Camera footage of the final minutes of Saddam Hussein released yesterday shows him being taunted by Shia hangmen and witnesses, a scene that risks increasing sectarian tension in Iraq.

As he stood at the gallows, he was tormented by the hooded executioners or witnesses shouting at him to "Go to hell" and chanting the name "Moqtada", the radical Shia Muslim cleric and leader of the Mahdi army militia, Moqtada al-Sadr, and his family.

The grainy images, which appeared to have been taken on a mobile phone, disclose exchanges between Saddam and his tormentors, the moment when his body drops through the trapdoor, and his body swinging, eyes partly open and neck bent out of shape.

In what Sunni Muslims will perceive as a further insult, the executioners released the trapdoor while the former dictator was in the middle of his prayers.   more »

Ever since a throng of ex-communist, socialist, and liberal power seekers swung hard right in the 1970s, the brainwashing of American public opinion has been one of the primary goals of so-called movement conservatism.

The turncoat leftists, disillusioned by the festering of Democratic power under Nixon, became the founding cadres of the neoconservative action front.

They brought with them a long tradition, stretching from the Kremlin to the Vatican, of captivating the masses with the art of inventive phrase-making, hot-button sloganeering, loaded words, and intemperate labels.

The word "propaganda" was adapted from the Vatican's department of "propagandum," the Office for the Propagation of the Faith, devoted to the swelling the ranks of its congregants.   more »

Undeterred by the horrors and disasters in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon, the Bush administration has opened another battlefront in the Muslim world. With US backing, Ethiopian troops have invaded Somalia in an illegal war of aggression.

But this brazen US-sponsored bid to topple the popular Islamists who had brought Somalia its first peace and security in 16 years has already begun to backfire.

Looting has forced the transitional government to declare a state of emergency. Clan warlords, who had terrorised Somalia until they were driven out by the Islamists this year, have begun carving up the city once again.

As with Iraq in 2003, the US has cast this as a war to curtail terrorism. The real goal of course is to gain a direct foothold in another highly strategic and oil rich region by installing a client regime in Somalia.   more »

In his hand clutching the same Bible that he had used for his inauguration back in January 2001, Bush remained defiant to the end, declaring the French invasion of the US illegal and those Americans who had collaborated with the hated French “traitors.”

He called on all his supporters and opponents, Black and White, Christian and Jewish, rich and poor, to unite and expel the French invaders from the North American continent.

After a lengthy trial by a series of judges, approved by Paris, George W. Bush was convicted for crimes committed against his own people while he reigned as governor of the State of Texas in the 1990s.

Bush was condemned to the gallows for executing 152 Texas prisoners using lethal chemicals concealed in hypodermic needles. All 151 men and one woman (Karla Faye Tucker) had proclaimed their innocence and referred to the Texas legal system as old-West, cowboy-style, kangaroo justice.   more »

"For Reasons of State." It's arguably the strongest reason for doing something--for doing anything. The Romans said it well: Videant consules, ne respublica detrimentum capiat--"Let the consuls look to the safety of the state."

When they had to, Roman leaders vested themselves with unlimited power. And who can argue with their success?

Americans today can only dream of dominating our world for as long as the Romans dominated theirs.

This holiday season, while most Americans have been celebrating and vacationing, the New Consuls, the Guardians of Our Republic, have been meeting and deciding what must happen in 2007. Here is a transcript of the opening presentation from The First Guardian, He Who Is First Among Equals--at least as I received it:   more »

It was symbolic that 2006 ended with a colonial hanging - most of it (bar the last moments) shown on state television in occupied Iraq. It has been that sort of year in the Arab world.

After a trial so blatantly rigged that even Human Rights Watch - the largest single unit of the US human rights industry - had to condemn it as a total travesty.

Judges were changed on Washington's orders; defence lawyers were killed and the whole procedure resembled a well-orchestrated lynch mob.

Where Nuremberg was a more dignified application of victor's justice, Saddam's trial has, till now, been the crudest and most grotesque.

The Great Thinker President's reference to it "as a milestone on the road to Iraqi democracy" as clear an indication as any that Washington pressed the trigger. [unofficial video of hanging]   more »