Friday, 26 January 2007
By Doctors Without Borders
The ninth annual list also highlights the lack of media attention paid to the plight of people affected by the consequences of conflict in Haiti, Somalia, Colombia, Chechnya, and central India.
New York — The staggering human toll taken by tuberculosis and malnutrition as well as the devastation caused by wars in the Central African Republic (CAR), Sri Lanka, and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), are among the "Top Ten" Most Underreported Humanitarian Stories of 2006, according to the year-end list released today by the international humanitarian medical aid organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
The ninth annual list also highlights the lack of media attention paid to the plight of people affected by the consequences of conflict in Haiti, Somalia, Colombia, Chechnya, and central India.
"Many conflicts worldwide are profoundly affecting millions of people, yet they are almost completely invisible," said MSF Executive Director Nicolas de Torrenté. "Haiti, for example, is just 500 miles from the United States and the plight of the population enduring relentless violence in its volatile capital Port-au-Prince received only half a minute of network coverage in an entire year."
According to Andrew Tyndall, publisher of the online media-tracking journal The Tyndall Report, the 10 countries and contexts highlighted by MSF accounted for just 7.2 minutes of the 14,512 minutes on the three major U.S. television networks' nightly newscasts for 2006. Treating malnutrition, tuberculosis, and Chechnya were mentioned, but only briefly in other stories. Five of the countries highlighted by MSF were never mentioned at all.
The 2006 "Top 10" list also focused on the devastation caused by TB and malnutrition.
The frightening situation of worldwide TB became even worse in 2006 with the detection of extensively drug resistant tuberculosis (XDR TB), a strain that is resistant to both first-line antibiotics and to two classes of second-line drugs. At the same time, none of the TB drugs currently in development, however promising, will be able to drastically improve TB treatment in the near future. "TB destroys millions of lives around the world every year, but we’re not seeing the necessary urgency to tackle the disease," said Dr. Tido von Schoen-Angerer, director of MSF’s Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines.
Hope is on the horizon, though, for malnutrition, with new strategies based on outpatient treatment that relies on ready-to-use therapeutic foods (RUTF) like Plumpy’nut showing tremendous promise. Unfortunately, these strategies are not implemented as widely as they could be.
"Acute malnutrition contributes to the deaths of millions of children every year," said de Torrente. "New strategies in treatment of moderate and severe acute malnutrition have helped MSF treat more than 150,000 children in Niger over the past two years. Millions more children throughout the world could benefit if such strategies were more widely implemented."
While the conflicts in the Darfur region of Sudan and in eastern Chad garnered significant media attention in 2006, the steady focus did not translate into improved conditions for people caught up in the conflict. "Even though there was more reporting about Darfur than about other crises, the situation continued to deteriorate to the point where MSF and other aid groups had to scale back their programs," said de Torrenté. "We know that media coverage does not generate improvements on its own. However, it is often a precondition for increased assistance and political attention. There is perhaps nothing worse than being completely neglected and forgotten."
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Is Globalization on Its Way Out?
by Girish Mishra
January 17, 2007/ZNet
For quite some time, serious doubts have been expressed about the continuance of the present era of globalization, based on the Washington Consensus or neo-liberalism. After John Ralston Saul’s well-argued book, The Collapse of Globalism, Walden Bello has come out with his research paper “The Capitalist Conjuncture: over accumulation, financial crises, and the retreat of globalisation” in the prestigious Third World Quarterly (Vol. 27, No.8, December 2006), underlining that the fortunes of the ongoing globalization have been on the decline.
Professor Bello of the University of Philippines is a well-respected researcher, who was declared as one of the “stars in our human cosmos” by the 2003 jury of the Right Livelihood Award, known as the Alternative Nobel Prize. When such a scholar is skeptic about the continuance of the on-going globalization, he must have solid reasons. Let us see what they are.
In the early 1990s, when the present era of globalization began, it was asserted that its course was irreversible. The New Economy, given birth by revolutionary changes in the sphere of information technology was immune to business cycles. There was no challenge to capitalism because the Soviet Union had collapsed and China had begun adapting itself to the new era. All the national economies were sooner or later going to be integrated into one global entity, and the world was sure to become borderless as nation-state was on its way out. This process could neither be held back nor reversed. The people opposed to this march of history were dubbed as lunatics or modern day Luddites. What is the situation after one and a half decades? No integrated global economy is visible even on the distant horizon. Bello says, “…despite runaway shops and outsourcing, what passes for an international economy remains a collection of national economies. These economies are interdependent, no doubt, but domestic factors still largely determine their dynamics. Globalization, in fact, has reached its high-water mark and is receding.”
When the present era of globalization was on ascendancy, it was declared by propagandists like Thomas L. Friedman from housetops that state policies had become irrelevant and MNCs were going to be domineering and driving force. Yet, the European Union, the US government and the Chinese state are stronger today than what they were a decade and a half ago. The nation- states in Latin America have become more assertive now. The MNCs have to obey their dictates even if they do not like to do so. Bello underlines: “Moreover, state policies that interfere with the market to build up industrial structures or protect employment still make a difference. Indeed, over the past 10 years, interventionist government policies have spelled the difference between development and underdevelopment, prosperity and poverty. Malaysia’s imposition of capital controls during the Asian financial crisis in 1997-98 prevented it from unraveling like Thailand or Indonesia. Strict controls also insulated China from the economic collapse engulfing its neighbours.”
When the present era of globalization began, it was asserted that it would lead to the rise of a transnational capitalist elite that would manage the global economy. This new elite would be led by its American component. Thus American dominance would be established. This scheme has, however, failed. National components still maintain their separate identity and are motivated by their national outlook and interests. They do not bother whether their nationalist approach leads to harmful consequences for other nations. The high hopes of the representatives of the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO, who met in Singapore in December, 1996 could not be realized. They thought, they were very near the goals of global governance and the imposition of well co-ordinated neo-liberal policies to bring about smooth, technocratic integration of the global economy. Sebastian Mallaby of the Washington Post, a pro-globalization journalist laments that these hopes have failed to be realized. According to him, “trade liberalization has stalled, aid is less coherent than it should be, and the next financial conflagration will be managed by injured fireman.” Bello thanks, in reality, the situation is worse for the protagonists of globalization. The IMF, a strong pillar of neo-liberalism is defunct. “Knowing how the IMF precipitated and worsened the Asian financial crisis, more and more of the advanced developing countries are refusing to borrow from it or are paying ahead of schedule, with some declaring their intention never to borrow again. These include Thailand, Indonesia, Brazil and Argentina. Since the Fund’s budget greatly depends on debt repayment from these big borrowers, this boycott is translating into what one expert describes as ‘a huge squeeze on the budget of the organization.’”
As far as the World Bank is concerned, the legitimacy of its existence is in question, .because, for decades, it imposed on developing countries its structural adjustment policies that brought poverty and sufferings to them. With the grounding of the Doha Round of negotiations, the WTO is losing its credibility and there are no indications that it would be able to take off in the near future.
Bello enumerates a number of factors that have brought globalization to a halt. First, the merits of globalization were overstated. The enthusiasts forgot that the bulk of the production by MNCs is carried on and sold in their countries of origin. There are not many corporations whose activities are widely dispersed over various regions. Second, the national capitalist elites have failed to adopt a truly global outlook and rise above their national interests and considerations. They have competed with one another in increasing their national benefits rather than evolving a rational approach to tackle the problems of over production, stagnation, environmental crisis, liberalization of trade and the free flow of labour. The USA and the European Union have sabotaged the Doha Round because they fear that its successful completion would anger their farmers. None of the developed countries have lifted fully the impediments obstructing the free flow of labour across the globe. In America, one can see how the Hispanics are discriminated against. Obviously, the double standard adopted by the USA has led to doubts in the minds of developing countries as regards its real intentions in championing globalization. To give a concrete example, it adopted somewhat strict attitude towards Enron but was very lenient and soft towards Union Carbide whose negligence resulted in the Bhopal tragedy in which thousands died and many more became condemned to suffer for life from various ailments.
The fact that neo-liberal policies have led to growing inequalities, and unemployment and poverty for certain sections of the society has antagonized people. The obsession with economic growth has resulted in disastrous consequences like ruining the environment and suspending labour laws and curtailing workers’ rights. The bid to eliminate capital controls and make national currencies fully convertible on both current and capital accounts has brought about the collapse of a number of economies. Lastly, the growing resistance by people has frustrated the attempts to foist globalization on all nations unmindful of their specific conditions. “One size fits all” has failed. This is crystal clear in Latin America where pro-globalization dispensations have been democratically overthrown by voters. Read Hugo Chavez’s recent speech and it will be obvious how discredited is current globalization.
Commenting on the attempts by certain people to impart a human face to globalization, Bello says: “Globalization … is a spent force. Today’s multiplying economic and political conflicts resemble, if anything, the period following the end of what historians refer to as the first era of globalization, which extended from 1815 to … 1914. The urgent task is not to steer corporate-driven globalization in a “social democratic” direction but to manage its retreat so that it does not bring about the same chaos and runaway conflicts that marked its demise in that earlier era.”
Girish Mishra, E-mail:gmishra@girishmishra.com
January 17, 2007/ZNet
For quite some time, serious doubts have been expressed about the continuance of the present era of globalization, based on the Washington Consensus or neo-liberalism. After John Ralston Saul’s well-argued book, The Collapse of Globalism, Walden Bello has come out with his research paper “The Capitalist Conjuncture: over accumulation, financial crises, and the retreat of globalisation” in the prestigious Third World Quarterly (Vol. 27, No.8, December 2006), underlining that the fortunes of the ongoing globalization have been on the decline.
Professor Bello of the University of Philippines is a well-respected researcher, who was declared as one of the “stars in our human cosmos” by the 2003 jury of the Right Livelihood Award, known as the Alternative Nobel Prize. When such a scholar is skeptic about the continuance of the on-going globalization, he must have solid reasons. Let us see what they are.
In the early 1990s, when the present era of globalization began, it was asserted that its course was irreversible. The New Economy, given birth by revolutionary changes in the sphere of information technology was immune to business cycles. There was no challenge to capitalism because the Soviet Union had collapsed and China had begun adapting itself to the new era. All the national economies were sooner or later going to be integrated into one global entity, and the world was sure to become borderless as nation-state was on its way out. This process could neither be held back nor reversed. The people opposed to this march of history were dubbed as lunatics or modern day Luddites. What is the situation after one and a half decades? No integrated global economy is visible even on the distant horizon. Bello says, “…despite runaway shops and outsourcing, what passes for an international economy remains a collection of national economies. These economies are interdependent, no doubt, but domestic factors still largely determine their dynamics. Globalization, in fact, has reached its high-water mark and is receding.”
When the present era of globalization was on ascendancy, it was declared by propagandists like Thomas L. Friedman from housetops that state policies had become irrelevant and MNCs were going to be domineering and driving force. Yet, the European Union, the US government and the Chinese state are stronger today than what they were a decade and a half ago. The nation- states in Latin America have become more assertive now. The MNCs have to obey their dictates even if they do not like to do so. Bello underlines: “Moreover, state policies that interfere with the market to build up industrial structures or protect employment still make a difference. Indeed, over the past 10 years, interventionist government policies have spelled the difference between development and underdevelopment, prosperity and poverty. Malaysia’s imposition of capital controls during the Asian financial crisis in 1997-98 prevented it from unraveling like Thailand or Indonesia. Strict controls also insulated China from the economic collapse engulfing its neighbours.”
When the present era of globalization began, it was asserted that it would lead to the rise of a transnational capitalist elite that would manage the global economy. This new elite would be led by its American component. Thus American dominance would be established. This scheme has, however, failed. National components still maintain their separate identity and are motivated by their national outlook and interests. They do not bother whether their nationalist approach leads to harmful consequences for other nations. The high hopes of the representatives of the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO, who met in Singapore in December, 1996 could not be realized. They thought, they were very near the goals of global governance and the imposition of well co-ordinated neo-liberal policies to bring about smooth, technocratic integration of the global economy. Sebastian Mallaby of the Washington Post, a pro-globalization journalist laments that these hopes have failed to be realized. According to him, “trade liberalization has stalled, aid is less coherent than it should be, and the next financial conflagration will be managed by injured fireman.” Bello thanks, in reality, the situation is worse for the protagonists of globalization. The IMF, a strong pillar of neo-liberalism is defunct. “Knowing how the IMF precipitated and worsened the Asian financial crisis, more and more of the advanced developing countries are refusing to borrow from it or are paying ahead of schedule, with some declaring their intention never to borrow again. These include Thailand, Indonesia, Brazil and Argentina. Since the Fund’s budget greatly depends on debt repayment from these big borrowers, this boycott is translating into what one expert describes as ‘a huge squeeze on the budget of the organization.’”
As far as the World Bank is concerned, the legitimacy of its existence is in question, .because, for decades, it imposed on developing countries its structural adjustment policies that brought poverty and sufferings to them. With the grounding of the Doha Round of negotiations, the WTO is losing its credibility and there are no indications that it would be able to take off in the near future.
Bello enumerates a number of factors that have brought globalization to a halt. First, the merits of globalization were overstated. The enthusiasts forgot that the bulk of the production by MNCs is carried on and sold in their countries of origin. There are not many corporations whose activities are widely dispersed over various regions. Second, the national capitalist elites have failed to adopt a truly global outlook and rise above their national interests and considerations. They have competed with one another in increasing their national benefits rather than evolving a rational approach to tackle the problems of over production, stagnation, environmental crisis, liberalization of trade and the free flow of labour. The USA and the European Union have sabotaged the Doha Round because they fear that its successful completion would anger their farmers. None of the developed countries have lifted fully the impediments obstructing the free flow of labour across the globe. In America, one can see how the Hispanics are discriminated against. Obviously, the double standard adopted by the USA has led to doubts in the minds of developing countries as regards its real intentions in championing globalization. To give a concrete example, it adopted somewhat strict attitude towards Enron but was very lenient and soft towards Union Carbide whose negligence resulted in the Bhopal tragedy in which thousands died and many more became condemned to suffer for life from various ailments.
The fact that neo-liberal policies have led to growing inequalities, and unemployment and poverty for certain sections of the society has antagonized people. The obsession with economic growth has resulted in disastrous consequences like ruining the environment and suspending labour laws and curtailing workers’ rights. The bid to eliminate capital controls and make national currencies fully convertible on both current and capital accounts has brought about the collapse of a number of economies. Lastly, the growing resistance by people has frustrated the attempts to foist globalization on all nations unmindful of their specific conditions. “One size fits all” has failed. This is crystal clear in Latin America where pro-globalization dispensations have been democratically overthrown by voters. Read Hugo Chavez’s recent speech and it will be obvious how discredited is current globalization.
Commenting on the attempts by certain people to impart a human face to globalization, Bello says: “Globalization … is a spent force. Today’s multiplying economic and political conflicts resemble, if anything, the period following the end of what historians refer to as the first era of globalization, which extended from 1815 to … 1914. The urgent task is not to steer corporate-driven globalization in a “social democratic” direction but to manage its retreat so that it does not bring about the same chaos and runaway conflicts that marked its demise in that earlier era.”
Girish Mishra, E-mail:gmishra@girishmishra.com
Sunday, January 14, 2007
زیندووم که وه
شعری از: کژال احمد
زيندووم که وه، زيندووم که وه،
له مه رگي خۆم په شيمانم!
زيندووم که وه، زيندووم که وه،
ببه به گيان بۆ گيانم،
ببه به خۆرپه بۆ دلم،
ببه گڕي خوێني سڕم،
خڕۆشي ناو ده مارانم!
زيندوم که وه، زيندوم که وه،
زۆري ماوه نه قشه ي ژيانم،
زۆري ماوه تاسه ي ده روون،
له مه رگي خۆم په شيمانم!
ببه به لێوي ئاگرين،
ئه لف و بێ نوي بو داستانم،
پێم بده وا هێزي گريان،
ڕاچه نينم خڕوشانم!
ده چنه وه به ئه ستێره،
جريوه ي ره شي ئاسمانم،
زيندووم که وه، زيندووم که وه،
تازه که وه لاقي شانم،
ببه به لێوي ئاگرين،
ئه لف و بێ نوي بو داستانم،
پێم بده وا هێزي گريان،
ڕاچه نينم خڕوشانم!
زيندووم که وه، زيندووم که وه،
له مه رگي خۆم په شيمانم!
زيندووم که وه، زيندووم که وه،
ببه به گيان بۆ گيانم،
ببه به خۆرپه بۆ دلم،
ببه گڕي خوێني سڕم،
خڕۆشي ناو ده مارانم!
له مه رگي خۆم په شيمانم!
زيندووم که وه، زيندووم که وه،
ببه به گيان بۆ گيانم،
ببه به خۆرپه بۆ دلم،
ببه گڕي خوێني سڕم،
خڕۆشي ناو ده مارانم!
زيندوم که وه، زيندوم که وه،
زۆري ماوه نه قشه ي ژيانم،
زۆري ماوه تاسه ي ده روون،
له مه رگي خۆم په شيمانم!
ببه به لێوي ئاگرين،
ئه لف و بێ نوي بو داستانم،
پێم بده وا هێزي گريان،
ڕاچه نينم خڕوشانم!
ده چنه وه به ئه ستێره،
جريوه ي ره شي ئاسمانم،
زيندووم که وه، زيندووم که وه،
تازه که وه لاقي شانم،
ببه به لێوي ئاگرين،
ئه لف و بێ نوي بو داستانم،
پێم بده وا هێزي گريان،
ڕاچه نينم خڕوشانم!
زيندووم که وه، زيندووم که وه،
له مه رگي خۆم په شيمانم!
زيندووم که وه، زيندووم که وه،
ببه به گيان بۆ گيانم،
ببه به خۆرپه بۆ دلم،
ببه گڕي خوێني سڕم،
خڕۆشي ناو ده مارانم!
Friday, January 12, 2007
Early to Bed, Early to Rise: Scientists Determine How Gene Behind Sleep Cycle Works
January 11, 2007
Early to Bed, Early to Rise: Scientists Determine How Gene Behind Sleep Cycle Works
A single amino acid in a particular protein can get you up long before dawn and into bed well before prime time.
By Nikhil Swaminathan
Scientific American
In 2000 scientists at the University of Utah discovered a family of early risers who typically slept from around five at night to two in the morning. The condition, dubbed familial advanced sleep phase syndrome (FASPS), has allowed researchers studying circadian rhythms to understand how the human body clock works, which could pave the way for future therapies aimed at seasonal affective disorder, jet lag and insomnia.
Now, a new study by a team out of the University of California, San Francisco, which includes members of the group that initially identified FASPS, has determined the operational mechanism by which the gene Per2 is implicated in adjusting the body clock's response to light. Their findings, published in this week's issue of Cell, state that the replacement of one amino acid from among hundreds found in a protein can result in irregular sleep patterns.
"A single amino acid change from serine to glycine, that's enough for all these people who have this mutation to have FASPS," says neurologist and study co-author Ying-Hui Fu. Based on lab tests of cells from the Utah family, the researchers believe that a single point mutation in Per2 results in the replacement of serine with glycine during transcription. This substitution then prevents a still unknown enzyme from adding a phosphate molecule onto the absent serine, which kicks off a domino effect resulting in lower overall transcription from DNA to mRNA (messenger RNA). This decreased mRNA, in turn, leads to lower amounts of protein when RNA is translated. "The message of this gene doesn't get transmitted appropriately," explains Fu," and therefore the protein level is low."
Previous studies had hinted that Per2's effect on circadian rhythm was an issue of protein stability, a defect that would have been caused during or after translation. "The biggest surprise in this [study] was the change in messenger RNA as opposed to protein stability," notes University of Utah cancer and circadian rhythm specialist David Virshup, who adds that the new paper conflicts with the results of a study published late last year in Genes & Development. Choogon Lee, a biomedical scientist at Florida State University, believes that post-translational effects are d efinitely not absent based on the raw data. He notes that the decrease in messenger RNA is only 30 percent in the Cell study, but that this results in a protein decrease of 80 to 90 percent. "So, it's not just the transcription decrease," he says. "There must be some protein-stability effect, too."
The San Francisco team, with the aid of University of Utah neurologist Christopher Jones, also studied the effects of Per2 mutation in mice. The scientists added a mutated copy of the Per2 gene to mice that would change the 662nd amino acid in the PER2 protein from a serine to glycine. This triggered a shift in the animals' circadian period, causing the mice to go to sleep nearly two hours earlier than before. When the researchers deleted the natural Per2 genes before inserting the mutated gene, the mice slept and woke nearly four hours earlier than before. "The mutation has a dominant effect over the endogenous Per2, so without endogenous Per2, interference, the phenotype is worse," Fu says. When the researchers inserted a copy of the gene that mimicked the presence of serine, the circadian period lengthened, which, Fu says, "really tells you that this amino acid plays a really critical role. It's almost like a dial in your cell that can turn your [period] short or long."
David Weaver, a neurobiologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School says he found the new study's findings to be quite surprising. "While the authors can't completely exclude a contribution of post-translational effects on PER2 protein levels," he explains, "their data indicate it has quite an important effect on Per2 transcript levels that I would not have anticipated." He also points out that "while the population affected by FASPS is relatively small, the lessons learned and the mouse models generated will likely be useful in developing methods for resetting the circadian clock."
Fu says that her group is working to develop therapies for modulating the human body clock, irregularities of which are associated with everything from insomnia to seasonal affective disorder and cancer. "We can use our mouse model to screen compounds to see which one can regulate period," Fu says, "to make it normal again."
Early to Bed, Early to Rise: Scientists Determine How Gene Behind Sleep Cycle Works
A single amino acid in a particular protein can get you up long before dawn and into bed well before prime time.
By Nikhil Swaminathan
Scientific American
In 2000 scientists at the University of Utah discovered a family of early risers who typically slept from around five at night to two in the morning. The condition, dubbed familial advanced sleep phase syndrome (FASPS), has allowed researchers studying circadian rhythms to understand how the human body clock works, which could pave the way for future therapies aimed at seasonal affective disorder, jet lag and insomnia.
Now, a new study by a team out of the University of California, San Francisco, which includes members of the group that initially identified FASPS, has determined the operational mechanism by which the gene Per2 is implicated in adjusting the body clock's response to light. Their findings, published in this week's issue of Cell, state that the replacement of one amino acid from among hundreds found in a protein can result in irregular sleep patterns.
"A single amino acid change from serine to glycine, that's enough for all these people who have this mutation to have FASPS," says neurologist and study co-author Ying-Hui Fu. Based on lab tests of cells from the Utah family, the researchers believe that a single point mutation in Per2 results in the replacement of serine with glycine during transcription. This substitution then prevents a still unknown enzyme from adding a phosphate molecule onto the absent serine, which kicks off a domino effect resulting in lower overall transcription from DNA to mRNA (messenger RNA). This decreased mRNA, in turn, leads to lower amounts of protein when RNA is translated. "The message of this gene doesn't get transmitted appropriately," explains Fu," and therefore the protein level is low."
Previous studies had hinted that Per2's effect on circadian rhythm was an issue of protein stability, a defect that would have been caused during or after translation. "The biggest surprise in this [study] was the change in messenger RNA as opposed to protein stability," notes University of Utah cancer and circadian rhythm specialist David Virshup, who adds that the new paper conflicts with the results of a study published late last year in Genes & Development. Choogon Lee, a biomedical scientist at Florida State University, believes that post-translational effects are d efinitely not absent based on the raw data. He notes that the decrease in messenger RNA is only 30 percent in the Cell study, but that this results in a protein decrease of 80 to 90 percent. "So, it's not just the transcription decrease," he says. "There must be some protein-stability effect, too."
The San Francisco team, with the aid of University of Utah neurologist Christopher Jones, also studied the effects of Per2 mutation in mice. The scientists added a mutated copy of the Per2 gene to mice that would change the 662nd amino acid in the PER2 protein from a serine to glycine. This triggered a shift in the animals' circadian period, causing the mice to go to sleep nearly two hours earlier than before. When the researchers deleted the natural Per2 genes before inserting the mutated gene, the mice slept and woke nearly four hours earlier than before. "The mutation has a dominant effect over the endogenous Per2, so without endogenous Per2, interference, the phenotype is worse," Fu says. When the researchers inserted a copy of the gene that mimicked the presence of serine, the circadian period lengthened, which, Fu says, "really tells you that this amino acid plays a really critical role. It's almost like a dial in your cell that can turn your [period] short or long."
David Weaver, a neurobiologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School says he found the new study's findings to be quite surprising. "While the authors can't completely exclude a contribution of post-translational effects on PER2 protein levels," he explains, "their data indicate it has quite an important effect on Per2 transcript levels that I would not have anticipated." He also points out that "while the population affected by FASPS is relatively small, the lessons learned and the mouse models generated will likely be useful in developing methods for resetting the circadian clock."
Fu says that her group is working to develop therapies for modulating the human body clock, irregularities of which are associated with everything from insomnia to seasonal affective disorder and cancer. "We can use our mouse model to screen compounds to see which one can regulate period," Fu says, "to make it normal again."
Why a Quick Look Can Be Better than a Deep Study
January 12, 2007
Why a Quick Look Can Be Better than a Deep Study
When searching for an object in a field of many others, often the first place we look is where it is
By Nikhil Swaminathan
Scientific American
Perhaps all the time spent furiously hunting for the red- and white-stripe-wearing hider Waldo could have been avoided if his eventual spotter just glanced and pointed to the page. At least that is what is indicated by the findings of a new study conducted by researchers at University College London, which appears in the January 9 issue of Current Biology.
MIND'S EYE: British researchers determine that certain tasks--like picking a unique object out of many other objects--can be completed more accurately by inpection with solely a cursory glance, avoiding higher level visual processing that can confound perception Perhaps all the time spent furiously hunting for the red- and white-stripe-wearing hider Waldo could have been avoided if his eventual spotter just glanced and pointed to the page. At least that is what is indicated by the findings of a new study conducted by researchers at University College London,
which appears in the January 9 issue of Current Biology.
Psychologist Zhaoping Li presented 10 subjects with a matrix of more than 650 lines leaning at a 45-degree angle, like slashes, with one object somewhere in the array reversed, like a backslash. The participants had to determine within seconds whether "the odd one out" resided on the left- or right-hand side of the screen in front of them. The subjects chose most accurately when they had little to no time to scrutinize the matrix.
"This finding seems counterintuitive," Li says. "You would expect people to make more accurate decisions when given the time to look properly. Instead they performed better when given almost no time to think."
Li and her colleague Nathalie Guyader used eye-tracking technology to follow the subjects' gazes as the their eyes darted around the array before them. In one trial, as soon as a participant's eye wandered onto the nonconforming line, the researchers hid the array and then prompted the viewer for an answer. Li says that most participants thought they were just blindly guessing which of the sides the backward line appeared in but they were nearly 95 percent accurate in choosing the correct region. On the other hand, when the researchers gave them more than 500 milliseconds to peruse the picture, allowing them to turn on higher level mental functions, the subjects' accuracy dropped to about 70 percent.
"A lot of times the eye darting around is actually the lower level function," Li explains. "Before your gaze actually lands on the target, you're seeing the target in your peripheral vision, and with your peripheral vision it hasn't really engaged your full attention y et and that's why you were darting around looking for it." Once a person's gaze lands on the target his or her brain begins to try to determine if it is the actual one. "Obviously the extra scrutiny, which is the extra mental recruitment," she notes, "is bad for them."
To our conscious minds, a rotated object is the same as the original object.
Li expounds on the dilemma of involving higher order brain functions in some tasks, such as copying a portrait with a pen and paper. "It's better that you don't think that it's somebody's face," she says. "If you think, 'Oh the nose should curve this way and the jaw should curve that way,' that actually interferes with you trying to reproduce the shade of a patch or curves. The contours and the shadings are actually lower level tasks that do not require you to recognize the shape of something." She also notes that this processing paradigm may be the reason why supermarket cashiers are asked to turn the signature on a credit card upside down when comparing it with the signature on a bill.
Wieske van Zoest, a researcher at the Brain and Attention Research Lab at the University of British Columbia, notes that Li's findings are similar to work she has done on the processing of simple features." We have shown that when people are intentionally looking for something salient, the obvious benefit of a salient target does not exist when people take a long time to respond," she says.
Jeremy Wolfe, head of the Visual Attention Lab at Harvard's Brigham and Women's Hospital, says Li's study reminds him of the brainteasers that appear in children's magazines and on IQ tests in which a shape is hidden within a picture. "I think that what this paper really shows is that very early on in processing you've got access to that information that then gets hidden by that larger context," he explains. "It points toward different stages in [the] visual process where different bits of information become available at different times."
Why a Quick Look Can Be Better than a Deep Study
When searching for an object in a field of many others, often the first place we look is where it is
By Nikhil Swaminathan
Scientific American
Perhaps all the time spent furiously hunting for the red- and white-stripe-wearing hider Waldo could have been avoided if his eventual spotter just glanced and pointed to the page. At least that is what is indicated by the findings of a new study conducted by researchers at University College London, which appears in the January 9 issue of Current Biology.
MIND'S EYE: British researchers determine that certain tasks--like picking a unique object out of many other objects--can be completed more accurately by inpection with solely a cursory glance, avoiding higher level visual processing that can confound perception Perhaps all the time spent furiously hunting for the red- and white-stripe-wearing hider Waldo could have been avoided if his eventual spotter just glanced and pointed to the page. At least that is what is indicated by the findings of a new study conducted by researchers at University College London,
which appears in the January 9 issue of Current Biology.
Psychologist Zhaoping Li presented 10 subjects with a matrix of more than 650 lines leaning at a 45-degree angle, like slashes, with one object somewhere in the array reversed, like a backslash. The participants had to determine within seconds whether "the odd one out" resided on the left- or right-hand side of the screen in front of them. The subjects chose most accurately when they had little to no time to scrutinize the matrix.
"This finding seems counterintuitive," Li says. "You would expect people to make more accurate decisions when given the time to look properly. Instead they performed better when given almost no time to think."
Li and her colleague Nathalie Guyader used eye-tracking technology to follow the subjects' gazes as the their eyes darted around the array before them. In one trial, as soon as a participant's eye wandered onto the nonconforming line, the researchers hid the array and then prompted the viewer for an answer. Li says that most participants thought they were just blindly guessing which of the sides the backward line appeared in but they were nearly 95 percent accurate in choosing the correct region. On the other hand, when the researchers gave them more than 500 milliseconds to peruse the picture, allowing them to turn on higher level mental functions, the subjects' accuracy dropped to about 70 percent.
"A lot of times the eye darting around is actually the lower level function," Li explains. "Before your gaze actually lands on the target, you're seeing the target in your peripheral vision, and with your peripheral vision it hasn't really engaged your full attention y et and that's why you were darting around looking for it." Once a person's gaze lands on the target his or her brain begins to try to determine if it is the actual one. "Obviously the extra scrutiny, which is the extra mental recruitment," she notes, "is bad for them."
To our conscious minds, a rotated object is the same as the original object.
Li expounds on the dilemma of involving higher order brain functions in some tasks, such as copying a portrait with a pen and paper. "It's better that you don't think that it's somebody's face," she says. "If you think, 'Oh the nose should curve this way and the jaw should curve that way,' that actually interferes with you trying to reproduce the shade of a patch or curves. The contours and the shadings are actually lower level tasks that do not require you to recognize the shape of something." She also notes that this processing paradigm may be the reason why supermarket cashiers are asked to turn the signature on a credit card upside down when comparing it with the signature on a bill.
Wieske van Zoest, a researcher at the Brain and Attention Research Lab at the University of British Columbia, notes that Li's findings are similar to work she has done on the processing of simple features." We have shown that when people are intentionally looking for something salient, the obvious benefit of a salient target does not exist when people take a long time to respond," she says.
Jeremy Wolfe, head of the Visual Attention Lab at Harvard's Brigham and Women's Hospital, says Li's study reminds him of the brainteasers that appear in children's magazines and on IQ tests in which a shape is hidden within a picture. "I think that what this paper really shows is that very early on in processing you've got access to that information that then gets hidden by that larger context," he explains. "It points toward different stages in [the] visual process where different bits of information become available at different times."
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Quotes
What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment & death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment ... inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose: Thomas Jefferson
="Since when do you have to agree with people to defend them from injustice?": Lillian Hellman - (1905-1984) American playwright and memoirist
="For in a Republic, who is 'the country?' Is it the Government which is for the moment in the saddle? Why, the Government is merely a servant -- merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them." -- Mark Twain [Samuel Langhornne Clemens] (1835-1910)
="Since when do you have to agree with people to defend them from injustice?": Lillian Hellman - (1905-1984) American playwright and memoirist
="For in a Republic, who is 'the country?' Is it the Government which is for the moment in the saddle? Why, the Government is merely a servant -- merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them." -- Mark Twain [Samuel Langhornne Clemens] (1835-1910)
Sunday, January 7, 2007
Some Quotes
If a war be undertaken for the most righteous end, before the resources of peace have been tried and proved vain to secure it, that war has no defense, it is a national crime.": Charles Eliot Norton - (1827-1908) American educator, writer, and editor who founded the Nation (1865)
"To act without clear understanding, to form habits without investigation, to follow a path all one's life without knowing where it really leads -- such is the behavior of the multitude.": - Mencius - [Mengzi Meng-tse] (c.371 - c.288 B.C.) Chinese Confucian philosopher
"Tolerance implies a respect for another person, not because he is wrong or even because he is right, but because he is human." - John Cogley Source: Commonwealth, 24 April 1959
"Not to forgive is to be imprisoned by the past, by old grievances that do not permit life to proceed with new business. Not to forgive is to yield oneself to another's control... to be locked into a sequence of act and response, of outrage and revenge, tit for tat, escalating always. The present is endlessly overwhelmed and devoured by the past. Forgiveness frees the forgiver. It extracts the forgiver from someone else's nightmare.": - Lance Morrow
"To act without clear understanding, to form habits without investigation, to follow a path all one's life without knowing where it really leads -- such is the behavior of the multitude.": - Mencius - [Mengzi Meng-tse] (c.371 - c.288 B.C.) Chinese Confucian philosopher
"Tolerance implies a respect for another person, not because he is wrong or even because he is right, but because he is human." - John Cogley Source: Commonwealth, 24 April 1959
"Not to forgive is to be imprisoned by the past, by old grievances that do not permit life to proceed with new business. Not to forgive is to yield oneself to another's control... to be locked into a sequence of act and response, of outrage and revenge, tit for tat, escalating always. The present is endlessly overwhelmed and devoured by the past. Forgiveness frees the forgiver. It extracts the forgiver from someone else's nightmare.": - Lance Morrow
Saturday, January 6, 2007
Power and the people
Iran says it wants nuclear energy to fuel its economy. The US says it wants to build an 'Islamic bomb'. But what do Iranians think about the deepening crisis? Given rare access, Simon Tisdall spoke to people on the streets of Tehran - and to the men in charge of the country's nuclear programme
Monday August 21, 2006The Guardian
Tensions between Iran and the west have rarely been greater than they are today. On the one side, President George Bush has accused Iran of being behind the attack by Hizbullah on Israel that sparked the Lebanon war; and both the US and Britain say that Iran is bent on developing nuclear weapons. On the other, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has claimed that the Bush administration is trampling on the rights of Muslims throughout the world; the US is the "Global Arrogance" (the term which has replaced the "Great Satan" in the Iranian lexicon) in which Washington's plan for a "new Middle East" is simply a scheme to subjugate the region to US and commercial interests.
Article continues
Just last week, an article by Seymour Hersh, the respected US investigative reporter, which claimed that the war against Iran's proxy Hizbullah was a premeditated US-directed warm-up for an attack on Iran itself, stoked fears in Tehran that a US air assault on its nuclear facilities, even regime change, are moving to the top of the agenda. Officials in Tehran worry that, after Afghanistan and Iraq, Iran is seen by Bush as "unfinished business" - and that, urged on by Israel, he is determined to destroy what both countries see as the looming threat of an "Islamic bomb". They hear Bush's talk of "Islamic fascists" - and wonder whether he will soon be gunning for them.
There is a way out. Tomorrow the Iranian government will present its long-awaited response to the west's last-ditch compromise offer on nuclear power. This package, belatedly backed by the US, offers Iran a range of incentives from implicit security, territorial guarantees and an end to sanctions, to new commercial and technological collaborations. But first, Bush insists, Iran must suspend all uranium enrichment operations, which Washington believes are connected to its attempts to acquire bomb-making capability.
So far, Iran has insisted that it will not accept any such pre-conditions. Officials say they are willing to resume negotiations with the west - but on equal terms. So when Ahmadinejad delivers Iran's formal reply at a Tehran press conference, the stage will be set for an epic clash that could reverberate across the Middle East and far beyond. So far, the story has mostly been reported from the outside, and from a western perspective. But what are the prospects for war and peace as seen from inside Iran? For the past two weeks the Guardian has been given unprecedented access to explore what ordinary Iranians think about the most pressing issue facing their country - and what some of the country's most powerful men believe will happen next.
'Diplomatic chess'
In a high-ceilinged, thick-carpeted inner sanctum of Iran's fortress-like Supreme National Security Council building in central Tehran, Ali Larijani patiently spells out the factors that will play a part in Iran's decision. The CIA would dearly love to penetrate inside these walls. Perhaps it already has; visitors' mobile phones and other electronic devices are confiscated.
Larijani is an important man in Iran. As secretary of the security council and chief nuclear negotiator, it is he, and his predecessor, Hassan Rowhani, who have by turns tantalised, teased and infuriated the west during three years of discussions on the nuclear dossier. Iran plays a long and astute negotiating game, which Larijani likens to "diplomatic chess". Officials say they learned at the feet of masters: the European powers who exploited Persia during the 19th century "Great Game". Britain is still referred to as the "Old Fox".
Larijani has a daunting reputation as the dour former head of state television whose programme schedules were both morally edifying and utterly tedious. His appointment by Ahmadinejad was seen in the west as representing an ominous shift towards recalcitrance. But in person he is charming and courteous.
"There are many reasons why Iran is seeking nuclear power," he says. "The history of our nuclear activity dates back 45 years to the time of the ex-shah's regime. But after the Islamic revolution, some western countries condemned Iran and cancelled their nuclear agreements with us. For example, the Americans had concluded an agreement for a research reactor in Tehran and also to provide the fuel. But they cancelled the agreement and did not give back the money. The Germans did the same. So the lesson was: we have to be self-sufficient, to provide fuel for ourselves."
He continues: "We don't see why we should stop the scientific research of our country. We understand why this is very sensitive. But they (the west) are categorising countries. Some countries can have access to high nuclear technology. The others are told they can produce fruit juice and pears! They say: 'Don't seek a nuclear bomb.' We don't have any objection to that. But unfortunately officials of some countries such as the UK say, 'We don't want you to have the knowledge for nuclear technology'. This is not logical. And we don't pay attention to this."
The Americans' contradictory impulses are to blame for the standoff, he says. "After September 11 2001, they faced a problem in Afghanistan. They requested assistance from Iran and we gave it. But after the problem ended in Afghanistan, they called us the 'axis of evil'. This paradox has always been their way. They want to kiss one side of our face, but at the same time they also want to slap the other side."
Iran is still willing to negotiate, Larijani concludes, but it will not give up its nuclear power programme. Nor will it yield to preconditions such as Bush's demand for an immediate suspension of uranium enrichment. "If they are going to seek an imposed agreement by putting pressure on us, we will not accept it. If the atmosphere is not proper, we may delay our reply. If you try to cultivate a flower in salty land, it does not grow."
For Larijani, the bottom line is respect. And the evident lack of it in Washington, magnified by loose talk of enforced regime change, is one of many reasons why Iran is going nuclear.
A changing society
Tehran is a city of elegant parks. And none is more serene than Saee Park, off Vali Asr Avenue, one of the capital's main thoroughfares. Known as the "lovers' park", it is where young and not-so-young couples sit at dusk beneath a canopy of fragrant chinar, cypress and pine trees, exchanging gossip and intimacies, sharing ice creams and swapping phone numbers.
According to Reza, 27, and his girlfriend, things are more easy-going socially than they were 10 years ago. They attribute the change to the presidency of Mohammad Khatami, Ahmadinejad's reformist predecessor. Despite Ahmadinejad's conservative instincts, the new government has been unable to put the street culture genie back in the bottle, Reza says.
"There's more personal freedom. You don't get harassed like you used to. The young people are changing the older people's attitude. They have to accept it - they have no choice, so they go with the flow." And in a country of 70m, where two-thirds of the population is under 30, the trend appears irreversible.
The present hardline government is not popular among many inhabitants of Saee Park. They complain about its failure to expand and diversify an economy that is roughly 80% state-controlled. Younger people worry about careers and jobs, about the difficulties of foreign travel and internet censorship, about the lack of things to do and places to meet. Leila, 27, says she would like to go to parties, to clubs; she would like to sing. "But they won't allow female singers, did you know that? Female vocalists are banned. They say they are too alluring to men. Poor men! They have weak brains!"
Yussuf, 63, has a different perspective. "I was a metallurgist until I retired. I trained in the US during the Shah's time. I worked all my life. But now I have to take part-time jobs because my pension isn't enough. This government is no good, they're all no good." Yussuf has another complaint: the government is sending money to Hizbullah in Lebanon that would be better spent at home, he says. "First you must look after your own people."
His friend, Ali, agrees. He wants to know into whose pockets Iran's record oil revenue is going. "Some of them [the governing elite] are buying cars for $100,000. Think of that! Did they get that money by working?"
All the same, Ahmadinejad's personal brand of nationalist populism, typified by his defiant handling of the nuclear issue, has many admirers in Saee Park and beyond. "Why don't they just leave us alone and let us live under our own rules?" asks a 32-year-old engineer.
"Iran has the right to nuclear power," chanted a crowd in Ardabil, in northern Iran, last week. During a series of nine rallies addressed by Ahmadinejad, the sentiments expressed by ordinary people are the same. Western attempts to deny Iran nuclear technology are "an obvious attempt to keep us down, like they want to keep all the developing countries down," says Majid, a 30-year-old teacher in Tehran. "We don't want nuclear weapons. But we want to build our country. What's wrong with that?"
Iranians may be cut off from the modern western world in many ways, but they are well versed in the long history of western intervention in Persia. From the Treaty of Golestan in 1813, by which Russia took control of Iran's Caucasus territories, to the 1953 CIA-led coup that toppled Iran's democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddeq, from the US embassy hostage siege to the Iran-Contra scandal, a tale of national subjugation and degradation forms the context in which Iran looks at the west. And Iranians hear, in derogatory western talk of "mad mullahs", an echo of a 19th-century British diplomat's sneering reference to "incomprehensible orientals". It smacks of disrespect.
And now, with Washington's neo-conservatives on one side and Ahmadinejad's neo-conservatives on the other, this mutual antagonism and misunderstanding is coming to a head. In some analyses, it has brought the two countries to the brink of military conflict. If the US attacks, experts say it is likely to take the form of "precision strikes" on the four main nuclear facilities and possibly Iranian armed forces and Revolutionary Guard bases, too. But Pentagon planners know Iran has the potential to retaliate, as the unexpected success of Hizbullah in Lebanon has shown. This week the US ambassador to Iraq highlighted what he said were Iranian attempts to push Shia militants into attacks on coalition forces in Iraq. And Baghdad is only one possible theatre for Iranian reprisals should the US pull the trigger.
Mohammad Saeidi is a practical man. Sidestepping the political, ideological and historical aspects of the nuclear dispute with the west, the vice-president of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation is focused on a set of problems that must be solved logically if the country and its people are to develop to their full potential. "The country's oil and gas reserves will last a maximum of another 25 or 30 years," he says. "Therefore we have to provide other resources."
About 7,000 people work in Iran's atomic establishment - principally in Tehran and at the Bushehr, Arak, Isfahan and Natanz complexes. Saeidi says there are plans to build 20 nuclear power stations in all, at a cost of $24-$25bn. The first, at Bushehr, built with Russian help, is expected to come on stream next year. Saeidi says that in going nuclear Iran is only following the example of other countries with growing populations and rising energy demand. Nuclear power is cheaper, and its raw component, naturally occurring uranium, is in plentiful supply in Iran's central deserts.
It is the cascade of 164 centrifuges constructed at Natanz that has drawn most international attention since Ahmadinejad announced last April that Iran had mastered the processes for uranium enrichment. It was Natanz that finally prompted the US to join with European negotiators in offering the compromise incentives package that is now on the table. But like Larijani, Saeidi stresses the research stage nature of this work - and the ongoing inspections of Natanz and other plants by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
To try to divert nuclear material for bomb-making purposes without the UN knowing would be "impossible", he says, and if a deal is struck, Tehran would be ready to reintroduce spot checks. But, in any case, bomb-making is not Iran's aim, Saeidi says - even if it had the capacity, which it does not. Overall, independent experts tend to agree that, at present, Iran does not have the wherewithal to build a nuclear weapon. But that does not mean it will not in future.
Saeidi denies that Iran kept its facilities at Natanz secret, as claimed in 2003 by the Bush administration. He says there was no legal necessity to notify the IAEA before nuclear material had entered the plant. "Natanz is a very large factory. You cannot hide it. It wasn't secret."
He also denies receiving help from Pakistan, now or in the past, despite a spate of disclosures concerning the proliferation network run by the Pakistani scientist, AQ Khan. "We don't have any relation to Pakistan on the nuclear issue. All the equipment and components we are using are made by Iranian companies and factories."
Needless to say, such statements are disputed by the US and other western governments who suspect that Iran may be running a hidden, parallel uranium enrichment programme using more advanced centrifuges. They worry it is also experimenting with plutonium reprocessing. But all such claims are met with a flat denial.
"We don't have any secret programme. We don't have any secrets," Saeidi says. Iran does not want the bomb, he and other officials insist; and it has no plans to build one. What it does want is a plentiful future supply of nuclear energy to fuel the rise of a new, more powerful nation - and in this ambition, it will brook no obstacles.
Ahmadinejad's vision
The man who could make all the difference is Ahmadinejad himself. He insists that Iran's intentions were not to make a bomb - "Iranians have mastered the complete cycle of uranium enrichment by themselves. But we will use it for peaceful purposes, for nuclear power. This is our right and no one can take this right away from us." But the man best known in the west for his desire to "wipe Israel off the map" and his questioning of the Holocaust, this blacksmith's son who rose to be mayor of Tehran before unexpectedly winning the presidency a year ago this month, is a controversial figure inside Iran, too. Many people, largely among the working class and in rural areas, adore him. Others, particularly among the intellectual elite of Tehran, fear his devout Islamic beliefs and his conservative political instincts will further isolate the country.
For Iran's president is a true believer. He maintains that the 1979 revolution that overthrew the shah was besmirched and betrayed after the death of its leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, by pragmatists and corrupt mercantilists, by pro-western compromisers and reformists. Ahmadinejad's famously humble lifestyle, emphasised by his rumpled jackets and unkempt beard, offers but one clue to the fundamentalist spirit that moves him. Tehranis say his vision is a return to the ideals of 1979, including a reinvigorated social conservatism, a revived popular piety, and a principled rejection of the Christian and Zionist "crusader" west.
Many political moderates, western diplomats and ordinary citizens say Ahmadinejad's vision is to turn the clock back to a more honest and more dutiful time. And what better way to demonstrate the uplifting virtues and potency of this religious retrenchment than defiance of the west over the nuclear issue? Here is a golden opportunity to re-affirm Iran's compromised independence and dignity - and restore both the international respect and the religious values that Ahjmadinejad believes the revolution has squandered since 1989. This is Ahmadinejad's chance.
It may be naive to believe that Iran's government, surrounded by nuclear-armed neighbours and directly threatened by the US, is not seeking to acquire a nuclear weapons capability. "The Americans have been seeking regime change in Iran ever since the victory of the revolution," say Larijani. Given such widespread convictions, and the example of several other countries that have built atomic weapons without facing serious penalties, Iran's leaders might be thought remiss in not seeking to arm themselves.
But more naive, perhaps, and potentially even more destabilising, is Ahmadinejad's apparent belief that by confronting the west over the nuclear issue, he can revive the purist, Khomeini-era ideal of fundamentalist Islamic revolution in a country that is changing rapidly. Most Iranians support the government's pursuit of nuclear power. But most oppose the intolerant theocracy that is Khomeini's legacy.
In his brilliant new book, Confronting Iran, Ali Ansari portrays the growing "secularisation" of Iranian society as an unstoppable force. "Fewer and fewer people show an interest in organised religion," he writes. And in Tehran the evidence of that is everywhere. Iran is a rich country, poorly run. Slowly but surely its people are demanding and obtaining change. Iran does seem destined once again to be a great regional power, but that destiny is likely to be attained despite its religious leadership - and despite the Bush administration's counter-productive bullying.
Ahmadinejad, the articulate champion of Iran's national rights, is a potent figure. But Ahmadinejad, the would-be visionary leader of a resurgent revolution awaiting the coming of the Hidden Imam, is living a dangerous illusion. And it is Iranians, not the US air force, who should be allowed to shatter his dream.
Monday August 21, 2006The Guardian
Tensions between Iran and the west have rarely been greater than they are today. On the one side, President George Bush has accused Iran of being behind the attack by Hizbullah on Israel that sparked the Lebanon war; and both the US and Britain say that Iran is bent on developing nuclear weapons. On the other, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has claimed that the Bush administration is trampling on the rights of Muslims throughout the world; the US is the "Global Arrogance" (the term which has replaced the "Great Satan" in the Iranian lexicon) in which Washington's plan for a "new Middle East" is simply a scheme to subjugate the region to US and commercial interests.
Article continues
Just last week, an article by Seymour Hersh, the respected US investigative reporter, which claimed that the war against Iran's proxy Hizbullah was a premeditated US-directed warm-up for an attack on Iran itself, stoked fears in Tehran that a US air assault on its nuclear facilities, even regime change, are moving to the top of the agenda. Officials in Tehran worry that, after Afghanistan and Iraq, Iran is seen by Bush as "unfinished business" - and that, urged on by Israel, he is determined to destroy what both countries see as the looming threat of an "Islamic bomb". They hear Bush's talk of "Islamic fascists" - and wonder whether he will soon be gunning for them.
There is a way out. Tomorrow the Iranian government will present its long-awaited response to the west's last-ditch compromise offer on nuclear power. This package, belatedly backed by the US, offers Iran a range of incentives from implicit security, territorial guarantees and an end to sanctions, to new commercial and technological collaborations. But first, Bush insists, Iran must suspend all uranium enrichment operations, which Washington believes are connected to its attempts to acquire bomb-making capability.
So far, Iran has insisted that it will not accept any such pre-conditions. Officials say they are willing to resume negotiations with the west - but on equal terms. So when Ahmadinejad delivers Iran's formal reply at a Tehran press conference, the stage will be set for an epic clash that could reverberate across the Middle East and far beyond. So far, the story has mostly been reported from the outside, and from a western perspective. But what are the prospects for war and peace as seen from inside Iran? For the past two weeks the Guardian has been given unprecedented access to explore what ordinary Iranians think about the most pressing issue facing their country - and what some of the country's most powerful men believe will happen next.
'Diplomatic chess'
In a high-ceilinged, thick-carpeted inner sanctum of Iran's fortress-like Supreme National Security Council building in central Tehran, Ali Larijani patiently spells out the factors that will play a part in Iran's decision. The CIA would dearly love to penetrate inside these walls. Perhaps it already has; visitors' mobile phones and other electronic devices are confiscated.
Larijani is an important man in Iran. As secretary of the security council and chief nuclear negotiator, it is he, and his predecessor, Hassan Rowhani, who have by turns tantalised, teased and infuriated the west during three years of discussions on the nuclear dossier. Iran plays a long and astute negotiating game, which Larijani likens to "diplomatic chess". Officials say they learned at the feet of masters: the European powers who exploited Persia during the 19th century "Great Game". Britain is still referred to as the "Old Fox".
Larijani has a daunting reputation as the dour former head of state television whose programme schedules were both morally edifying and utterly tedious. His appointment by Ahmadinejad was seen in the west as representing an ominous shift towards recalcitrance. But in person he is charming and courteous.
"There are many reasons why Iran is seeking nuclear power," he says. "The history of our nuclear activity dates back 45 years to the time of the ex-shah's regime. But after the Islamic revolution, some western countries condemned Iran and cancelled their nuclear agreements with us. For example, the Americans had concluded an agreement for a research reactor in Tehran and also to provide the fuel. But they cancelled the agreement and did not give back the money. The Germans did the same. So the lesson was: we have to be self-sufficient, to provide fuel for ourselves."
He continues: "We don't see why we should stop the scientific research of our country. We understand why this is very sensitive. But they (the west) are categorising countries. Some countries can have access to high nuclear technology. The others are told they can produce fruit juice and pears! They say: 'Don't seek a nuclear bomb.' We don't have any objection to that. But unfortunately officials of some countries such as the UK say, 'We don't want you to have the knowledge for nuclear technology'. This is not logical. And we don't pay attention to this."
The Americans' contradictory impulses are to blame for the standoff, he says. "After September 11 2001, they faced a problem in Afghanistan. They requested assistance from Iran and we gave it. But after the problem ended in Afghanistan, they called us the 'axis of evil'. This paradox has always been their way. They want to kiss one side of our face, but at the same time they also want to slap the other side."
Iran is still willing to negotiate, Larijani concludes, but it will not give up its nuclear power programme. Nor will it yield to preconditions such as Bush's demand for an immediate suspension of uranium enrichment. "If they are going to seek an imposed agreement by putting pressure on us, we will not accept it. If the atmosphere is not proper, we may delay our reply. If you try to cultivate a flower in salty land, it does not grow."
For Larijani, the bottom line is respect. And the evident lack of it in Washington, magnified by loose talk of enforced regime change, is one of many reasons why Iran is going nuclear.
A changing society
Tehran is a city of elegant parks. And none is more serene than Saee Park, off Vali Asr Avenue, one of the capital's main thoroughfares. Known as the "lovers' park", it is where young and not-so-young couples sit at dusk beneath a canopy of fragrant chinar, cypress and pine trees, exchanging gossip and intimacies, sharing ice creams and swapping phone numbers.
According to Reza, 27, and his girlfriend, things are more easy-going socially than they were 10 years ago. They attribute the change to the presidency of Mohammad Khatami, Ahmadinejad's reformist predecessor. Despite Ahmadinejad's conservative instincts, the new government has been unable to put the street culture genie back in the bottle, Reza says.
"There's more personal freedom. You don't get harassed like you used to. The young people are changing the older people's attitude. They have to accept it - they have no choice, so they go with the flow." And in a country of 70m, where two-thirds of the population is under 30, the trend appears irreversible.
The present hardline government is not popular among many inhabitants of Saee Park. They complain about its failure to expand and diversify an economy that is roughly 80% state-controlled. Younger people worry about careers and jobs, about the difficulties of foreign travel and internet censorship, about the lack of things to do and places to meet. Leila, 27, says she would like to go to parties, to clubs; she would like to sing. "But they won't allow female singers, did you know that? Female vocalists are banned. They say they are too alluring to men. Poor men! They have weak brains!"
Yussuf, 63, has a different perspective. "I was a metallurgist until I retired. I trained in the US during the Shah's time. I worked all my life. But now I have to take part-time jobs because my pension isn't enough. This government is no good, they're all no good." Yussuf has another complaint: the government is sending money to Hizbullah in Lebanon that would be better spent at home, he says. "First you must look after your own people."
His friend, Ali, agrees. He wants to know into whose pockets Iran's record oil revenue is going. "Some of them [the governing elite] are buying cars for $100,000. Think of that! Did they get that money by working?"
All the same, Ahmadinejad's personal brand of nationalist populism, typified by his defiant handling of the nuclear issue, has many admirers in Saee Park and beyond. "Why don't they just leave us alone and let us live under our own rules?" asks a 32-year-old engineer.
"Iran has the right to nuclear power," chanted a crowd in Ardabil, in northern Iran, last week. During a series of nine rallies addressed by Ahmadinejad, the sentiments expressed by ordinary people are the same. Western attempts to deny Iran nuclear technology are "an obvious attempt to keep us down, like they want to keep all the developing countries down," says Majid, a 30-year-old teacher in Tehran. "We don't want nuclear weapons. But we want to build our country. What's wrong with that?"
Iranians may be cut off from the modern western world in many ways, but they are well versed in the long history of western intervention in Persia. From the Treaty of Golestan in 1813, by which Russia took control of Iran's Caucasus territories, to the 1953 CIA-led coup that toppled Iran's democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddeq, from the US embassy hostage siege to the Iran-Contra scandal, a tale of national subjugation and degradation forms the context in which Iran looks at the west. And Iranians hear, in derogatory western talk of "mad mullahs", an echo of a 19th-century British diplomat's sneering reference to "incomprehensible orientals". It smacks of disrespect.
And now, with Washington's neo-conservatives on one side and Ahmadinejad's neo-conservatives on the other, this mutual antagonism and misunderstanding is coming to a head. In some analyses, it has brought the two countries to the brink of military conflict. If the US attacks, experts say it is likely to take the form of "precision strikes" on the four main nuclear facilities and possibly Iranian armed forces and Revolutionary Guard bases, too. But Pentagon planners know Iran has the potential to retaliate, as the unexpected success of Hizbullah in Lebanon has shown. This week the US ambassador to Iraq highlighted what he said were Iranian attempts to push Shia militants into attacks on coalition forces in Iraq. And Baghdad is only one possible theatre for Iranian reprisals should the US pull the trigger.
Mohammad Saeidi is a practical man. Sidestepping the political, ideological and historical aspects of the nuclear dispute with the west, the vice-president of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation is focused on a set of problems that must be solved logically if the country and its people are to develop to their full potential. "The country's oil and gas reserves will last a maximum of another 25 or 30 years," he says. "Therefore we have to provide other resources."
About 7,000 people work in Iran's atomic establishment - principally in Tehran and at the Bushehr, Arak, Isfahan and Natanz complexes. Saeidi says there are plans to build 20 nuclear power stations in all, at a cost of $24-$25bn. The first, at Bushehr, built with Russian help, is expected to come on stream next year. Saeidi says that in going nuclear Iran is only following the example of other countries with growing populations and rising energy demand. Nuclear power is cheaper, and its raw component, naturally occurring uranium, is in plentiful supply in Iran's central deserts.
It is the cascade of 164 centrifuges constructed at Natanz that has drawn most international attention since Ahmadinejad announced last April that Iran had mastered the processes for uranium enrichment. It was Natanz that finally prompted the US to join with European negotiators in offering the compromise incentives package that is now on the table. But like Larijani, Saeidi stresses the research stage nature of this work - and the ongoing inspections of Natanz and other plants by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
To try to divert nuclear material for bomb-making purposes without the UN knowing would be "impossible", he says, and if a deal is struck, Tehran would be ready to reintroduce spot checks. But, in any case, bomb-making is not Iran's aim, Saeidi says - even if it had the capacity, which it does not. Overall, independent experts tend to agree that, at present, Iran does not have the wherewithal to build a nuclear weapon. But that does not mean it will not in future.
Saeidi denies that Iran kept its facilities at Natanz secret, as claimed in 2003 by the Bush administration. He says there was no legal necessity to notify the IAEA before nuclear material had entered the plant. "Natanz is a very large factory. You cannot hide it. It wasn't secret."
He also denies receiving help from Pakistan, now or in the past, despite a spate of disclosures concerning the proliferation network run by the Pakistani scientist, AQ Khan. "We don't have any relation to Pakistan on the nuclear issue. All the equipment and components we are using are made by Iranian companies and factories."
Needless to say, such statements are disputed by the US and other western governments who suspect that Iran may be running a hidden, parallel uranium enrichment programme using more advanced centrifuges. They worry it is also experimenting with plutonium reprocessing. But all such claims are met with a flat denial.
"We don't have any secret programme. We don't have any secrets," Saeidi says. Iran does not want the bomb, he and other officials insist; and it has no plans to build one. What it does want is a plentiful future supply of nuclear energy to fuel the rise of a new, more powerful nation - and in this ambition, it will brook no obstacles.
Ahmadinejad's vision
The man who could make all the difference is Ahmadinejad himself. He insists that Iran's intentions were not to make a bomb - "Iranians have mastered the complete cycle of uranium enrichment by themselves. But we will use it for peaceful purposes, for nuclear power. This is our right and no one can take this right away from us." But the man best known in the west for his desire to "wipe Israel off the map" and his questioning of the Holocaust, this blacksmith's son who rose to be mayor of Tehran before unexpectedly winning the presidency a year ago this month, is a controversial figure inside Iran, too. Many people, largely among the working class and in rural areas, adore him. Others, particularly among the intellectual elite of Tehran, fear his devout Islamic beliefs and his conservative political instincts will further isolate the country.
For Iran's president is a true believer. He maintains that the 1979 revolution that overthrew the shah was besmirched and betrayed after the death of its leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, by pragmatists and corrupt mercantilists, by pro-western compromisers and reformists. Ahmadinejad's famously humble lifestyle, emphasised by his rumpled jackets and unkempt beard, offers but one clue to the fundamentalist spirit that moves him. Tehranis say his vision is a return to the ideals of 1979, including a reinvigorated social conservatism, a revived popular piety, and a principled rejection of the Christian and Zionist "crusader" west.
Many political moderates, western diplomats and ordinary citizens say Ahmadinejad's vision is to turn the clock back to a more honest and more dutiful time. And what better way to demonstrate the uplifting virtues and potency of this religious retrenchment than defiance of the west over the nuclear issue? Here is a golden opportunity to re-affirm Iran's compromised independence and dignity - and restore both the international respect and the religious values that Ahjmadinejad believes the revolution has squandered since 1989. This is Ahmadinejad's chance.
It may be naive to believe that Iran's government, surrounded by nuclear-armed neighbours and directly threatened by the US, is not seeking to acquire a nuclear weapons capability. "The Americans have been seeking regime change in Iran ever since the victory of the revolution," say Larijani. Given such widespread convictions, and the example of several other countries that have built atomic weapons without facing serious penalties, Iran's leaders might be thought remiss in not seeking to arm themselves.
But more naive, perhaps, and potentially even more destabilising, is Ahmadinejad's apparent belief that by confronting the west over the nuclear issue, he can revive the purist, Khomeini-era ideal of fundamentalist Islamic revolution in a country that is changing rapidly. Most Iranians support the government's pursuit of nuclear power. But most oppose the intolerant theocracy that is Khomeini's legacy.
In his brilliant new book, Confronting Iran, Ali Ansari portrays the growing "secularisation" of Iranian society as an unstoppable force. "Fewer and fewer people show an interest in organised religion," he writes. And in Tehran the evidence of that is everywhere. Iran is a rich country, poorly run. Slowly but surely its people are demanding and obtaining change. Iran does seem destined once again to be a great regional power, but that destiny is likely to be attained despite its religious leadership - and despite the Bush administration's counter-productive bullying.
Ahmadinejad, the articulate champion of Iran's national rights, is a potent figure. But Ahmadinejad, the would-be visionary leader of a resurgent revolution awaiting the coming of the Hidden Imam, is living a dangerous illusion. And it is Iranians, not the US air force, who should be allowed to shatter his dream.
Thursday, January 4, 2007
Airs Rare Interview With Saddam Hussein Shortly After First Gulf War
Shortly after the first Gulf War, filmmaker Jon Alpert traveled to Baghdad and became one of the last American journalists to interview Saddam Hussein. The interview was originally slated to air on ABC but it was never broadcast. [includes rush transcript]
In Baghdad, the Iraqi government has announced plans to investigate why Saddam Hussein was taunted in the final moments before his hanging. Cell phone footage shows that masked guards chanted the name of Shiite leader Muqtada al Sadr and then told the former Iraqi president to go to hell. The treatment of Hussein has sparked protests around the world.
Former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw said Hussein’s execution "resembled the worst kind of nightmare out of the old American West." Britain’s deputy prime minister, John Prescott, said the manner of Hussein’s killing was deplorable.
Well, today on Democracy Now! we are going to continue our coverage of the execution of Saddam Hussein by airing one of the last televised interviews Hussein did with an American journalist. The interview took place in 1993 in Baghdad shortly after the first Gulf War and was conducted by our colleague here at Down Town Community Television, the 15-time Emmy Award winner Jon Alpert. Until now, it has never been aired in the United States.
Jon Alpert, 15-time Emmy Award winning documentary filmmaker and the founder of
Excerpts of Jon Alpert’s interview with Saddam Hussein in 1993
AMY GOODMAN: Well, today on Democracy Now!, we're going to continue our coverage of the execution of Saddam Hussein by airing one of the last televised interviews Saddam Hussein did with an American journalist. The interview actually took place in 1992, soon after Desert Storm. It was in Baghdad and was conducted by our colleague here at Downtown Community Television, 15-time Emmy Award-winning journalist Jon Alpert. Until now, this broadcast was never aired in the United States. In a moment, we'll play excerpts. But first, Jon Alpert, welcome back to Democracy Now! Talk about this interview you did with Saddam Hussein.
JON ALPERT: Well, everybody was anxious to find out what he was thinking after the Gulf War. Did he feel that he had made a mistake in invading Kuwait? Was he interested at all in trying to find a path to peace? There didn't really seem to be much going on in the diplomatic front. And we were fortunate enough to get an interview with him, and he used it to talk about the possibilities for peace and how he felt about the war.
AMY GOODMAN: Where did you do the interview?
JON ALPERT: In one of his palaces. It’s really a rather exciting journalistic story. They came knocking on the hotel room door at 10:00 in the morning. And I could tell from the way they were dressed and their serious faces that this was -- these were the people who were going to take me to the interview. And I went to get my camera, because I do my interviews basically from behind the camera, not sitting here like this. And they said, “What are you doing?” I said, “I’m getting my camera.” They said, “You can’t take the camera.” I said, “Well, how can I interview him? You know, I’m not going to do this with colored pencils.” And they said, “Get in the car. If you're not in the car in two minutes, we're leaving you behind.”
And they took us to the palace. We walked in. And immediately, Saddam Hussein appears. And he came up, he shook my hand, took our photograph. I have the souvenir photographs here. And then he disappeared. And I said, “My goodness, I blew it. There's no interview.” And they said, “Just shut up,” and took us down to the basement, where I had my first and only jailhouse search. They inspected parts of me I didn't know I had, then took me to a room, and when they opened the door, there were 200 people sitting in the room. The entire crew from Iraqi Television and all Saddam's officials, hanger-on, translators, and things like that. And I knew eventually I’d be speaking to him. It didn't happen until later on that evening. But then we conducted a one-hour interview.
AMY GOODMAN: Let's go to a clip of this interview.
JON ALPERT: We’re wondering, when the Iraqi army went into Kuwait, did you imagine that the forces were going to strike back against your country as hard as they did?
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] Yes, we imagined this, and we imagined even more than that.
JON ALPERT: This is now your chance to talk directly to the American people. And I’m wondering if you could just make a simple declarative statement about your intentions with chemical weapons and nuclear weapons?
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] If it helps make things clear to the American people, then let me tell you that we are ready and willing to work positively and effectively with all those who are interested to work in this direction to make the region of the Middle East a region free of all weapons of mass destruction.
JON ALPERT: We have a new administration in Washington. Do you think that there is any hope, now that President Bush has gone, that there can be better relations between the United States and your country?
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] We are still willing to discuss new relations with the United States, if the United States is prepared so to do.
JON ALPERT: If President Clinton was sitting here opposite you, what would you like to tell him?
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] When he actually sits in front of me, then I will tell him what I think I will do.
JON ALPERT: And how about if ex-President Bush was here?
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] And it is part of the trait of an Arab and values of an Arab not to fight. It is part of an Arab’s trait to fight only those who are on their horses with their swords drawn. Now that President Bush is neither on his horse nor with a sword drawn, then I don't think that he is in a position to be fought.
JON ALPERT: Basically, the people in the United States have come to the point where they don't trust you.
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] At any rate, whether or not people trust us or not is -- I don't want to comment on that. But I want to say that the American people are going to discover that amongst the first people that are worthy of their trust are people here in Iraq.
JON ALPERT: Many people believe that if, for example, we turn around and we walk away, that you'll be back across the border in Kuwait tomorrow.
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] If only we had the means to reach out to the American people and explain to them how the American administration goaded the Kuwaitis themselves to become part of the conspiracy being woven against us, then the situation and the perception of the American people today would have been different from what it is.
JON ALPERT: Now, whatever you think about Kuwait, Kuwait is a much smaller country than your country, doesn't measure up to your country militarily, and the same situation exists with you vis-à-vis Kuwait. In other words, the United States is a big country, and the United States can push you around, and they did push you around. You were a big country, and you pushed Kuwait around. How can we stop this?
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] Would you consider any quarter or a government that was announcing at the time that they intended to -- that is before, before the 2nd of August, 1990 -- that they intended to bring the value of the Iraqi dinar to its lowest possible value and that they had intended to shrink or minimize the revenues and the resources of Iraq to the lowest possible level, would such a government be considered weak? So the rulers of Kuwait used their weapons to the limit, but their weapon was money.
JON ALPERT: If the same situation existed again, in your perception -- Kuwait, for example, was successful in undermining your economy again -- would you do the same thing that you did before? Would you go into Kuwait again if you felt that that would solve your problem?
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] I don't think it would be right to put hypothetical questions and then expect an answer from the head of state on the basis of those hypothetical questions. The question should be put in this way: why should they use their wealth to destroy -- in this way to destroy the Iraqi economy? So, the fact is -- the known fact is that this great people of Iraq, despite all that has been inflicted upon it, perpetrated against it, still maintains its leadership and is still attached to its leadership. What does this mean? This means that the Iraqi people is in possession of -- it's more in possession of the truth. It has more details about the situation than the American public.
JON ALPERT: Well, the United States and Iraq are somewhat different. You know, the United States voted out its leadership. We did not have President Bush. Does the Iraqi people have this type of choice? Always when they talk about you, they talk about, this is a country that is a dictatorship, and they say that you’re a strongman and people cannot disagree with you.
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] What does this mean? It means, that is at the time when the American people have thrown their president out of the White House. If the Iraqi people were not convinced in their leadership, they would have dismissed the leadership and could have at least used the opportunity created by the coming of all these armies and all the campaign, the military campaign launched against Iraq and the destruction inflicted upon the country. They could have used that chance to say to its leadership, well, we can no longer take it with you in power.
JON ALPERT: You’re one tough cookie, though. It’s not so easy. I’m curious, if you don't mind, when we go around town now, we see hospitals without medicine. If you want to buy a car at the normal salary, you'd have to work 200 years to buy a car. The people are really suffering. And when you look back at the last two years, is there anything that you would have liked to have done differently? Great men have the capacity to look at their actions and say, “I should have done something different.” And as you look back at what you’ve done, would you have done anything at all different possibly to avoid the situation, to avoid the bloodshed, to avoid the war?
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] If you looked at the situation then and examined the details and the developments, you would have discovered yourself that the United States and its allies did not want peace to be ensured.
JON ALPERT: Do you think that President Bush was trying to kill you, for example, when he hit the air raid shelter, when he hit the hotel? There was talk that you might be at that conference at the Al-Rashid Hotel. Do you think that you were personally targeted? And how did you avoid getting killed during the war?
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] Unfortunately, I have read things in the book, in the memoirs of Norman Schwarzkopf that would tend to explain, to go along the political level and military level. At any rate, whoever wanted to hit Saddam Hussein, it's God's will that has prevailed, not his, because you see what the situation is like nowadays. It is God's will that Saddam Hussein is here and the others are not.
AMY GOODMAN: Saddam Hussein being interviewed by journalist Jon Alpert, just after Bill Clinton was elected for the first time in 1992. When we come back from break, we'll discuss this interview and play a bit more. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: I’m Amy Goodman, joined by my colleague here at Downtown Community Television at the firehouse in Downtown Manhattan, Jon Alpert, won an Emmy 15 times for his reporting, interviewed Saddam Hussein just after the first Iraq war, just after Desert Storm. Jon, what we are watching today never appeared on American television, and yet I think it was you and Dan Rather who were the only ones who interviewed Saddam Hussein since the first Iraq war.
JON ALPERT: That's correct. It's the only time he's ever talked to the press.
AMY GOODMAN: What happened? Why didn't this air here?
JON ALPERT: I think it was probably a combination of two things. There might have been perceived pressure from the American government basically just to not give Saddam a forum, even though you would think that if we went to war with him, and ultimately we went to war with him again, we might be interested in finding out what he had to say, any type of conversation, what he was thinking. We were certainly putting American lives on the line there, and it would be nice to sort of have a little more understanding.
But this was the interview that everybody wanted. And I got it. And, boy, it made a lot of people in the establishment unhappy. We ultimately had a handshake from ABC. It was going to be Primetime Live, the main story. But I was told that Roone Arledge decided to kill it.
AMY GOODMAN: Roone Arledge was the president of NBC?
JON ALPERT: Yeah, you know, one of the gods of television news. And it was his idea and basically all sort of figured this out, that if they could keep this off the air, then maybe one of their reporters could get the interview, and that’s what they did. They sort of all ganged up, a little cabal, to keep this off the air, and then they all began calling up Baghdad, pushing their own reporters as substitutes.
AMY GOODMAN: But no one got it.
JON ALPERT: Not in the United States. It was seen all over the world and analyzed all over the world, and there were some actually important news items in the things that Saddam was saying. But never was seen here. It’s a real -- it's a journalistic tragedy, when you get right down to it. I don't care about myself, but it was obvious that Saddam Hussein wanted to talk some way to the American people. He had gone to war with us. He would go to war with us again. And this was an opportunity to talk, instead of fight.
AMY GOODMAN: It particularly made headlines in Israel. Let's go to another clip of the interview that you did. Jon Alpert interviewing Saddam Hussein in Baghdad.
JON ALPERT: People in the United States are very curious, if you would tell them what your policy on Israel and Palestine is at this particular time. If an accommodation could be reached with Palestine, what would be your view towards the state of Israel?
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] As far as the Arabs are concerned, they are against discrimination. And they are against any religious discrimination amongst -- on the level of mankind or within a certain nation. The Arabs do not establish their relations with others on the basis of religion or on the basis of race.
JON ALPERT: Can you envision an Israeli state and the Palestinians living side-by-side, if the solution was acceptable to the Palestinians?
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] But the question is, do you think Israel is going to give the Palestinians their rights? I don't think so.
JON ALPERT: Would you recognize the right of Israel to exist, if justice was done for the Palestinians?
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] I said that if they come to a solution that would be satisfactory to the people of Palestine, then that would be satisfactory to the whole, to everyone and to the Arab world, and to including Iraqis, because that would mean that the Arabs would be dealing with a new situation.
AMY GOODMAN: Jon Alpert interviewing Saddam Hussein. So, this made headlines in Israel.
JON ALPERT: This was big news: Saddam Hussein saying that he was ready to recognize the right of Israel to exist, that he was ready for peace in the Middle East. They weren't talking those things in those days. And this was -- when this played in Israel, my phone rang. My cousin was on the phone, “Jonny, you're on TV!” And the fact that Saddam Hussein was saying, “Let's make peace with Israel, I can make peace with Israel,” was transformative, and it got absolutely no traction over here. And that's a big tragedy. When you look at the death and destruction that’s come in the Middle East, and he was signaling at that particular time, “Listen, there might be a peaceful way to do this,” it's a shame that nobody picked up on this here in the United States.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, the footage that we didn't get to see on the national networks then, that you brought back, was about the carnage in Iraq after Desert Storm.
JON ALPERT: Well, it's the suffering that happens in all wars. Some people think that there's justification for this war, justification for that war. In the end, the people on the ground always suffer, no matter what. And the people in Iraq were suffering. They were suffering from Saddam. He was a dictator. He was brutal. And they were suffering from the shortages. They were suffering from the effect of the war. And the people were dying, especially the babies. And when you saw this, it's something that you’ll never ever forget, when you go to the baby hospital in Iraq, then and now, because the people in Iraq are still paying the price for what Saddam did and the war that the United States brought to them, too.
AMY GOODMAN: Jon Alpert most recently did Baghdad ER, a remarkable film about the emergency room in Baghdad today.
JON ALPERT: We're suffering too. I mean, the American soldiers, 19 years old, 20 years old, getting chopped up there. So any time there’s an opportunity to talk instead of fight, it's a good opportunity. We should talk.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re going to go back in time with Jon Alpert to this footage after the US first attacked Iraq, and I want to warn you, this footage is graphic. Jon Alpert, thank you.
JON ALPERT: Sure, my pleasure.
JON ALPERT: At night, during the war two years ago, when we visited the Kardaciya [phon.] general hospital, the doctors had to work under incredible conditions. There was no electricity. But at least they had supplies. Now, because of the blockade, conditions in the hospital are actually worse than they were during the war.
DR. ABDUL-JABAR HASHIM: I am Dr. Abdul-Jabar Hashim. I’d like to show you some problems that we are having actually every day.
JON ALPERT: OK. So can we visit the hospital?
DR. ABDUL-JABAR HASHIM: Yes, please. This is the surgical department. Actually, normally this room is nearly filled, and there is awaiting people. When somebody come out, somebody come instead of him to have a surgery. But now, because we can't afford the surgery, it's empty.
JON ALPERT: How many operations are you doing a day?
DR. ABDUL-JABAR HASHIM: Now, we are doing about two to three. Before, we used to do about 12 to 15 operations a day.
JON ALPERT: And what happens to the people that are sick?
DR. ABDUL-JABAR HASHIM: They just are waiting. They don’t know what to do, actually.
This is my supply cart.
JON ALPERT: This is the supply cart?
DR. ABDUL-JABAR HASHIM: Yes.
JON ALPERT: But, Doctor, it’s empty.
DR. ABDUL-JABAR HASHIM: Yes, it’s empty. I mean, it’s usually filled with all medicine, what which we needed every minute.
JON ALPERT: So, band-aids?
DR. ABDUL-JABAR HASHIM: No.
JON ALPERT: Let’s look at the pharmacy. Show me the pharmacy.
DR. ABDUL-JABAR HASHIM: This used to be all the types of [inaudible] fluid here. You can see only this [inaudible] and this and this one.
JON ALPERT: So in the whole hospital you’ve only got those two bottles left? That’s it?
DR. ABDUL-JABAR HASHIM: I mean, this is -- yeah, we have no more.
JON ALPERT: And what happens when the patient needs the fluid?
DR. ABDUL-JABAR HASHIM: Very difficult. Some of them will die.
I mean, this is the bandage unit. This kid. If we have the bandages and the cottons, we will cover him and dress him. But now we are leaving him exposed.
JON ALPERT: And you don't have any band-aids for this kid?
DR. ABDUL-JABAR HASHIM: No.
JON ALPERT: That's horrible.
DR. ABDUL-JABAR HASHIM: Of course.
JON ALPERT: [to the boy] You OK?
IRAQI BOY: [nods]
JON ALPERT: Doctor, what happened to this kid?
DR. ABDUL-JABAR HASHIM: This kid has a burn, actually. Exposed to burn. And she is suffering from burn. Her condition is actually getting worse. We can't cover her, because we are having shortages of bandages and cotton. I think she might die, because, I mean, in another two days she will get septicemia from the infection because we have no proper antibiotic for her.
JON ALPERT: And does the mother know that her baby’s going to die?
DR. ABDUL-JABAR HASHIM: Yes. She said, “Yes, I know she is.”
IRAQI GIRL: [speaking Arabic]
JON ALPERT: What is she saying, doctor?
DR. ABDUL-JABAR HASHIM: She is saying, “I am suffering,” actually. “Don’t let me suffer more.”
JON ALPERT: Do you have painkillers for her?
DR. ABDUL-JABAR HASHIM: No, we have no painkillers for her.
AMY GOODMAN: An excerpt of the footage of journalist Jon Alpert in Iraq soon after Desert Storm. For those of us in our radio listening audience, you can go to our website at democracynow.org to see the footage from Iraq.
In Baghdad, the Iraqi government has announced plans to investigate why Saddam Hussein was taunted in the final moments before his hanging. Cell phone footage shows that masked guards chanted the name of Shiite leader Muqtada al Sadr and then told the former Iraqi president to go to hell. The treatment of Hussein has sparked protests around the world.
Former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw said Hussein’s execution "resembled the worst kind of nightmare out of the old American West." Britain’s deputy prime minister, John Prescott, said the manner of Hussein’s killing was deplorable.
Well, today on Democracy Now! we are going to continue our coverage of the execution of Saddam Hussein by airing one of the last televised interviews Hussein did with an American journalist. The interview took place in 1993 in Baghdad shortly after the first Gulf War and was conducted by our colleague here at Down Town Community Television, the 15-time Emmy Award winner Jon Alpert. Until now, it has never been aired in the United States.
Jon Alpert, 15-time Emmy Award winning documentary filmmaker and the founder of
Excerpts of Jon Alpert’s interview with Saddam Hussein in 1993
AMY GOODMAN: Well, today on Democracy Now!, we're going to continue our coverage of the execution of Saddam Hussein by airing one of the last televised interviews Saddam Hussein did with an American journalist. The interview actually took place in 1992, soon after Desert Storm. It was in Baghdad and was conducted by our colleague here at Downtown Community Television, 15-time Emmy Award-winning journalist Jon Alpert. Until now, this broadcast was never aired in the United States. In a moment, we'll play excerpts. But first, Jon Alpert, welcome back to Democracy Now! Talk about this interview you did with Saddam Hussein.
JON ALPERT: Well, everybody was anxious to find out what he was thinking after the Gulf War. Did he feel that he had made a mistake in invading Kuwait? Was he interested at all in trying to find a path to peace? There didn't really seem to be much going on in the diplomatic front. And we were fortunate enough to get an interview with him, and he used it to talk about the possibilities for peace and how he felt about the war.
AMY GOODMAN: Where did you do the interview?
JON ALPERT: In one of his palaces. It’s really a rather exciting journalistic story. They came knocking on the hotel room door at 10:00 in the morning. And I could tell from the way they were dressed and their serious faces that this was -- these were the people who were going to take me to the interview. And I went to get my camera, because I do my interviews basically from behind the camera, not sitting here like this. And they said, “What are you doing?” I said, “I’m getting my camera.” They said, “You can’t take the camera.” I said, “Well, how can I interview him? You know, I’m not going to do this with colored pencils.” And they said, “Get in the car. If you're not in the car in two minutes, we're leaving you behind.”
And they took us to the palace. We walked in. And immediately, Saddam Hussein appears. And he came up, he shook my hand, took our photograph. I have the souvenir photographs here. And then he disappeared. And I said, “My goodness, I blew it. There's no interview.” And they said, “Just shut up,” and took us down to the basement, where I had my first and only jailhouse search. They inspected parts of me I didn't know I had, then took me to a room, and when they opened the door, there were 200 people sitting in the room. The entire crew from Iraqi Television and all Saddam's officials, hanger-on, translators, and things like that. And I knew eventually I’d be speaking to him. It didn't happen until later on that evening. But then we conducted a one-hour interview.
AMY GOODMAN: Let's go to a clip of this interview.
JON ALPERT: We’re wondering, when the Iraqi army went into Kuwait, did you imagine that the forces were going to strike back against your country as hard as they did?
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] Yes, we imagined this, and we imagined even more than that.
JON ALPERT: This is now your chance to talk directly to the American people. And I’m wondering if you could just make a simple declarative statement about your intentions with chemical weapons and nuclear weapons?
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] If it helps make things clear to the American people, then let me tell you that we are ready and willing to work positively and effectively with all those who are interested to work in this direction to make the region of the Middle East a region free of all weapons of mass destruction.
JON ALPERT: We have a new administration in Washington. Do you think that there is any hope, now that President Bush has gone, that there can be better relations between the United States and your country?
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] We are still willing to discuss new relations with the United States, if the United States is prepared so to do.
JON ALPERT: If President Clinton was sitting here opposite you, what would you like to tell him?
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] When he actually sits in front of me, then I will tell him what I think I will do.
JON ALPERT: And how about if ex-President Bush was here?
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] And it is part of the trait of an Arab and values of an Arab not to fight. It is part of an Arab’s trait to fight only those who are on their horses with their swords drawn. Now that President Bush is neither on his horse nor with a sword drawn, then I don't think that he is in a position to be fought.
JON ALPERT: Basically, the people in the United States have come to the point where they don't trust you.
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] At any rate, whether or not people trust us or not is -- I don't want to comment on that. But I want to say that the American people are going to discover that amongst the first people that are worthy of their trust are people here in Iraq.
JON ALPERT: Many people believe that if, for example, we turn around and we walk away, that you'll be back across the border in Kuwait tomorrow.
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] If only we had the means to reach out to the American people and explain to them how the American administration goaded the Kuwaitis themselves to become part of the conspiracy being woven against us, then the situation and the perception of the American people today would have been different from what it is.
JON ALPERT: Now, whatever you think about Kuwait, Kuwait is a much smaller country than your country, doesn't measure up to your country militarily, and the same situation exists with you vis-à-vis Kuwait. In other words, the United States is a big country, and the United States can push you around, and they did push you around. You were a big country, and you pushed Kuwait around. How can we stop this?
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] Would you consider any quarter or a government that was announcing at the time that they intended to -- that is before, before the 2nd of August, 1990 -- that they intended to bring the value of the Iraqi dinar to its lowest possible value and that they had intended to shrink or minimize the revenues and the resources of Iraq to the lowest possible level, would such a government be considered weak? So the rulers of Kuwait used their weapons to the limit, but their weapon was money.
JON ALPERT: If the same situation existed again, in your perception -- Kuwait, for example, was successful in undermining your economy again -- would you do the same thing that you did before? Would you go into Kuwait again if you felt that that would solve your problem?
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] I don't think it would be right to put hypothetical questions and then expect an answer from the head of state on the basis of those hypothetical questions. The question should be put in this way: why should they use their wealth to destroy -- in this way to destroy the Iraqi economy? So, the fact is -- the known fact is that this great people of Iraq, despite all that has been inflicted upon it, perpetrated against it, still maintains its leadership and is still attached to its leadership. What does this mean? This means that the Iraqi people is in possession of -- it's more in possession of the truth. It has more details about the situation than the American public.
JON ALPERT: Well, the United States and Iraq are somewhat different. You know, the United States voted out its leadership. We did not have President Bush. Does the Iraqi people have this type of choice? Always when they talk about you, they talk about, this is a country that is a dictatorship, and they say that you’re a strongman and people cannot disagree with you.
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] What does this mean? It means, that is at the time when the American people have thrown their president out of the White House. If the Iraqi people were not convinced in their leadership, they would have dismissed the leadership and could have at least used the opportunity created by the coming of all these armies and all the campaign, the military campaign launched against Iraq and the destruction inflicted upon the country. They could have used that chance to say to its leadership, well, we can no longer take it with you in power.
JON ALPERT: You’re one tough cookie, though. It’s not so easy. I’m curious, if you don't mind, when we go around town now, we see hospitals without medicine. If you want to buy a car at the normal salary, you'd have to work 200 years to buy a car. The people are really suffering. And when you look back at the last two years, is there anything that you would have liked to have done differently? Great men have the capacity to look at their actions and say, “I should have done something different.” And as you look back at what you’ve done, would you have done anything at all different possibly to avoid the situation, to avoid the bloodshed, to avoid the war?
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] If you looked at the situation then and examined the details and the developments, you would have discovered yourself that the United States and its allies did not want peace to be ensured.
JON ALPERT: Do you think that President Bush was trying to kill you, for example, when he hit the air raid shelter, when he hit the hotel? There was talk that you might be at that conference at the Al-Rashid Hotel. Do you think that you were personally targeted? And how did you avoid getting killed during the war?
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] Unfortunately, I have read things in the book, in the memoirs of Norman Schwarzkopf that would tend to explain, to go along the political level and military level. At any rate, whoever wanted to hit Saddam Hussein, it's God's will that has prevailed, not his, because you see what the situation is like nowadays. It is God's will that Saddam Hussein is here and the others are not.
AMY GOODMAN: Saddam Hussein being interviewed by journalist Jon Alpert, just after Bill Clinton was elected for the first time in 1992. When we come back from break, we'll discuss this interview and play a bit more. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: I’m Amy Goodman, joined by my colleague here at Downtown Community Television at the firehouse in Downtown Manhattan, Jon Alpert, won an Emmy 15 times for his reporting, interviewed Saddam Hussein just after the first Iraq war, just after Desert Storm. Jon, what we are watching today never appeared on American television, and yet I think it was you and Dan Rather who were the only ones who interviewed Saddam Hussein since the first Iraq war.
JON ALPERT: That's correct. It's the only time he's ever talked to the press.
AMY GOODMAN: What happened? Why didn't this air here?
JON ALPERT: I think it was probably a combination of two things. There might have been perceived pressure from the American government basically just to not give Saddam a forum, even though you would think that if we went to war with him, and ultimately we went to war with him again, we might be interested in finding out what he had to say, any type of conversation, what he was thinking. We were certainly putting American lives on the line there, and it would be nice to sort of have a little more understanding.
But this was the interview that everybody wanted. And I got it. And, boy, it made a lot of people in the establishment unhappy. We ultimately had a handshake from ABC. It was going to be Primetime Live, the main story. But I was told that Roone Arledge decided to kill it.
AMY GOODMAN: Roone Arledge was the president of NBC?
JON ALPERT: Yeah, you know, one of the gods of television news. And it was his idea and basically all sort of figured this out, that if they could keep this off the air, then maybe one of their reporters could get the interview, and that’s what they did. They sort of all ganged up, a little cabal, to keep this off the air, and then they all began calling up Baghdad, pushing their own reporters as substitutes.
AMY GOODMAN: But no one got it.
JON ALPERT: Not in the United States. It was seen all over the world and analyzed all over the world, and there were some actually important news items in the things that Saddam was saying. But never was seen here. It’s a real -- it's a journalistic tragedy, when you get right down to it. I don't care about myself, but it was obvious that Saddam Hussein wanted to talk some way to the American people. He had gone to war with us. He would go to war with us again. And this was an opportunity to talk, instead of fight.
AMY GOODMAN: It particularly made headlines in Israel. Let's go to another clip of the interview that you did. Jon Alpert interviewing Saddam Hussein in Baghdad.
JON ALPERT: People in the United States are very curious, if you would tell them what your policy on Israel and Palestine is at this particular time. If an accommodation could be reached with Palestine, what would be your view towards the state of Israel?
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] As far as the Arabs are concerned, they are against discrimination. And they are against any religious discrimination amongst -- on the level of mankind or within a certain nation. The Arabs do not establish their relations with others on the basis of religion or on the basis of race.
JON ALPERT: Can you envision an Israeli state and the Palestinians living side-by-side, if the solution was acceptable to the Palestinians?
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] But the question is, do you think Israel is going to give the Palestinians their rights? I don't think so.
JON ALPERT: Would you recognize the right of Israel to exist, if justice was done for the Palestinians?
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] I said that if they come to a solution that would be satisfactory to the people of Palestine, then that would be satisfactory to the whole, to everyone and to the Arab world, and to including Iraqis, because that would mean that the Arabs would be dealing with a new situation.
AMY GOODMAN: Jon Alpert interviewing Saddam Hussein. So, this made headlines in Israel.
JON ALPERT: This was big news: Saddam Hussein saying that he was ready to recognize the right of Israel to exist, that he was ready for peace in the Middle East. They weren't talking those things in those days. And this was -- when this played in Israel, my phone rang. My cousin was on the phone, “Jonny, you're on TV!” And the fact that Saddam Hussein was saying, “Let's make peace with Israel, I can make peace with Israel,” was transformative, and it got absolutely no traction over here. And that's a big tragedy. When you look at the death and destruction that’s come in the Middle East, and he was signaling at that particular time, “Listen, there might be a peaceful way to do this,” it's a shame that nobody picked up on this here in the United States.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, the footage that we didn't get to see on the national networks then, that you brought back, was about the carnage in Iraq after Desert Storm.
JON ALPERT: Well, it's the suffering that happens in all wars. Some people think that there's justification for this war, justification for that war. In the end, the people on the ground always suffer, no matter what. And the people in Iraq were suffering. They were suffering from Saddam. He was a dictator. He was brutal. And they were suffering from the shortages. They were suffering from the effect of the war. And the people were dying, especially the babies. And when you saw this, it's something that you’ll never ever forget, when you go to the baby hospital in Iraq, then and now, because the people in Iraq are still paying the price for what Saddam did and the war that the United States brought to them, too.
AMY GOODMAN: Jon Alpert most recently did Baghdad ER, a remarkable film about the emergency room in Baghdad today.
JON ALPERT: We're suffering too. I mean, the American soldiers, 19 years old, 20 years old, getting chopped up there. So any time there’s an opportunity to talk instead of fight, it's a good opportunity. We should talk.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re going to go back in time with Jon Alpert to this footage after the US first attacked Iraq, and I want to warn you, this footage is graphic. Jon Alpert, thank you.
JON ALPERT: Sure, my pleasure.
JON ALPERT: At night, during the war two years ago, when we visited the Kardaciya [phon.] general hospital, the doctors had to work under incredible conditions. There was no electricity. But at least they had supplies. Now, because of the blockade, conditions in the hospital are actually worse than they were during the war.
DR. ABDUL-JABAR HASHIM: I am Dr. Abdul-Jabar Hashim. I’d like to show you some problems that we are having actually every day.
JON ALPERT: OK. So can we visit the hospital?
DR. ABDUL-JABAR HASHIM: Yes, please. This is the surgical department. Actually, normally this room is nearly filled, and there is awaiting people. When somebody come out, somebody come instead of him to have a surgery. But now, because we can't afford the surgery, it's empty.
JON ALPERT: How many operations are you doing a day?
DR. ABDUL-JABAR HASHIM: Now, we are doing about two to three. Before, we used to do about 12 to 15 operations a day.
JON ALPERT: And what happens to the people that are sick?
DR. ABDUL-JABAR HASHIM: They just are waiting. They don’t know what to do, actually.
This is my supply cart.
JON ALPERT: This is the supply cart?
DR. ABDUL-JABAR HASHIM: Yes.
JON ALPERT: But, Doctor, it’s empty.
DR. ABDUL-JABAR HASHIM: Yes, it’s empty. I mean, it’s usually filled with all medicine, what which we needed every minute.
JON ALPERT: So, band-aids?
DR. ABDUL-JABAR HASHIM: No.
JON ALPERT: Let’s look at the pharmacy. Show me the pharmacy.
DR. ABDUL-JABAR HASHIM: This used to be all the types of [inaudible] fluid here. You can see only this [inaudible] and this and this one.
JON ALPERT: So in the whole hospital you’ve only got those two bottles left? That’s it?
DR. ABDUL-JABAR HASHIM: I mean, this is -- yeah, we have no more.
JON ALPERT: And what happens when the patient needs the fluid?
DR. ABDUL-JABAR HASHIM: Very difficult. Some of them will die.
I mean, this is the bandage unit. This kid. If we have the bandages and the cottons, we will cover him and dress him. But now we are leaving him exposed.
JON ALPERT: And you don't have any band-aids for this kid?
DR. ABDUL-JABAR HASHIM: No.
JON ALPERT: That's horrible.
DR. ABDUL-JABAR HASHIM: Of course.
JON ALPERT: [to the boy] You OK?
IRAQI BOY: [nods]
JON ALPERT: Doctor, what happened to this kid?
DR. ABDUL-JABAR HASHIM: This kid has a burn, actually. Exposed to burn. And she is suffering from burn. Her condition is actually getting worse. We can't cover her, because we are having shortages of bandages and cotton. I think she might die, because, I mean, in another two days she will get septicemia from the infection because we have no proper antibiotic for her.
JON ALPERT: And does the mother know that her baby’s going to die?
DR. ABDUL-JABAR HASHIM: Yes. She said, “Yes, I know she is.”
IRAQI GIRL: [speaking Arabic]
JON ALPERT: What is she saying, doctor?
DR. ABDUL-JABAR HASHIM: She is saying, “I am suffering,” actually. “Don’t let me suffer more.”
JON ALPERT: Do you have painkillers for her?
DR. ABDUL-JABAR HASHIM: No, we have no painkillers for her.
AMY GOODMAN: An excerpt of the footage of journalist Jon Alpert in Iraq soon after Desert Storm. For those of us in our radio listening audience, you can go to our website at democracynow.org to see the footage from Iraq.
Wednesday, January 3, 2007
The Hanging of Saddam Hussein: A Roundtable Discussion on International Law, the U.S. Role, the Kurdish Response and the Media's Glossing Over of U.S.
Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007
The Hanging of Saddam Hussein: A Roundtable Discussion on International Law, the U.S. Role, the Kurdish Response and the Media's Glossing Over of U.S.
Democracy Now! talks to Param Preet Singh of Human Rights Watch; international law expert Richard Falk; Najmaldin Karim, President of the Washington Kurdish Institute; and Professor John Collins.
It was a grisly scene. Just after dawn Saturday, former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was executed by hanging in Baghdad.
A video released on the internet, filmed on a cellular phone, showed men preparing to execute Hussein. As the men with Hussein argue over how best to tie the noose, others behind the cameraman begin a series of chants including, "Muqtada muqtada," a reference to the Shia cleric Muqtada al Sadr. As Saddam Hussein interrupts to mock al Sadr, the men tell him "go to hell." The jeering continues as the noose is placed around Hussein's neck. He says the testimony once, then as he is in the middle of repeating it a second time, the door below him opens and he drops to his death. Afterwards the chants continue. Hours later, the video was shown around the world, drawing massive protest.
U.S. President George Bush hailed the execution as "the end of a dark era" for Iraq. Just hours earlier, Hussein had been transferred from U.S. custody to the custody of the Iraqi government. Last week, Hussein lost his final appeal and was sentenced to death by hanging for ordering the deaths of 148 Shiite Iraqis at Dujail in 1982. Yet while many Iraqis celebrated Hussein's demise, the execution was also met with worldwide condemnation. Egypt, Libya, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, and the Vatican protested the hanging. Rallies were held in India and Pakistan throughout the weekend. In the Iraqi city of Samarra Monday, Sunni demonstrators stormed the Al-Askiriya mosque carrying a mock coffin and a photograph of Hussein. Iraqi Kurds protested the timing of Hussein's death--he was killed before hearing the majority of the counts against him. Human Rights groups also criticized the execution.
Param Preet Singh, counsel for the International Justice Program of Human Rights Watch.
Najmaldin Karim, President of the Washington Kurdish Institute.
Richard Falk, Professor Emeritus of International Law and Practice at Princeton University and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of more than twenty books and was a founding member of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms.
John Collins, Associate Professor of Global Studies at St. Lawrence University. author of Occupied by Memory: The Intifada Generation and the Palestinian State of Emergency and co-editor of Collateral Language: A User's Guide to America's New War.
AMY GOODMAN: Param Preet Singh joins us now in our firehouse studio. She is the counsel for the International Justice Program of Human Rights Watch. We are also joined on the phone by Richard Falk, who is a Distinguished Professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara. And we welcome you both to Democracy Now! Param Preet Singh, your response to the execution?
PARAM PREET SINGH: Well, Saddam Hussein's execution follows a deeply flawed trial for crimes against humanity committed in Dujail. Our observers documented a number of severe procedural flaws within the trial, in terms of how the trial was conducted. First of all, a fundamental benchmark of a fair trial is independence of the judiciary from the executive and impartial judges conducting the case.
But there were a number of instances throughout the trial to indicate that this indeed wasn't present in Saddam Hussein's case. For example, in January of 2006, the first presiding judge resigned in protest over a public criticism by the then-Minister of Justice and others, that he was being too lenient on Saddam Hussein. Similarly, the second presiding judge in July of 2006 indicated that -- he abruptly halted the defense case and told the defense attorneys that “no number of witnesses will convince me of your client's innocence.”
And there were a number of political statements, as well. In July of 2006, the prime minister indicated that Saddam Hussein's execution would follow shortly after his conviction for the crimes committed, but the verdict didn't come out until November of 2006, which indicates that clearly this was an atmosphere of prejudgment of the outcome against him.
There were also other flaws. For example, Saddam Hussein didn't have an opportunity to confront a lot of the witnesses who presented key evidence against him. Without the opportunity to confront, he had no -- there was no possibility for him to test their credibility or test the type of evidence presented. Extensive use of anonymous witnesses, again, the same issue: he didn't have a right to confront the witnesses and the evidence against him. Those are just a few of the procedural flaws that we documented.
AMY GOODMAN: And then, once the verdict came down in November -- November 5th -- what happened?
PARAM PREET SINGH: Well, the verdict came down on November 5th, but the judgment, the 300-page judgment, was not made available to defense attorneys until November 22nd. And under Iraqi law, defense attorneys have 30 days from the announcement of the verdict to launch an appeal. But, of course, they didn't get the judgment until two weeks later, so they had essentially less than three weeks to review a complex 300-page judgment and present arguments.
Those submissions were given, I guess, in December 5th of 2006. And the appeals chamber reviewed their submissions and the 300-page judgment, and on December 26 indicated that it confirmed the death sentence and the verdict. In less than three weeks it was able to review the judgment, the 300-page judgment, and the submissions of the defense, which, I think, it illustrates that the appeals process is -- appears to be even more unfair than the actual trial.
AMY GOODMAN: And what has happened to the other two people who were tried, found guilty, sentenced to death, as well: the judge, as well as Saddam Hussein's brother-in-law, al-Tikriti?
PARAM PREET SINGH: It’s my understanding that their execution will take place on a -- I mean, the execution against them was also confirmed. The verdict against them was confirmed. And it’s my understanding that they’ll be executed at a later date.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Richard Falk, your assessment of the trial, the verdict? And then I’d like to go into the issue of the timing of this verdict. Welcome to Democracy Now!
RICHARD FALK: Well, my [inaudible] echoes that of your other guest, in the sense that, from the beginning, the trial was deeply flawed, and the flaws, in a sense, distracted one from the substantive issues engaged by Saddam Hussein's behavior while he had been a leader. And the execution, its manner, the fact of not only carrying out a death penalty at a time when most liberal democracies have repudiated that as an option for the state and doing it in a particularly horrifying manner, has completely eclipsed the criminality of Saddam Hussein’s period of brutal rule. And I think in a way that’s the greatest cost, aside from the public relations catastrophe for the United States and the current Iraqi leadership that’s associated with the way in which this execution was carried out.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, talk about the timing and what it meant. And can you talk about the US role? I mean, he was killed in Iraqi custody, though that only happened in the last hours before he was executed, the transfer.
RICHARD FALK: Yes, precisely. As far as we know -- it is to some extent based on circumstantial evidence -- the US orchestrated the whole process and was very intent on accelerating both the reaching of judgment and now the announcement of the process that culminated in this execution. The timing of the verdict seemed connected with the American November elections. The timing now seems clearly connected with both the hope to divert attention from passing the 3,000-death threshold, as well as -- and I think this is more important -- creating a possibility for President Bush to contend that this is -- that the United States is making progress in the Iraq war and that all that is required to achieve the goals that he has set some years ago is the patience of the American people and the support of Congress when he unfurls this new turn in American policy, which is expected to include the recommendation of -- or the decision to send an additional 20,000 to 30,000 American troops to Iraq.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, the New York Times had a front-page piece yesterday, on January 1st, saying that the US felt that Iraq was rushing the execution. You’re making the opposite case in a piece you wrote, “The Flawed Execution of Saddam Hussein,” that the US was trying to speed it up.
RICHARD FALK: Well, yes. It may be that at the very last moment, because it became so clear that this was going to be a very ugly, ugly way of handling the execution, that there was an attempt to make it conform at least to Iraqi internal law, which had, as far as we know, required that no execution be carried out during an Islamic holiday, and the Saturday when Saddam Hussein was executed was the first day of the Eid holiday, which is the most sacred day in the Islamic liturgical calendar and a holiday that is supposedly dedicated to the ethical theme of forgiveness.
And beyond that, there was clearly the sense that the execution should be carried out in a manner that doesn't deepen the sense that this is an incident in internal sectarian strife within Iraq, rather than a matter of rendering justice. So I think the people in Iraq got very nervous. The American handlers of the policy surrounding Saddam Hussein got very nervous at the very last stage, when they saw what the Iraqi leadership planned to do with this event associated with the execution.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Richard Falk. He is Distinguished Visiting Professor at University of California, Santa Barbara. We’re also talking to Param Preet Singh, who is with Human Rights Watch, which has condemned the execution of Saddam Hussein. When we come back from break, we’ll be talking with a Kurdish surgeon about his response to the killing. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: We are joined, in addition to Param Preet Singh of Human Rights Watch and Dr. Richard Falk, now at the University of California, Santa Barbara, we’re joined by Najmaldin Karim. He is on the phone with us, President of the Washington Kurdish Institute. He wrote a piece in the New York Times on Saturday. It was called “Justice, But No Reckoning.” We welcome you to Democracy Now!
NAJMALDIN KARIM: Thank you. Glad to be with you.
AMY GOODMAN: Your response to the execution?
NAJMALDIN KARIM: My response is just like the Op-Ed piece. Most of the people in Kurdistan are really deeply disappointed by the timing of the execution. Saddam was going through the trial for his genocidal campaign, which he named Anfal, and that trial was starting to go. And it was very important for the victims and their families for that trial to come to conclusion.
For us, as Kurds, going through these trials, the Anfal campaign, the massacre of the Shias in the south in 1991, the killing of the Barzanis or the use of chemical weapons, is not about revenge. It’s about coming to a conclusion. Why did Saddam do this? Who helped him? Who were his accomplices in committing these crimes? And I think he took all of those answers with him, and we probably will never know.
AMY GOODMAN: Why do you think he was tried on this one issue in Dujail, the killing of the Shia there in 1982, without being tried for these other crimes, Dr. Falk?
RICHARD FALK: A possible explanation is that this incident was clearly detachable from American complicity with the regime of Saddam Hussein and the period when the worst offenses occurred under his rule. And it was a very unprecedented procedure to separate the crimes of someone who is charged with sustaining a criminal regime during a period of political leadership.
If one thinks back to the Pinochet trial or the Milosevic trial, much less the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials, it was taken for granted that the whole package of alleged criminality would be addressed in a single unified trial. And that makes political, moral and legal sense, as the main purpose of such trials is not the punishment of the defendant, but, really, the political education of the society and the wider global public, in the hope that such an exposure of criminality will be a warning to the people and to future leaders of their accountability for crimes of state.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Karim, in your piece, you wrote about President Ford in 1975. Today, a funeral for him is being held in Washington, D.C., at the National Cathedral. Can you elaborate?
NAJMALDIN KARIM: Well, first, let me say that President Ford is revered by the people in this country, particularly in his late years, for what he did as far as the healing and all that. But it was during 1975, when Henry Kissinger was Secretary of State and there was a Kurdish resistance against the Baathist regime in Iraq, at that time Saddam Hussein was the vice president but he was really the de facto president. And the United States at the time was helping the Kurds, and there was a covert operation where the Kurds were getting help from the United States. And then, the Shah of Iran decided that he will make a deal with Saddam Hussein. And at that time, Kissinger was obviously the person who was running the foreign policy of this country, and it was during the Ford administration. So that is really where Ford's name comes in. And when Kissinger was asked why did he cut the aid to the Kurds, and his answer was “Covert operation is not missionary work,” if I’m quoting him correctly, but that's basically what he said. And as a result of that, 250,000 refugees went into Iran, and I was one of those. And many, many more returned to Iraq, and a lot of those were deported into the southern deserts, and thousands of them were killed, and we still don't know what happened to them.
AMY GOODMAN: You feel this point in 1975 was the worst?
NAJMALDIN KARIM: I believe that was the beginning, because it was that agreement between Saddam Hussein and the shah of Iran that probably led to the other things that happened afterwards because it was during that agreement that Saddam Hussein and the Shah of Iran that probably led to the other things that happened afterwards, because it was during that agreement that Saddam Hussein gave up Iraqi territory to the Shah of Iran.
And in 1979, when he saw that the Shah was overthrown and Khomeini had come to power, the Iranian regime was weak, he thought, and it was the time of the hostage crisis, when they took American hostages. So he took advantage of that moment to come back and tear that agreement on television -- this is Saddam Hussein -- and attacked Iran, thinking that Iran is weak and he will regain the territory that he had given to the Shah of Iran in the 1975 agreement. But, of course, that war with Iran lasted eight years, and as a result of that, Iraq went bankrupt, and it was that bankruptcy and the need for money that made Saddam Hussein invade Kuwait.
So, if you look at it, really a series of blunders and aggressions by Saddam Hussein really resulted from him giving up Iraqi territory to the Shah of Iran, which he felt that he will get back, and led to these other military adventures and then his genocidal campaign against the Kurds, invasion of Kuwait, killing of the Shias, and etc.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Karim, among those who will be eulogizing President Ford today at the National Cathedral are Henry Kissinger and also former President George H.W. Bush. What about the role of the Reagan-Bush years with Saddam Hussein?
NAJMALDIN KARIM: Well, as we all know now that it was in 1983 when President Reagan sent Donald Rumsfeld to Baghdad to establish relations with Baghdad -- with Saddam Hussein's regime, and it was the support of the Reagan administration to Saddam. And it was during that time when Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against the Kurds and carried out the genocidal Anfal campaign. Even though this was known in this country and there were hearings in the United States Senate about this and imposing sanctions on Iraq, yet the Reagan administration kept defending its policies towards Iraq.
And in 1990, on exactly on June 15, there was a hearing at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, when Bush was president, and that hearing was about imposing sanctions at the time the United States was giving hundreds of millions of dollars in credit to Iraq, and this was June 15, just about six weeks prior to the invasion of Kuwait, when the Bush administration defended its relationship with Iraq and described Saddam's influence in the region as being a moderating influence against, particularly, the Iranian aggression.
So, and then after the invasion of Kuwait and then the first Gulf War, President Bush called for the Iraqi people to rise up and get rid of the dictator. And when they did so, instead of protecting them, actually the Bush administration allowed Saddam Hussein to fly his helicopters, and it was those helicopters that massacred the Kurds and the Shias in 1991.
So, if you look back at it, you know, there is complicity. At least, at the minimum, they looked the other way when they knew Saddam was committing these atrocities and committing genocide against the people of Kurdistan.
AMY GOODMAN: Najmaldin Karim, I want to thank you very much for being with us, President of the Washington Kurdish Institute, a surgeon here now in the United States. In a minute, we’re going to go to Professor John Collins at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, who did some media analysis of CNN this weekend in the coverage of the execution. But before we do that, I wanted to turn back to Param Preet Singh to ask you about the possibility now, what it means when Saddam Hussein has been executed, yet these trials of his involvement in these other killings have not been carried out.
PARAM PREET SINGH: Well, I think it’s important to remember that the Anfal trial -- that was a trial that was being conducted at the time of his execution -- will continue. There are six other defendants against whom the prosecution will present evidence, and the defense will have an opportunity to rebut that evidence. So, of course, there are secrets about the Anfal campaign that Saddam Hussein will take with him to his grave. But the evidence that will come out in that trial could shed some light, in terms of how the crimes were committed, who was involved, how the victims were chosen, etc. So, I mean, there is still an opportunity there for the victims of these crimes to see some justice. It certainly wouldn't be the same had Saddam Hussein lived to stand trial.
AMY GOODMAN: And why do you think they didn't do these trials before he was killed?
PARAM PREET SINGH: I can't speculate on the thinking of the Iraqi government in terms of why they decided to, first of all, go forward with the Dujail case, as opposed to the Anfal case, which, although the killings in Dujail are horrific, the Anfal case involved the killing of up to 100,000 Kurds in northern Iraq. So in terms of why they decided to move ahead with one case over the other, it’s not clear.
In terms of the decision to execute him before his role was fully explored in other crimes, again, I mean, I can’t speculate on why the Iraqi government decided to do what they did. It most likely, you know -- they had a conviction, and they wanted to put in place the sentence as quickly as possible, just for the sake of making sure that there was at least some justice done for them.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I wanted to turn now to Professor John Collins at St. Lawrence University, Upstate New York, who wrote a piece for Electronic Iraq called “The Low Profile: CNN and New York Times Execute a Denial of History.” Welcome to Democracy Now!
JOHN COLLINS: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you evaluate the media coverage of the execution of Saddam Hussein here in the United States?
JOHN COLLINS: Sure. Certainly CNN, I think, needs to get some attention here. I turned on CNN's broadcast on the night of the execution, as I’m sure a lot of people did, and I was immediately struck by the fact that the whole event was being very carefully framed in order to kind of facilitate a denial of the historical relationship between Saddam Hussein and the US government.
The entire focus of the broadcast -- and this was the Anderson Cooper program on CNN -- the entire focus was on Saddam Hussein as an individual, and the images that were being looped on the screen, sort of over Anderson Cooper's voice and the voices of the guests, were obviously selected for their value in pushing that storyline forward. So, we saw, for example, images of Saddam Hussein brandishing a sword, firing a gun, laughing sort of like a cartoon villain, being checked for lice by US military doctors, and so forth.
And for me, the most obvious absence there was the photo and the video of this Donald Rumsfeld visit to Saddam in December 1983, at a time when the US government was working very hard to strengthen its ties with Baghdad. And that image of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein is not a random image. It’s a very crucial piece of the history of that regime, a piece that many Americans, I think, may not be aware of. And it’s all the more important given Rumsfeld's subsequent and current role during the current Bush administration.
AMY GOODMAN: Interestingly, Professor Collins, I think it was CNN that was one of the first to show that videotape on air, the actual videotape in 1983-1984 of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein, and questioning Rumsfeld about it.
JOHN COLLINS: Right. And that’s why it’s all the more so strange to me that CNN would have chosen, at this point, at the moment of the execution, to frame the issue in a way that shielded its viewers in that moment from any reference to past US support for Saddam and his actions.
And I think we saw a little bit something kind of similar in the New York Times the following morning in the front-page obituary in the Times, which was a long piece, over 5,000 words, and it certainly did a better job than CNN, in terms of providing some historical context. It did mention briefly that the US chose to back Iraq in its war with Iran during the 1980s. But the vast majority of the obituary portrayed the US as a consistent opponent of Saddam, which is to say that it leaned heavily toward the post-1990 piece of the story.
And I think what we have to keep in mind here is that the history of this regime is a long and complicated history, like anything in international politics. It’s built on a web of relationships, which bring with them webs of responsibility. And I think that, as Americans, we have an ethical responsibility to confront the role that we’ve played in that story, and certainly the news media have a responsibility to give us as detailed a history as possible, so that we can make informed decisions about policy.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor John Collins, you also write about New York Times coverage of Saddam Hussein's reign.
JOHN COLLINS: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about that?
JOHN COLLINS: Absolutely. I mean, I think the obituary on the front page was particularly noteworthy, because it played on a lot of the kinds of, I guess, stereotypes that we’ve become very used to when America's enemies are discussed in the mainstream media. So there were lots of anecdotes in the Times obituary about Saddam's paranoia, his megalomania, his sadism, and so forth. And I think the overall effect of that piece was to confirm to the readers of the Times that, yes, this man really was evil. But that just raises the question of why we ever allied ourselves with him to begin with. And the Times could have done a much better job of exploring that issue at the moment of his execution.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Professor Richard Falk, President Bush at Crawford, praising Saddam's execution as, quote, "the kind of justice he denied victims of his brutal regime. Fair trials were unimaginable under Saddam Hussein's tyrannical rule," said Bush. He said, “It’s a testament to the Iraqi people's resolve to move forward after decades of oppression, that despite his terrible crimes, Saddam Hussein received a fair trial. This would not have been possible without the Iraqi people’s determination to create a society governed by the rule of law.” That sentiment of a fair trial was underscored by, well, formerly Democrat, but now independent Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman on CNN, talking about the fact that Saddam Hussein got a fair trial. Professor Falk?
RICHARD FALK: Well, I can hardly imagine a more Orwellian description of the actual trial. And to hear those words juxtaposed with the reality that we’ve been discussing this past hour suggests either the extreme detachment of President Bush from the notion of what a fair trial constitutes or a deliberate confusion of what happened with what the American people are being told happened by our leadership and, as Professor Collins suggested, by the most supposedly reliable mainstream media. So, it’s part of spinning an event in such a distorted and deformed manner as to really commit a kind of crime on the language itself and on the seriousness of the events that were taking place.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you all for being with us: Richard Falk, Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton, now Visiting Distinguished Professor at University of California, Santa Barbara, teaching in the Global Studies Department; Param Preet Singh of Human Rights Watch; and Professor John Collins of St. Lawrence University in Upstate New York.
The Hanging of Saddam Hussein: A Roundtable Discussion on International Law, the U.S. Role, the Kurdish Response and the Media's Glossing Over of U.S.
Democracy Now! talks to Param Preet Singh of Human Rights Watch; international law expert Richard Falk; Najmaldin Karim, President of the Washington Kurdish Institute; and Professor John Collins.
It was a grisly scene. Just after dawn Saturday, former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was executed by hanging in Baghdad.
A video released on the internet, filmed on a cellular phone, showed men preparing to execute Hussein. As the men with Hussein argue over how best to tie the noose, others behind the cameraman begin a series of chants including, "Muqtada muqtada," a reference to the Shia cleric Muqtada al Sadr. As Saddam Hussein interrupts to mock al Sadr, the men tell him "go to hell." The jeering continues as the noose is placed around Hussein's neck. He says the testimony once, then as he is in the middle of repeating it a second time, the door below him opens and he drops to his death. Afterwards the chants continue. Hours later, the video was shown around the world, drawing massive protest.
U.S. President George Bush hailed the execution as "the end of a dark era" for Iraq. Just hours earlier, Hussein had been transferred from U.S. custody to the custody of the Iraqi government. Last week, Hussein lost his final appeal and was sentenced to death by hanging for ordering the deaths of 148 Shiite Iraqis at Dujail in 1982. Yet while many Iraqis celebrated Hussein's demise, the execution was also met with worldwide condemnation. Egypt, Libya, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, and the Vatican protested the hanging. Rallies were held in India and Pakistan throughout the weekend. In the Iraqi city of Samarra Monday, Sunni demonstrators stormed the Al-Askiriya mosque carrying a mock coffin and a photograph of Hussein. Iraqi Kurds protested the timing of Hussein's death--he was killed before hearing the majority of the counts against him. Human Rights groups also criticized the execution.
Param Preet Singh, counsel for the International Justice Program of Human Rights Watch.
Najmaldin Karim, President of the Washington Kurdish Institute.
Richard Falk, Professor Emeritus of International Law and Practice at Princeton University and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of more than twenty books and was a founding member of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms.
John Collins, Associate Professor of Global Studies at St. Lawrence University. author of Occupied by Memory: The Intifada Generation and the Palestinian State of Emergency and co-editor of Collateral Language: A User's Guide to America's New War.
AMY GOODMAN: Param Preet Singh joins us now in our firehouse studio. She is the counsel for the International Justice Program of Human Rights Watch. We are also joined on the phone by Richard Falk, who is a Distinguished Professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara. And we welcome you both to Democracy Now! Param Preet Singh, your response to the execution?
PARAM PREET SINGH: Well, Saddam Hussein's execution follows a deeply flawed trial for crimes against humanity committed in Dujail. Our observers documented a number of severe procedural flaws within the trial, in terms of how the trial was conducted. First of all, a fundamental benchmark of a fair trial is independence of the judiciary from the executive and impartial judges conducting the case.
But there were a number of instances throughout the trial to indicate that this indeed wasn't present in Saddam Hussein's case. For example, in January of 2006, the first presiding judge resigned in protest over a public criticism by the then-Minister of Justice and others, that he was being too lenient on Saddam Hussein. Similarly, the second presiding judge in July of 2006 indicated that -- he abruptly halted the defense case and told the defense attorneys that “no number of witnesses will convince me of your client's innocence.”
And there were a number of political statements, as well. In July of 2006, the prime minister indicated that Saddam Hussein's execution would follow shortly after his conviction for the crimes committed, but the verdict didn't come out until November of 2006, which indicates that clearly this was an atmosphere of prejudgment of the outcome against him.
There were also other flaws. For example, Saddam Hussein didn't have an opportunity to confront a lot of the witnesses who presented key evidence against him. Without the opportunity to confront, he had no -- there was no possibility for him to test their credibility or test the type of evidence presented. Extensive use of anonymous witnesses, again, the same issue: he didn't have a right to confront the witnesses and the evidence against him. Those are just a few of the procedural flaws that we documented.
AMY GOODMAN: And then, once the verdict came down in November -- November 5th -- what happened?
PARAM PREET SINGH: Well, the verdict came down on November 5th, but the judgment, the 300-page judgment, was not made available to defense attorneys until November 22nd. And under Iraqi law, defense attorneys have 30 days from the announcement of the verdict to launch an appeal. But, of course, they didn't get the judgment until two weeks later, so they had essentially less than three weeks to review a complex 300-page judgment and present arguments.
Those submissions were given, I guess, in December 5th of 2006. And the appeals chamber reviewed their submissions and the 300-page judgment, and on December 26 indicated that it confirmed the death sentence and the verdict. In less than three weeks it was able to review the judgment, the 300-page judgment, and the submissions of the defense, which, I think, it illustrates that the appeals process is -- appears to be even more unfair than the actual trial.
AMY GOODMAN: And what has happened to the other two people who were tried, found guilty, sentenced to death, as well: the judge, as well as Saddam Hussein's brother-in-law, al-Tikriti?
PARAM PREET SINGH: It’s my understanding that their execution will take place on a -- I mean, the execution against them was also confirmed. The verdict against them was confirmed. And it’s my understanding that they’ll be executed at a later date.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Richard Falk, your assessment of the trial, the verdict? And then I’d like to go into the issue of the timing of this verdict. Welcome to Democracy Now!
RICHARD FALK: Well, my [inaudible] echoes that of your other guest, in the sense that, from the beginning, the trial was deeply flawed, and the flaws, in a sense, distracted one from the substantive issues engaged by Saddam Hussein's behavior while he had been a leader. And the execution, its manner, the fact of not only carrying out a death penalty at a time when most liberal democracies have repudiated that as an option for the state and doing it in a particularly horrifying manner, has completely eclipsed the criminality of Saddam Hussein’s period of brutal rule. And I think in a way that’s the greatest cost, aside from the public relations catastrophe for the United States and the current Iraqi leadership that’s associated with the way in which this execution was carried out.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, talk about the timing and what it meant. And can you talk about the US role? I mean, he was killed in Iraqi custody, though that only happened in the last hours before he was executed, the transfer.
RICHARD FALK: Yes, precisely. As far as we know -- it is to some extent based on circumstantial evidence -- the US orchestrated the whole process and was very intent on accelerating both the reaching of judgment and now the announcement of the process that culminated in this execution. The timing of the verdict seemed connected with the American November elections. The timing now seems clearly connected with both the hope to divert attention from passing the 3,000-death threshold, as well as -- and I think this is more important -- creating a possibility for President Bush to contend that this is -- that the United States is making progress in the Iraq war and that all that is required to achieve the goals that he has set some years ago is the patience of the American people and the support of Congress when he unfurls this new turn in American policy, which is expected to include the recommendation of -- or the decision to send an additional 20,000 to 30,000 American troops to Iraq.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, the New York Times had a front-page piece yesterday, on January 1st, saying that the US felt that Iraq was rushing the execution. You’re making the opposite case in a piece you wrote, “The Flawed Execution of Saddam Hussein,” that the US was trying to speed it up.
RICHARD FALK: Well, yes. It may be that at the very last moment, because it became so clear that this was going to be a very ugly, ugly way of handling the execution, that there was an attempt to make it conform at least to Iraqi internal law, which had, as far as we know, required that no execution be carried out during an Islamic holiday, and the Saturday when Saddam Hussein was executed was the first day of the Eid holiday, which is the most sacred day in the Islamic liturgical calendar and a holiday that is supposedly dedicated to the ethical theme of forgiveness.
And beyond that, there was clearly the sense that the execution should be carried out in a manner that doesn't deepen the sense that this is an incident in internal sectarian strife within Iraq, rather than a matter of rendering justice. So I think the people in Iraq got very nervous. The American handlers of the policy surrounding Saddam Hussein got very nervous at the very last stage, when they saw what the Iraqi leadership planned to do with this event associated with the execution.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Richard Falk. He is Distinguished Visiting Professor at University of California, Santa Barbara. We’re also talking to Param Preet Singh, who is with Human Rights Watch, which has condemned the execution of Saddam Hussein. When we come back from break, we’ll be talking with a Kurdish surgeon about his response to the killing. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: We are joined, in addition to Param Preet Singh of Human Rights Watch and Dr. Richard Falk, now at the University of California, Santa Barbara, we’re joined by Najmaldin Karim. He is on the phone with us, President of the Washington Kurdish Institute. He wrote a piece in the New York Times on Saturday. It was called “Justice, But No Reckoning.” We welcome you to Democracy Now!
NAJMALDIN KARIM: Thank you. Glad to be with you.
AMY GOODMAN: Your response to the execution?
NAJMALDIN KARIM: My response is just like the Op-Ed piece. Most of the people in Kurdistan are really deeply disappointed by the timing of the execution. Saddam was going through the trial for his genocidal campaign, which he named Anfal, and that trial was starting to go. And it was very important for the victims and their families for that trial to come to conclusion.
For us, as Kurds, going through these trials, the Anfal campaign, the massacre of the Shias in the south in 1991, the killing of the Barzanis or the use of chemical weapons, is not about revenge. It’s about coming to a conclusion. Why did Saddam do this? Who helped him? Who were his accomplices in committing these crimes? And I think he took all of those answers with him, and we probably will never know.
AMY GOODMAN: Why do you think he was tried on this one issue in Dujail, the killing of the Shia there in 1982, without being tried for these other crimes, Dr. Falk?
RICHARD FALK: A possible explanation is that this incident was clearly detachable from American complicity with the regime of Saddam Hussein and the period when the worst offenses occurred under his rule. And it was a very unprecedented procedure to separate the crimes of someone who is charged with sustaining a criminal regime during a period of political leadership.
If one thinks back to the Pinochet trial or the Milosevic trial, much less the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials, it was taken for granted that the whole package of alleged criminality would be addressed in a single unified trial. And that makes political, moral and legal sense, as the main purpose of such trials is not the punishment of the defendant, but, really, the political education of the society and the wider global public, in the hope that such an exposure of criminality will be a warning to the people and to future leaders of their accountability for crimes of state.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Karim, in your piece, you wrote about President Ford in 1975. Today, a funeral for him is being held in Washington, D.C., at the National Cathedral. Can you elaborate?
NAJMALDIN KARIM: Well, first, let me say that President Ford is revered by the people in this country, particularly in his late years, for what he did as far as the healing and all that. But it was during 1975, when Henry Kissinger was Secretary of State and there was a Kurdish resistance against the Baathist regime in Iraq, at that time Saddam Hussein was the vice president but he was really the de facto president. And the United States at the time was helping the Kurds, and there was a covert operation where the Kurds were getting help from the United States. And then, the Shah of Iran decided that he will make a deal with Saddam Hussein. And at that time, Kissinger was obviously the person who was running the foreign policy of this country, and it was during the Ford administration. So that is really where Ford's name comes in. And when Kissinger was asked why did he cut the aid to the Kurds, and his answer was “Covert operation is not missionary work,” if I’m quoting him correctly, but that's basically what he said. And as a result of that, 250,000 refugees went into Iran, and I was one of those. And many, many more returned to Iraq, and a lot of those were deported into the southern deserts, and thousands of them were killed, and we still don't know what happened to them.
AMY GOODMAN: You feel this point in 1975 was the worst?
NAJMALDIN KARIM: I believe that was the beginning, because it was that agreement between Saddam Hussein and the shah of Iran that probably led to the other things that happened afterwards because it was during that agreement that Saddam Hussein and the Shah of Iran that probably led to the other things that happened afterwards, because it was during that agreement that Saddam Hussein gave up Iraqi territory to the Shah of Iran.
And in 1979, when he saw that the Shah was overthrown and Khomeini had come to power, the Iranian regime was weak, he thought, and it was the time of the hostage crisis, when they took American hostages. So he took advantage of that moment to come back and tear that agreement on television -- this is Saddam Hussein -- and attacked Iran, thinking that Iran is weak and he will regain the territory that he had given to the Shah of Iran in the 1975 agreement. But, of course, that war with Iran lasted eight years, and as a result of that, Iraq went bankrupt, and it was that bankruptcy and the need for money that made Saddam Hussein invade Kuwait.
So, if you look at it, really a series of blunders and aggressions by Saddam Hussein really resulted from him giving up Iraqi territory to the Shah of Iran, which he felt that he will get back, and led to these other military adventures and then his genocidal campaign against the Kurds, invasion of Kuwait, killing of the Shias, and etc.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Karim, among those who will be eulogizing President Ford today at the National Cathedral are Henry Kissinger and also former President George H.W. Bush. What about the role of the Reagan-Bush years with Saddam Hussein?
NAJMALDIN KARIM: Well, as we all know now that it was in 1983 when President Reagan sent Donald Rumsfeld to Baghdad to establish relations with Baghdad -- with Saddam Hussein's regime, and it was the support of the Reagan administration to Saddam. And it was during that time when Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against the Kurds and carried out the genocidal Anfal campaign. Even though this was known in this country and there were hearings in the United States Senate about this and imposing sanctions on Iraq, yet the Reagan administration kept defending its policies towards Iraq.
And in 1990, on exactly on June 15, there was a hearing at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, when Bush was president, and that hearing was about imposing sanctions at the time the United States was giving hundreds of millions of dollars in credit to Iraq, and this was June 15, just about six weeks prior to the invasion of Kuwait, when the Bush administration defended its relationship with Iraq and described Saddam's influence in the region as being a moderating influence against, particularly, the Iranian aggression.
So, and then after the invasion of Kuwait and then the first Gulf War, President Bush called for the Iraqi people to rise up and get rid of the dictator. And when they did so, instead of protecting them, actually the Bush administration allowed Saddam Hussein to fly his helicopters, and it was those helicopters that massacred the Kurds and the Shias in 1991.
So, if you look back at it, you know, there is complicity. At least, at the minimum, they looked the other way when they knew Saddam was committing these atrocities and committing genocide against the people of Kurdistan.
AMY GOODMAN: Najmaldin Karim, I want to thank you very much for being with us, President of the Washington Kurdish Institute, a surgeon here now in the United States. In a minute, we’re going to go to Professor John Collins at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, who did some media analysis of CNN this weekend in the coverage of the execution. But before we do that, I wanted to turn back to Param Preet Singh to ask you about the possibility now, what it means when Saddam Hussein has been executed, yet these trials of his involvement in these other killings have not been carried out.
PARAM PREET SINGH: Well, I think it’s important to remember that the Anfal trial -- that was a trial that was being conducted at the time of his execution -- will continue. There are six other defendants against whom the prosecution will present evidence, and the defense will have an opportunity to rebut that evidence. So, of course, there are secrets about the Anfal campaign that Saddam Hussein will take with him to his grave. But the evidence that will come out in that trial could shed some light, in terms of how the crimes were committed, who was involved, how the victims were chosen, etc. So, I mean, there is still an opportunity there for the victims of these crimes to see some justice. It certainly wouldn't be the same had Saddam Hussein lived to stand trial.
AMY GOODMAN: And why do you think they didn't do these trials before he was killed?
PARAM PREET SINGH: I can't speculate on the thinking of the Iraqi government in terms of why they decided to, first of all, go forward with the Dujail case, as opposed to the Anfal case, which, although the killings in Dujail are horrific, the Anfal case involved the killing of up to 100,000 Kurds in northern Iraq. So in terms of why they decided to move ahead with one case over the other, it’s not clear.
In terms of the decision to execute him before his role was fully explored in other crimes, again, I mean, I can’t speculate on why the Iraqi government decided to do what they did. It most likely, you know -- they had a conviction, and they wanted to put in place the sentence as quickly as possible, just for the sake of making sure that there was at least some justice done for them.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I wanted to turn now to Professor John Collins at St. Lawrence University, Upstate New York, who wrote a piece for Electronic Iraq called “The Low Profile: CNN and New York Times Execute a Denial of History.” Welcome to Democracy Now!
JOHN COLLINS: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you evaluate the media coverage of the execution of Saddam Hussein here in the United States?
JOHN COLLINS: Sure. Certainly CNN, I think, needs to get some attention here. I turned on CNN's broadcast on the night of the execution, as I’m sure a lot of people did, and I was immediately struck by the fact that the whole event was being very carefully framed in order to kind of facilitate a denial of the historical relationship between Saddam Hussein and the US government.
The entire focus of the broadcast -- and this was the Anderson Cooper program on CNN -- the entire focus was on Saddam Hussein as an individual, and the images that were being looped on the screen, sort of over Anderson Cooper's voice and the voices of the guests, were obviously selected for their value in pushing that storyline forward. So, we saw, for example, images of Saddam Hussein brandishing a sword, firing a gun, laughing sort of like a cartoon villain, being checked for lice by US military doctors, and so forth.
And for me, the most obvious absence there was the photo and the video of this Donald Rumsfeld visit to Saddam in December 1983, at a time when the US government was working very hard to strengthen its ties with Baghdad. And that image of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein is not a random image. It’s a very crucial piece of the history of that regime, a piece that many Americans, I think, may not be aware of. And it’s all the more important given Rumsfeld's subsequent and current role during the current Bush administration.
AMY GOODMAN: Interestingly, Professor Collins, I think it was CNN that was one of the first to show that videotape on air, the actual videotape in 1983-1984 of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein, and questioning Rumsfeld about it.
JOHN COLLINS: Right. And that’s why it’s all the more so strange to me that CNN would have chosen, at this point, at the moment of the execution, to frame the issue in a way that shielded its viewers in that moment from any reference to past US support for Saddam and his actions.
And I think we saw a little bit something kind of similar in the New York Times the following morning in the front-page obituary in the Times, which was a long piece, over 5,000 words, and it certainly did a better job than CNN, in terms of providing some historical context. It did mention briefly that the US chose to back Iraq in its war with Iran during the 1980s. But the vast majority of the obituary portrayed the US as a consistent opponent of Saddam, which is to say that it leaned heavily toward the post-1990 piece of the story.
And I think what we have to keep in mind here is that the history of this regime is a long and complicated history, like anything in international politics. It’s built on a web of relationships, which bring with them webs of responsibility. And I think that, as Americans, we have an ethical responsibility to confront the role that we’ve played in that story, and certainly the news media have a responsibility to give us as detailed a history as possible, so that we can make informed decisions about policy.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor John Collins, you also write about New York Times coverage of Saddam Hussein's reign.
JOHN COLLINS: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about that?
JOHN COLLINS: Absolutely. I mean, I think the obituary on the front page was particularly noteworthy, because it played on a lot of the kinds of, I guess, stereotypes that we’ve become very used to when America's enemies are discussed in the mainstream media. So there were lots of anecdotes in the Times obituary about Saddam's paranoia, his megalomania, his sadism, and so forth. And I think the overall effect of that piece was to confirm to the readers of the Times that, yes, this man really was evil. But that just raises the question of why we ever allied ourselves with him to begin with. And the Times could have done a much better job of exploring that issue at the moment of his execution.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Professor Richard Falk, President Bush at Crawford, praising Saddam's execution as, quote, "the kind of justice he denied victims of his brutal regime. Fair trials were unimaginable under Saddam Hussein's tyrannical rule," said Bush. He said, “It’s a testament to the Iraqi people's resolve to move forward after decades of oppression, that despite his terrible crimes, Saddam Hussein received a fair trial. This would not have been possible without the Iraqi people’s determination to create a society governed by the rule of law.” That sentiment of a fair trial was underscored by, well, formerly Democrat, but now independent Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman on CNN, talking about the fact that Saddam Hussein got a fair trial. Professor Falk?
RICHARD FALK: Well, I can hardly imagine a more Orwellian description of the actual trial. And to hear those words juxtaposed with the reality that we’ve been discussing this past hour suggests either the extreme detachment of President Bush from the notion of what a fair trial constitutes or a deliberate confusion of what happened with what the American people are being told happened by our leadership and, as Professor Collins suggested, by the most supposedly reliable mainstream media. So, it’s part of spinning an event in such a distorted and deformed manner as to really commit a kind of crime on the language itself and on the seriousness of the events that were taking place.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you all for being with us: Richard Falk, Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton, now Visiting Distinguished Professor at University of California, Santa Barbara, teaching in the Global Studies Department; Param Preet Singh of Human Rights Watch; and Professor John Collins of St. Lawrence University in Upstate New York.
Monday, January 1, 2007
شعری از :فروغ فرخزاد
از دوست داشتن
امشب از آسمان دیده تو
روی شعرم ستاره می بارد
در سکوت سپید کاغذها
پنجه هایم جرقه می کارد
شعر دیوانه تب آلودم
شرمگین از شیار خواهش ها
پیکرش را دوباره می سوزد
عطش جاودان آتش ها
آری آغاز دوست داشتن است
گرچه پایان راه ناپیداست
من به پایان دگر نیندیشم
که همین دوست داشتن زیباست
از سیاهی چرا حذر کردن
شب پر از قطره های الماس است
آن چه از شب به جای می ماند
عطر سکر آور گل یاس است
آه بگذار گم شوم در تو
کس نیابد ز من نشانه من
روح سوزان آه مرطوب من
بوزد بر تن ترانه من
آه بگذار زین دریچه باز
خفته در پرنیان رویا ها
با پر روشنی سفر گیرم
بگذرم از حصار دنیاها
دانی از زندگی چه می خواهم
من تو باشم ‚ تو ‚ پای تا سر تو
زندگی گر هزار باره بود
بار دیگر تو بار دیگر تو
آن چه در من نهفته دریایی ست
کی توان نهفتنم باشد
با تو زین سهمگین طوفانی
کاش یارای گفتنم باشد
بس که لبریزم از تو می خواهم
بدوم در میان صحراها
سر بکوبم به سنگ کوهستان
تن بکوبم به موج دریا ها
بس که لبریزم از تو می خواهم
چون غباری ز خود فرو ریزم
زیر پای تو سر نهم آرام
به سبک سایه تو آویزم
آری آغاز دوست داشتن است
گرچه پایان راه نا پیداست
من به پایان دگر نیندیشم
.که همین دوست داشتن زیباست
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