The Id of Mesopotamia

by: Michael J. Totten

A new film captures Uday Hussein and the regime he served in all their horror.

Hollywood has finally released a feature film that takes place in Iraq but isn’t about the Iraq War. Lee Tamahori’s The Devil’s Double tells the story of Latif Yahia, a young Iraqi officer from a privileged family who is forced to become the body double of Saddam Hussein’s psychopathic son Uday. The Iran-Iraq war is raging when the story begins, and Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait takes place midway through, but these conflicts are in the background, off screen. The film, based on a book written by the real-life Latif with the help of Karl Wendl, is not about war but about the depravity of the palace.
Uday Hussein pushes drug abuse, sex, and impulsive violence to their extremes. He doesn’t just blow cocaine up his nose; he snorts it off the tip of a dagger. He likes to kill people when he gets drunk and even disembowels one of his father’s best friends at a party. We see him prowling the streets of Baghdad in his sports car and abducting young girls in school uniforms—including one still wearing braces—and taking them back to his bedroom to drug and rape them. He rapes another woman on her wedding day while she is wearing her wedding dress; a few minutes later, he is annoyed when she throws herself off a balcony. The man is pure id, scoffing at the Muslim saying “Allahu akbar” (“God is great”) and insisting that God never gave him anything. “Everything I want, I just take for myself,” he says. He sure does. “You should have been killed at birth,” his furious father says, holding him down and aiming a long curved sword at his genitals. You ought to know you’ve gone off the rails when Saddam Hussein is appalled by your behavior.
Poor Latif Yahia. Not only is he forced to become Uday’s body double; he must also effectively erase his identity and become Uday. The official story is that he was killed on the front lines in the war against Iran. Even his family believes this for a while. He undergoes plastic surgery so that he’ll look even more like Uday than he already does, and he’s expected to adopt Uday’s facial expressions, mannerisms, and tones of voice. Uday even wants him to kill, and Latif gets himself into serious trouble when he refuses. Presumably the only reason that Uday doesn’t kill Latif is that Uday desperately needs him to survive. He also seems to love Latif in a twisted sort of way—at least when he’s not beating and torturing him. Latif is seriously injured in an assassination attempt when the would-be killer mistakes him for the dictator’s son. (Of course, that’s the whole point of having a double in a place like Iraq.) The real-life Latif escaped from Iraq in the 1990s and spent years in therapy to soothe the emotional trauma of witnessing so much rape, murder, torture, and mayhem at the hands of the brutal man he had no choice but to serve. To this day, he says, he can’t fall asleep until five or six in the morning.
Dominic Cooper brilliantly plays both Uday and Latif. Despite the fact that the characters look the same, I never had any doubt which character was on screen; Cooper’s subtle shifts in body language and facial expression—a wild or soft look in the eyes, for instance—made it abundantly clear which role he was playing at every moment.
I don’t want to give anything away, but I can say at least that the film eventually departs from what took place in the real world to tack on an entirely fictional (though emotionally satisfying) ending. The writers presumably thought the departure made for a better story. Despite the modification, the film is well worth seeing for its vivid, accurate depiction of the viciousness of Uday Hussein and of the filthy regime he was born into.
The Devil’s Double is also blessedly free of even the tiniest anti-American jab, something that can be said of few feature films Hollywood has produced that take place in Iraq. (The only others worth watching are Three Kings and The Hurt Locker.) It would be a mistake, however, to assume that the film was made to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the American-led coalition. Latif doesn’t seem to be a fan of the war himself, for one thing. And though Uday Hussein did meet his end at the hands of American soldiers in Mosul in 2003, The Devil’s Double isn’t about the United States, even peripherally. Latif’s book was written before the invasion, and hardly anyone knew it existed until after the overthrow of Saddam’s regime. So few copies of the first edition were published that if you want to buy one from Amazon, you’ll have to pay $1,000, as of this writing. The most expensive copy costs over $100,000.
A story about Iraq written by an Iraqi is refreshing. Events in that country are far too often analyzed as though the United States were always at their center. Even during the darkest days of the insurgency, between 2004 and 2006, far more Iraqis were injured and killed by other Iraqis than by American forces. And many more Iraqis were killed and traumatized during the period in which The Devil’s Double takes place than after the American-led invasion.
If you’re inclined to view this film as a justification for the war in 2003, you’ll have a case. At least the invasion prevented Uday from ruling the country even more viciously than his father did. But the genre that the movie truly belongs to is Totalitarian Studies. If absolute power corrupts absolutely, which it did in the case of Saddam Hussein, what happens when a boy is raised with absolute power before he has a chance to mature? The Devil’s Double answers that question with the force of a punch to the stomach.
Michael J. Totten is a contributing editor of City Journal and author of The Road to Fatima Gate and In the Wake of the Surge. Visit his blog at www.michaeltotten.com.

Before the Invasion of Kuwait in 1990, even though we had had an eight year war with Iran, Iraq had everything. No-one had felt the effects of war so much, yes, we knew that it was happening and we saw the young soldiers return from the front but life had always continued as normal, everything you wanted and needed was there for you, including Night Clubs, Bars and Restaurants.

Saddam may have been considered a dictator and despot, but he made sure that the people of iraq were provided for, he kept crime at a minimum, the streets were clean and the system worked.
Since the 'Liberation' of Iraq by America in 2003, this has changed completely, those who were once our enemies and the sworn enemies of America according to Mr. Bush's 'Axis of Evil' are now the masters of Iraq. Iran is now in control of Iraq, we have been invaded by Mullahs, only the ones in Iraq come wearing suits.
The effect is the same though, before 2003 two million people a year would visit Mecca, now in Iraq we have 18 million pilgrims to Iraq, whose only desire is to slap themselves and cry for Hussein (cousin of the Prophet Mohammed PBUH) in an effort to absolve themselves of the sins of their forefathers, the murder of Hussein and his family in Karbala.
Iraq was built on blood, throughout it's history it has been won and lost, blood feeding it's soil. Maybe it is for this reason that only someone with a strong fist can truly control it.

Iraq Before The 1990 War Part 1

Iraq Before The 1990 War Part 2

Sundance Film Festival
by Jen Yamato || 01 28 2011 4:30 PM

The Devil’s Double: The Outrageous, Over the Top Iraqi Scarface You’ve Been Waiting For

Tired of those run-of-the-mill biopics and staid Iraq war dramas that avoid sensationalism out of respect for their subjects? Want a peek into the orgiastic, debauched, ultra-violent underbelly of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq? Director Lee Tamahori brought all that and more to an unsuspecting audience — and conjured his own comparisons to David Fincher’s The Social Network, naturally — with The Devil’s Double, the guiltiest thrill of Sundance 2011.

Based very, very loosely on the life of Latif Yahia, an Iraqi lieutenant enlisted to double for Saddam’s out-of-control elder son Uday, The Devil’s Double stars Dominic Cooper (Mamma Mia!) in a bravura dual performance as both the monster and his innocent stand-in. Forced into indentured servitude under pain of torture and threats to his family, and transformed into a perfect doppelganger through plastic surgery and mimicry lessons, Cooper’s stoic Latif watches disapprovingly as Uday rapes and murders his way through life in a coke-fueled psychopathic haze, a pistol-waving, sex-obsessed, wild-eyed, magnetic thug with a penchant for schoolgirls and no interest in becoming the responsible heir apparent to his stern, menacing father. Whenever Uday is incapacitated or lazy, he sends Latif to make speeches to the troops; eventually, when Latif has had enough, he takes Uday’s favorite mistress (Ludivine Sagnier) as his own. The two men are brothers in Uday’s perverse way of thinking, and the only way Latif will ever escape his enslavement is in death.

Though he plays fast and loose with the facts, Tamahori claims to get the most important details right: The well-documented horrors of life inside the palace walls, where even honored guests and confidantes of Saddam were in danger of Uday’s explosive, violent rage; Uday’s proclivity for abusing his power to kidnap, rape, and murder young girls. (A brief scene in which Latif comes across the sight of two Saddams playing tennis is a comically bizarre break from the brutality.) The Devil’s Double is a portrait of a monster, no doubt, and yet the movie indicates he’s nothing in comparison to his father.

That sense for the corruption and danger that hung in the air during the Hussein family regime is what lingers most, even after Tamahori’s tale flies off the rails and enters almost legendary WTF? status. First comes the melodramatic love triangle, brought to the edge of campiness by Ludivine Sagnier’s anti-subtle turn as the sultry minx Sarrab (perhaps the film’s most egregiously ridiculous bit of non-ethnic casting, but hey). Then there’s the bombastic lovers’ escape, in which Sarrab and Latif literally ride off triumphantly on horseback. But nothing compares to how Tamahori ends it all by channeling his own James Bond past, transforming the epic-scale gangster pic into an all-out spy actioner, slo-mo shoot-outs and sexy hero shots and all. (Or, as an astute writer pal put it, “It’s a real life version of Medellin.”)

Tamahori took the stage after his Sundance premiere to answer a lot of questions. Portraying Latif Yahia’s story in its factual details was never the plan, for starters. “I’m not a great fan of truth in film,” he explained, lauding Michael Thomas’s “odd and twisted” screenplay.

Though many of the scenes of torture, rape, and killing in the film came from actual documented events, the real Uday’s crimes “are all worse than we possibly could have portrayed.” (Tamahori sent a ripple through the crowd when he suggested, unflinchingly, that the unruly, power-hungry children of despots across the world should be lined up against a wall and shot.)

And finally, the first person to compare Lee Tamahori’s The Devil’s Double to The Social Network was, of course, Lee Tamahori. While Fincher pulled a digital facelift to allow his two Winklevii to share the screen, Tamahori and star Cooper (whose impressive turns as Uday and Latif are like night and day) used a variation on the technique to shoot the film’s many Latif-Uday scenes, filming a master shot in one character first, then editing for sound and throwing Cooper back in to play the second part in the same day.

Will Tamahori’s The Devil’s Double earn Social Network-level plaudits when it’s eventually released? (A deal with Lionsgate is reportedly close.) Probably not. The material’s just too insane. But let’s be real: That’s exactly why it will appeal to many. Because as much as The Devil’s Double is about the innocent man who lived to tell the tale, it’s the most revealing, rape-y, torture-filled, excessively gaudy inside look at Iraq’s unstable family of thugs that we’re likely to ever get. The film itself falls prone to the sensory indulgences of its maker, but at a certain point it no longer matters whether that’s by design or not.

Lionsgate takes North America on Sundance hit Devil's Double

27 January, 2011 | By Jeremy Kay

The studio has closed a deal for North American rights on Lee Tamahori’s widely admired thriller, ending several days of conversations between the film’s representatives and multiple suitors.

Lionsgate is understood to have agreed to a substantial seven-figure MG and p&a commitment and is planning a significant theatrical release and awards campaign centred on British talent Dominic Cooper’s breakout role as Uday Hussein and his body double Latif Yahia. Ludivine Sagnier also stars.

Paradigm Motion Picture Group and CAA jointly handled North American rights and Corsan international sales head Pascal Borno closed a deal with Icon for Australia and New Zealand at the festival.

Lionsgate beat several rival bids and entered exclusive negotiations with the representatives in the small hours of Wednesday [26]. As first reported on Screendaily, Relativity and Summit both circled the project but did not pursue it aggressively. Several other buyers are believed to have come in with bids.

Corsan head Paul Breuls produced The Devil’s Double with Catherine Vandeleene, Michael John Fedun and Emjay Rechsteiner.

Sundance 2011: Exclusive Interview With 'The Devil's Double' Star Dominic Cooper

By Matt Patches , Special to Hollywood.com
Tuesday, January 25, 2011

In 2010, Dominic Cooper made a big splash opposite Carey Mulligan in the Oscar-nominated An Education. The role showed off his suave, dapper side, but in his latest film, the Sundance debut The Devil's Double, Cooper really sinks his teeth into a role (or in this case, roles) and pushes himself to the extreme.

The Devil's Double tells the story of Latif Yahia, an Iraqi military officer recruited to become the fiday, or body double, of Saddam Hussein’s tyrannical son Uday. Cooper plays two distinct roles in the film: the conflicted Latif, who struggles to take on his new job, and the murderous party animal Uday. The film is insane, to put it lightly, and the crazed tone is in part to Cooper's disappearance into the two men's stranger-than-fiction world.

The Devil's Double is a wild ride and a real departure from previous work? How did you get involved with the film?

I read it, with the understanding that someone else had the part that it might fall through. I read it knowing that it had been around for many, many years, many directors had been attached, It was a script that stuck in my head. I was fascinated by how little I knew of something that affected so much of my life and the world, and ultimately, it was this mad gangster movie and the opportunity for an actor to play both those roles.

I was unsure about the person I heard doing the part at the time, it didn’t make sense to me. I managed to get into a room with Lee [Tamahori, director] and I auditioned for hours with him. I brought into the room something I thought this person was and who the other person was, and next thing I knew...I was doing it. It was the most exciting moment in the work I’ve done so far.

Were there resources to help you better understand how this world operated? To give insight into living out both Latif and Uday's lives?

No, there was nothing to like that. The difficulty for me was to understand and have compassion for this person, which I think you have to do when you’re playing someone. When you’re inhabiting someone, looking through their eyes and understanding their complexities.

With this guy, I couldn’t. I couldn’t understand him - he was a madman, a berserk man that needed help. Everything he did was disgusting and atrocious. It wasn’t necessarily about him, they became more fictional characters. I think that was important for me and Lee both to kind and reach a point and use this as an incredible story but we don’t know what they said we don’t know the relationship they had. We’re making a film. And this is not meant to be stooped in the real truth. Lee said the only truth in this film is that the US got him. That's the one fact that we know of this story.

That's evident in the film. You're constantly wondering what's real because the tone jumps from gritty realism to over-the-top, often comedic levels. Uday is executing these insane operations and one minute you're laughing, the next, you're horrified. How did you balance the tones of the film?

That’s why you need to be in the hands of a genius like Lee, with this kind of material. An actor doesn’t know that. That’s why I have to rely on him for the tone and sensibility of the piece. I don’t know what he’s going for. I can kind of get a vague understanding. I didn’t know he was making a outrageous, horrific gangster film. What I knew is that he made the most stunning debut film with Once Were Warriors, and I knew that, if any one can handle that kind of material and those people, and can understand how those gangsters type tribal people. then he is the person to do it. And my job is to come up with something that fitted with that environment. And although sometimes humorous because you're so baffled and amazed that this human exists.

Were there moments where you wanted to pull back but Lee pushed you to go further?

I think it was a matter of bringing it down. He kept me very still, that was very helpful. It was his actual energy on set that was so inspiring. It was a short shoot, relatively cheap, and we had a lot to do. Technically it was difficult because of the doubling up of the scenes.

What was the process of shooting two roles in one scene? Were you constantly repeating the setups and blocking?

Yes, and that was why you only really got three takes on anything. Some people like to go on and do take after take, I couldn’t do that. There wasn’t time. It wasn’t stressful, I loved it. And you watched him and he had to create a new environment. It would be like...Lee wasn’t allowed to use this position or camera angle. And he was completely reconfiguring his ideas and I always think that creates the most creative inspired work and its constantly moving. Watching him with the amount of decisions he had to make, [laughs] I kind of felt my job is kind of easy.

What challenges did you face embodying two separate roles, bouncing between characters on a whim?

I needed to make one who is watching it believe it is two different people no matter how much reconstructive surgery one of them had had and how much they needed to look the same which they did, it was difficult to decide who was who. I needed them to be clearly two different people, I got help from my wonderful dialect coach, I got help with the make-up lady. It was about making a vocal difference and physical difference and the way in which the two characters thought differently.

Into the film, you slowly realize there's a third character you're playing. Was that intentional?

Oh, definitely. The one that Latif had to transform into. I wanted here to be an intricate difference in the way he went to perform as Uday. I wanted him to be slightly different still. Not quite succeeding whole heartily in becoming him - there was still something holding him back. That’s why when you see him practicing in the mirror there’s still this tentativeness about him. He was not a showman, not an actor. There was no reason he should have been able to manipulate who he is. He did it to the best of his ability and I needed that to be clear.

What's next for you? Anything in the can?

My Week With Marilyn with Kenneth Branagh. And Captain America.

That must have been a bit bigger than what you were accustom to.

It was massive - and intriguing.

You play Howard Stark in the film, a character with a wealth of comic mythology. What does your role in the actual film entail?

He moves the story along. He transforms him into Captain America. He’s Iron Man’s dad! He was a playboy, it was fun. How much he winds up in the film, who knows. But I hope he has an affect on it.

Sundance Review: "The Devil's Double" Delivers the Horror of Uday Hussein

By Sharon Waxman

How much do we want to know about the world that ended with the hated war in Iraq?

Uday Saddam Hussein, older son of the Iraqi dictator, was so grotesque a character that when fictionalized in “The Devil’s Double,” the viewer is tempted to imagine that liberties were taken.

But, no. Uday really was that man: the schoolgirls snatched off the street and raped; the brides taken in their gowns for a night of his pleasure; the torture of athletes when they lost – or when they won if they stole too much of the national spotlight. The drugs. The sex. The hanging upside down of innocent people for peceived slights.

He is a villain of epic, operatic proportions, and Dominic Cooper – in his first leading role of consequence - makes Uday a strangely compelling, sometimes mesmerizing and consistently entertaining monster.

The story of Uday is told through the eyes of a man forced to bear witness to this regime-sanctioned psychotic, Latif Ahmed, who became Uday’s body double.

Cooper ably plays both roles – the former, who charges through each scene on the verge of hysteria and/or violence. And the other, a quiet observer who seethes through the depravities he must silently accept, lending every scene an underpinning of morality. (Resistance would have meant death to his family, torture for him.)

Before the screening began I ran into an agent who described it a “Three Kings meets Scarface meets Goodfellas.”

That about hits it. Back in 2003, on the day that Uday and his younger brother Qusay were murdered, I wrote an essay about the stories that swept through Baghdad about them, having recently returned from a reporting stint in Iraq. (It’s still posted here.)

At the time I wrote: “Doesn’t anyone see a television movie in this?”

Director Lee Tamahori did see a movie in it; and some critics and buyers who saw the film felt that it played too much like television – melodramatic and unidimensional.

But on second glance, the story gives us a moral center in Latif and a context for thinking about the consequences of our foreign policy – not just the 2003 invasion, but the choice not to topple Saddam back in 1990, and our support of that regime through the Iran-Iraq conflict.

Those decisions helped create this monster. Uday and his brother were finally hunted down and shot. But it took until 2003, and the terror they wrought on their own people was no small price for the residents of this ancient land.

As Tamahori said in the q&a after the premiere screening this weekend, “There’s not much of a message here other than: Despots have children that run out of control and we should put them up against the wall and shoot them.”

Count on this one getting bought, and appearing in theaters some time this year.

SUNDANCE REVIEW: 'The Devil's Double' Is a Vivid Look at the Body Double for Saddam Hussein's Satanic Son

11:37 PM 1/23/2011
by Todd McCarthy

The Bottom Line

Excellent lead performance tops a vivid but one-dimensional look at the double for Saddam's satanic son.

PARK CITY -- An urgent desire to take a long shower is an appropriate response to watching "The Devil’s Double," so unsavory is the experience of being immersed in the world of Saddam Hussein’s Caligula-like son Uday and his double, Latif Yahia.

Undeniably fascinating as a visit to a world you’d never have wanted to have come near in real life -- that of the Hussein family’s inner sanctum -- the film falls crucially short by not providing a window into the mind of the man who was coerced into acting as his double. Dominic Cooper’s riveting double performance and the lurid, beyond-"Scarface" sensationalism are the main selling points for a film to which it will still be difficult to lure a wide public.

A drunken, drug-fueled, gun-toting, short-tempered party boy, torturer, rapist and murderer, Uday, with unlimited funds at his disposal and never properly reined in by his disapproving father, would routinely cruise schools in his Porsche or Ferrari, pick up 14-year-old girls, have his way with them and then have their bodies dumped by a roadside. On a whim, he'd drop by a wedding ceremony and demand to defile the bride on the spot. Intensely psychotic, he threw endless bacchanalian parties, reveled in torture videos and avoided anything resembling official responsibilities.

He was widely despised, of course, and, as with his father, it was thought advisable that he have a double to cover for him, throw off potential attackers and so on. In the late 1980s, toward the end of Iraq’s long war with Iran, it was the misfortune of army lieutenant Latif Yahia to be handpicked to fill the job, the full dimensions of which would have been hard to foresee.

With the fate of his family held over him if he declines, Latif undergoes plastic surgery and dental work to enhance the resemblance, learns to match Uday’s higher-pitched voice and vocal patterns, acquires a double of his wardrobe and is installed in a life of luxury, including a selection of women, while always being on call if needed. Mostly, he's just another member of Uday's sinister entourage, passed off humorously as Saddam's "third son" (curiously little is seen of the dictator's actual other son, Qusay).

Guided through his paces by a wise old mentor, Munem (Raad Rawi), Latif clearly disapproves of Uday and his sleazy lifestyle, but there’s nothing he can do except sullenly go along. Unfortunately, director Lee Tamahori and screenwriter Michael Thomas ("The Hunger," "Scandal") aren't able to make Latif the viewer’s confidant, to effect a viewer's personal connection to his strange odyssey; instead, one is simply left a spectator at a Roman circus.

One way to supply this would have been a Latif voice-over, perhaps in the style of Ray Liotta's in "GoodFellas." Another would have been a deeper, more revealing liaison between Latif and Sarrab (Ludivine Sagnier), Uday's main squeeze, who dares to launch a relationship with his double. Given that there can be no secrets in this world, how this affair is allowed to continue is never explained, but a more intimate connection between the two might have provided the lacking human dimension.

When the U.S. steps in to aid Kuwait, Uday rails against the enemy but sends Latif to the front to rally the troops instead of going himself. Outrage follows outrage until, finally, Latif manages an escape, leading to a dramatic climax that ends the film well before Uday's death during the American invasion years later.

Tamahori makes sure there's never a dull moment, although the succession of mindless disco parties, coke snorting, assaults on helpless women, psychotic rants and unmotivated violence has a cumulative deadening and depressing effect that is never leavened by an artistic vision or historical take on the grim spectacle. Although energetic and visually and aurally dynamic, this feels like a job of work rather than something more ambitious and felt from the inside.

With shooting in Iraq impossible, the filmmakers found an unexpectedly effective substitute in Malta. Having just worked on Green Zone, production designer Paul Kirby has done a terrific job creating both the grand exteriors and ornately vulgar interiors of the Hussein regime, an effect elaborated by Anna Sheppard's costume designs and Sam McCurdy's cinematography. Christian Henson's score and various source music choices are effective at generating a dark, turbulent mood.

In utter command of both roles, Cooper differentiates between the two beautifully, suggesting Latif's necessarily restrained natural cockiness and seething resentment at his lot in life while letting out all the stops as the mercurial Uday. He's really the whole show, although it's too bad the script restrained him from further illuminating Latif's inner self.

The film doesn't mention that, in real life, Uday and Latif had been schoolmates and that their close resemblance had been noted since youth. Furthermore, the third act particulars of Latif's escape and subsequent events seem to have been fabricated out of whole cloth. Latif's autobiography was published in 1997 but only became an international best seller after 9/11.

VENUE: Sundance Film Festival, Premieres
PRODUCTION: Corsan, Corrino, Statccato production
CAST: Dominic Cooper, Ludivine Sagnier, Mimoun Oaissa, Raad Rawi, Philip Quast, Khalid Laith
DIRECTOR: Lee Tamahori
SCREENWRITER: Michael Thomas, based on the life story of Latif Yahia
PRODUCERS: Paul Breuls, Michael John Fedun, Emjay Rechsteiner, Catherine Vandeleene
EXECUTIVE PRFODUCERS, Harris Tulchin, Arjen Terpstra
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Sam McCurdy
PRODUCTION DESIGNER: Paul Kirby
COSTUME DESIGNER: Anna Sheppard
MUSIC: Christian Henson
EDITOR: Luis Carballar
SALES: Corsan World Sales
No rating, 108 minutes

Bring George W Bush to Trial for Genocide.

Never has it happened that such a well known and respected prosecutor in America has taken such a stance against a President. Having had three bestselling books and winning all his cases Vincent Bugliosi is now set to do his utmost to get George W. Bush to stand trial for the atrocities that he committed not only in Iraq but against his own countrymen and women. Support him and let us finally see some justice in this world and let us see America as a beacon of Democracy as we once did.

Worldwork and High Impact Leadership

Vision and Relationships

Drs. Max and Ellen Schupbach
in Amsterdam, NL
27th - 29th November 2009

Leadership is no longer an attribute reserved for those on the top of the pyramid; it is a quality that must be developed across all teams, organizations, and communities, and in all individuals who wish to have impact on the creation of our future.
Leaders of the future must have a theoretical understanding of the principles that underlie the unpredictable paths that teams and organizations often take. They must have a set of skills and interventions to bring their visions and goals into the flow of these paths, and the inner work abilities to stay connected to their own inspirations and the sparks that move them.
In order to heighten the impact of their leadership, our future leaders must also be able to translate all of this into the real relationships that surround them, and to collaborate with the networks that they hope to influence.
This seminar will provide

* Worldwork concepts to understand and work with unpredictable, non-linear behaviors of teams and organizations.
* Process-oriented inner work tools to rediscover your vision and spark.
* Deep Democracy concepts and exercises to relate to team-members, independent of their willingness to collaborate.
* Worldwork methods to collaborate with networks to unfold the impact that they can have on your leadership.

Day 1: Vision and Inspiration

Each of us recognizes his or her own personal inspiration, which is ignited when the right spark is lit. The "reality" of our visions is challenged on a 24/7 basis by everyday reality, which at times looks impenetrable and unchangeable. We will show methods that bring together concepts from psychology, modern physics and native wisdom to develop the discipline to stay in "the zone" - the dream path that punctures through the rigidity of the status quo around you.

Day 2: The Magic of Relationships

The actualization of our visions and inspirations, no matter how strongly and clearly we carry them, depends on the ability to manifest them within the context of our relationships. Relationships enhance our visions, and create impact that can change the world. Many projects and teams fail in spite of a strong vision, because of the marginalization of the power of relationships. This day is devoted to discovering and enhancing relationship intelligence in connection to leadership, and the realization of your visions.

Day 3: The Power of Networks

Impactful leadership understands and includes the power of networks. Networks are formal and informal tribes with their own power structures and spirits that create and drive them. Impactful leadership uses tools to include and discover the spirits of these networks.
The Facilitators

Max Schupbach, Ph.D., Dip. PW, CPF, is a co-founder of the Worldwork paradigm. He leads maxfxx, a consulting group active on 4 continents, and coaches executives from the corporate world, governments, and non-profit groups. He is a co-founder and president of the Deep Democracy Institute, an NGO that develops leadership and coaching trainings in the Middle East, Africa and countries of the former Soviet Union.

Ellen Schupbach, Ph.D, Dip. PW, is a Certified Processwork Diplomate who specializes in the personal development of the leader and facilitator. She wrote her doctoral thesis on the spiritual experience of the facilitator and coach. Ellen is a co-founder and executive director of the Deep Democracy Institute, an NGO that aims to create worldwide leadership trainings to develop more collaborative systems in diverse societies.

www.maxfxx.net
www.deepdemocracyinstitute.org
All you need to know

The seminar starts on 9 am on November 27th and ends on 12 pm on November 29th.
Information and Registration:

Elena Chopin, Phone: +31 (6) 55521022
E-Mail: elena.chopin@deepdemocracyinstitute.org

Price: 325,00 Euro

Venue: Hermitage Amsterdam, Auditorium
Amstel 51, 1001 GR Amsterdam
www.hermitage.nl

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Top CIA officials openly admit, Al-qaeda is a total and complete fabrication

Made by CIA 100%

BBC’s killer documentary called “The Power of Nightmares“. Top CIA officials openly admit, Al-qaeda is a total and complete fabrication, never having existed at any time. The Bush administration needed a reason that complied with the Laws so they could go after “the bad guy of their choice” namely laws that had been set in place to protect us from mobs and “criminal organizations” such as the Mafia. They paid Jamal al Fadl, hundreds of thousands of dollars to back the U.S. Government’s story of Al-qaeda, a “group” or criminal organization they could “legally” go after. This video documentary is off the hook…

I have been trying to tell the media since the first time that Al-qaeda was ever mentioned anywhere that Al-qaeda was a figment of the American administrations imagination, a tool to rule the masses and get their backing for the administrations war on the world.

Al-qaeda was a double edged sword for the American administration, it firstly drew out any anti-American activists by giving them a sense of belonging, belonging to a group or cell of like minded people, people controlled by the administration, it also gave the administration the freedom to raise the fear levels in the population to fever pitch so that their war machine could to go to work, for if America cannot sell it’s arms, the major corporations cease to exist and therefore so does The United States itself.
In the run up to the next Presidential Election we see Presidential hopefuls vie for the chance to represent their parties, but what we don’t see or sometimes don’t understand is that no matter what candidate actually makes it to the Whitehouse the foreign policy will never change radically, the Faces change but the policies stay the same.
America has been at war with one country or another for 52 years, when it enters a country it never fully leaves, it always keeps a foothold.
1945-1946 China
1950-1953 Korea/China
1954- Guatemala
1958 Indonesia
1959-1961 Cuba
1960 Guatemala
1964 Congo
1965 Peru
1964-1973 Laos
1961-1973 Vietnam
1969-1970 Cambodia
1967-1969 Guatemala
1983 Grenada
1983-1994 Lebanon
1980s El Salvador
1980s Nicaragua
1986 Libya
1987 Iran
1989 Panama
1991 Iraq
1993 Somalia
1998 Sudan
1998 Afghanistan
1999 Yugoslavia
2001-? Afghanistan
2003-? Iraq
It may be argued that as the last remaining superpower America has the responsibility to intervene in situations that occur in the world or help when asked by Sovereign Nations, but what we have seen in the recent past is that the American Administration has ignored the UN and done it’s own thing, what is there to stop the American administration from doing anything that it chooses? Who can stand up to them?
In recent times the world has come to know the horror that is extraordinary rendition, we have learned about covert CIA prisons around the world, for me it was old news, in 1994 when I had fled from Iraq and was living in Austria, I was approached by the CIA, they wanted me to work for them to spy on my fellow countrymen, I was against the Iraqi regime but I had no intention of putting my fellow Iraqis in any more harm than they were already in. I refused to work for them and found myself in a six foot by five foot cell in solitary confinement in a Covert CIA prison in Austria a democratic country or supposedly so. Ten and a half months I spent in that cell with no contact from the outside world, I was badly tortured not for information but because I wouldn’t succumb, eventually I was released, it was a break in the chain of command, a new prison officer had been put on my floor but had not been given the instruction that no-one was to know that I was there, he inadvertently let a visiting Judge into my cell and my release was sealed then and there, the Judge could find no record of me, my supposed crime or length of detainment and on foot of this he ordered my release immediately. He was so concerned that I leave the prison that he brought me to Vienna himself in search of my family.
When my two books “I was Saddam’s Son” and “The Devil’s Double” were released they were used as propaganda for the American administration, I had written them to make the world aware of the situation in Iraq, not to be used as an excuse to invade, occupy and make life even tougher than it had already been for the Iraqis, you may argue that Iraq now has a democratically elected government, but at what human cost 1.4 million Iraqis have died,5 million are displaced inside and outside Iraq something that never happened during Saddam Hussein’s 35 year dictatorship , five years along Iraqis still have no proper sanitation, electricity is sporadic and unemployment is high, the New government lives in “The Green zone” and is terrified to leave it for fear of asasination attempts, billions of dollars have been stolen by former Ministers in the Interim government and Iraqi gangs. Kidnapping and extortion is the new commerce, daily, civilians are killed by roadside/suicide bombs and militias rule the streets, Whole areas are walled in with special identity cards maybe they should be made to wear yellow crescents?
Will the American army ever leave Iraq? well 50+ years after WW II they still haven’t fully left Germany or Japan.
To prepare for the future we must learn from the past, so why is it we keep repeating it?

In November 2006 I released my last book “The Black Hole” it recounted my experiences in Europe since fleeing Iraq, most people think that since I left Iraq my life has been a bed of Roses,I have several European citizenships under my belt and I am a multi-millionaire. If it were so I would indeed be a happy man, but unfortunately it is not. Having lived in Europe for the past 17 years 11 of which I have spent in Ireland, I am still stateless, the CIA have made many promises to me, namely that if I do not co-operate I will spend the rest of my life without a country, they have kept this promise. I am happily married to an Irish woman we have Irish children and I am on my third application for Naturalization as an Irish citizen. I am not a multi-millionaire and my royalties from “The Black Hole” go to charity, unfortunately the charity is not doing as well as it could because my book has been banned in Ireland and America, you will not find it in any bookshop, fortunately for me there are virtual bookshops like Amazon or my publisher’s website www.arcanum-publishing.com where it is available.
Is it not surprising to you that this book should be blacked out in this way, if I had continued to write against Iraq or Saddam I guarantee it would be in every major bookshop on the bestseller shelf like the first two, but because it goes against the “agenda” and talks openly about my experiences in Democratic European countries with the CIA and how they have and still are affecting my life, it is on the banned list.
I do not write about myself because I feel important or that I am some sort of celebrity, I write about my life because the world needs to know what can happen to an ordinary person in an extraordinary situation.
In recent times I have had emails, websites, blogs, youtube etc all closed and deleted without warning or explanation, I had nothing of a terrorist or violent nature on these sites and yet someone somewhere saw fit to shut me down, how is it that Al-Qaeda can have it’s own website showing people being beheaded, murdered etc and not be shut down if it is not affiliated to some power or government, how is it that we hear nothing from Bin Laden until the day before an election or some poll/bill that GW Bush needs to win and lo and Behold there he is threatening this that or the other, I put it to you that Bin Laden doesn’t live in some cave in the Tora Bora mountains he lives two doors down on Pennsylvania Ave so his buddy GW can get him to the studios everytime his ratings plummet.
On the day that G W Bush once again refused to sign into policy that the CIA cannot use torture as a method of information gathering, I say to you that that is all they know. In my life I have met many Intelligence agencies and in my opinion the CIA are the most inexperienced and unintelligent of them all.
Best regards to you all and work for Peace!

Latif Yahia.

Click For the Documentary Film

{( Mama America )}

By. Latif Yahia

Daddy Bush watching the world

In a few short years we have seen our world change dramatically, irrevocably. We all have heard the reasons given for these changes, the new laws and the lessening of our human rights. I the age of Big Brother, when our bank accounts are scrutinised, telephone conversations monitored and our every movement tracked by CCTV in every street and shop or by following the little footsteps left behind by our mobile phones. How did we let this happen? Instantly, you will pinpoint September 11th 2001 as the day the world changed and indeed it did, but these changes to our lives were happening long before the fall of the twin towers. Technology is not at fault, it is, as it is used. It can have an extremely positive or negative effect dependant on the user. As much as technology can be used to contain and confuse us, to bring us "the official line", there are people out there, journalists, broadcasters and producers who want to show us reality, they show the live footage, the unedited very shocking truth. A truth that cannot be disparaged.

"We Love Iraq" Mr. Rumsfeld meets Saddam in 1983

With new mobile phone technology we are instantly transported, involved in the moment, anyone and everyone is the cameraman and the footage can be as shocking as the Asian Tsunami, or as disquieting as the shadowy underground figures of the London tube bomb survivors filing out of a smoke filled tunnel. It was once the case that everyone in the Mid-East would listen to Western Radio and Television if and when they could. For a long time in many countries it was illegal to do so and this in turn reinforced the belief that everything that was reported on these Western Stations was infallible, undoubtedly true and accurate. But now as I flip between western and mid-eastern channels, I find a disparity, they may be showing the same pictures but the words do not always fit. The mid-east now relies less on western media, it sees it for what it is, controlled and contrived just as our own channels were, giving the "official line" making sure we see it their way. Wars are not just fought on the battlefields; they are fought in your living room, at your breakfast table and on your way to work. There have always been "terrorists" in our midst, it just depended which side you were on and to whom you were speaking. One man's terrorist was another's freedom fighter. Let's look at the who? And moreover the why? Of this situation. Today the terrorists at the top of everyone's lists are Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. All terrorists need funding and although Bin Laden is independently wealthy, he was once trained, armed and supported by America.

The Family Made by the CIA

When the world had two Super-powers, America was only too happy to keep Bin Laden on their books, he was their boy as long as he kept fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. So he did and eventually he won, so why then should he turn against his partner in victory? Another American trainee was Saddam Hussein, again when it was deemed that the then Socialist President of Iraq was somehow a threat to Capitalism, Saddam was trained, armed and supported by America to remove this Socialist threat. Now there is no Socialist threat, the last bastion of Communism is on America's doorstep, Cuba; it is only a matter of time. There is no need to take Cuba by force, Mr. Castro is ageing and the clock is ticking until the gate is open and America will just walk in. This is the "New Empire", each civilisation has had their time in the spotlight and Mr. Bush is gonna make "darn sure" that this is his. Since the conception of America four hundred or so years ago it has needed an adversary. It began with the Native Americans whose presence on their own land was not to be tolerated and still to this day are quarantined on reservations. The next foe to America was Britain, (they have since made up and become rather good friends) and as the British Empire began America refused to be a part of it, after all, they had just fled Europe hadn't they? The Soviet Union was to be America's greatest Nemesis, it went against everything that America stood for and there was no room in this world for two "Super-powers". America fought against it any and everyway that it could, it created Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and Mubarak to overthrow their communist leaders in the middle-east and the world was theirs. But now there is no adversary. Or is there? Islam is the new threat to the American way, after all it has communist principles doesn't it? Communal funds, interest free banking, the ideas of shared wealth and that high consumerism is bad for us, not just spiritually but environmentally. In the world of Islam the credo of Richard Greco "greed is good" does not stand. Islam is not perfect but it is the last belief system to have a strong and numerous following and is therefore dangerous. America needs business, capitalism is the life blood of the country. Americans are the highest consumers in the world, but they need us to consume too. We are needed to consume their products; we are invited to indulge in their way of life because there is none better. Buy more than you need, eat more than you hunger for, everything is an excess and it must stay that way because if we don't buy, their economy won't survive. But they also need war and conflict because even though we may buy their cars and their clothes and buy into the lifestyle, the big money is in weapons. Without conflict there is no market for weaponry, no testing ground for new ideas, tanks, and bombs. A famous example of this is during the Iran/Iraq war, America was selling Iran the weaponry and selling Iraq the satellite intelligence on where it was being transported to and stored by the Iranians. Today the Iraqi Army is reformed with American training, weaponry and uniforms; the same applies to the police force. Iraq is paid approximately six dollars a barrel for it's oil, which is shipped to the oil refineries in America, processed and sold back to Iraq at $60 a barrel. This is democracy? It is if the Iraqi government are in agreement. A government for the people, elected by the people. Well some of the people anyway. The "New Government" has managed to sequester more money in their short term than Saddam did during his thirty-five years reign. Saddam may have been a dictator, but each morning Iraq woke with a purpose, each had their job, their business and money in their pockets. Now there are no jobs, no prospects unless you want to work for America. Water is limited and electricity is available to your home for one hour each day. Saddam may have been a tyrant but to most of the Iraqi people now he is a prophet. As America and Britain celebrate a job well done in Iraq, bringing democracy to the Iraqi people wasn't easy. The New Government attend to the matters at hand, how to carve Iraq up; the two main proponents of this course of action are of course the Shia and the Kurds. The logic behind their move is that as both factions have oil in their perceived territories, that they should form federal republics one to the North in what they would hope to one day call "Kurdistan" and the other in the South, suggestions for the new name for this area are varied but all have a common theme, "Islamic Federal Republic of the South of Iraq". Another common theme in this lunacy is that both factions are only too willing to leave Central Iraq barren; there are no common economic policies, no shared governmental funds, and no Central government. It is a free for all, lands grab and all the oil and power that goes with it. The message from Messrs. Bush and Blair is coming loud and clear whether it has been delivered blatantly or subliminally, if you are not white, Christian or western return to your country of origin because it is not safe for you here in the west. Even as I am writing this new plans are being made to revoke the naturalisation/citizenship of British people who have been given a gift of citizenship by the Queen. The argument for the revocation is that when the Queen granted the citizenship she was unaware that they were or would be a threat to Britain and that the revokee's were in fact disrespectful to the Queen. Many of these people are facing death sentences in their country of Origin which was why they fled in the first instance. To return them is actually an act against Human Rights. When you read something about people being issued with death sentences, if you are not middle-eastern or have no experience of the regimes, whether they are kingdoms or republics, it is shocking.

To the Western person to receive a death sentence you must have committed a heinous crime and have been judged by a jury of your peers. This is not necessarily the case in the middle-east, yes there are the murderers, the rapist's etc but also to speak out against the King or the President or a member of government, even local government, can land you with a death sentence. What makes one Dictator different from another? Well, business. Business is the difference between being dragged kicking and screaming into the UN for offences against Human Rights and not. I am not inferring that all countries violate human rights, some have excellent records but there are countries that openly flout their contempt for their citizens or ethnic minorities that nothing is said about and why? Business. I am not talking about corner shops here; I am talking about big mutli-million if not billion dollar business. When countries are involved in big business it doesn't really matter what they are doing behind closed doors, torture, extreme poverty etc. While the business is going on nothing will be said and things can continue as they are, everyone concerned is aware of what is happening, they just choose to ignore it and if questioned on the subject will deny any knowledge. This happens time and time again. Anyone who can speak openly from Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Kuwait can tell you that this is the situation in their countries, but not many are able to speak freely. Although America and Britain would have you believe that nothing of the sort goes on in these countries, that Saddam in Iraq was the only one, it is not true. As I described earlier when you do business you are a friend and are not held accountable. Further proof of this is the situation of the Kurdish peoples, for many years America, Israel and Britain supported the Iraqi Kurdish in their fight against Saddam Hussein but on the other side of the Iraqi Border with Turkey are 17.5 million Kurdish. These Turkish Kurdish are denied any and all rights to their heritage, language and culture. To acknowledge ones Kurdish origins in Turkey is illegal, many have been imprisoned without trial or hearing, tortured and murdered. {( New Iraq )}

The "Liberation" Dinar an hommage to Mr. Bush

Forty Shades of Conspiracy
New Book By: Latif Yahia

Product details
English Special Limited Edition

• Hardcover: 340 pages Hardcover
• Publisher: Arcanum Publishing: 1 edition (20 Nov 2010)
  
• Language
• ISBN-10: 0955419115
• ISBN-13: 978-0955419119

Product Description
Forty Shades of Conspiracy The Sequel To The Black Hole, a True Story of the illusion of Democracy in Europe and how the American CIA are behind Every Door of Power. Latif Yahia was drawn to the Emerald Isle after remember what so many Doctors, Engineers and Contractors that he had met in Iraq had told him about their homeland. Looking for a country to take him in and welcome him as its own in 1997 Latif booked his flight to Dublin, Ireland's Capital city, using another assumed identity he went about destroying Latif Yahia and his Uday connections, surely this time he could be free of Iraq and all the pain that it had brought to him. Having settled into a comfortingly mundane routine Latif now Kaled was beginning to believe that maybe, just maybe this time it would work and he could finally live a quiet and normal life, hope unfortunately was to fade as his past caught up with him, but this time not in the form of the CIA, this time it was a woman and hell hath no fury like this woman scorned. Pandora's box was opened and all that Latif had hoped to leave behind came like a torrent, suddenly the Irish authorities were aware of his presence, with their close ties to America it did not take the CIA long to follow and the game continued... Because of his opposition to the war on Iraq in 2003 and the American's use of Shannon airport, Latif Yahia is still stateless after 18 years of exile in the West.

From the Publisher
Since our publication of The Black Hole, we have seen what
opposition is; when you meet someone who has truly experienced dictatorship

it is the opportunity to be thankful for liberty but not to be complacent.
When we met with Dr. Yahia, our first reaction was how fantastic it was
that he could come through these horrors and still be a happy functioning
Human Being.
But to hear of the injustices and humiliations that he has suffered here in

our Democratic countries is humbling, so often we as Western Nations press

upon the world that our way is the right or Only way. Having spoken with
Dr. Yahia and read his works. We at Arcanum feel that each and every one of

us should sit back and take stock of what we think are our freedoms and
rights.
The modern world is full of distractions, problems to keep the mind and
body on the verge of panic, the important question is what are we to be
distracted from?
Our eyes have been opened to the world around us and we hope that in some
small way yours will too.

"I was Saddam's Son" was my first book, I wrote it in 1992. It was stolen by Arcade publishing, in America. The publishers changed a lot of the content to suit the agenda of the American Government and the CIA. Unfortunately, my book was used to support the propaganda of the Administration for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Best regards,
Dr.Latif Yahia.

Our YOUTUBE could be shut down

http://www.youtube.com/arcanumpublishing

We use Youtube to see what terrestial TV will not show us Reality, the reality of what is happening in our world. Do not be surprised if one day you try to click on our channel and it had been deleted, we have received two warnings,because we put up two exclusive clips of American soldiers in Iraq killing dogs for fun, we disagree with the taking of any life but when others are allowed to upload clips of be-headings etc and cruelty to our fellow human beings you would have to wonder where our humanity is? Keep watching for as long as you can, it is only a matter of time before we are completely censored!
YouTube was famous around the world for letting the people exercise their right to free speech but since they have been taken over by Google (who have previously deleted three of our other websites) it remains to be seen how open they will be in the weeks and months to come, we do not show video clips for shock value, we truly believe before we upload any video that it's content must be seen by as many people as possible so they can make their own judgment.For us it all adds to the story of the documentary we are making, each time we receive a warning or loose a website it is recorded on film. Is the end of Youtube nigh? in the end will all we be able to see on Youtube is sex clips because they will be all that is allowed? Wake up, there's a world out there and it needs to be saved and the story must be viewed.
For Peace.
Latif Yahia
http://www.youtube.com/arcanumpublishing

President of the USA ?

If Obama was to become President of the USA what a wonderful thing that would be, although it is not impossible, for there is nothing truly impossible, it is highly improbable. Obama the first non-white American President wouldn't that just be something to behold, I would like to believe that he would change American foreign policy, pay more attention to the American economy, social housing and health care, pull the troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan and mend bridges with Nations that may have been slighted by the "with us or against us" attitude of the present President. I have not completely lost hope.

As for Mrs Clinton, well yes, as the next best thing to Obama certainly, also a first for America, the first female President, she has a lot of experience in policy making as she divulged recently. But are the American people truly ready for a "First" America has always been the place to go to, the role model and in so many ways the forerunner except in this regard, so will the American people vote in the first Afro American President, the first Female President or do they go with what they know? I think they'll go with what they know, military service, tough talking, I'll keep you safe from the bad guys, high alert, strong Eisenhower type. After all they do love movies.
When I first saw Mr Bush running for election I turned to my wife and said "that man is a war monger" I was proven right, I do not take pleasure in my premonition, far from it! My prediction for McCain makes Bush look like an angel, if McCain is elected America will fall like the Soviet Union, California will be the first break away state, Arnie has always wanted to be President of somewhere and with the largest economy why not? Laugh if you will but always remember truth is stranger than fiction.

Best regards,
Latif Yahia

Top Ranking CIA Operatives Admit Al-qaeda Is a Complete Fabrication.

BBC’s killer documentary called “The Power of Nightmares“. Top CIA officials openly admit, Al-qaeda is a total and complete fabrication, never having existed at any time. The Bush administration needed a reason that complied with the Laws so they could go after “the bad guy of their choice” namely laws that had been set in place to protect us from mobs and “criminal organizations” such as the Mafia. They paid Jamal al Fadl, hundreds of thousands of dollars to back the U.S. Government’s story of Al-qaeda, a “group” or criminal organization they could “legally” go after. This video documentary is off the hook…




I have been trying to tell the media since the first time that Al-qaeda was ever mentioned anywhere that Al-qaeda was a figment of the American administrations imagination, a tool to rule the masses and get their backing for the administrations war on the world.
Al-qaeda was a double edged sword for the American administration, it firstly drew out any anti-American activists by giving them a sense of belonging, belonging to a group or cell of like minded people, people controlled by the administration, it also gave the administration the freedom to raise the fear levels in the population to fever pitch so that their war machine could to go to work, for if America cannot sell it's arms, the major corporations cease to exist and therefore so does The United States itself.
In the run up to the next Presidential Election we see Presidential hopefuls vie for the chance to represent their parties, but what we don't see or sometimes don't understand is that no matter what candidate actually makes it to the Whitehouse the foreign policy will never change radically, the Faces change but the policies stay the same.
America has been at war with one country or another for 52 years, when it enters a country it never fully leaves, it always keeps a foothold.
1945-1946 China
1950-1953 Korea/China
1954- Guatemala
1958 Indonesia
1959-1961 Cuba
1960 Guatemala
1964 Congo
1965 Peru
1964-1973 Laos
1961-1973 Vietnam
1969-1970 Cambodia
1967-1969 Guatemala
1983 Grenada
1983-1994 Lebanon
1980s El Salvador
1980s Nicaragua
1986 Libya
1987 Iran
1989 Panama
1991 Iraq
1993 Somalia
1998 Sudan
1998 Afghanistan
1999 Yugoslavia
2001-? Afghanistan
2003-? Iraq
It may be argued that as the last remaining superpower America has the responsibility to intervene in situations that occur in the world or help when asked by Sovereign Nations, but what we have seen in the recent past is that the American Administration has ignored the UN and done it's own thing, what is there to stop the American administration from doing anything that it chooses? Who can stand up to them?
In recent times the world has come to know the horror that is extraordinary rendition, we have learned about covert CIA prisons around the world, for me it was old news, in 1994 when I had fled from Iraq and was living in Austria, I was approached by the CIA, they wanted me to work for them to spy on my fellow countrymen, I was against the Iraqi regime but I had no intention of putting my fellow Iraqis in any more harm than they were already in. I refused to work for them and found myself in a six foot by five foot cell in solitary confinement in a Covert CIA prison in Austria a democratic country or supposedly so. Ten and a half months I spent in that cell with no contact from the outside world, I was badly tortured not for information but because I wouldn't succumb, eventually I was released, it was a break in the chain of command, a new prison officer had been put on my floor but had not been given the instruction that no-one was to know that I was there, he inadvertently let a visiting Judge into my cell and my release was sealed then and there, the Judge could find no record of me, my supposed crime or length of detainment and on foot of this he ordered my release immediately. He was so concerned that I leave the prison that he brought me to Vienna himself in search of my family.
When my two books "I was Saddam's Son" and "The Devil's Double" were released they were used as propaganda for the American administration, I had written them to make the world aware of the situation in Iraq, not to be used as an excuse to invade, occupy and make life even tougher than it had already been for the Iraqis, you may argue that Iraq now has a democratically elected government, but at what human cost 1.4 million Iraqis have died,5 million are displaced inside and outside Iraq something that never happened during Saddam Hussein's 35 year dictatorship , five years along Iraqis still have no proper sanitation, electricity is sporadic and unemployment is high, the New government lives in "The Green zone" and is terrified to leave it for fear of asasination attempts, billions of dollars have been stolen by former Ministers in the Interim government and Iraqi gangs. Kidnapping and extortion is the new commerce, daily, civilians are killed by roadside/suicide bombs and militias rule the streets, Whole areas are walled in with special identity cards maybe they should be made to wear yellow crescents?
Will the American army ever leave Iraq? well 50+ years after WW II they still haven't fully left Germany or Japan.
To prepare for the future we must learn from the past, so why is it we keep repeating it?

In November 2006 I released my last book "The Black Hole" it recounted my experiences in Europe since fleeing Iraq, most people think that since I left Iraq my life has been a bed of Roses,I have several European citizenships under my belt and I am a multi-millionaire. If it were so I would indeed be a happy man, but unfortunately it is not. Having lived in Europe for the past 17 years 11 of which I have spent in Ireland, I am still stateless, the CIA have made many promises to me, namely that if I do not co-operate I will spend the rest of my life without a country, they have kept this promise. I am happily married to an Irish woman we have Irish children and I am on my third application for Naturalization as an Irish citizen. I am not a multi-millionaire and my royalties from "The Black Hole" go to charity, unfortunately the charity is not doing as well as it could because my book has been banned in Ireland and America, you will not find it in any bookshop, fortunately for me there are virtual bookshops like Amazon or my publisher's website www.arcanum-publishing.com where it is available.
Is it not surprising to you that this book should be blacked out in this way, if I had continued to write against Iraq or Saddam I guarantee it would be in every major bookshop on the bestseller shelf like the first two, but because it goes against the "agenda" and talks openly about my experiences in Democratic European countries with the CIA and how they have and still are affecting my life, it is on the banned list.
I do not write about myself because I feel important or that I am some sort of celebrity, I write about my life because the world needs to know what can happen to an ordinary person in an extraordinary situation.
In recent times I have had emails, websites, blogs, youtube etc all closed and deleted without warning or explanation, I had nothing of a terrorist or violent nature on these sites and yet someone somewhere saw fit to shut me down, how is it that Al-Qaeda can have it's own website showing people being beheaded, murdered etc and not be shut down if it is not affiliated to some power or government, how is it that we hear nothing from Bin Laden until the day before an election or some poll/bill that GW Bush needs to win and lo and Behold there he is threatening this that or the other, I put it to you that Bin Laden doesn't live in some cave in the Tora Bora mountains he lives two doors down on Pennsylvania Ave so his buddy GW can get him to the studios everytime his ratings plummet.
On the day that G W Bush once again refused to sign into policy that the CIA cannot use torture as a method of information gathering, I say to you that that is all they know. In my life I have met many Intelligence agencies and in my opinion the CIA are the most inexperienced and unintelligent of them all.
Best regards to you all and work for Peace!

Latif Yahia.