[UrukNet] - [Daily Information from Occupied Iraq] - [newsletter 10 Mar 2006]

uruknet.info   اوروكنت.إنفو :: information from occupied iraq :: informazione dall'iraq occupato

Defend Pace University Students Statements and Letters of Support ...Dear Mr. Caputo: Brian Kelly and Lauren Giaccone should be commended for their actions, not threatened with discipline by Pace University. It is shocking that the university is trying to control student free speech and clamp down on peaceful protests. And it’s incredible that the Dean of Students disrupted a regular meeting of the campus’ Campus Antiwar Network and Students for a Democratic Society chapters. Universities are supposed to be bastions of free speech, places where students are encouraged to think, to exchange ideas, and to exercise their freedoms. Not so at Pace, it would seem... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=21425 Tortured, shot, ambushed, victims are found dumped outside morgues. What is happening to Iraq's intellectuals is chilling Felicity Arbuthnot It is estimated that between 250 and 500 intellectuals have been killed or have disappeared since the fall of Saddam Hussein. There is a rising surge of anger over attacks on Iraq's intellectuals and many believe some of the killings may be part of a deliberate policy of targeting those who speak out against the "occupation". A prominent, internationally respected Iraqi academic, who cannot reveal his or her identity for fear of repercussions, says: "Under the American and British occupation, Iraqi academics are being forced out of their jobs and their country under the veil of politics. This is especially true for female Iraqi academics, who once made up nearly half of Iraqi academics in higher institutions and now fear for their lives and the lives of their families"... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=21398 The 48 Hour Media-blitz for War with Iran Mike Whitney In the last 48 hours all the major players in the Bush administration have issued statements warning of the impending danger of Iran. Cheney blasted the Islamic regime saying there would be "meaningful consequences" if it refuses to comply with international demands to stop its nuclear program. Condoleezza Rice said, "We face no greater challenge from a single country than Iran… This is a country that seems determined, it seems, to develop a nuclear weapon in defiance of the international community that is determined that they should not get one." Donald Rumsfeld warned at a press conference on Wednesday, "I will say this about Iran. They are currently putting people into Iraq to do things that are harmful to the future of Iraq. We know it, and it is something that they, I think, will look back on as having been an error in judgment."(...) Israel’s Defense Minister joined the chorus as well," If the UN Security Council is incapable of taking action to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, Israel will have no choice but to defend itself." Bush, Cheney, Bolton, Rice, Rumsfeld, Burns, Congress, and Israel. Whoa! That’s quite a line-up... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=21402 CPT Release: We Mourn the Loss of Tom Fox Christian Peacemaker Teams In grief we tremble before God who wraps us with compassion. The death of our beloved colleague and friend pierces us with pain. Tom Fox’s body was found in Baghdad yesterday. Christian Peacemaker Teams extends our deep and heartfelt condolences to the family and community of Tom Fox, with whom we have traveled so closely in these days of crisis. We mourn the loss of Tom Fox who combined a lightness of spirit, a firm opposition to all oppression, and the recognition of God in everyone... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=21430 Abductees... Company Suspected Of Assisting Insurgency in Iraq Kirk Semple, THE NEW YORK TIMES The Sunni-owned security company where about 50 employees were kidnapped Wednesday was under investigation for allegedly collaborating with the anti-government insurgency, an Interior Ministry official said Thursday. The official, Maj. Gen. Mehdi Sabih Hashem al-Garawi, commander of a paramilitary police unit, said in an interview that his investigators had been examining the company. Many of its employees were members of Saddam Hussein’s security forces, said a company employee who evaded the abductors (...) The brother of an administrator for the company, who requested anonymity out of fear for his safety, said his family had been told by a government official that the employees were being held at a government detention center in Baghdad... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=21428 O’Reilly: Mass Murder is the “Sane Thing to Do” Kurt Nimmo It is now obvious—Fox News loud-mouth Bill O’Reilly is a dangerous sociopath. He should be removed immediately from both television and radio. "You know, in a sane world, every country would unite against Iran and blow it off the face of the earth. That would be the sane thing to do, just go in and remove the government, because this is a terrorist state," said Bill on his radio program a couple days ago. In Bushzarro world, it is sane to kill hundreds of thousands of people, it is normal to invade countries predicated on nothing more than lies, dissimulation, and fabrication... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=21427 Iraq's death squads make the rules Paul McGeough THE Sunni imam in Baghdad's al-Salam City clings to sanity but his mixed community is a sectarian tinder-box and, increasingly, Sheikh Fadal Kalaf Jasam struggles to maintain his grip. He has been working tirelessly to hold the community together, shuttling between Shiite and Sunni mosques and the offices and compounds of the US military, Iraqi security forces and the religious-backed militias that make up their own rules in the new Iraq. But now he is tortured by indecision. The 42-year-old cleric fears information he is sitting on could spark the sort of sectarian violence not previously seen in his pocket of north-west Baghdad... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=21421 The National Strategy For Disaster In Iraq American Progress Report Yesterday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld appeared before the Senate Appropriations Committee to request $65 billion in emergency security funds for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, on top of the $369 billion the United States has spent already. This appearance came amidst deep dissatisfaction among the U.S. public over the war (only 30 percent approve of President Bush's handling of Iraq), increasing sectarian violence, and a troubling human rights situation. The testimony by Rice and Rumsfeld did little to reassure the American people that the administration is using taxpayers' money wisely, amounting to "more or less a recitation of the administration's standard formulations on Iraq," according to the New York Times. Rice and Rumsfeld's testimony yesterday ignored the U.S. responsibility for Iraq's current state of instability... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=21420 A letter From Baghdad Wafaa' Al-Natheema ...On the morning of Thursday, the 2nd of March, a car with three assassins inside , pulled beside Lt. Col. Air force pilot, Hussain Ali Marhoon, who was standing on the kerb with a friend awaiting the work’s bus not far from his home in the Yarmouk district of Baghdad; they shot them both, with one of the criminals getting out of the car to shoot him in the head from close range. Hussein Marhoon died instantly and his friend died in hospital in the afternoon. The incident took place about fifty meters away from two police cars who did not take any action against the assailants . When we took him to the Baghdad mortuary, the attending doctor told us that he was the No. 20 victim so far that day; it was only nine in the morning !... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=21418 Stealing from U.S.? Bad. Stealing from Iraq? No problem. Eli Stephens, Left I on the News The headlines tout the good news: "Contractor Bilked U.S. on Iraq Work, Federal Jury Rules. Custer Battles Is Told It Should Pay More Than $10 Million in Damages." But one of the most interesting tidbits is hidden inside: "U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III told the jury that they could only consider fraud charges on the first $3 million spent on the Custer Battles currency contract -- out of a total of about $20 million -- because that clearly came from the U.S. Treasury." The rest of the money, we can assume based on what we know, came from money "expropriated" by the Coalition Provisional Authority from the Iraqi treasury... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=21416 Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Friday, 10 March 2006 Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice. ... ...In a bulletin posted at 6:40pm Mecca time Friday evening, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that a short while earlier Iraqi Resistance forces had fired 11 mortar rounds into the house occupied by the US-installed puppet "President of Iraq" Kurdish separatist Jalal at-Talibani. The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported that at-Talibani has taken over and occupies the home of Barzan at-Tikriti, the half brother of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, as his residence, and it was this home that was struck by the Resistance barrage on Friday evening. Dense pillars of smoke could be seen rising over the building. No information on the nature or extent of casualties was available... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=21417 "Thou Shalt Not Criticize the Zionists!" William Hughes "There is an 11th Commandment! It states: "Thou Shalt Not Criticize the Zionists." Recently, the Brit’s Royal Court Theater wanted to put on a play, in NYC, entitled, "My Name is Rachel Corrie." Corrie was the peace activist, who was killed by an Israeli bulldozer, on March 16, 2003, in Occupied Gaza. The NYC theater company, however, has "postponed" the production because Jewish leaders objected to it. This is an example of that 11th Commandment!" Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=21415 New Lancet Letter Condemns Force Feeding At Guantanamo Amnesty International UK Amnesty International today (10 March) called for action from the US authorities in response to an open letter from leading medical experts that condemns force-feeding of prisoners at the US detention centre in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The letter, published today in The Lancet medical journal, is signed by more than 250 distinguished medical experts from the UK, the USA,Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and Australia. Co-authors include Dr Oliver Sacks (author and neurologist), Dr Holly G Atkinson (President of Physicians for Human Rights) and Dr John Kalk (who supported hunger strikers? human rights in apartheid-era South Africa). A number of the experts are American medics, including from Harvard and Yale... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=21413 Two soldiers killed in Kirkuk, US tank blown up Eastern Baghdad KUNA Two Iraqi Army soldiers were killed and three others were wounded Friday in an explosion near a check point south of Kirkuk, Northern Iraq. An army source told reporters an explosive device went off near a National Guards check point as a National Guards patrol was passing by. Meanwhile in Eastern Baghdad, a US tank was devastated when a highly explosive charge went off this morning and an Interior Ministry source said the tank caught fire in an explosion in Canal Street, Eastern Baghdad... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=21412 Iraqi journalist slain; educators targeted; US tank on fire; and more Truth about Iraqis Yet another Iraqi journalist has been killed. Munsuf Abdallah al-Khaldi, 35, a Baghdad TV presenter was on his way to Mosul to interview three poets for his cultural TV show. Reuters carried a statement from the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists saying al-Khaldi had been shot dead by unidentified gunmen while driving from the Iraqi capital. This comes less than a month after the killing of Atwar Bahjat, Al-Arabiya's correspondent in Sammara. Two Iraqi journalists Rim Zeid and Marwan Khazaal who were kidnapped in January still remain unaccounted for. Nothing has been heard from their captors. Freelancer Jill Carroll's deadline passed on February 26. No word has been heard from her or her captors since although Iraqi officials have said she is alive... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=21411 DAILY WAR NEWS FOR FRIDAY, MARCH 10, 2006 Today in Iraq American tank set on fire, with no casualties reported. Three US Marines wounded in checkpoint truck bombing in Fallujah. Car bomb exploded near a mosque in New Baghdad on the eastern side of the city, killing three people and wounding ten others. Six civilians killed and eight wounded by a roadside bomb that targeted an Iraqi army patrol in western Baghdad. Iraqi soldier killed and three injured by car bomb in southwestern Baghdad. Car bombs kill three, including the imam of a Sunni Mosque in northern Baghdad. Five more people were wounded... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=21410 Good mourning, Vietnam Greg Mitchell, Editor & Publisher It may surprise most in the media to learn that the U.S. has now been waging war in Iraq for precisely the same length of time that passed between the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in 1965 and the humbling of President Lyndon Johnson at the polls that led him to promise to exit the White House in 1968. As a survivor of the late-1960s, I can recall that three years sure seemed like a long time THEN, as the Vietnam war escalated. Yet the months and years slip by now, with the daily deaths and other carnage in Iraq seemingly occurring in slow motion, while newspapers refuse to cry, "enough!" Perhaps they need to be reminded that many more years passed after that LBJ turning point before the killing ended--and that the majority of the 55,000 Americans who died in Vietnam were lost in that drawn out when-will-it-ever-end finish... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=21409 Madrid Bombings: No “al-Qaeda” Involvement Kurt Nimmo Big surprise here. "A two-year investigation into the Madrid train bombings concludes that the Islamic terrorists who carried out the blasts were homegrown radicals acting alone rather than at the behest of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network, two senior intelligence officials" told the Associated Press. Of course not. Because the Madrid train bombings were carried out by police informants connected to a false flag intelligence operation. "Moroccan Rafa Zuher and Spaniard Jose Emilio Suarez had been in contact with police before the attacks," the BBC reported on April 29, 2004. "According to [the Spanish newspaper] El Mundo, [Suarez] was an informant for the National Police, providing information about trafficking in weapons, drugs and explosives."... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=21408 Are you working for impeachment? It's your civic duty Carol Wolman If you are a citizen of the US, then you are living under the US Constitution, which vests ultimate authority in "we the people". Authority carries with it responsibility. "We the people" are ultimately responsible for the actions of our government, no matter how fraudulent the elections or how corrupt the Congress may be. The US Constitution gives "we the people", through our elected representatives in Congress, the power and authority to get rid of members of the executive and judicial branches who are violating their oath of office to uphold the Constitution, or who are committing high crimes and misdemeanors... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=21406 There Are Criminals, and Then There Are CRIMINALS Cindy Sheehan, BuzzFlash As I lie here in bed recuperating from the injuries that I received from a federal agent and the NYPD in front of the US Mission to the UN (USUN) the other day, I have had time to reflect on the experience, the state of our union and its descent into a fascist state. When the four of us. Missy Beattie, Rev. Patricia Ackerman, Medea Benjamin, and I, were arrested the other day, I was singled out for federal police brutality. The other three ladies were picked up, not gingerly, though, and I was dragged across the pavement and treated very, very roughly -- having both arms wrenched out from beneath me... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=21403 'Ira() has nukes, will use them - we must strike first' Jerome a Paris, Daily Kos ...we are watching as the drums of war are beating with increasing strength and we watch, with incredulity mixed wiht disgust and fear, as the exact same steps that led to the Iraq War are now being played out with Iran. This diary is inspired, and draws content from various diaries with extensive discussions of Iran over at European Tribune... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=21401 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.