Regulating Reproduction Law, Technology and Autonomy Book

A history that the UK and US would rather we forgot

Geoff Simon's book 'Iraq from Sumer to Saddam', a useful history of 'Mesopotamia' and modern Iraq, demonstrates that he is no apologist for the Ba'ath Party or Saddam Hussein.

In 'The scourging of Iraq' he details the workings of the UN Security Council (led by Britain and North America) vis a vis sanctions against the Iraq, from 1990 to 1997. Subsequent to the 2003 invasion Iraq's poverty, the terrible state of its health service, infrastructure and schools was all laid at the door of the regime - a distortion that now goes largely unchallenged as the impact of sanctions is airbrushed from history. This book documents how a country classified as a `middle income' country in 1989 was reduced to absolute poverty by a ferocious bombing campaign and the most draconian economic blockade in modern history, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives.