We Are Many: a unique documentary about the Iraq war worldwide protests

Yesterday I went to watch the only screening in Montreal of the documentary about the worldwide protests against the Iraq war on February 15, 2003. The documentary is directed by Amir Amirani.  The main producers are Wael Kabbani & Omid Djalili.

I still don't understand why the producers chose to screen their documentary at the Montreal Just for Laughs festival, because one of the producers, Omid Djalili, is a comedian? It hurts the documentary more than anything else.

I have to admit I was looking forward and waiting to see this movie and think it is a necessary movie.

The documentary lasts one hour and 50 minutes.  It starts with 911 and ends in 2013 with the vote in the UK not to authorize war on Syria. It is well documented and edited.  It describes well the run up to the Iraq war and the social forces that brought us the protests on this unique day of Februray, 15, 2003.

The director and producer had access to the main protagonists in the anti-war movement and to many prominent experts and politicians who voiced their opposition to the war, some before, others, after the war. It has footage of parliamentary sessions about the Iraq war in the UK.

For someone who went to the protests, recalling this moment through the doucmentary can be quite emotional as the documentary succeeds in recreating the context.

The documentary is flawless as long as it stays within the main subject, but it does not stay within the limits of its main subject, and this is an error in my opinion because it misses on some aspects of the Iraq war and the anti-war movement that were not adressed.

The documentary does not adress the failure of the anti-war movement to act on the Libya invasion in particular and the failure of their movement in general.  It does not even mention Libya.

The documentary does not address Israel’s and the Neocons’ role in the push for the war on Iraq.  It even manages to show an Israeli flag in an anti-war protest at the end when Israel’s anti Iraq war protests were marginal.  Israel and its role in this war are totally absent from the movie.

The documentary rightly attributes the vote in UK not to go to war on Syria in 2013 as being a consequence of the changing public mood after the Iraq war. Although this is partial since it is Libya and its Islamist winter that were on the minds during this vote.

The documentary branches to the Arab Spring and the protests in Egypt and tries to establish a link between the Iraq war protests and the 2011 protests in Egypt.  This attempt is unconvincing and part of many attempts to own the Arab Spring. 

Highlights:

Footage of the protests on February 15, 2003.  Although they were insufficient in my opinion.

The resignation of Robin Cook in the house of parliament before the Iraq war vote.

John Le Carre saying about the Iraq war : This is a crime of a century

Bush jocking about Iraq’s WMD at the 2004 Correspondants' dinner association with the press hilarious is a sordid reminder of the complicity of the press in the Iraq war crime.

I recommend this documentary and hope it will gain a larger audience. 

UN find challenges Israeli version of attack on civilian building in Gaza war

The UN mine action team, which handles ordnance disposal in Gaza, has told the Guardian that the remains of a 500-pound Mk82 aircraft-dropped bomb were found in the ruins of the mill last January. Photographs of the front half of the bomb have been obtained by the Guardian.

This evidence directly contradicts the finding of the Israeli report, which challenged allegations that the building was deliberately targeted and specifically stated there was no evidence of an air strike. Goldstone, however, used the account of the air strike as a sign that Israel's attack on the mill was not mere collateral damage, but precisely targeted and a possible war crime.

It is only a matter of time before an Israeli official is arrested abroad on charges of war crimes

Prosecutions of Israeli political and military figures remain likely despite the failure to obtain an arrest warrant for Ehud Barak, the defence minister, when he visited the UK earlier this month, he said. In the Barak case a magistrate accepted advice from the Foreign Office that the minister enjoyed state immunity and rejected an application made on behalf of several residents of the Gaza Strip.

"This needs to be tested at the right time and in the right place," Machover said. "One day one of these people will make a mistake and go to the wrong country and face a criminal process — and then it'll be a matter for the courts of that country to give them a fair trial: that's what the Palestinian victims want."

''Open fire and don't ask questions''

Anonymous Israeli soldiers' testimonies to Humanitarian organisations on the latest Gaza war .

Amnesty International: Israel committed war crimes in Gaza

Hundreds of Palestinian civilians were killed using high-precision weapons, while others were shot at close range, the group Amnesty International says.

The report says that ''Israeli forces repeatedly breached the laws of war'' (the report you see on the link is not the full report.

UPDATE:

Amnesty International accused Israel and Palestinian militants of war crimes Thursday in the most comprehensive report on the recent Gaza war. Both sides rejected the findings.

Organisations reporting war crimes and human rights abuse have accustomed us now to this false equivalence between Israel and Palestinian organisations without which they cannot condemn Israel unless they condemn the other side, fearing an outcry from Zionist organisations.
First false equivalence: I thought that Hamas being considered anyway a terrorist organisation is not worth the news, while Israel is a 'light unto the nations'.
Second false equivalence: More than 1,400 Palestinians, including more than 900 civilians, were killed during the three-week offensive. Thirteen Israelis were killed.
Third false equivalence: Israel is the occupying entity, Gaza is occupied (the word is even a misstatement since Gaza is not only occupied but under a constant and harsh Israeli siege...
Fourth false equivalence: the Israeli occupation of Palestine has been going on for sixty years now while Palestinian rockets are "the unbearable reality of nine years of incessant and indiscriminate rocket fire on the citizens of Israel" according to an Israeli official, they only killed 11 more Israelis in addition to the thriteen who died during the Gaza December offensive. 544 Israelis died from suicide bombings between 2001 and 2008. So that brings the total of Israeli victims to approximately 568 from both suicide bombings and rockets between 2000 and 2008 while Palestinian victims in Gaza numbered 1400 for the only month of december 2008.

I hate to look at these statistics because every human life is unique but we have to do it when we are to look at these false equivalences...I don't think Jews would have got any sympathy to have a state of their own if they were few to die from Nazi's persecutions. For political purposes, numbers matter, and this is what Amnesty and HRW are missing out when they issue their condemnations. For as long as zionists could maintain this equivalence, nobody can imagine how much pain and suffering is inflicted on Palestinians and how much their situation is dramatic...When the rockets fall silent, settlers return to their homes and their villages but every Israeli incursion into Gaza leaves permanent scars, death, trauma, and tragedies behind at the scale of the population and beyond our imagination...In Gaza, between incursions, there is no return to normal life, there is only a stop on the way down the abyss of the occupation...

Gaza: The legacy of war, and audio slideshow by Peter Beaumont, Antonio Olmos and Jim Powell

Israel imprisoned recently human rights activists from the Free Gaza movement trying to ship aid to Gaza including building material. Listen below to a message from Cynthia McKinney in an Israeli prison calling on president Obama to ease the Israeli blockade of Gaza. This is plainly crime against humanity.


Read here from Informed Comment: 'Piracy at the fourth of July'

Israel officials face war crimes probe in Spain

The people named in the suit include Dan Halutz, former Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff and Israel Air Force commander at the time, as well as Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, then defense minister and now the minister of infrastructure...Senior Israeli ministers have expressed serious fears during following the war about the possibility that Israel will be pressed to agree to an international investigation of the losses among non-combatants during Operation Cast Lead...

The Wall Street Journal calls this 'Lawfare'. Yeah, right, the Nuremberg trials were also lawfares...

Children Of Gaza

Gallery: Innocent lives targeted by Israel
Rory McCarthy reports from Gaza:

Only now, after most of the dead have been buried, is the first properly researched reckoning of the toll emerging. What already stands out is the striking cost borne by the children of Gaza, who make up more than half of the 1.5 million people living in this overcrowded strip of land.

Evidence Of War Crimes In Gaza: The Forest And The Trees

An excellent documentary from Channel Four, UK.


It is time someone tells Israel to stop, the international community doesn't seem to be ready to do it, out of guilt for WWII holocaust, among other things. A labor Jew MP whose parents died in the holocaust is telling Israel to stop. The holocaust industry still lives on. For how long ? Until the last Palestinian ? (Thanks Richard)



Israel used white phosphorus in Gaza.
According to the US military, this isn't a problem.
According to Amnesty International, the use of White Phosphorus in civilian areas is a war crime:

When white phosphorus lands on skin it burns deeply through muscle and into the bone, continuing to burn until deprived of oxygen.

Israel says it is going to investigate the use of white phosphorus in Gaza. Thanks but no thanks, as we already know the answer to this investigation.
In my opinion, this story of the use of white phosphorus in civilian areas, although highly disturbing, is a zionist distraction. Because the use of white phosphorus is permitted in certain conditions, the answer to this war crime will never be clear. Israel shelled civilian areas heavily and intentionally as in the case of the UN school, and white phosphorus or not, the whole Israeli offensive on Gaza and the previous blockade is a war crime. Lets not drown into the details provided to us as a smokescreen by Israel. You know what this reminds me of ? It reminds me of the people who negate the Nazi gaz chambers. They often resort to details in order to refute the extermination of Jews. The irony here is that it is the Jewish state who is using the Nazi tactic. And it is not the first time. War crimes have the same pattern, easy to identify, but we prefer to be distracted by details, the reality of this situation and of the whole conflict is so horrible for Palestinians, but we prefer to turn our eyes and let ourselves be distracted by the details...

Bolivia severes diplomatic ties with Israel, the rest of the world should follow

To protest Israel's war crimes In Gaza, Bolivia today announced that it is severing diplomatic ties with Israel. Evo Morales leads and other countries should follow. An action like this one is urgently required.
More on this from Jews Sans Frontières.
UPDATE: European plans to turn Israel into a "privileged" partner enjoying special political, diplomatic and trade links were frozen by Brussels today in protest at the Israeli onslaught in Gaza. OK, this doesn't match Bolivia's action but the EU has become a staunch supporter of Israel lately, following Israel's and the US mistreatment of Gaza and its population by blocking life sustaining aid. But this move by the EU is important, it makes clear that what Israel is doing in Gaza is unacceptable. There is another fact misrepresented in the western press and By Israel, It is Israel who broke the truce, and it did it right after signing it with Hamas. Israel strives for war. Watch the video and read the links below.

Talking about Israel's actions in Gaza, the mainstream press is presenting the war as Hamas's fault. But it is time for some cold statistics. I like cold statistics backing up reality as opposed to Israel's hype and mainstream media press biases. Read also here what Hamas's political leader in exile had to say about the current war to le Monde Diplomatique middle east expert Alain Gresh.

Calls mount for Gaza war crimes inquiry

The Israeli military are accused of:
• Using powerful shells in civilian areas which the army knew would cause large numbers of innocent casualties;
• Using banned weapons such as phosphorus bombs;
• Holding Palestinian families as human shields;
• Attacking medical facilities, including the killing of 12 ambulance men in marked vehicles;
• Killing large numbers of police who had no military role.

Gaza Massacre comparable to Sabra and Chatila. And the USA is accomplice in this crime.

UN Human Rights Chief Accuses Israel of War Crimes

Please click on the title to read the whole story.

Kosovan and Albanian guerilla accused of war crimes

These people were actually rewarded with a country, by NATO, the US, and the EU...in total disregard for international law.

Del Ponte claims, based on what she describes as credible reports and witnesses, that Kosovan Albanian guerrillas transported hundreds of Serbian prisoners into northern Albania where they were killed, and their organs "harvested" and trafficked out of Tirana airport.
The Kosovan government, now headed by the former guerrilla leader Hashim Thaci, dismisses the claims as untrue, while Serbia and Russia are demanding a war crimes investigation into the allegations. Del Ponte, now a Swiss ambassador, has been ordered to keep silent by the Swiss government.

The True Cost of the Iraq War

Joseph Stiglitz's appreciation. Read it and you will realise that the Iraq war is pure madness. It is destructing two people, the Iraqi and the American people, and it is destabilising the region, and the wrold, for years to come...

People in the US, even though they were brainwashed to believe that the war was necessary, they overwhelmingly supported it, even electing Bush for a second term after what appeared to be a gigantic blunder. They are not to lament as much as Iraqis because this was their choice according to their own system of democracy. But what about Iraqis and other people in the Middle East who were affected by this war ? Who didn't vote and who didn't ask for it? Lebanese, Palestinians, etc..?

Those who made this war should be tried according to international law, if this law still exist...There is no way we can have our reason and our spirits back if justice, real justice, not the justice of the powerful, is not delivered...And Justice should be demanded both by Iraqis, the American people, and the rest of the world...

This is not, then, pure neocon ideology at work, says Stiglitz: "Ideology of convenience is a better description." It is an ideology illustrated even more clearly in another fact that Stiglitz can't believe - that Bush put through tax cuts while going to war. In Stiglitz and Bilmes's reading, this was downright underhand. Raising taxes, and resorting to the rhetoric of shared sacrifice used in the world wars, for example, would have made Americans more aware of exactly what the war was costing them, and would have provoked opposition sooner. The solution was to borrow the money, at interest of couple of hundred billion dollars a year, which, by 2017, will add up to another trillion dollars or so. This government will be gone in nine months; subsequent administrations, and generations, will have to pay it off.

At the same time, Stiglitz and Bilmes argue, the Federal Reserve colluded in this obfuscation, because it "kept interest rates lower than they otherwise might have been, and looked the other way as lending standards were lowered, thereby encouraging households to borrow more - and spend more." Alan Greenspan, by this account, encouraged people to take on variable-rate mortgages, even as household savings rates went negative for the first time since the Depression. Individuals were taking on unprecedented debt at the same time as a long housing bubble made them feel wealthy (and less concerned with derring-do abroad) - a scenario echoed on this side of the Atlantic.

As we now know, this couldn't continue - in part because of yet another effect of the war. Whatever the much argued reasons for bombing Baghdad, cheap oil has not been the result. In fact, the price of oil has climbed from $25 a barrel to $100 in the past five years - great for oil companies, and oil-producing countries, who, along with the contractors, are the only beneficiaries of this war, but not for anyone else. After calculations based on futures markets, Stiglitz and Bilmes conclude that a significant proportion of this rise is directly due to the disruptions and instabilities caused by Iraq. This price rise alone has cost the US, which imports about 5bn barrels a year, an extra $25bn per year; projecting to 2015 brings that number to an extra $1.6 trillion on oil alone (against which the recent $125bn stimulus package is simply, as Stiglitz puts it, "a drop in the bucket").

White House to receive convicted Lebanese war criminal

To:
President George Bush
Sen. John Warner
Sen. James Webb
Rep. Thomas Davis
February 22, 2008

As of 1994, Geagea was tried and convicted for four crimes - only a small portion of his long list of war crimes that we have listed below for your reference. He was convicted for:
1. The assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister, Mr. Rachid Karami
2. The assassination of a former leading figure in the Lebanese Forces militia, Elias Zayek
3. The assassination of Christian leader Dany Chamoun with his wife and two young children (ages 5 and 7)
4. The assassination attempt against Deputy Prime Minister/Minister of the Interior Michel Murr.

More
And may I add: The assassination of Suleiman Frangie's parents and siblings for which Gea'gea stands for suspicion as the principal planner ?

This is my 999th post.

Weapons of Mass and Durable Destruction in Vietnam and the ME

Three decades after US soldiers and diplomats scrambled aboard the last planes out of Saigon in April 1975, the toxins they left behind still poison Vietnam.

In the 3,160 villages in the southern part of Vietnam within the Agent Orange spraying zone, 800,000 people continue to suffer serious health problems and are in need of constant medical attention. Last month, members of a US Vietnamese working group reported that it will cost at least $14m to remove dioxin residues from just one site around the former US airbase in Danang. The cost of a comprehensive clean-up around three dioxin hotspots and former US bases is estimated at around $60m. The $3m pledged by US Congress last year is a pathetically inadequate amount set against the billions spent in waging war and deploying weapons of mass destruction.

This, as well as Israel's use of outrageously huge amounts of cluster bombs in south Lebanon in 2006, most of them leftovers from US's munitions from the Vietnam war era, will certainly go unnoticed and unpunished while these same countries are waging and threatening wars in the ME in the name of cleaning the area from WMD. I think the lesson to be learned from Vietnam is that the goal of USrael is not to clean the region from WMD but to inundate it with its own, threreby renewing its stock, feeding the war industry, and prolonging the war effects on the ennemy's civilian population, in the absence of a clear military victory against the ennemy.

HRW: Flooding South Lebanon. Israel’s Use of Cluster Munitions in Lebanon in July and August 2006.

UPDATE: For a more complete information go and visit Gorilla's Gguides' article which cites this one and expands on it by adding more sources and information.

More from Gorilla's: What a nice way of saying "genocide" (part 2)

And this is how This Old Brit feels about it all.

Amnesty Int'l: Winograd report fails to address Israel's war crimes

"The indiscriminate killings of many Lebanese civilians not involved in the hostilities and the deliberate and wanton destruction of civilian properties and infrastructure on a massive scale were given no more than token consideration by the commission," said Smart.
..."Of some 1,190 people killed, the vast majority were civilians not involved in the hostilities, among them hundreds of children. The overwhelming majority of homes, properties and infrastructure targeted in air strikes and artillery attacks were likewise civilian."
..."Although the Winograd Commission recommended that the army review its policies on the use of cluster bombs to ensure that the use of these weapons will not violate international humanitarian law and army discipline, it did not propose any concrete measures," said Smart.

Amnesty International called on Israel's government to provide data on the use of cluster bombs during the Second Lebanon War, establish an independent and impartial investigation into evidence indicating that IDF forces committed serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law during the conflict, and ensure that those responsible are brought to justice.

Related: Hezbollah leader accuses Siniora of working with Israel during war.

Read here Amnesty's full press release.

Bush, Blair, and Israel: A concerted agression on Lebanese civilians during last year's July war

I was away from the blogosphere for one week and nearly missed this interesting post by Craig Murray* shedding some new light on what appeared to be the inability of western governments, especially Blair's, on which many have pinned hopes to stop the savage bombings of civilians in Lebanon by Israel because of its good relations with the US government who was actively and openly promoting and supporting Israel's war on Lebanon (remember Rice's many trips to the ME during this war and famous declaration about the ME pangs of birth ?).

Well, behind the scenes, UK's diplomacy was actually working the other way. While Margaret Beckett, Blair's minister for foreign affairs, as other western leaders, was showing support for the west's darling Lebanese PM Fouad Sanyura with a short visit and a declaration about how her country was working hard to achieve a ceasefire, the UK's mission at the UN was instructed to keep a ceasefire off the agenda.

Murray relates the following: "I had a friend and former colleague call me from our Mission to the United Nations phone me from New York at the time in deep personal despair, as he had been instructed to keep an early ceasfire resolution off the Security Council agenda by making it known that we would veto it. Meanwhile everyday he was seeing news footage of dead Lebanese children dragged from the rubble of their homes. "

At the time, I was deeply moved by British peace activists efforts to expose the UK's complicity and bring the case of war crimes against Israel and its allies in this war by attempting on the night of 6th to 7th August last year, when Israel knew it was loosing the war and consequently intensified its bombings on civilians in a will to inflict maximum damage, to look at Prestwick airport for evidence of US munitions bound for Israel for use in the Lebanon conflict, among them the infamous cluster bombs who continued to kill children well after the end of the war. At the time, we, citizen of Lebanon, felt totally abandoned by our own government and by the international community, who was supporting our government but refusing a ceasefire to save our children, our civilians, and our source of living and infrastructure (remember the ugly oil spill all over the Lebanese coast and the cluster bopmbs scattered in our fields resulting from Israel's bombings ?).

Eight activists were charged of trespassing. Seven were acquitted by the court this August. The remaining activist, Marcus Armstrong, who was charged, refused to pay a 750 pounds fine and preferred prison for 20 days. Indy media Scotland reports that a prominent expert witness of the defendants testified that "a collusion in war crime was relevant to the context of the trial.
Paul Rogers, Professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University told the court that war crime by Israel was very much an issue at the time of the incident at the airport. Israel had been breaching international law by targeting its air strikes in Lebanon at areas and installations liable to contain civilians. They had asked the US for an emergency top-up supply of bombs. US planes delivering these armaments would need a fuel stop-over in the UK and Prestwick was one of the options."

This shows, among others, that activism is never vain, especially when it is brought to the courts of law where it can serve as a basis to build a case for war crimes against powerful governments by ordinary citizens. The impulse shouldn't be changed, it only need to be intensified and extended. As Craig Murray rightly states, Marcus Armstrong is a prisoner of conscience and I wish everyone had his conscience during this ugly war. I wish him well.

Read what Jonathan Cook, Correspondant in Nazareth, has to say about the July war of agression on Lebanon.

*As Britain's outspoken Ambassador to the Central Asian Republic of Uzbekistan, Craig Murray helped expose vicious human rights abuses by the US-funded regime of Islam Karimov. He is now a prominent critic of Western policy in the region.