[uruknet.info] - [daily information from occupied iraq] - [newsletter 9 Feb 2006 - Part One]

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Insulting Islam Felicity Arbuthnot, Special to PalestineChronicle.com ...Nearly three thousand years ago, the Babylonian 'Council of Wisdom' instructed: To the feeble show kindness, Do not insult the downtrodden, Do charitable deeds, render service all your days, Do not utter libel, speak what is of good report, Do not say evil things, speak well of people. Editors, politicians and cartoonists, would do well to pin it to the wall and reflect from time to time. Large gatherings will, near, inevitably contain hot heads – and sometimes even agent provocateurs, determined to discredit. Burning buildings is tragic, illegal, unacceptable, reprehensible and inexcusable. So is burning homes, towns, villages, state buildings: countries. Cartoons too are a two way stretch. An Arab newspaper recently showed a crusader, helmeted, cross regaling the front of his robes, blood dripping from sword depicted as pen. The caption was: 'European Press'... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20457 Iran and the bomb Pedro De Pezarat Correia ...At the time of the invasion of Iraq, in 2003, George W. Bush and the other extremist "hawks" that dictate US policy were not afraid to state, implicitly and explicitly, that they were on the first stage of an ambitious strategy that eyed the whole of the Middle East, having as targets, obviously, the hostile states of the so-called "axis of evil", namely Syria and Iran. It was, after all, to continue what has been for decades Washington’s choice: to act as patron and agent of Israel’s geopolitical strategy. Once Iraq was "normalized" the American bulldozer would move on to crush Iran. Syria would fall on its own... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20458 ON NSA SPYING: A LETTER TO CONGRESS The New York Review of Books We are scholars of constitutional law and former government officials. We write in our individual capacities as citizens concerned by the Bush administration's National Security Agency domestic spying program, as reported in The New York Times, and in particular to respond to the Justice Department's December 22, 2005, letter to the majority and minority leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees setting forth the administration's defense of the program. Although the program's secrecy prevents us from being privy to all of its details, the Justice Department's defense of what it concedes was secret and warrantless electronic surveillance of persons within the United States fails to identify any plausible legal authority for such surveillance. Accordingly the program appears on its face to violate existing law. Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20461 Report Says Number of Attacks by Insurgents in Iraq Increases JAMES GLANZ, "New York Times" Sweeping statistics on insurgent violence in Iraq that were declassified for a Senate hearing on Wednesday appear to portray a rebellion whose ability to mount attacks has steadily grown in the nearly three years since the invasion. The statistics were included in a report written by Joseph A. Christoff, director of international affairs and trade at the Government Accountability Office, who testified before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee during a hearing on Iraq stabilization and reconstruction. The American military declassified the statistics so he could present them to the hearing in his report, Mr. Christoff said in an interview... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20463 Agustin Velloso: The West Adding Cartoons to Injury Agustin Velloso, Special to PalestineChronicle.com It seems Westerners ability to trespass limits knows no limits. The cartoons disgraceful affair, or global crisis as some have called it, shows the West lack of decency, moral hypocrisy and political cynicism. Decency. Year after year Muslim and Arab blood is being spilt in the Middle East. Those who kill, maim and destroy unlawfully and without mercy, find themselves unable to intervene in the cartoons affair because they say they cannot go against the right of journalists to freely express themselves. We have here a Jewish-Christian civilization that kills thousands upon thousands of Muslims while invade their lands with total disregard for international and humanitarian laws, but that it is at the same time hand-tied by a sacred law about freedom of speech... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20459 "Humane and compassionate" Eli Stephens, Left I on the News The chief military spokesman at Guantanamo, Lt. Col. Jeremy M. Martin, said yesterday force-feeding of hunger strikers is being carried out "in a humane and compassionate manner." And really, who can disagree? In recent weeks, the officials said, guards have begun strapping recalcitrant detainees into "restraint chairs," sometimes for hours a day, to feed them through tubes and prevent them from deliberately vomiting afterward. Detainees who refuse to eat have also been placed in isolation for extended periods to keep them from being pressured by other hunger strikers. The lawyers [for the "detainees"] said other measures used to dissuade the hunger strikers included placing them in uncomfortably cold air-conditioned isolation cells, depriving them of "comfort items" like blankets and books and sometimes using riot-control soldiers to compel the prisoners to sit still while long plastic tubes were threaded down their nasal passages and into their stomachs. And why are they doing this exactly? Out of concern for the lives of the hunger strikers? Out of "compassion"? Hardly... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20455 Who's behind the kidnaps? Firas Al-Atraqchi, Al-Ahram Weekly ...In short, both the four CPT members and Carroll had been recognised by Iraqis -- and specifically Sunnis -- as performing work they viewed as beneficial to the Iraqi people and/or alleviating the plight of Sunnis in Western Iraq (CPT) and in detention centres (Carroll). It is worthy of mentioning that CPT had been operating in Iraq at least six months before the US invasion of 20 March 2003 (...) This is known by all Iraqis across the board since 2002. So who would kidnap them? Who stands to gain? Who stands to lose? Who would kidnap Ms Carroll? Who stands to gain? Who stands to lose? Perhaps the answer lies in a deeper understanding of an armed group which few know operates in Iraq. Ever heard of the Scorpions? According to a Washington Post report in 2005, the US intelligence community tried to conceal the existence of the group known as the Scorpions which was operating secretly in Iraq. The report says that the Scorpions were small teams of CIA-sponsored militia (paramilitary) outfits nicknamed Alligator and Cobra who were set up prior to the invasion to commit acts of subterfuge and incite violence against the Baathist regime... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20453 Educators face blowback for protesting Iraq war in schools Carlos Miller, RAW STORY Just over three years ago, as the nation readied for war with Iraq, elementary school teacher Deb Mayer stood in front of her class and uttered the word that would get her blacklisted from her profession. It was a word that got her deemed "unpatriotic" by an angry parent. A word that led to her termination from the Bloomington, Indiana school district. A word that got her labeled as a potential sex offender and ruined her chances of finding work elsewhere. That word was "peace.".. Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20460 The Corporate Plunder Of Iraq Dave Whyte ...The largest part of the money spent by the US-British occupation was not US or international donor funds, but oil revenue that belongs to the Iraqi people. During the period of direct rule the US spent, or committed to spend, around £11.3 billion, most of which was disbursed to US corporations. Of this expenditure, £5 billion is unaccounted for. From the available evidence we know that much of it has vanished into the hands of corporations, corrupt public officials and elite Iraqi deal fixers. During 14 months of its existence the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) – the body set up to rule Iraq and headed up by Bush favourite Paul Bremer – issued 100 legal orders by decree. Those orders, implemented without the consent of Iraqi people, represent a pure form of neo-liberal orthodoxy that has had profound and irreversible consequences for the Iraqi economy... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20454 Nigger thought experiment Xymphora ...Here is a small list of some of the things we do to Muslims, without even a hint that there might be some moral issues involved: 1. drop bombs on innocent civilians in a country that posed no harm, and boastfully talk of 'shock and awe'; 2. shoot their children in the face as part of an organized program to steal their lands; 3. imprison their wives and daughters as hostages; 4. chop down the olive trees that have supported their families for hundreds of years; 5. threaten more innocent civilians with death in countries like Iran and Syria, countries which again pose no threat; 6. lock up their young men by the hundreds of even thousands after September 11, unconstitutionally and illegally, and quietly release them months later rather than admit it was all a racist program of profiling... 7. fire a tank shell into a group of their children, and call it a 'mistake'; Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20451 Three Years After 30 Million People Took the Streets to Tell Bush and Blair Not to Go to War The Human Majority was Right About Iraq MIKE MARQUSEE Three years ago, the world witnessed something unprecedented. On the same day, in 900 cities in forty countries north and south, east and west, thirty million people took to the streets in protest against the imminent attack on Iraq. There were demonstrations in Moscow, Karachi, Dhaka, Manila, Johannesburg, Cairo, Kinshasa, Tel Aviv, among many others, but the biggest turn-outs were in the belligerent nations. The marches in Britain, Spain, Italy and Australia were probably the largest in their countries' histories. On 15th February 2003, I was lucky enough to find myself in New York... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20450 WAR NEWS FOR WEDNESDAY, February 8, 2006 Today in Iraq Two U.S. soldiers died in Iraq at Al Husayniya on Sunday in a roadside bomb attack, the U.S. military reported on Tuesday. Soldier dies in Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas from injuries received in a bomb attack in Baghdad last December. Army soldier from the 4th Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment dies on Wednesday of wounds suffered three days earlier in a roadside bombing in Anbar province. Marine assigned to the 2nd Marine Logistics Group, II Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward) killed Monday in a bombing in Anbar... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20462 Kidnapped journalist pleads for her life AP US journalist Jill Carroll has appeared in a video aired on a private Kuwaiti TV channel appealing for her supporters to do whatever her Iraqi kidnappers want to secure her release. "I am here. I am fine. Please just do whatever they want, give them whatever they want as quickly as possible," Carroll says. Carroll appeared in the black-and-white video wearing an Islamic veil, sitting in a chair in front of a wall with a large floral design... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20465 Iraq's basic services are worse now than before war began James Glanz, The New York Times Virtually every measure of the performance of Iraq's oil, electricity, water and sewerage sectors has fallen below pre-invasion values, even though $16 billion of U.S. taxpayer money has already been disbursed in the Iraq reconstruction program, several government witnesses have told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Of seven different measures of infrastructure performance presented Wednesday at the committee hearing by the inspector general's office, only one was above pre-invasion values... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20464 CIA Patsy Gets Help in Prison Escape Kurt Nimmo, Another day in the empire Be afraid of Jamal al-Badawi, al-CIA-duh "mastermind" terrorist—or interchangeably, dim bulb Muslim patsy—who supposedly dug a tunnel out of "a heavily guarded" Yemeni prison and made his escape, thus posing a "clear and present danger to all countries." As it turns out, al-Badawi received the equivalent of a cake with a metal file from Yemeni intelligence officers, according to the Associated Press. Of course, the Associated Press did not bother to mention that Yemeni intelligence is in the pocket of the CIA, as reported by the Sydney Morning Herald in 2002... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20449 Baath Party Statement In the ongoing open ended confrontation with the US imperialism: the Baath is the Resistance base, its inspirer, the source of its strength and its invincible spearhead The Arab Baath Socialist Party Those who didn't understand or tried not to understand the real meaning of the Political and Strategic Program of the Armed Iraqi resistance, as designed by the Resisting Baath in Iraq, and those who ignored or tried to ignore the early publication of the Program immediately after the start of the Armed Iraqi Resistance and went on talking about a Resistance "without a political Program" for various in connection with their political, security, intellectual or economical integration with the Occupation and its failed project in Iraq.. All these were historically in the opposite trench of the Baath and its Renaissance Project in Iraq and in the nation as a whole... When the planned aggression started and the soil of Iraq was occupied, they took a wait and see position, in the hope to finish the Baath and to destroy it. These included plotter and inept Arab regimes, politicians, intellectuals, writers, Media, individuals, and institutions plus all the debased traitors of Iraq those who got debased either before or after the Occupation or through its failed political agendas and episodes... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20447 International Progress Organization condemns anti-Muslim hate propaganda and calls upon European Union to take a firm stand in defense of the rights of all religious communities Al-Moharer.net In a statement issued today, the President of the International Progress Organization (I.P.O.), Dr. Hans Koechler, condemned the publication of blasphemous caricatures by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten and their republication by newspapers in France, Norway, Germany, Belgium, Spain, Austria, New Zealand, and other Western countries. The 12 cartoons originally printed in the Danish newspaper reveal utter contempt for the Muslim religion and are a clear incitement to religious hatred and fanaticism against the worldwide community of Muslims... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20446 What does this guy have to do to get impeached? Greg Sagan, Amarillo Globe-News ...We are now deluged with evidence that President Bush has violated federal law in authorizing the National Security Agency to tap the telephone and Internet communications of Americans without a warrant, that he has violated international law by launching an unprovoked invasion of another country, that he has violated the Geneva Conventions by abusing prisoners of this war, and that he manipulated Congress by offering sanitized versions of National Intelligence Estimates about Iraq's weapons programs - versions that did not contain the disclaimers and rebuttals in the original documents he received from the CIA. The latest cannonade comes from a television station in Great Britain claiming to hold written minutes of a Jan. 31, 2003 meeting between President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair, in which our president outlined a plan for provoking Iraq by flying a U-2 reconnaissance plane and its fighter escorts in the markings of the United Nations in hopes the Iraqis would shoot at them in violation of U.N. resolutions... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20445 Criticize Bush, get investigated for sedition Chairman Jeff, SmirkBlog It happened to Laura Berg, a Veterans Administration nurse who showed up for work one day to find government agents waiting for her. The American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico wants the government to apologize to a nurse for seizing her computer and investigating her for "sedition" after she criticized the Bush administration. Her crime? Berg, a clinical nurse specialist, wrote a letter in September to a weekly Albuquerque newspaper criticizing how the administration handled Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq War... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20444 BUSH REFUSES TO CONFRONT THE TRUE COST OF THE IRAQ WAR Randolph T. Holhut The butcher’s bill, the ever-expanding human and economic cost of the Iraq war, grows with each passing week. The human cost keeps increasing. Nearly 2,300 U.S. soldiers have been killed and more than 16,000 have been seriously wounded. The economic cost keeps increasing too. The war in Iraq is estimated to cost the United States about $100,000 a minute, or nearly $200 million a day. But the bill will ulitmately be much worse. According to Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stieglitz of Columbia University and Linda Biomes, who teaches management at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, the ultimate cost of the Iraq war could go as high as $2 trillion... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20442 “Dangerous” Academics Right-wing Distortions about Leftist Professors Robert Jensen, www.dissidentvoice.org In an "urgent" e-mail last week, right-wing activist David Horowitz hyped his latest book about threats to America’s youth from leftist professors. The ad for The Professors -- The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America describes me as: "Texas Journalism Professor Robert Jensen, who rabidly hates the United States, and recently told his students, 'The United States has lost the war in Iraq and that’s a good thing.’"... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=20448 www.uruknet.info: a site gathering daily information concerning occupied Iraq: news, analysis, documents and texts of iraqi resistance available in Italian and English.   You receive this newsletter because you subscribed it. If you think it was an abuse, or simply if you don't want to receive it any more, click here to unsubscribe from the newsletter.