[uruknet.info] - [daily information from occupied iraq] - [newsletter 01 Feb 2005 - Part two]

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A Statement from the International Action Center
The Election in Iraq
The International Action Center
The media and the Bush Administration are in high gear, trumpeting this
weekend's election as a victory for democracy. However, this election
changes nothing on the ground in Iraq. On Monday, January 31, the day after
the election, the people of Iraq woke up with 150,000 U.S. troops occupying
their country, CIA asset Ayad Allawi the appointed head of state, and the
Pentagon's plans to build 14 permanent milit ary bases still proceeding.
Democracy means, "rule of the people." What happened on Sunday merely
continues rule by military occupation and an appointed government...

<http://uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=9364&s2=02>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=9364


Analysis: Chalabi's magical comeback
CLAUDE SALHANI, UPI
...Since his fall from favor with the U.S. administration, Chalabi, a
Shiite, re-aligned himself with Iraq's most revered Shiite religious
authority, the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. It was undoubtedly one of his
smartest moves. Again, analysts remarked that if U.S. intelligence was
Machiavellian enough, they would have orchestrated the whole episode. What
better way to give Chalabi credibility among many Iraqis, particularly
among those opposed to the U.S. occupation, than to make him appear a
pariah to the United States? Since parting ways with the Pentagon, Chalabi
spent time winning favors and cultivating support with Tehran's mullahs and
convinced Sistani to include him on his electoral slate. Iraqis who voted
Sunday chose a slate rather than a candidate. Given that the names of most
candidates were not revealed due to security concerns, many Iraqis voted
for the slate their religious leaders told them to vote for. Chalabi was
the lead candidate on Sistani's slate. If Sistani's slate wins, Chalabi
will most likely become the next prime minister of Iraq...

<http://uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=9374&s2=02>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=9374


"We've had multiple voting here, and I saw one person vote three times"
Barbara Slavin, USA TODAY
...But several Kurdish observers complained that illiterate voters were
being told to vote for the Sistani-approved list by Shiite election workers
and clerics. "We've had multiple voting here, and I saw one person vote
three times," said Mohammed Amin Sheikh Mohammed, a Kurd from the northern
Iraqi city of Erbil who now lives in Kashan, Iran...


<http://uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=9362&s2=02>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=9362


Fraud Rife In Baghdad Elections; "Israeli" Reporters Allowed To Vote
Muhammad Abu Nasr, Free Arab Voice; Edited And Published By JUS - IraqWar.ru
...Members of Ahmad Chelebi's Iraqi National Congress Party were bringing
in non-Iraqi citizens, probably Iranians, and the party members would issue
them false Iraqi citizenship certificates, which they would use to get into
the polls where they would then vote for Chelebi's party. One election
observer who worked for the United Nations also observed such a case, the r
eporter noted, saying that he told a foreign news company "we have
uncovered just four cases of fraud and we don't know how many might have
taken place that went unregistered"...


<http://uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=9372&s2=02>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=9372


America, What Is It We Are Dying For?
Monica Benderman, Project for the Old American Century
...My husband and others have said no to the dying and no to the killing as
they reach for a better way. Their better way is fighting still. Their
better way is not a broken contract in the service of their country, it is
not a broken promise made to defend America. Their better way is fighting
harder, and fighting mad...

<http://uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=9371&s2=02>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=9371


Iraq elections: Success or worst case scenario?
Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey, Pravda
...In fact, this election confirms the worst-case scenario, a partition of
Iraq, formerly held together by the Ba'ath government and now deeply cleft
in three separate sections. Was this not after all the policy followed by
Washington and London, whose establishment of no-fly zones more or less
followed the ethnical lines dividing the Iraqi people?...

<http://uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=9370&s2=02>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=9370


Train wreck of an election
James Carroll. Boston Globe
...Tomorrow night, like a boy in a bubble, George W. Bush will tell the
world it was for "freedom." He will claim the Iraqi election as a stamp of
legitimacy for his policy, and many people will affirm it as such. Even
critics of the war will mute their objections in response to the image of
millions of Iraqis going to polling places, as if that act undoes the Bush
catastrophe...


<http://uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=9369&s2=02>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=9369


Press Release
Ziyad Khasawneh, President of ISNAD, www.albasrah.net
ISNAD President-lawyer Ziyad Khasawneh declared that he received a letter
on 24.jan.2005 from Iraqi lawyer Khalil Dulaimi. Dulaimi said in his letter
that three suicidal groups have been recently formed to assassinate him ,
so that he would be an example lesson for all lawyers who have volunteered
to defend Saddam Hussein . Lawyer Khalil Dulaimi is the only lawyer who
have been allowed to meet president Saddam till now . Lawyer Khasawneh
stated th at threatening Dolaims life is a new addition to the package of
violations to Geneva conventions committed by the invading armies that
occupy Iraq...


<http://uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=9368&s2=02>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=9368


Prison Uprisings: 4 Iraqi detainees killed, 6 injured
Raed Jarrar, Raed in the Middle
...don't have any bad ideas about freedom or democracy, "The cause of the
riot and use of lethal force is currently under investigation by the chain
of command and the U.S. Army's Criminal Investigations Division, which is
standard procedure whenever a detainee death occurs," the statement added.
Maybe they were just celebrating the historical elections. Maybe they were
crying out of joy and freedom... Maybe they were hap py because of the new
bush statue in Baghdad...

<http://uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=9367&s2=02>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=9367


New Republic Writer Threatens the Lives of Anti-war Activists
Kurt Nimmo
...I am writing this email in response to an article I read this evening on
the Counterpunch web site, where articles I write are occasionally posted.
In an article by Dave Zirin, appearing on January 31, 2005, I read with
dismay about Tom Frank who, in an article ("Left Out") published on the New
Republic web site, threatened the lives of at least two writers and
political commentators, viz. Stan Goff, a former Delta Forces soldier and
curre nt organizer for Military Families Speak Out, and internationally
renowned writer and speaker, Arundhati Roy...


<http://uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=9365&s2=02>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=9365


Iraqi "President": U.S. Troops Should Stay
MARIAM FAM, Associated Press Writer
Iraq's president said Tuesday it would be ``complete nonsense'' to ask
foreign troops to leave the country now, although some could depart by
year's end. Officials began the final vote tally from elections to produce
a government to confront the insurgency. Despite scattered clashes in rebel
areas across the country, Iraq reopened its borders Tuesday and commercial
flights took off from Baghdad International Airport as authorities eased
security restrictions imposed to protect last weekend's landmark voting...


<http://uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=9366&s2=02>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=9366


Iraqi in Baghdad: "The Election Was Shoved Down Our Throats"
Demicracy Now!
To get an Iraqi perspective on the election, we go to Baghdad to speak with
retired Iraqi engineer Ghazwan Al-Mukhtar. Mukhtar says, "What do I do with
democracy? Does it allow me to walk across the street without being feared
of being kidnapped or being shot at or being mugged or being stolen? Would
democracy feed my children? Would democracy allow me to quench my thirst?
The U.S. has not done anything at all to improve the life of Iraqi
people."...

<http://uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=9353&s2=02>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=9353


Making Sense Of The Election
Kelebdooni Anti-Allawi group - Iraqwar.ru
Iraqis did not split down ethnic or sectarian lines for the sham election.
Only the Kurds acted as a separate ethnic unit, as they have always done.
Elsewhere in Iraq voter participation in the election farce was determined
by the degree of socio-economic development. In backward rural areas
participation was higher whereas in developed areas there was often a total
boycott by both the Sunni and the Shia population....

<http://uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=9363&s2=02>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=9363


One Voter In Falluja
GI SPECIAL 3A31 - Aljazeera TV
Aljazeera: In war-ravaged Falluja, nearly all residents stayed at home
despite the presence of five polling stations. Only one man was reported to
have voted. Kelebdooni, Anti-Allawi group writes: That's turnout of
0.00033%...


<http://uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=9360&s2=02>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=9360


The Vietnam turnout was good as well
Sami Ramadani, The Guardian
On September 4 1967 the New York Times published an upbeat story on
presidential elections held by the South Vietnamese puppet regime at the
height of the Vietnam war. Under the heading "US encouraged by Vietnam
vote: Officials cite 83% turnout despite Vietcong terror", the paper
reported that the Americans had been "surprised and heartened" by the size
of the turnout "despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the
voting". A successful electio n, it went on, "has long been seen as the
keystone in President Johnson's policy of encouraging the growth of
constitutional processes in South Vietnam". The echoes of this weekend's
propaganda about Iraq's elections are so close as to be uncanny...

<http://uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=9359&s2=02>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=9359


Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Monday, 31 January 2005
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board,
the Free Arab Voice.
...Going even beyond the inflated propaganda churned out by the US
occupation authorities, an official of the Chaldean Church has issued
highly extravagant claims about the sham election held at US insistence on
Sunday, 30 January 2005. Contrary to the reports of every news organization
that covered the event and noted numerous attacks by the Iraqi Resistance
on the sham "election stations" rigged up around the country, Monsignor
Djibrail Kassab the Chaldean archbishop of al-Basrah told the Catholic
Missionary News Agency MISNA that, "there were no reports of violence of
any kind." Kassab went so far as to say that the Iraqi people were so happy
to vote in an election farce that changed nothing regarding the American
occupation, that the mood was "almost as though it was Carnival"...

<http://uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=9361&s2=02>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=9361


The Staged Elections of 2005
Ghali Hassan
...According to the Washington Post, Allawi's gang threatened Iraqis if
they do not vote (for Allawi), they will not get their monthly food
rations, the miracle of Saddam, which is keeping the Iraqi people out of
starvation. Under these elections, Iraqis had two choices, lose your card
(Saddam's old food-distribution cards) and starve, or go out and vote for
the fraudulent elections. About 3 million Iraqis were forced to venture out
of their homes to vote in the mid of vi olence. It is this violence that
will keep Allawi and his masters in their positions. These are truly
"historic elections" for the US dream of "spreading democracy"...


<http://uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=9356&s2=02>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=9356


Democracy in Iraq
Omar Khan, Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches
...Arbitrary coercions thereby do not merely subvert the law; they are
written into the law. One can only conclude that "the rule of law and an
independent judiciary," will in Iraq continue to be "concepts that have
been alien"—which is to say imposed from the outside, by the
representatives of the United States of America (...) The fact remains that
what has been said up to this point of the Transitional Administrative Law
(TAL) and the judicial provisio ns that it extends are removed from
current, everyday realities in Iraq. Nonetheless, the indefinite extension
of these provisions gives every indication that what is will be what
remains. Whatever we can determine of criminal justice in Iraq up to the
present time tells us, then, what is likely to remain. We begin with Dahr
Jamail's interview of Lilu Hammed late last May. Sitting alone on the hard
packed dirt in his white dishdasha, his head scarf languidly flapping in
the dry, hot wind, Lilu Hammed stared unwaveringly at the high walls of the
nearby prison as if he were attempting to see his 32 year-old son Abbas
through the concrete walls "...

<http://uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=9358&s2=02>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=9358


The Jordanian Government attacks the Union of Professional Associations
(UPA) over its anti-Zionist anti-Occupation Positions
A report by: Dr. Hisham Bustani - Member of the Liberties Committee and the
anti-Normalization Committee of the UPA - Al-Moharer
The Union of Professional Associations (UPA) is a coordination body between
14 Jordanian professional associations (...) The UPA is well-known for its
principled positions regarding promoting Liberties and Human Rights
locally, and against the US aggression in Ira q, against the Zionist
Occupation in Palestine, and against the Imperialist Globalization. These
positions seem to be in contradiction with the government in Jordan which
has been trying to undermine the UPA for about 5 years by banning some of
its activities, arresting many of its activists, outlawing its central
committees, outlawing its Council of Presidents, threatening continuously
to dissolve its elected executive committees and replacing them with
governmentally-appointed ones, and last but not least threatening to change
the laws of the UPA Associations...

<http://uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=9351&s2=02>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: www.uruknet.info/?p=9351




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