[uruknet.info] - [daily information from occupied iraq] - [newsletter 23 Jan 2006]

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DONNE IN NERO, ANZI NERISSIMO
DALLA JUGOSLAVIA ALL’IRAQ ALLA PALESTINA I PACIFISMI CARI A QUELLI CHE
FANNO LE GUERRE
Fulvio Grimaldi, MONDOCANE FUORILINEA
Voglio subito fare una premessa importante. Tra le "Donne in nero",
organizzazione internazionale di signore per la pace, contro la violenza e
per il dialogo (credo che così più o meno si descrivono) di cui
l’europarlamentare Luisa Morgantini è agguerrita capintesta, ci sono
persone che mi sono amiche, a cui voglio bene e di cui ammiro l’i! mpegno,
la tensione morale, la buonafede, anche se non ne condivido la piattaforma
politico-culturale che, come quella di tutti i pacifisti non-violenti,
spesso ha come risultato più la criminalizzazione della legittima
autodifesa degli aggrediti che il ripensamento degli aggressori. Detto
questo, mi preme evidenziare come, ancora una volta, tra corpo e testa, per
dire persone e bonzi, vi sia quella disparità di livello umano, etico in
particolare, contro cui nei tempi di borghesia dominante sbattiamo
perennemente il grugno...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=19872&s2=24>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=19872


IRAQ: LE FORZE DI POLIZIA "MAGHAWIR" UCCIDONO 4 GIOVANI
HAJ ALI
Nel distretto popolare e povero di Abou-Deshir, dove vivono persone
semplici, alcuni degli agenti della Polizia "Maghawir", che risponde al
ministero degli interni, hanno commesso un crimine terribile, che potrebbe
essere aggiunto ai crimini delle milizie settarie che lavorano sotto
copertura come Forze Speciali e sotto la piena protezione americana.
Venerdì 11 dicembre 2005, la Polizia ha arrestato 11 giovani alle 10 A.M. e
li ha condotti dalle loro! case ad un posto vicino usato come quartier
generale, dichiarandosi come Forze di Sicurezza per i cosiddetti Grandi
Crimini. Questo quartier generale è diventato luogo di tortura ed
esecuzione, nonostante il suo aspetto esterno da luogo di culto...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=19888&s2=24>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=19888


More arrogance and racism from the US army
Truth About Iraqis
Seriously, is there something inherently twisted in the ethics and morality
of US military personnel and their families? By now, most must have heard
of the sham trial of Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer Jr. who killed
an Iraqi general during questioning by stuffing him headfirst into a
sleeping bag and sitting on his chest. "Prosecutors described Welshofer as
a rogue interrogator who became frustrated with Mowhoush's refusal to
answer questions a! nd escalated his techniques from simple interviews to
beatings to simulating drowning, and finally, to death." But thank the
maker, Welshofer apologized ... erm .. just not to the Iraqis. "I deeply
apologize if my actions tarnished the soldiers serving in Iraq," he said,
fighting back tears...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=19868&s2=24>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=19868


Mr. Muqtada Goes to Tehran
Middle East Foundation Blog
A busy weekend in the Middle East - the most important development being
Muqtada al-Sadr’s vow to defend "neighboring Islamic countries, including
Iran" if they were attacked by Israel or America. On a trip to Tehran,
where al-Sadr was feted by Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, the
radical Iraqi cleric declared that his "Mahdi Army is beyond the Iraqi
army. It was established to defend Islam." Juan Cole points out that,
ironically, al-Sadr has con! sistently been, the least pro-Iranian of the
major Iraqi political figures. In fact, I think that Cole is understating
the case: al-Sadr is opposed to SCIRI’s vision of a federal Iraq and is a
bit of an Arab chauvinist vis-a-vis Persian Shia. Therefore his trip to
Tehran and subsequent declaration that he will help defend Iran is even
more of a coup for the Islamic Republic - and another major headache for
Washington. By hosting al-Sadr, Iran is once again demonstrating to Iraqis
and the rest of the Middle East that it, not the U.S., holds all the cards
and has the most influence in the region...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=19889&s2=24>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=19889


Tribunal Indicts Bush
Jan. 20-22: International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity
Committed by the Bush Administration
Revolutionary Worker Online
Hundreds of people came together in New York City on the weekend of January
20-22 for a historic tribunal indicting the Bush administration for crimes
against humanity. This extraordinary event opened Friday evening at the
Riverside Church, where Harry Belafonte gave a riveting speech that brought
the audience to their feet. Among the ! witnesses and experts giving
testimony about Bush's crimes were Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, former head
of the Abu Ghraib prison; Craig Murray, former British ambassador to
Uzbekistan; Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector; Alan Berkman,
physician and professor of public health at Columbia University, and D.
McBride, who was left to drown in a New Orleans prison when Katrina struck.
The participation of people like this underscored the far-reaching
significance and impact of the Bush Crimes Tribunal...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=19874&s2=24>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=19874


Another nuke exercise -- your next 9/11?
Jerry Mazza
Catch this! Some fresh-brewed Homeland Insecurity published today on
WorldNetDaily. The Department of Defense (DOD) has scheduled its second
major, three-day exercise to combat nuclear terrorism, this time in the
Charleston, South Caroline area. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t know
Charleston had a nuclear terror problem, shades of Sept. 11, 2001, the day
on which some six drills were going, enough to distract anybody from doing
anything when the drills we! nt real...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=19887&s2=24>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=19887


When A Marine Speaks Truth to Power: Why I Stand By My Interview With Sgt.
Jimmy Massey
Paul Rockwell
...When I talked with him a year and a half ago, he was open, direct,
willing to answer any kind of question. But it was painful for the homeboy
from the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina to recall the horrific events
which changed his life forever. In the Sacramento Bee interview, "I Killed
Innocent People For My government," Massey not only expressed remorse for
killing innocent civilians, he called attention t! o the systematic war
crimes of American commanders, for whom Iraqi life is cheap. He talked
freely about the illegal use of cluster bombs, the effects of depleted
uranium, the pattern of checkpoint massacres. In short, he blew the whistle
on the Marine Corps to which he was devoted, with full knowledge that, like
all truthtellers in war, he would eventually face virulent attacks...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=19886&s2=24>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=19886


An American Hitler and his Gestapo
DOUG THOMPSON, Publisher, Capitol Hill Blue
The U.S. Department of Justice, led by Alberto "The Constitution is an
outdated document" Gonzales, wants to know if you’ve been looking at any
racy material on the Internet. Yahoo and MSN have already complied with
subpoenas from Gonzales’ storm troopers demanding records on who is using
their search services to look at porno sites on the Internet. Google, to
their credit, said no and is now caught in a tough legal fight against the
G! eorge Bush’s Gestapo...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=19885&s2=24>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=19885


Fitzgerald Eyes Plame-Niger Conspiracy
Prosecutor Probing Niger Forgeries, Possible Conspiracy in CIA Leak
Jason Leopold, t r u t h o u t
Over the past few months, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has been
questioning witnesses in the CIA leak case about the origins of the
disputed Niger documents referenced in President Bush's January 2003 State
of the Union address, according to several current and former State
Department officials who have testified in the case. The State Department
officials,! who spoke on condition of anonymity because some of the
information they discussed is still classified, indicated that the White
House had substantial motive for revealing undercover CIA operative Valerie
Plame's identity to reporters. They said the questions Fitzgerald asked
them about the Niger documents suggested to them that the special
prosecutor was putting together a timeline. They said they believe
Fitzgerald wants to show the grand jury how some people in the Bush
administration may have conspired to retaliate against former Ambassador
Joseph Wilson, an outspoken critic of the administration's pre-war Iraq
intelligence...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=19884&s2=24>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=19884


Saddam slams 'Iranian meddling'
Brisbane Courier Mail
OUSTED Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein blasted "Iranian meddling" in Iraq
during a five-hour jailhouse meeting with his lawyers, one of his defence
lawyers said in statements published today. "President Saddam complained of
being cut off from world news and told us 'I don't know what is happening
on the outside'," the head of Jordan's Bar Association, Saleh al-Armuti,
told the Al-Arab Al-Yawm newspaper. "We briefed him on major Iraqi, Arab
and international affair! s, led by the (Iraqi) resistance, the pressure on
Syria and the Iranian nuclear crisis", during the Sunday meeting, Mr Armuti
said...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=19871&s2=24>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=19871


Bush administration report defends spying, unconstrained executive powers
Joe Kay, WSWS
The Bush administration is responding to revelations of illegal government
spying by mounting a campaign to defend its actions, employing the same
arguments that have been used to justify a massive expansion of executive
powers on a number of different fronts. Far from retreating in the face of
media reports of the secret National Security Agency (NSA) program to spy
on US citizens, the administration has declared that it cann! ot be
constrained in carrying out these actions...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=19883&s2=24>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=19883


Tomgram: Vietnam Veterans on Civilian Casualties in Iraq
The Devastation We Inflict
Tom Engelhardt
...It's like most people don't seem to realize what devastation we inflict
there on a frequent basis. Today, for example, someone I know sent me some
"feel good pictures" about our troops in Iraq. You know: old ladies holding
up "Thanks, Mr. Bush" signs, smiling kids. Pictures she said that "just
don't make the news." For "don't make the news," how about some pictures of
kids that our bombs have eviscerate! d? Pictures of the sort that are found
in Where War Lives, a Photographic Journal of Vietnam by Dick Durrance
(intro by Ron Kovic). We should be the bright light to the world, spending
our tax monies on cures for malaria, not on killing innocents. Have we no
shame? From the bottom of my heart I wish to thank those who, like
yourself, are trying to bring an end to this war madness...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=19881&s2=24>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=19881


Professionals Fleeing Iraq As Violence, Threats Persist
Exodus of Educated Elite Puts Rebuilding at Risk
Doug Struck, Washington Post Foreign Service
...Iraq's top professionals -- doctors, lawyers, professors -- and
businessmen have been targeted by shadowy political groups for kidnapping
and ransom, as well as murder, some of them say. So many have fled the
country that Iraq is in danger of losing the core of skilled people it
needs most just as it is trying to build a newly independent society. "It'!
s creating a brain drain," said Amer Hassan Fayed, assistant dean of
political science at Baghdad University. "We could end up with a society
without knowledge. How can such a society make progress?"(...) "Our medical
schools and doctors are known all over the Arab world. The teaching care
was excellent, based on the British system. We were successful under Saddam
Hussein to start our own postgraduate studies, including many medical
specialties. Now they are ridding the country of all of this."...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=19880&s2=24>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=19880


The War on the American Republic: Lies and their Consequences
Melvin Hendrix
...On the other hand, looking at the gruesome images of human suffering
coming out of Iraq, and the continued apathy by US citizens to aggressively
act to end those horrors NOW rather than later, it's clear to me in 2006
that in modern warfare it's not truth that is the first casualty, but
reason, the power of being able to think in a logical and rational manner
as a basis of knowledge for taking appropriate action...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=19879&s2=24>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=19879


Speaking Out Against Wars of Aggression
Harry Belafonte Reaffirms a Proud Tradition
WILLIAM LOREN KATZ
Harry Belafonte did more than speak truth to a President who lied to
justify an invasion that has taken the lives of more than 2,000 Americans
and tens of thousands of Iraqis. He became part of a proud African American
tradition Frederick Douglass started in 1848. Frederick Douglass excoriated
President Polk's administration for "grasping ambition, atrocious
aggression, and wholesale murder of an unof! fending people" in "a
disgraceful, cruel, and iniquitous war," and demanded "the instant recall
of U.S. forces from Mexico." President Polk lied to justify a U.S. invasion
that seized land stretching from Texas to California for new slave states.
"I would not care if tomorrow, I should hear of the death of every man who
engaged in that bloody war," said Douglass. (Congressman Abraham Lincoln
also reviled Polk for ordering an invasion of an innocent neighbor based on
a lie.)...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=19878&s2=24>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=19878


The power of the Fatwa
Baghdad Dweller
...With one word from the clerics in Iran they can mobilize every Shiia on
earth to fight against the US, including Iraqi Shiia. If such Fatwa issued
by Iran, even Sistani can do nothing about it only to accept because the
Iranian spiritual leader is in much higher status in the Shiia pyramid
religious hierarchy , nothing happened yet and Shiia clerics are rallying
to give their support to Iran, here is Al-Sadr for example "Militia will
defend Iran" (shame on him, instead of! defending Iraq he want to defend
Iran)...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=19877&s2=24>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=19877


Civil War-Elect
Robert Dreyfuss
...So what’s left is an increasingly Iran-leading, Shiite fundamentalist
theocracy with a rump Kurdish republic attached to it. And you can put this
in your signs-of-things-to-come file: Muqtada Sadr, the cherubic (and
Rubenesque) militant young cleric, said on Sunday that the Mahdi Army,
which is now a big part of the Iraqi government to be, says that his forces
will fight alongside Iran’s if Iran is attacked by the United States over
its nuclear program. So it’s curtains for Bush! ’s "victory or defeat"
policy. The insurgency will strengthen, so that won’t help. The Shiites are
likely to move in an increasingly radical (and pro-Iranian direction), so
that won’t help. The violence will get worse...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=19876&s2=24>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=19876


More Bricks in the Road Leading to an Iran Attack
Kurt Nimmo, Another day in the empire
...In other words, Blair put millions of people on notice and essentially
told them the neocons, tagged up with the Brits and the Israelis, will kill
hundreds of thousands of people for the unpardonable sin of living in
countries (and of course following Islam) that happen to be in the way of
Greater Israel and, in the case of Iran, for the impertinence of creating
its own oil exchange (often called the Iranian bourse), a far ! worse crime
than Saddam Hussein’s conversion to the euro for Iraq’s oil exports in the
fall of 2000. In all fairness, it should be noted that Blair said it would
be a "terrible miscalculation" to bomb the dickens out of Iran, but then,
since the British PM is connected at the hip to the Straussian neocons, we
can put absolutely no faith in this statement...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=19890&s2=24>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=19890


Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Sunday, 22 January 2006
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board,
the Free Arab Voice
In a dispatch posted at 5:20pm Mecca time Sunday afternoon, Mafkarat
al-Islam reported that a short while earlier, US forces had stormed into a
maternity hospital in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, arresting one
27-year old Iraqi woman. The Mosul correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam
reported that US troops burst into the hospital and went into the maternity
w! ard where they arrested the Iraqi woman, claiming that her husband was
involved in armed Resistance activities against the American occupation...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=19869&s2=24>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=19869


Iran’s Oil-exchange threatens the Greenback
Mike Whitney
The Bush administration will never allow the Iranian government to open an
oil exchange (bourse) that trades petroleum in euros. If that were to
happen, hundreds of billions of dollars would come flooding back to the
United States crushing the greenback and destroying the economy. This is
why Bush and Co. are planning to lead the nation to war against Iran. It is
straightforward defense of the current global system and the continuing
dominance of the reserv! e currency, the dollar. The claim that Iran is
developing nuclear weapons is a mere pretext for war...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=19866&s2=24>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=19866


US Hunt for Carroll Highlights Iraqis' Sufferings
IslamOnline.net
In their search for kidnapped American journalist Jill Carroll, US
occupation forces in Iraq pay little, if any, attention to the grave
sufferings their hostile tactics cause to Iraqis. As with much of their
so-called "counter-insurgency war", US forces face the dilemma that their
tactics can further fuel anti-US sentiments in the occupied Arab country.
"My son was in the garden so I went around the back door to see what was
happening and suddenly ! American soldiers pointed rifles at us," Hamdiya
Sabri, 55, told Reuters of her son Jassim, 23. She was telling Reuters, in
a typical instance, how her Nazih family was humiliated and terrorized by
the US forces hunting for Carroll...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=19875&s2=24>Read the full article / Leggi
l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=19875




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information concerning occupied Iraq: news, analysis, documents and texts
of iraqi resistance available in Italian and English.





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