Big Brother Internet.

Do you remember the Safe-Cyber instructions they taught you in the mandatory Computer Ed class (operated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology)? First you fire up your Secured Computing Device (SCD) and its hardware token authenticator.
Then you enter the six-digit algorithmically generated password displayed (a new one flashes every 60 seconds) and are asked to supply your biometric identifier. You place your thumb on the built-in fingerprint pad, click, and wait for the Internet connection to begin. But it doesn’t.
Instead, the screen goes black for a second before the dreaded words appear: “Malware has been detected on this SCD. As mandated by federal law, it has been placed in quarantine.” Then the machine shuts down.
This is not just conjecture, but an imminent scenario. Policies, such as the White House proposed “National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace,” which will transform the character, culture and freedom of the Internet, are already in place. The 20 cybersecurity-related bills introduced in the Senate in 2011, and the dozen introduced in the House of Representatives, have wound their way through committees and, according to Senator Harry Reid, are scheduled to be voted on in the first quarter of 2012. Almost all of them, with the blessing of the White House, would make the Department of Homeland Security the overseer of private-sector networks.

Considering the apocalyptic rhetoric coming from Washington and the ranks of cybersecurity experts – echoed by media reports that portray every picayune data breach as Armageddon – it would appear that the vulnerability of the Internet has been underplayed for many years.

In the Internet’s start-up decades, both industry and government were committed to establishing an atmosphere of trust that would draw the public into conducting more and more digital business. Though data breaches, theft of trade secrets, identity theft and bank robbery have been a fact of Internet life since its beginnings, there were few laws requiring disclosure. Banks and credit card firms ate their losses as a cost of doing business, and the giant corporations kept mum rather than roil the public. Recently, the pendulum has swung in the other direction and a raucous alarm has been sounded regarding the great danger posed by the Internet.

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t

The Nation is at a crossroads. The globally-interconnected digital information and communications infrastructure known as “cyberspace” underpins almost every facet of modern society and provides critical support for the U.S. economy, civil infrastructure, public safety, and national security. This technology has transformed the global economy and connected people in ways never imagined. Yet, cybersecurity risks pose some of the most serious economic and national security challenges of the 21st century. The digital infrastructure’s architecture was driven more by considerations of interoperability and efficiency than of security. Consequently, a growing array of state and non-state actors are compromising, stealing, changing, or destroying information and could cause critical disruptions to U.S. systems. (White House Cyberspace Policy Review, 2011)
While there may be other factors behind the current wave of cybersecurity alarmism, we have identified three major forces: The Government, the Cybersecurity-Industrial complex, and the so-called “Hacktivists.”

The Hacktivists LulzSec and Anonymous, the most-publicized of the hacktivists, along with a growing community of ad hoc cyberactors, have had a multi-faceted impact on the cybersecurity environment that goes far beyond the number of hackers at work or the amount of actual damage their exploits have inflicted.
They have skillfully publicized their outsized, headline-ready cyberintrusions. Their attacks, which are something other than the garden variety cybercrime, have compromised the web assets of Sony, the CIA, Fox News, the Church of Scientology, Bank of America and many more. Beyond the financial damage and security breaches, they’ve created a public relations nightmare forcing these major institutions to go public with what they would otherwise go to great lengths to conceal.
As a result, attention has been focused on the inadequacies of Internet security. If organizations as large, powerful and security-conscious as these are vulnerable, who then is safe? Not only have the targets been breached and embarrassed, consumer trust in the Internet has also been shaken.

These high profile, anarchic Internet exploits – compounded by the role of social media in evading and undermining government control of the political and media arena (Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, etc.) – have intensified government efforts to clamp down on the Internet … while providing the media with scary cyber-stories to further that agenda.
The Government The US government agenda to control the Internet is at least a decade old. Just three months after the Bush White House created the Department of Homeland Security, it issued “The National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace.” The document begins:
My Fellow Americans:
The way business is transacted, government operates, and national defense is conducted have changed. These activities now rely on an interdependent network of information technology infrastructures called cyberspace. The National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace provides a framework for protecting this infrastructure that is essential to our economy, security, and way of life.
In the past few years, threats in cyberspace have risen dramatically. The policy of the United States is to protect against the debilitating disruption of the operation of information systems for critical infrastructures and, thereby, help to protect the people, economy, and national security of the United States.
Nearly a decade later, the basic message from the White House sounds much the same, if louder and more urgent. But there is a big difference. President Obama, and the rest of the Beltway insiders, have now formally defined cyberspace as a “strategic national asset.”
On the face of it, this appears to be a reasonable approach for a world that has become, in a relatively short time, totally dependent on digital resources. Unfortunately, it is an approach that provides a straight path to the militarization of the Internet and the loss of liberty that will follow. It is an approach that will elevate the most common forms of cybercrime (bank robbery, credit card theft) to the high-alert status of a cyberwar attack.
This government mindset will lead to the same abrogation of individual rights in cyberspace as the National Defense Appropriations Act of 2012 has codified in “Battlefield America.”
Given the integrated nature of cyberspace, computer-induced failures of power grids, transportation networks, or financial systems could cause massive physical damage and economic disruption. DoD operations – both at home and abroad – are dependent on this critical infrastructure. As military strength ultimately depends on economic vitality, sustained intellectual property losses erode both U.S. military effectiveness and national competitiveness in the global economy. Cyber hygiene must be practiced by everyone at all times; it is just as important for individuals to be focused on protecting themselves as it is to keep security software and operating systems up to date. (Department of Defense Strategy for Operating in Cyberspace, July 2011)
Many Internet experts and cybersecurity professionals have deemed 2011 “The Year of the Hack,” in recognition of the unending stream of headlines related to data breaches and thefts. We believe that – aside from any real uptick in cybercrime or cyberwarfare skirmishes – this perception is the result of the government’s determination to soften up the public to meekly accept an upcoming barrage of Internet regulation. It is a digital-age version of the tried and true fear mongering that is always employed to further empower the president and further enrich the military/industrial and Homeland Security complex. The government says it’s not fear mongering, just education.
The national dialogue on cybersecurity must begin today. The government, working with industry, should explain this challenge and discuss what the Nation can do to solve problems in a way that the American people can appreciate the need for action. People cannot value security without first understanding how much is at risk. Therefore, the Federal government should initiate a national public awareness and education campaign informed by previous successful campaigns. (White House Cyberspace Policy Review, 2011)
The Prominence of the Non-military Aspects of Warfare. Non-military means of warfare, such as cyber, economic, resource, psychological, and information-based forms of conflict will become more prevalent in conflicts over the next two decades. In the future, states and non-state adversaries will engage in “media warfare” to dominate the 24-hour news cycle and manipulate public opinion to advance their own agenda and gain popular support for their cause. (“Global Trends 2025,” National Intelligence Council, 2008)
The Money Card A key point being used to “educate” the public is the putative astronomical monetary loss caused by cybercrime in all its forms. There is, of course, no way to ascertain the validity of these numbers or even to figure out just what kind of losses are included in the estimates, which are generally arrived at by the large cybersecurity corporations. Some loss-figures appear to include the fall in a company’s stock price that usually follows revelation of a major hack (but doesn’t adjust that figure when the stock price climbs back up), as well as adding in an arbitrary sum attributable to time lost in recovery.
The largest global estimate of money lost to cybercrime currently floating around – as totted up by McAfee, the world’s largest cybersecurity company and endorsed by the White House – is $1 trillion a year. Symantec Corp., another cybersecurity giant, calculates the annual toll of global cybercrime to be about $388 billion. For dramatic impact, Symantec notes that figure is greater than the black market in marijuana, cocaine and heroin combined. Either of those (wildly divergent) sums is impressive, but do they mean anything? Or are they just part of a government “education campaign modeled on previous successful campaigns,” such as selling the public on the certainty of WMDs in Hussein’s Iraq?
Far from being broadly based estimates of losses across the population, the cyber-crime estimates that we have appear to be largely the answers of a handful of people extrapolated to the whole population. A single individual who claims $50,000 losses, in an N = 1000 person survey, is all it takes to generate a $10 billion loss over the population. One unverified claim of $7,500 in phishing losses translates into $1.5 billion.
Our assessment of the quality of cyber-crime surveys is harsh: they are so compromised and biased that no faith whatever can be placed in their findings.
There has long been a shortage of hard data about information security failures, as many of the available statistics are not only poor but are collected by parties such as security vendors or law enforcement agencies that have a vested interest in under- or over-reporting. (“Sex, Lies and Cyber-crime Surveys,” Microsoft Research)
The Cybersecurity-Industrial Complex The fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) surrounding cyberspace has helped turn cybersecurity into an enormously profitable business, worth between $60 and $100 billion a year, depending on who’s providing the statistics. The sector is expected to grow 10 percent annually for at least the next five years. You don’t have to attribute any ethical lapses in the cybersecurity industry to recognize that it, like the government, has a great interest in “educating” the public in cybersecurity awareness.
Security experts say that it is virtually impossible for any company or government agency to build a security network that hackers will be unable to penetrate. (Reuters, 27 May 2011)
“I am convinced that every company in every conceivable industry with significant size and valuable intellectual property and trade secrets has been compromised (or will be shortly), with the great majority of the victims rarely discovering the intrusion or its impact …. In fact, I divide the entire set of Fortune Global 2,000 firms into two categories: those that know they’ve been compromised and those that don’t yet know.” – Dmitri Alperovitch, Vice President of Threat Research for McAfee
The military-industrial complex of the Cold War era has morphed into the cybersecurity-military/industrial-Homeland Security complex of the Cyber War era … to which there is no end in sight. With the cybersecurity industry creating the technology required to stem the very cyberattacks they are in charge of discovering and monitoring, we face an endless cyberarms race that will undoubtedly be fed on exaggerations of the virtual menace and our vulnerability to it.
On the heels of the fear and hysteria will come the firm push for strict control and regulation of the Internet. It will be championed by government and industry as the necessary response to cyberwar, cyberterrorism, and cybercrime which, since cyberspace is considered a “strategic national asset,” are essentially all the same.
The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) for instance, which is scheduled for a vote in 2012, will take a page from the National Defense Appropriation Act of 2012. In order to protect the rights of copyright holders to profit from their intellectual property, SOPA would permit the dissolution of due process and open the door wide to censorship and the denial of the right to free speech. The bill, supporters suggest, is not just about recovering the billions lost to bootlegged movies and music, rather, it’s about protecting the military strength that ultimately depends on economic vitality.
We agree with The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has called SOPA the most extreme, anti-Internet, anti-privacy, anti-free speech copyright proposal in US legislative history. It is, however, only one of many legislative proposals likely to be steamrollered through Congress in the coming year.
Computer security expert Eugene Kaspersky, co-founder of Kaspersky Labs, envisions the “passportization” of the Internet. In his opinion, to access critical online services, such as banking or electronic voting, “it should be made mandatory to log-on only with the use of a unique personal identifier [for example, a token – a sort of cyber-passport] and establish a secure authoring connection.”
Microsoft has proposed what it calls a “public health model” for the Internet. Cybercitizens would be required to have a “clean bill of health,” make their computers open to inspection, and, if contaminated by a virus or other malware, be prepared for quarantine.
President Obama’s National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace is pushing for development and public adoption of Internet user authentication systems that will function as a driver’s license for the cyberhighway.
Government control of the flow of information will strike a blow against Internet anonymity and the free speech it has made possible. Driver’s license, bill of health, passport, whatever you call it – it’s all about the ability to track and control the individual. Today, traffic in copyrighted digital material is the criminal behavior supposedly under attack; tomorrow, it will be the ability to speak out against corrupt government.
Hello, Big Brother.
Trendpost: The demand for ever-more effective cybersecurity tools to counter the ever-more inventive depredations of cybercriminals and cyberwarriors will be with us far into the foreseeable future. Clearly, this situation will create many jobs, both for the formally educated and the creative hacker. In addition, The National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education – established to provide cyber-awareness training to students in Kindergarten through post-graduate programs – will need many specialized teachers.
Somewhat farther along on the timeline, there is a high likelihood that the manufacture of cyber-components will be repatriated to the US. The 2011 Department of Defense’s “Strategy for Operating in Cyberspace” notes: “The majority of information technology products used in the United States are manufactured and assembled overseas. The reliance of DoD on foreign manufacturing and development creates challenges in managing risk at points of design, manufacture, service, distribution, and disposal.”
A high probability exists that 2012 will bring revelations about contamination in the global IT hardware and software supply chain and proof that computer components are providing our “enemies” with entry to critical networks or transmitting sensitive information to them. This will turn the DoD’s security concern into a hot imperative.

Uday Hussein's body double

 As the body double for Saddam Hussein's son, Latif Yahia suffered several assassination attempts. Having escaped to Offaly, the controversial figure is now seriously at odds with his adopted country.

This article was first published on 26th of April 2007 in HOT PRESS, the journalist Jason O'Toole is one of the handful of Irish journalists that I have found to be fair and balanced. The rest all write for their editors or owners political agenda.
I am posting this so that you can read what I was saying four years ago about Ireland and ask "what has changed?" The answer is nothing, the government has changed but the civil service stays the same, same shit different ass, as they say. The system is still corrupt, Government, Garda (Irish police) and justice system ask any Irish person and they will tell you the same. So after all my years trying, I have finally found a lawyer with enough balls to bring the state of Ireland to the European court, I have said many times over the years that Ireland doesn't have an European government, it has an Iraqi one just with Blond hair and Blue eyes.
As you may or may not be aware I lodged my third and last application for Irish citizenship in September 2007, it is now September 2011 and I have yet to receive a decision on my case. In the past four years I have written over 105 emails and letters to the various Ministers for Justice and their office asking for status updates and any other news as to the progression or processing of my case, the answer is standard " your case is being processed" so no matter which political party the Minister for justice belongs to or how New he is to the job the response to my case is the same. Nothing. I wonder how long they can process it for?   According to the Dept of Justice website the average processing time is 23 months, but then I'm anything but average!

By: Jason O'Toole, 26 Apr 2007

The former body double of Saddam Hussein’s sadistic son, Uday, is now living in (of all places) Offaly. Latif Yahia’s account of his time serving as the dictator’s son’s double would make a Hollywood screenwriter salivate.

Indeed, the 42-year-old recently sold the rights to his two autobiographies, I Was Saddam’s Son and The Devil’s Double, to the film company Pâté, with pre-production work already underway on what will certainly make for a fascinating insight into the demi-monde of Saddam’s regime.

Latif came to notice as a possible double, or ‘Fidai’ as they are referred to in Iraq, when he first met Uday in school.

He insists that he only agreed, reluctantly, to undertake what was a deadly dangerous role when the regime’s cronies arrested him and threatened to rape his younger sisters. Latif suffered several assassination attempts and was shot 11 times, with the last bullet lodged in his right shoulder coming from the gun of Uday himself. He states categorically that Uday – who he describes as “pure evil” – murdered his father.

Perhaps there’s an even better film in how Latif managed to abscond from Saddam’s clutches to a suburban housing estate in Daingean, County Offaly. He tells it like this.

Aided by the CIA, he was transported to Austria. Placed in a refugee camp there, he became incensed by conditions and took a policeman hostage to negotiate better living conditions. He alleges that the CIA then kept him incarcerated illegally for 10 months, as they attempted to pump him for confidential information about Saddam. Later, in Norway, Latif was so upset by the conditions in another refugee camp that he threatened to burn the place down.

Eventually, Latif, who has a PhD in international law, opted to come here. He relished the thought, he says, of settling down and living a mundane life in rural Ireland. But this dream has since been shattered by, he alleges, sinister CIA agents who vowed to crush him for refusing to co-operate and become a spy. 

Since he rejected their offer, Latif says that his request for Irish citizenship was rejected – despite the fact that his is married to a Dublin woman, with whom he has a child.

Recently, a fabricated story alleging that he was an international arms dealer appeared in the tabloid press, and he successfully sued one Sunday paper for printing this story. Latif is adamant that both situations can be traced back to his refusal to cooperate with the CIA.

Throughout our conversation, he speaks passionately. You can sense that he is volatile, and much of what he says may be deemed to have the ring of the fantasiscal about it. But that may be a misreading. Latif Yahia has some deadly serious things to say… 

He admits to arriving in Ireland under a bogus passport…

“I was in Austria with my real name and I had two assassination attempts. I went to London and I had an assassination attempt. At this time, Saddam was still strong,” he says. “In the end, I found out that my ex-partner was passing on information to the intelligence service. I left her and I came here and applied under a false name – not because I am doing fraud, not because I want to do something wrong, just so nobody knows where Latif Yahia is. Just to disappear. Because there was no Iraqi embassy here. I am safe here.” 

Alleges he was beaten up by a Gardaí

“There is no justice in this country,” he states. “If I do this to you (shows photograph of his badly beaten face), what happens to you, do you go to court? I was beaten up by a Garda. They (the Gardaí) wrote to the Department of Justice, saying, ‘(We) believe that Latif Yahia is a terrorist.’ To cover themselves. I wrote and complained to the Commissioner of Police and he is not going to trust Latif Yahia, a foreign piece of shit who came in hunger from his country. But I am not hungry. My father was the third (richest) millionaire in Iraq. I come for political reasons. They think each one coming to this country is hungry, and is coming to take the Irish money. In the end, after two months, I received a letter from the head commissioner, saying I was harassing the Gardaí.

Why would the Gardaí pick on him?

“This Garda, I don’t want to mention his name, was the boyfriend of my ex and one day I came down and I saw him with my ex, and they did this job to me (points to photograph). He holds me and she puts a glass in my face. I get 46 or 47 stitches. You can see the scar on my face. After that I went to the Garda to make a complaint, but they didn’t want to take it. They said, ‘You are going to lose your citizenship.’ They used exactly these words: ‘We are going to fuck you. We are going to deport you back to where you came from if you open your mouth.’ I am not the kind of person to take a threat. I fought Saddam Hussein.” 

On plans to leave Ireland…

Michael McDowell the Saddam Hussein of Ireland

“I applied for citizenship in 2001. I was the longest case in this country to be processed. In the end they make an excuse, after five years of waiting, because I started talking in the media. Michael McDowell – I call him Michael McFool – will refuse citizenship even if you have a parking ticket. I don’t even have a parking ticket. I am not staying in this country. I 

left my country because I couldn’t find justice, and I came into another Iraq! Michael McDowell is the biggest racist in this country. I have been refused citizenship in this country which, I am sorry to say, is a shame on Ireland. There are four European countries that all offer me citizenship. I am leaving to go to Germany for a couple of reasons. I have a son there and I think Germany is a country of law, no no matter what colour you are.” 

On Shannon Airport…

“America doesn’t need Shannon,” he argues, “but they want to show the world that there is a lot of countries supporting them. I am taking these words straight out of a big politician in this country, who is my friend for eight years. He told me when he met George Bush, Bush threatened him and said: ‘We have 24,000 Irish persons living in the US that don’t have green cards. We can deport them back to Ireland.’”

Ireland is now a legitimate target in the eyes of Islamic extremists…

“Ireland is not neutral,” he says. “Ireland is one of the big targets. Irish people are going to have a hard time, like the American people. If you go to Shannon, I don’t think you will see one Irish civilian there, it is an American base. Even if Islamic extremists don’t attack Shannon, Ireland is still going to be targeted – by even America! They are going to make something to blame on Islamic terrorists. The have got to do something to make believe that Islamic terrorists are coming to Ireland.”

Iran has suicide bombers, or “sleepers”, living in Ireland.

“A long time ago Iran trained suicide bombers to come into the West,” he states. “Since 1988, the Iranians have been building themselves up in the West. They send over refugees, which are the intelligence service for Islamic jihad. They have been told to claim asylum and get citizenship in these countries. There are a lot of them in Ireland. They are going to harm Irish citizens. They are going to blow up any part of Ireland that can hurt the Irish and damage the economy of Ireland. They are going to put a bad name on Ireland to not bring any more investors.” 

He informed the Special Branch about the possibility of attacks within Ireland. 

“I told the Special Branch that something is going on in this country,” he recounts. “They didn’t believe it, they said I was talking bullshit. I talked to the Special Branch, you know what his answer to me was? ‘I don’t give a fuck. In eight months time, I’m retired.’ I don’t want to see this country harmed, because this country is a beautiful country. I am Irish more than the Irish!”

On the CIA operating in Ireland

“The CIA have a small prison in Shannon,” he claims. “This is how they exchange the prisoners to Guantanamo Bay. A lot of innocent people have been exchanged through Shannon. The Special Branch don’t have a clue. Any intelligent Irish person realises that Ireland is a state of America. Last December, the CIA contacted me and said, ‘Look, Latif, we can give you citizenship in Ireland. We control a lot of things here. We can make you happy and a multimillionaire again. Or, we can,’ – they said exactly these words – ‘we are going to fuck you and fuck your mother.’ I tell them, ‘I don’t work for you and fuck Bush. And get out of this house.’ After three weeks, I received a letter from Michael McFool and he refused my citizenship. Before that they had sent me a letter saying don’t contact this office until the middle of 2008 – three weeks after kicking out the CIA, I got the letter.”

He is calling on the Irish government to stop the usage of Shannon by the American military and to apologise to the Arab world. Only this, he says, will prevent the deaths of innocent Irish citizens.

“There is no chance,” he observes, “that Ireland would have been targeted (if Shannon was not used by American military). Now, when you say Ireland, the Arab world thinks, ‘American arse, or American state’. This is the picture now. If they close Shannon (to the US army), they still have time to apologise and make this country become neutral again. I don’t think the government here have a clue about what is going on. Plus, they don’t care about Irish people, they care about their pockets. They don’t care about the next generation.” 

On allegations of him being an international arms dealer…

“One of the articles said I was a weapons dealer,” he laughs. “I don’t think a weapons dealer would live my life. Weapon dealers have six/seven citizenships around the world. If I am a weapons dealer, how come I don’t have any citizenship?”

On censorship in Ireland…

“My new book is not available in Ireland,” he complains. “It sold 24,000 copies around the world, but it is ‘banned’ in Ireland because I talk about the CIA. I am writing something against America and the CIA. When I say America, I mean American government and foreign policy. They don’t want it read here. This is why, I say to you, the Irish media wasn’t fair to me, because I think the government controls the papers here. I was never humiliated by the media, except here (in Ireland). I would be absolutely shocked if this interview is published accurately.” 

On Osama Bin Laden.

“After September 11, one newspaper wrote a small article on the front page that the double of Saddam’s son is the right hand of Bin Laden in Ireland!” he recalls. “I don’t know how they come up with that! Bin Laden, he drink Guinness? I never met Bin Laden. I don’t believe (in) Bin Laden. Bin Laden is the son of America. I don’t believe (in) Al Qaeda. If a freedom fighter in Iraq hits an American (solider) he is a freedom fighter. To hit any civilian is a terrorist. This is what I want to pass to the media but they don’t want to listen.”

Corruption in Ireland...

“The Irish government say this is a free country, but I don’t think Ireland is a free country,” he says. “At Christmas, somebody called me from the Department of Justice, and he said to me, ‘You hand me €50,000 and you have your citizenship, because we deal with these things here. I can write the report to give you citizenship, or I can write the report that you never get it.’ If you go to the Gardaí (about this), the Gardaí is full of corruption. Where do you go?” 

On Latif Yahai, peacemaker…

“In the Irish media, they never talk about Latif Yahai as a peacemaker,” he says bitterly. “I have a title and I am recognised by the United Nation as an ambassador of peace. The last peace mission I did was a 5,800 walk from Jerusalem to Tripoli, in 32 days. The UN was behind that. With the last tsunami in Asia, I helped; why do they not mention that? I donated money and I donated medication. I never did fundraising, (it was) always my money. With all my books, I never put a cent in my pocket. This (new) book, the profits go to the children’s hospital here. Not one paper has mentioned my peace missions, not one paper.”

On Saddam Hussein…

“I met Saddam nearly once a week for four-and-a-half years,” he discloses. “He was a great President and suitable for the Iraqi people because, look at America, they can’t even control a small area of Iraq now. I am not pro-Saddam. I fight for 15 years against his government, but I never had a problem with Saddam Hussein as a person. I met him, I sit with him, we even exchanged jokes. He was a funny guy. I tell him joke about what the people say outside about him, and he laughing. Plus, he was very religious, but the people here don’t know that. He would pray. The problem was the people around Saddam fed him with false information. It is exactly like Michael McFool. The people around him – the Gardaí, the Special Branch – feed him with wrong information. The problem with Saddam was that he trusted the people around him. I was against his regime…”

On Saddam’s son, Uday.

“Absolutely evil,” he spits. “Uday tortured me. He shaved off all my moustache and eyebrows with his own hands. This is how I left Iraq. When I left Iraq, he shot me himself in my right shoulder. I had 11 assassination attempts. I have a couple of bullets in my body. He killed my father. They poisoned him. I can’t forget or forgive myself (about that).”

George Bush Jr and war crimes…

“He is a murderer and he must be brought to justice,” he argues. “He must be hanged. I am against the death penalty because I am a member of Amnesty International. But I want to see George Bush hanged in the same place as Saddam Hussein.

How his mother was refused asylum in Ireland.

“I paid $22,000 to smuggle my mother and my niece and nephew out of Iraq, to Ireland,” he confesses. “They were refused straightaway as asylum seekers. I don’t know who gets asylum here if my mother doesn’t! Again – Michael McFool. After two weeks – this was one-and-a-half year ago – they refused her, before even the immigration Gardaí do their investigation. She was refused and we went to a tribunal and the tribunal says, ‘Who’ll prove this is your mother?’ Do you think I would bring a 67-years-old woman and two children and pretend they are my family? They sent me for a DNA test. I paid (for it) from my own pocket in Blackrock Clinic and the result came in 99.7 she is my mother. Nobody is educated in the civil service. They sent me a letter asking why isn’t the DNA 100%! I showed it to my solicitor and he laughed. Is anybody 100% in this world? In an Irish court, 99.4 is acceptable. This is why I am leaving, because there is no chance here for my mother to stay. A tribunal should give you an answer within a maximum of eight weeks, but this is seven months I am waiting. I call them and they make excuses.” 

Plans for legal action against Irish state. 

“I am bringing Ireland, as a state, to the European Court,” he announces. “I have two files against the state of Ireland – human rights and about my case. Because I can’t get justice here, I think I will get it in the European Court. The government here are the losers, I am moving.”

Why he is being discriminated against in Ireland. 

“If I say tomorrow that I agree with Michael McDowell,” he believes, “and Ireland must open Shannon for America because they are going to liberate Iraq, and if I say George Bush is a great man and Tony Blair is doing a great job – if I say all this, I guarantee you next week I get Irish citizenship – if not an American passport. If I shut my mouth I get everything. My problem is that I won’t shut my mouth. This world is not for honest people anymore.”

Latif Yahai’s latest book, The Black Hole, is available from
www.acanum-publishing.com