[UrukNet] - [Daily Information from Occupied Iraq] - [newsletter 04 Apr 2006 - Part One]

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Condi's Charm Offensive - The Truth Behind the Spin Felicity Arbuthnot No excesses of Washington and Whitehall spin could disguise the fact that the visit of US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice with UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, to his Blackburn constituency and 2008 European City of Culture, Liverpool, bombed. On the scale of PR disasters, it was Titanic. She was welcomed, wrote Mary Riddell in the Guardian : '... as if she were General Pinochet in Ferragamo shoes.' The woman whose administration make even the actions of that murderous old tyrant pale by comparison - he disappeared people, they disappear entire sovereign nations as well - appropriately first visited the BAE weapons factory, manufacturer of the quaintly named 'Charm 111' depleted uranium (DU) missiles fired by the Challenger 11 tanks used the in the US/UK's joint 'Crusades'... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22249 Iraq: neither 'civil war' nor 'chaos'. Lenin's tomb In what is curiously described as a shift from "a socialist to a free market economy", the Iraqi 'government' has decided to slash food rations for the poor. As part of the same move, the oil-for-food programme will be eliminated by the end of 2006, because it is part of a "socialist" legacy. It's such a bad state of affairs for some children that they are reduced to searching through piles of rubbish to find something to eat or wear. This is not the only way the occupiers have brought Palestine to Iraq. The infrastructure, destroyed by years of war and sanctions, perpetually blitzed by the occupation, and barely rebuilt before the occupiers turned off the funding tap (which was at any rate being delivered into the pockets of embezzlers and Bush-friendly companies), is a ruin. The ongoing violence of the occupation, coupled with the sectarian violence that has been dramatically escalated since the bombing of the Samarrah shrine has led to tens of thousands of displaced, doctors fleeing the country... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22252 The mysterious murder case of Wissam Al Hashimi Dirk Adriaensens BRussells Tribunal Dr. Wissam Al Hashimi was murdered in August 2005. The announcement of this murder by his daughter Tara can be read underneath. Dr. Al-Hashimi authored a large number of scientific papers, in both Arabic and English, published in local, Arab, and international journals, and covering a wide range of topics, including carbonate sedimentology and diagenesis, petrology, mineralogy, geoarchaeology, engineering geology, underground storage, industrial rocks and minerals, and hydrology. He was also a regular contributor of analytical articles to newspapers in Iraq covering various political, oil, and water issues in the Middle East and the Arab world... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22245 Bush’s War Zia Mian It is now three years since the US attacked and occupied Iraq. The war came despite determined resistance from public opinion around the world. People took to the streets in a massive popular mobilization that was arguably the largest political protest since the anti-nuclear movement of the early 1980s. The New York Times described it as a struggle between "two superpowers on the planet: the United States and world public opinion." United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan told a BBC interviewer that he considered the war in Iraq to be "illegal". But neither public opinion nor international law was organized enough yet to stop the US when it had chosen war... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22247 The secret alliance Xymphora The secret Israel-Iran alliance isn’t much written about (it’s a secret, after all). Here are some quick points to think about: * the 'doctrine of the periphery’, the idea that Israel’s natural allies are non-Arab states not adjacent to Israel, which Susser indicates is dead, is very much alive, applying now both to Turkey and the Kurds (...) * Iran facilitated the immigration of the Jews from Iraq to Israel in 1948-1949 * continuing dealings between Ledeen and Ghorbanifar, who represents Iranian business interests (the real long-term power base in Iran) * Israeli support for Iran in the Iran-Iraq war * a little thing we like to call Iran-Contra, although the Contras got very little out of it, should have been called Iran-Israel, as it was primarily a deal for the Israelis to sell arms to Iran... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22236 Silence in class Gary Younge, The Guardian After the screenwriter Walter Bernstein was placed on the blacklist during the McCarthyite era he said his life "seemed to move in ever-decreasing circles". "Few of my friends dropped away but the list of acquaintances diminished," he wrote in Inside Out, a memoir of the blacklist. "I appeared contaminated and they did not want to risk infection. They avoided me, not calling as they had in the past, not responding to my calls, being nervously distant if we met in public places." As chair of African American studies in Yale, Paul Gilroy had a similar experience recently after he spoke at a university-sponsored teach-in on the Iraq war... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22242 GI Special 4D3: No FLowers Here - April 3, 2006 Thomas F. Barton ... Since the very day the occupation forces came to Iraq and the Iraqi state collapsed, there has been an uprising by all Iraqi movements and organisations; including those defending women, or unemployed youth, human rights organisations, trade unions, professional syndicates, agencies defending environmental issues and the rights of prisoners, and all other cultural and political organisations, side-by-side with provincial and tribal communities and peaceful and armed resistance groups. A national movement, which opposes occupation and sectarianism, has developed. It took various forms, from civil to armed resistance. One does not contradict the other but rather supports the other in its own choice of struggle... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22241 Baath Party Statement Answering the Occupation secretary of state: the ongoing historical and open-ended confrontation is far from being decisive yet The Arab Baath Socialist Party All the observers and all those who follow the declarations of the US highest political circles and those of highest political and military levels in the US government witness and notice the contradictions and the regression concerning the ever changing war justifications and pretexts which reflect the entry of the Occupation and its political, military and administration project in Iraq into its collapse phase. The Resisting Baath has determined and defined the entry of the Occupation into its collapse phase and the Baath behaves through its resistance stand according to a complex and well thought strategic comprehension to continue eradicating the Occupation project and all its political, security, and administration components... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22255 Bush: Always the Accuser, Never the Accused When War Crimes Are Unspeakable NORMAN SOLOMON To even ask the question is to go far beyond the boundaries of mainstream U.S. media. A few weeks ago, when a class of seniors at Parsippany High School in New Jersey prepared for a mock trial to assess whether Bush has committed war crimes, a media tempest ensued. Typical was the response from MSNBC host Tucker Carlson, who found the very idea of such accusations against Bush to be unfathomable. The classroom exercise "implies people are accusing him of a crime against humanity," Carlson said. "It's ludicrous." In Tennessee, the Chattanooga Times Free Press thundered in an editorial: "That some American 'educators' would have students 'try' our American president for 'war crimes' during time of war tells us that our problems are not only with terrorists abroad."... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22254 Vice president urges al-Jaafari to quit Aljazeera.net An Iraqi vice president has called for the prime minister to step aside so a new government can be formed, becoming the most senior Shia official publicly to endorse demands for a leadership change to halt the slide toward civil war. Adil Abdul-Mahdi told the BBC on Tuesday that he met with Ibrahim al-Jaafari on Monday and urged him to give up the nomination for a second term because he had lost the confidence of the Sunnis and Kurds. But Abdul-Mahdi said al-Jaafari refused, insisting he wanted to take his case to parliament, which must approve the new prime minister and his cabinet by a majority vote... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22253 Iraq: More Palestinians leave Baghdad for border ReliefWeb (press release) ...Meanwhile, the situation faced by Palestinians in Baghdad remains very bad. They are afraid to leave their homes because of ongoing intimidation and attacks. Additionally, there are new reports of verbal threats forcing Palestinians to flee their homes to another area in Baghdad. Some of the Palestinians have expired residence permits and fear being stopped by the police. There have been many incidents of harassment, kidnapping, beatings and killings over the past few months. UNHCR has had some limited contact with the Palestinians in Baghdad, but it has been extremely difficult because no one is safe from the violence... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22251 Damage Control: Noam Chomsky and the Israel-Palestine Conflict Jeffrey Blankfort ...A number of statements made by Chomsky have demonstrated his determination to keep Israel and Israelis from being punished or inconvenienced for the very monumental transgressions of decent human behavior that he himself has passionately documented over the years. This is one of the glaring contradictions in Chomsky’s work. He would have us believe that Israel’s occupation and harsh actions against the Palestinians, its invasions and undeclared 40 years war on Lebanon, and its arming of murderous regimes in Central America and Africa during the Cold War, has been done as a client state in the service of US interests. In Chomsky’s world view, that absolves Israel of responsibility and has become standard Chomsky doctrine... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22234 Iraqi oil exports dive; there’s no telling where the money went BTC News Iraq’s oil exports hit another post-invasion low in December and January, according to the Oil & Gas Journal. How do they know? Good question: according to Reuters, production and exports have gone unmetered since the Coalition Provisional Authority took over the country following the 2003 invasion; until new meters are installed, everybody’s just guessing. Among the best chronicles of the haziness surrounding Iraq’s oil production and exports — and the general pall of corruption that hangs over the country — comes from journalist Ed Harriman, writing in the July, 2005 issue of the London Review of Books. Harriman wrote that in addition to the roughly $9 billion in Iraqi oil funds that vanished without a trace during CPA head Paul Bremer’s reign, the International Advisory and Monitoring Board established to oversee and audit CPA expenditures of Iraqi cash "discovered that Iraqi oil exports were unmetered"... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22233 Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Monday, 3 April 2006 Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice. http://www.freearabvoice.org Three Resistance organizations battle US, puppet forces in fierce combat in ar-Ramadi late Monday afternoon. US forces bombard local mosque, killing Imam and preacher. Ten US troops killed or wounded; four Resistance fighters die in battle. In a dispatch posted at 5:15pm Makkah (Mecca) time Monday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that at the time of reporting, Iraqi Resistance forces were engaged in fierce combat with US and Iraqi puppet troops in the city of ar-Ramadi, about 110km west of Baghdad... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22231 MEDIA ALERT UPDATE: BBC WHITEWASH - HEAD OF NEWS RESPONDS Media Lens On March 21 we noted that the BBC's Diplomatic Correspondent, Bridget Kendall, had said on the Six O'Clock News: "There's still bitter disagreement over invading Iraq. Was it justified or a disastrous miscalculation?" (Kendall, BBC Six O'Clock News, March 20, 2006.) We asked how the war could possibly be justified when Tony Blair had identified the "serious and current threat" posed by Iraqi WMD as the justification. We also asked how "disastrous miscalculation" could be presented as the opposing argument to the claim that the war was justified. We pointed out that many people believe that launching a war of aggression is "the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole"... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22240 There should be a new Nuremberg trial, but it’s not Saddam Hussein who should be in the dock. Gabriele Zamparini, The Cat's Dream Dear Sadakat Kadri, In "They'd do better sticking Saddam's head on a pole" (Sadakat Kadri, The Guardian, Tuesday April 4, 2006) you mention several times the Nuremberg trials and "Robert Jackson, the US chief prosecutor at Nuremberg". You also write that: "The preconditions for a new Nuremberg - tranquillity, stable conceptions of justice and clarity of governing purpose - are lacking." It’s curious that you forgot to mention the core of the Nuremberg trials: "To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." - Judgment of the International Military Tribunal for the Trial of German Major War Criminals - Nuremberg, Germany 1946... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22239 Iran-US talks on Iraq to be held in Baghdad Middle East Online Talks between Iran and the United States on the situation in Iraq will take place in Baghdad with Iraqi participation, Iran's charge d'affaires in Iraq Hassan Kazemi Gomi said Tuesday. In an interview with the government daily Iran, Gomi said: "For the moment, it has been decided that these negotiations will take place in Baghdad with participation by the Iraqi side on Iraq as the first subject and they will be transparent."... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22237 I am an Iraqi woman appealing all the honorable peoples at the world Albasrah.net I am an Iraqi woman appealing all the honorable peoples at the world specially the American and British people, and appealing the international Red Cross, and the all associations of human rights to HELP me for setting free of my husband. My husband is now arresting without any legal evidence at the "Boka" prison nearly one year and seven months ago. He arrested with many peoples without any guilt. We are a big family and he is the only man- helping for us. We are living now in very bad situation, and severing bareness. It is very difficult for us to visit him, because we haven't money to pay as transporting fees. Please, I and my family ask all of you to help us and support our campaign to set free my husband, our father. He is quite innocent, and all of peoples here certificate his innocent. He is still not being investigated by them... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22235 How Massacres Become the Norm Dahr Jamail, t r u t h o u t US soldiers killing innocent civilians in Iraq is not news. Just as it was not news that US soldiers slaughtered countless innocent civilians in Vietnam. However, when some rare reportage of this non news from Iraq does seep through the cracks of the corporate media, albeit briefly, the American public seems shocked. Private and public statements of denial and dismissal immediately start to fill the air. We hear, "American soldiers would never do such a thing," or "Who would make such a ridiculous claim?" It amazes me that so many people in the US today somehow seriously believe that American soldiers would never kill civilians. Despite the fact that they are in a no-win guerrilla war in Iraq which, like any other guerrilla war, always generates more civilian casualties than combatant casualties on either side... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22256 Spare me the deathbed conversions Eli Stephens, Left I on the News General Anthony Zinni was on Meet the Press yesterday. He had lots of perceptive things to say, like "We just heard the secretary of state say these were tactical mistakes. These were not tactical mistakes. These were strategic mistakes, mistakes of policy made back here," and "An election doesn’t equal democracy." As a result, some, like those over at Daily KOS, are over the moon about Zinni, calling for the Democrats to nominate him for President (ignoring the fact that he's a Republican), praising him to the heavens, etc. But there's nothing progressive in Zinni's current position, it's just the usual "we're doing it wrong, let's start doing it right, 'we can't let it fall apart', etc." (...) You might be wondering about the title of this post. General Zinni, after all, isn't on his deathbed. No, but more than 100,000 Iraqis and more than 2500 Americans and others, are. Or were. They're dead now. Thanks to people like General Zinni, who kept what they knew to themselves until it was long since too late... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22230 Iraq militia power frustrates coalition The Age IRAQ's Interior Ministry is refusing to deploy thousands of police recruits trained by the United States and Britain and is hiring its own men and putting them on the streets, according to Western security advisers. The disclosure comes amid growing US and British concern about the role of partisan militias in sectarian killings, and their links to top Iraqi politicians... Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=22250 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.