[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'...

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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 th! e 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...

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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 st! orage,
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...

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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 intervi! ewer 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...

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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...

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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...

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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 a! nd 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...

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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...

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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 ex! ercise "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."...

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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-J! aafari refused, insisting he wanted to take his case
to parliament, which must approve the new prime minister and his cabinet by
a majority vote...

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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, beating!
s 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...

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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...

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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
expor! ts — 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"...

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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 repo! rted 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...

<http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=22231&s2=05>Read the full article / Leggi
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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 "disastrou! s 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"...

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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 purpo!
se - 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...


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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."...

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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...

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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 t! hing," 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...

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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 Presiden! t (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...

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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...

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