Public Prosecutions, made this comment on the government's planned communications database.. I can't improve on this as a critique of what is wrong at the heart of this agenda:

"The tendency of the state to seek ever more powers of surveillance over its citizens may be driven by protective zeal. But the notion of total security is a paranoid fantasy which would destroy everything that makes living worthwhile.
We must avoid surrendering our freedom as autonomous human beings to such an ugly future. We should make judgments that are compatible with our status as free people."
No other country is considering such a drastic step. This database would be an unimaginable hell-house of personal private information.
It would be a complete readout of every citizen's life in the most intimate and demeaning detail. No government of any colour is to be trusted with such a roadmap to our souls.

source


This is the party that won only 15.3% of the popular vote at the most recent electoral test they took part in. Hopefully, we have only months to go before we can finally give this government the Parliamentary electoral kicking it deserves for introducing this oppressive database state and for taking our country into an illegal war of aggression in Iraq.

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Rumsfeld Preaches A Different Gospel

Former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ordered Bible verses to be placed on the front of top secret military intelligence documents prepared for cabinet and Presidential briefings during the Bush years.

The covers of these documents have now been made public and combine to paint a picture of a gospel of violence and nationalism.

The images, which can be viewed here, are a sober reminder of the dangers of misusing the word of God to support one's own agenda - in this case the Project for a New American Century , a right-wing think tank advocating the aggressive expansion of American diplomatic and military influence around the world, especially into the middle east. The Project was the first body to articulate the concept of a "regime change" in Iraq, several years before it was expressed as government policy by the Bush administration.

President Obama has ordered these Bible verses to be removed from future intelligence briefings under his administration - a move which may be criticised by some as evidence of the secular nature of the current administration but which, in my view, could be equally seen as the kind of action needed to purge a gospel of war from the corridors of power. Perhaps this act could be loosely compared with Hezekiah destroying the bronze serpent - an object that had been a means of grace but whose use had been perverted into a form of idolatry.

Historically, third stream Christian groups have included many pacifists or, as some would describe themselves, active peacemakers. Even those who have not been pacifists have been careful to avoid the trap of using Biblical proof texts to justify militarism, as Donald Rumsfeld has so crudely done.

Middle East Table Talk

Over the last year, my family has had a succession of students lodging with us from various Arabic-speaking countries in the middle east and north Africa.

Without wanting to reveal too much about specific individuals, it would be fair to say that our guests have all been well connected to senior members of the governments of their home countries.

As we've got to know each other, I've learned a lot of new things, some significant some mundane. Here's a sample of the anecdotes shared around our meal table over the last year by people closer to life in the middle east than I will ever be:

• Prior to the first Gulf War, it is claimed, the governments of Iraq, Jordan and Yemen made a secret deal between themselves to effectively carve up Saudi Arabia and Kuwait between the three of them. Money was exchanged and deals done, only to be thwarted by the arrival of large numbers of American troops in Saudi Arabia itself in preparation for Operation Desert Storm. Interestingly, I understand, though have not been able to verify this yet, that both Jordan and Yemen abstained from the vote in the UN General Assembly that confirmed the imposition of sanctions against Iraq following its invasion of Kuwait. It was well known at the time that both countries provided sanction busting services to Iraq during and after the first Gulf War.

• Camels - loved and kept in large numbers by Saudis and Kuwaitis - have extremely long memories, especially if mistreated. There are stories circulating about camels attacking former owners, even though they have not seen them for years, as retaliation for a beating given many years earlier.

• When Sadaam Hussain met King Hussain of Jordan on one occasion, he presented the King with a gold plated automatic weapon. Apparently, Sadaam's gift of choice to foreign heads of state was almost always a rifle or pistol of some kind.

• When a student living with us failed to reach the necessary grade in an exam which was a requirement for admission to a leading British university in the south of England, he announced that "I pay money" and was shocked when we informed him that that was not how things worked in Britain and that doing so could land him in prison.

• It is widely assumed in Jordan that the territorial integrity of Iraq is unsustainable and that the country will inevitably split into three states at some point in the coming 10-20 years. Interestingly, I noted on this site in November 2006 that such a solution was a distinct possibility. It is a view that receives absolutely no attention in the western media or in government but is , apparently, widely assumed in Jordan and possibly elsewhere.

• The cheapest place to take a holiday in the middle east is, apparently, Damascus, where high quality hotels come at a low price. Mind you, Syria is also one of the five worst countries in the world to be a blogger, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
  

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CNN, Iraq and Twitter

The following video from CNN illustrates the routine banality of much of the American mainstream media as it seems to increasingly serve a light entertainment PR role on behalf of large corportations and celebrity culture rather than having a genuinely independent and investigative voice.

The clip consists of an interview between CNN's Kiran Chetry and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, who is in Iraq today to learn from local people about whether and how the social media platform might serve the cause of nation building in Iraq. Dorsey's patience with the infantile level of interviewing is to his credit.

The thudding noise in the background is either the reverberations from the suicide attack today north of Baghdad which claimed the lives of five civilians, or it might be me banging my head on my desk in despair.

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When it's Cool to be a Historian

I read the following paragraph recently from Martin Gilbert's A History of the Twentieth Century (Volume Three, 1952-1999) and thought about how much fun he must have had writing it.

The section is about the invasion of Kuwait by the army of Iraq in 1990 and the response of the global community to it. Quoting President Bush (senior) from his memoirs, Gilbert writes:

"In the first few weeks of the crisis, I happened to be reading a book on World War II by the British historian Martin Gilbert. I saw a direct analogy between what was occurring in Kuwait and what the Nazis had done, especially in Poland....I saw a chilling parallel with what the Iraqi occupiers were doing in Kuwait."

I can imagine a fictitious conversation in the future:

What did you do during the war, granddad?

Well son, I used the excellent facilities of Merton College, Oxford to write books that influenced world leaders. Now bring me my slippers, there's a good lad.

Marvellous.







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Harold Pinter Quote

Harold Pinter, the British Playwright who died on Christmas Eve, spoke these words after receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2005:

"The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law....

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?"

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Targeting Benefit Thieves

Call me an unreconstructed hippie liberal do-gooder (if you must) BUT.... there's something about the government's current campaign to reduce benefit fraud that I find a bit distasteful.

In it, the image of a telescopic lens, of a type associated with a sniper's rifle, is superimposed on top of photographs of poorly dressed individuals in run down neighbourhoods.

In case there was any doubt that the image is meant to evoke a gun rather than a camera, the campaign's title (repeated on the posters) is unambiguous: Targeting Benefit Thieves. While a camera focuses on its subject, targeting is clearly something done with a weapon.

Of course, I'm annoyed that benefit fraud cost the country £800 million pounds last year and I'd like to see people who steal public money stopped.

What I don't want, however, is the elected government treating its citizens (even its law-breaking ones) as if they are rifle fodder.

There's enough destructive imagery and activity today around the theme of guns. It seems pretty irresponsible for a government department to be adding to the collection.

It's too much of a coincidence to not mention in closing, but the Ministry of Defense states on its web site that the additional costs of its operations in Iraq (above and beyond the normal costs of salaries) was £787 million in 2006-07. I'd like to see the instigators of that illegal war targeted (so to speak) for their appalling and illegal waste of resources and lives.

























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How Will President Bush be Remembered?

Citizens of San Francisco, one of America's most liberal cities, are to be balloted in November on whether to rename a city sewage works after the outgoing President.

Organisers of the ballot gathered over 12,000 signatures on a petition for the change of name and, under election rules, this qualifies the motion (no pun intended) to be listed on the ballot paper in the city in November at the same time as voters are electing the next President.

Brian McConnell, organiser of the petition, said he came up with the idea over a beer with friends. If successful, the measure will result in the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant being renamed the George W. Bush Sewage Plant. McConnell said the intent is to remember the Bush administration and what the group sees as the President's mistakes, including the war in Iraq.

Naming public buildings after former Presidents has an illustrious history in the United States. But as Jesse McKinley explains in the New York Times,

Reagan has his highways. Lincoln has his memorial. Washington has the capital (and a state, too). But President Bush may soon be the sole president to have a memorial named after him that you can contribute to from the bathroom.

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Kucinich Offers Impeachment Articles Against Bush

It won't go anywhere, of course, but at least someone's tried.










For Rep. Kucinich's views that America went to war in Iraq for oil, click here.





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After Five Years, it's Official: Bush Exagerated the Threat Posed by Sadamm

It took five years, but today the US Senate finally published its report into the build up to the invasion of Iraq and the intelligence used to justify the war.

The report concludes that:

• President Bush and his aides built the public case for war against Iraq by exaggerating available intelligence
• The White House ignored disagreements among spy agencies about Iraq's weapons programs
  
• The President ignored doubts about Saddam Hussein's links to Al Qaeda

Senator John Rockefeller IV, Democrat chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said:

"The President and his advisers undertook a relentless public campaign in the aftermath of the attacks to use the war against Al Qaeda as a justification for overthrowing Saddam Hussein."

The real story here, of course, is how powerless the American public seem to be in demanding that those who took the nation into this illegal war be brought to account for their actions.

The full report can be read here.

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Blackwater Back to Iraq

"We cannot operate without private security firms in Iraq,” said Patrick Kennedy, under secretary of state for management. “If the contractors were removed, we would have to leave Iraq.”

Full story of Blackwater's return here.

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Guess Who is Opposing Ban on Cluster Bombs?

With delegates from more than 120 national governments meeting in New Zealand to discuss a world ban on the use of cluster bombs, Britain, the US, China and Russia are all opposing the idea. The latter three are not even attending.

New Zealand Defense Minister Phil Goff opened the 5-day conference by informing delegates that its aim was "to build agreement among a sufficient mass of countries, including those who possess cluster munitions, to form a legally binding treaty to stop unacceptable harm to civilians."

Figures for the percentage of mini-bomblets contained within a typical cluster bomb that fail to detonate on impact are, not surprisingly, heavily disputed. While the MOD figure is 6%, Landmine Action places the total between 7-11%, based on the failure rate of cluster bomblets in the Kosovo campaign of 1999.

With some types of cluster bomb containing bomblets (technically sub-munitions) that are brightly coloured, they are about the size of a soft drink can and have proven a particular danger to children.

Unicef estimates that about 1000 children in Iraq have been injured or killed by such munitions since the 2003 war, the sub-munitions remaining live for months or years after their initial deployment. After the first Gulf War, there were over 1,600 deaths or injuries to Kuwaiti citizens from unexploded cluster bomblets used in that country to drive out Iraqi forces.

The following table indicates the number of cluster bombs used in Iraq by American and British forces since 2003. Figures are in the public domain and are from the British Ministery of Defence and the US Pentagon.

Type	Quantity	Number of bomblets (sub-munitions)	Originator	Location
RBL 755 (arial delivery)	66	147 per bomb (=9702)	RAF	Not stated
L20 Cluster Shells	2,098	49 per shell (=102, 802)	Royal Artillery	Basra
CBU-103	818	202 per missile (=165,236)	USAF	Not stated
BBU-105	88	202 per missile (=17776)	USAF	Not stated
CBU-105	6	202 per missile (=1212)	USAF	Baghdad

China, Russia and the United States - the main producers of cluster bombs - are not participating in the Wellington Conference either directly or by sending observers. Meanwhile, France, Germany, Japan and the UK have been tabling motions to restrict the terms of any agreement reached at the conference - including excluding certain weapons from a ban, allowing their use in conflicts with countries which do not sign the treaty and building in a transition period before any ban becomes law.

Steve Goose of Human Rights Watch responded: "The treaty must not be weakened to pander to the interests of users, producers and stockpilers."

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