William Bowles.info

IRAQ: Women Miss Saddam
By Abdu Rahman and Dahr Jamail*
March 12, 2010 – Under Saddam Hussein, women in government got a year’s maternity leave; that is now cut to six months. Under the Personal Status Law in force since Jul. 14, 1958, when Iraqis overthrew the British-installed monarchy, Iraqi women had most of the rights that Western women do. Now they have Article 2 of the Constitution: “Islam is the official religion of the state and is a basic source of legislation.” Sub-head A says “No law can be passed that contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam.” Under this Article the interpretation of women’s rights is left to religious leaders – and many of them are under Iranian influence. “The U.S. occupation has decided to let go of women’s rights,” Yanar Mohammed who campaigns for women’s rights in Iraq says. “Political Islamic groups have taken southern Iraq, are fully in power there, and are using the financial support of Iran to recruit troops and allies. The financial and political support from Iran is why the Iraqis in the south accept this, not because the Iraqi people want Islamic law.”…

Read the full article: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=64109

Afghanistan: Nato accused of cover up over killing of pregnant women
By JEROME STARKEY in Khataba
March 12, 2010 – THE survivors of a night raid in eastern Afghanistan in which five people, including two pregnant women, died have accused Nato of trying to cover up the atrocity. In a statement issued after the raid last month, it was claimed Nato staff found the women’s bodies “tied up, gagged and killed”, and hidden in a room. The statement was headed: “Joint force operating in Gardez makes gruesome discovery”. However, more than a dozen survivors, local officials, police chiefs and a religious leader interviewed at and around the scene of the attack maintain the women were killed by the same unknown US and Afghan gunmen who killed two male relatives and another woman during a botched pre-dawn assault on a policeman’s compound a few miles outside Gardez, the capital of Paktia province…

Read the full article: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=64120

Palestinians mark 1000 days of the siege
EXCLUSIVE PICTURES
Middle East Monitor
March 2, 2010 – Palestinians mark 1000 days of the siegePalestinians in Gaza have held a candlelit vigil to mark the 1000th day of the siege of Gaza. Hundreds of people gathered at the “Square of the Unknown Soldier” in Gaza City on 11 March to remind the world of the immoral blockade imposed by Israel, with Egyptian support. Under the slogan “Enough is Enough – End the Siege”, Jamal Al-Khudari, the President of the Popular Committee Against the Siege, lit the first candle of many that formed the number “1000″. Hundreds of men, women and children followed suit, each lighting a candle, each with their own memory, each with their own loss…

Read the full article: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=64115

Israeli Settlement Expansions Continue
Stephen Lendman
March 12, 2010 – Currently, around 500,000 Jews reside illegally in over 120 West Bank and East Jerusalem settlements as well as dozens of outposts. Their numbers grow daily despite occasional pledges to curtail or slow them, the latest last November when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared a 10 month freeze, calling it a move to “help launch meaningful negotiations to reach a historic peace agreement that would finally end the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.” Never mind Israel’s history of past peace process futility because all previous efforts were more pretense than real, or as some Palestinians say – How can they negotiate in good faith without a willing partner? They’ve never had one and don’t in Netanyahu, an extremist hard-right zealot…

Read the full article: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=64110

UPDATE 4 – Iraq’s Elections.
Layla Anwar
March 12, 2010 – …A first version of this AP report had a whole paragraph on Stevenson from the EU who stated that the amount of fraud that took place rendered these elections useless. This was ALSO picked up by
Al-Sharqiya. Stevenson mentioned a very highly placed female employee of the HEC caught changing the vote results in favor of Al-Maliki’s bloc. Steveneson then contacted the UN observer and asked that the final results be presented with no further delay. For some reason, that same AP report has changed and the whole paragraph about Stevenson’s statement has been erased. Al Iraqiya candidates also have a list of serious complaints/charges about Fraud taking place, echoing Stevenson’s “uselessness of elections” — “rigging to an extent that would render the elections useless for reflecting the voice of the Iraqis.”…

Read the full article: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=64080

Iraq Is Still Under Sanctions…
Layla Anwar
March 12, 2010 – I am going to post this just released video on the Sanctions, that are still in place…7 years later. Sanctions are still in place, you read me right… Then the video talks about the sanctions still being applied, since there is fear of Iraq developing weapons of mass destructions – believe it or not !!! even though the sanctions have practically destroyed Iraq’s economy, making it totally dependent on food imports and the worst hit sector today is Iraq’s agriculture. The cost of sanctions for this “ flourishing democracy” is too high …with an unemployment rate not of 18% as the synopsis to this video says —but a rate of 50 to 60%. Get your facts right Al-Jazeera ! And am not holding my breath…

Read the full article: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=64113

Haitian president at White House: US military occupation to continue
By Hiram Lee
March 12, 2010 – Haitian President René Préval met Barack Obama at the White House Wednesday to discuss the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Haiti following the January 12 earthquake that killed up to a quarter of a million people. In a private meeting, Préval made an appeal for continued financial support for the relief efforts in his beleaguered country. Préval and Obama held a joint press conference in the White House Rose Garden following the closed-door meeting. The remarks made by the two leaders revealed indifference to the suffering of the Haitian people and a deliberate distortion of the actual response by the US and Haitian governments to the crisis…

Read the full article: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=64119

Iraq opposition alleges ‘flagrant’ election fraud
AFP
March 12, 2010 — A senior member of Iraq’s main secular opposition bloc on Friday protested of blatant fraud in favour of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki during Iraq’s general election last weekend…”There has been clear and flagrant fraud,” said Intisar Allawi, a senior candidate in ex-prime minister Iyad Allawi’s Iraqiya bloc, the main rival to Maliki’s State of Law Alliance. “There were persons who manipulated or changed the figures to increase the vote in favour of the State of Law Alliance.” She said that Iraqiya’s own election observers for last Sunday’s poll had found ballot papers in garbage dumps in the northern disputed province of Kirkuk…

Read the full article: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=64114

Israeli police launched arrest campaign among Palestinians
Jerusalem Center for Social & Economic Rights
March 12, 2010 – Israeli occupation authorities conducted a campaign of arrests in occupied Jerusalem, early yesterday morning. In Sur Baher, Israeli police arrested Tareq Bkeirat, 23, who works as a guard inside al-Aqsa mosque from his home. The police confiscated his computer and some documents. Bkeirat was released before one-and-a-half month after serving eight months in prison. He got married before two months. The arrest campaign included Fadi al-Ju’beh, Ahmad al-Jalad, Wisam Sider, Muhammad Muhalwes, Iyad Qiresh, Amar al-Hawash, Omar Muhaisen, Yihya Dweik, Ala’ Fakhouri and Rami Fakhouri…

Read the full article: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=64121

Rove ‘proud’ detainees were waterboarded
Agence France-Presse
March 12, 2010 – A top aide to former US president George W. Bush has defended the use of harsh interrogation techniques, insisting he is “proud” of the methods and they had helped prevent terrorist attacks. Karl Rove also told the BBC in an interview broadcast Thursday that he did not believe waterboarding — a simulated drowning method — amounted to torture. “I’m proud that we used techniques that broke the will of these terrorists and gave us valuable information that allowed us to foil plots,” he said…

Read the full article: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=64122

Iraq’s Political Prisoners.
Layla Anwar
March 12, 2010 – following are excerpts from an Urgent Appeal addressed to Ban Ki Moon of the United Nations on behalf of the hundreds of Iraqi detainees in US custody. While the Americans claim that the number of Iraqi detainees in their camps is not more than 10’000 or so, maybe even less, the reality is far different…Moreover I would like to add these secret prisons in Baghdad and its provinces are run by the sectarian Iraqi forces and the KRG. It is in fact very difficult to know the exact number of political prisoners in Iraq. And by the way, torture and rape are systematic in ALL of those dungeons, including the American ones…

Read the full article: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=64104

Israel imposes West Bank closure
Ma’an News
March 12, 2010 – Israeli forces imposed a general closure on the West Bank beginning Friday morning, the army said. The decision means those Palestinians with permits will generally not be permitted to access Jerusalem over the weekend. The move comes in accordance with directives of the Israeli minister of defense, Ehud Barak, following situation assessments, the army said in a statement explaining the closure…

Read the full article: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=64106

West Bank rises up in a new ‘white’ intifada
The Independent
March 12, 2010 – Ehab Barghouti would not have been at the demonstration at all if his father Asdal had had his way. Asdal found his son, 14, on the road from their village of Beit Rima and ordered him into the car. “I told him: ‘You shouldn’t go, you’re too young.’ He told me: ‘I want to resist.’ I said: ‘Do you want me to see you on TV?’” But when Asdal stopped at a local garage and went in to talk to the mechanic, Ehab made his escape. A few hours later he was unconscious in intensive care in Ramallah’s main hospital, a rubber-coated steel bullet having penetrated his skull. He had been standing among a crowd of youths, well inside the nearby village of Nabi Saleh, on a hillside carpeted with the first daisies and wild flowers of spring. Many of the youths were throwing stones at an unfinished house 25 metres away which had been occupied by armed Israeli Border Police some 15 minutes earlier…

Read the full article: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=64112

Clashes erupt near Al-Aqsa Mosque
Ma’an News
March 12, 2010 – Israeli forces clashed with Palestinians near the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem on Friday. Several Palestinians were reported injured, but it was not immediately clear how seriously. Mosque security guards and Al-Aqsa Foundation officials said less than usual numbers of worshipers were permitted to enter the holy site, and that less than 2,000 attended Friday prayers, which usually draw thousands more…

Read the full article: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=64111

Palestinians report to Arab Health Ministers on Israeli actions against patients and hospitals.
Middle East Monitor
March 12, 2010 – The Ministers of Health of the Arab states have been given a detailed report on the situation of health provision in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The report was presented by the Palestinian Health Minister, Fathi Abu Maghly, during a meeting of the Ministers of Health at the 34th session of their council in the Arab League headquarter in Cairo. The agenda included a discussion of Israeli actions that impede the work of medical personnel working in Palestine…

Read the full article: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=64107

Video: UN sanctions on Iraq still in force
Aljazeera.English
March 12, 2010 – Iraq is one of the richest countries in the world in terms of natural resources, and yet it suffers from a dismal economy with an unemployment rate of up to 18 per cent. The country’s economy slipped under Saddam Hussein’s long rule and nose-dived further in the anarchic years that followed the US-led invasion in 2003. But even now, despite much optimism over a stable democratic future in Iraq, several UN trade sanctions applied in the early 1990’s during Hussein’s reign – are still in effect…

Read the full article: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=64108

13 Honor Killings in Two Months in Palestine
Kawther Salam
March 12, 2010 – Seven women were killed in the Palestinian territories because of “honor killings” in the first month of the year 2010. These news were released by Palestinian human rights organizations interested in women’s issues, but according to my sources, this statistic was falsified and the real number of women who were murdered, only in the cities of Ramallah and Hebron since the beginning of the year 2010 has exceeded 13. The sources confirm that these seven women, who were registered in the statistics of human rights organizations as victims of “honor killing”, were left in public streets and in fields after being killed and there was no chance for the perpetrators to hide the crime…

Read the full article: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=64117

U.S. gave Israel green light for East Jerusalem construction
By Akiva Eldar, Haaretz Correspondent
March 12, 2010 – The apology offered by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Interior Minister Eli Yishai recalls the joke about the servant who pinched the king’s bottom. En route to the gallows, the servant apologized: He thought it was the queen’s bottom. The statement issued by Netanyahu’s bureau said that in light of the ongoing dispute between Israel and the United States over construction in East Jerusalem, the plans for new housing in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood should not have been approved this particular week. It also said the premier had ordered Yishai to draft procedures that would prevent a recurrence. In other words, Yishai is welcome to submit more plans for Jewish construction in East Jerusalem next week, when U.S. Vice President Joe Biden will no longer be here. Based on Biden’s reaction, it seems that he (and, presumably, his boss) has decided that it is better to leave with a few sour grapes than to quarrel with the vineyard guard…

Read the full article: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=64097

Ayad Allawi accuses Nouri al-Maliki’s group of fraud in bid to retain power
Oliver August
March 12, 2010 – The threat of violent protests loomed over Iraq yesterday as the country’s leading opposition politician said that there was widespread fraud in last week’s elections. Ayad Allawi told Western officials that aides to Nouri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister, had hidden ballot papers and falsified computer records in an effort to retain power. “They are stealing the votes of the Iraqi people,” his spokesman told a press conference called to set out the main claims…

Read the full article: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=64081

Military Resistance 8C8: Not Another Life – 12 March 2010
Thomas F. Barton
U.S. Marines carry a member of their unit, who was wounded minutes earlier in a rocket-propelled grenade attack, to a U.S. Army Task Force Pegasus Black Hawk medevac helicopter, in Marjah, Helmand province, southern Afghanistan, Feb. 13, 2010. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)

Read the full article: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=64123

Military Resistance 8C7: No Help For Zabul – 12 march 2010
Thomas F. Barton
No Help For Zabul: “Taliban Fighters Are Moving In”.
Occupation Command Abandoning Most Of Afghanistan To The Resistance: Only 80 of 364 Districts Considered “A Priority”. 40,000 U.S., Foreign And Afghan Troops To Concentrate “In One 60-Mile Stretch Of The Helmand River Valley”.

Read the full article: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=64118