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The show must go on
Gabriele Zamparini, The cat’s dream
Justice at last! Saddam Hussein was convicted and sentenced to hang. From Washington to London the wolves are howling. Freedom! Freedom! Democracy! Democracy! The butchers and the whores are banqueting with the blood of the Iraqi children. Three million Iraqis have fled Iraq in the past three years. More than 650,000 have been killed in this war of liberation. The price was worth it, the butchers and the whores are howling. Freedom! Freedom! Democracy! Democracy! (…) Celebrated in that notorious bordello called “the green zone”, the Saddam Hussein “trial” brings the international community all the way back to the pre-Nuremberg era. It deletes the last 60 years of international law and restores the “legality” of committing the “supreme international crime” by the most barbarian death machine in human history: Corporate America. That show-trial (where everything was a surprise except the verdict) has been a dirty smokescreen to cover the monstrosity of this scandal happening before our eyes; the illegal invasion, occupation and annihilation of a sovereign and defenseless country. Butchers, clowns and whores have directed a miserable pornographic show against the legitimate president of Iraq while their masters have been plundering the country. In the dock Saddam Hussein was Iraq and Iraq was Saddam Hussein…
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Address at Balham Mosque, London
Felicity Arbuthnot
…In Iraq, the U.S. has a policy they call: ‘positive instability’ – only in America – and having brought in Iranian, Israeli and Israeli-trained militias, they are busy dividing a peoples who have, broadly, lived together for a thousand years. Having wrought daily mayhem, carnage and unimagnable heartbreak, in a country that was safe (unless you messed with the regime) and stable, they then claim that they must stay ‘until Iraq is capable of running itself.’ Actually, until they have moved into their fourteen bases, some the size of small cities, stategically placed along the oil fields and piplelines and secured the oil, which was to pay for the invasion and provide vast profits for Uncle Sam (or Uncle George W., and his pals.)…
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Update on Iraq’s mass kidnapping
Roads to Iraq
…The kidnapers took the hostages from the High-education Ministry, riding on the highway to an Area near “Iraqi National Stadium” which is near the Interior Ministry, their they got rid of the police, took it back to the Ministry [where they belong] and then continued riding different cars to Sadr-City, to reach Sadr-City they must pass through three American checkpoints (…) Iraqirabita also managed to contact on the released hostages and he said: They isolate women from men and searched all the floors of the building. It seems that the number of gunmen has been very significant to do these procedures, then they handcuffed us and blindfolded our eyes with adhesive tape, thye put us in cars, I do not know what, but seemed to me a small bus or similar. They asked me if I am a Sunni or Shiite, because my name is neutral [can be Sunni or Shiite…ie Mohhamed, Ali], I told them I am Shiite, they asked me to enumerate the twelve Shiite imams, tell their names, then they told me what the prayers conditions at the Shiites, I gave the answers because I have some knowledge, and I am ready for this moment, thank God .. After that the kidnappers shaved my beard, and somebody said “send him free”, when I went out, I knew I was in Sadr-City…
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Iraqi PM: Mass kidnapping not terrorism
AND
Iraq’s prime minister has blamed the mass kidnapping at an education ministry building on an inter-militia conflict. Nouri Maliki said yesterday’s broad-daylight kidnapping of dozens of people in Baghdad by suspected Shiite militiamen dressed as interior ministry commandos had nothing to do with terrorism. “What is happening is not terrorism, but the result of disagreements and conflict between militias belonging to this side or that,” he said during a meeting with President Jalal Talabani. Maliki, who leads a Shiite-dominated Iraqi government, appeared to play down the importance of the kidnappings, believed to be the work of the Mahdi Army, the heavily-armed al-Sadr militia that controls the Karradah district, the central Baghdad region where the abductions happened…
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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Tuesday, 14 November 2006
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice
In a dispatch posted at 11:25am Makkah time Tuesday morning, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that US occupation aircraft bombed and rocketed residential areas of the city of ar-Ramadi, about 110km west of Baghdad, on Monday night and Tuesday morning. The correspondent for Quds Press in ar-Ramadi reported that the Americans used heavy artillery and tanks to bombard various civilian residential areas of ar-Ramadi, beginning on Monday night and going on to the early hours of Tuesday. The correspondent wrote that the American bombardment targeted several residential areas of ar-Ramadi but hit the ad-Dubbat neighborhood with particular ferocity. The correspondent wrote that many houses were completely flattened by the American attack, collapsing the buildings over the heads of their residents, confined inside by the American-imposed nighttime curfew. The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported a source in the puppet police as saying that US warplanes struck the ad-Dubbat neighborhood of central ar-Ramadi late Monday night and again on Tuesday morning. Bombardment destroyed about 20 homes. A source in ar-Ramadi Hospital told Mafkarat al-Islam that his facility had so far received the bodies of 30 people killed in the American attack and 17 more wounded, but that the number was likely to rise because search and rescue operations were still underway and bodies were still being dug out of the rubble at that hour. That account was confirmed by Quds Press, which quoted Dr. Kamal al-’Ani of ar-Ramadi Hospital as saying that 30 bodies had been brought in and about 20 more had been admitted to the hospital with injuries, some of them sever…
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It Seems There is No Bottom to This Hole!
24 Steps to Liberty
More than a 100 Iraqi employees disappeared today in Baghdad when men wearing Iraqi police uniforms swarmed a Higher Education ministry building and ordered the employees out! How would a huge group of people, like this one, disappear? How could they be kidnapped? Where is the government? (…) When more than 80 men, who, according to witnesses, appeared to be Iraq police, come in 25 police cars and take hostage more than 100 male employees from the Scholarships and Cultural Relations department of the Higher Education ministry_ which is located in Karrada in central Baghdad_ and the 20-minute-long episode was not interrupted by the government’s security forces, WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? When all this happened and Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq’s Prime Minister, goes on T.V. and addresses his terrified nation and say “”what is happening is not terrorism,” one might ask: So, what is this? And how do you define terrorism Mr. PM? It is “the result of disagreements and conflict between militias belonging to this side or that,” he continued! So, Mr. PM knows it is the ethnic and sectarian-motivated militias who are doing this. But, he doesn’t believe it is terrorism…
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The Myth of the “Anfal Genocide”
Saddam Hussein Did Not “Kill the Kurds”
David Hungerford, Al-Moharer.net
Many crimes against Iraq have been justified by the demonization of Saddam Hussein. Invasion was justified by claims that he possessed “weapons of mass destruction,” had ties to al-Qaeda, and posed a threat to the territorial United States. The claims turned out to be lies. There were no “weapons of mass destruction” or programs to develop them. There were no ties to al-Qaeda. He did not threaten U.S. territory. Those who still support the occupation now say it was justified because Saddam Hussein was a “brutal dictator.” One of the main complaints against him is that “he killed the Kurds.” The usual reference is the Anfal campaign of the Iraqi army from February 23, 1988 to September 6, 1988. It is claimed that Anfal was a campaign of genocide. It can now be said that the “Anfal genocide” never happened. It is another lie. Ironically it is the second of the illegal U.S.-run “trials” of Mr. Hussein in Baghdad that allows this conclusion…
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“Death Squads” the documentary
Roads to Iraq
This is the Channel 4 documentary “The Death Squads”, screened about a week ago. Night after night death squads rampage through Iraq killing civilians. ‘The Death Squads’, the last film of the Iraq season, reveals that these organised killings are linked to the Iraqi government and to politicians who want to turn Iraq into a Shia state aligned to Iran. More worrying is that many these Iraqis politicians, who are behind the “Death Squads”, are received by the western countries and introduced to the public as heroes of freedom and champions democracy…
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US raid kills 30 in Ramadi
Reuters
Iraqi medical officials said at least 30 people were killed in violence overnight in the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Ramadi in what local police described on Tuesday as a US military raid (…) In one part of the district, a Reuters reporter saw several bodies of adult men still lying in a street, some being placed in coffins by relatives, and a number of body parts. One small structure was burnt out in that street. Local residents, who declined to be named for fear of reprisals, said US tanks had fired into the area and that those who died were not militants. They criticised the US forces and Shi’ite-led Iraqi government. Several said young men gathered to play a traditional street game had been attacked. Abdullah Salih, a doctor at Ramadi’s main hospital, told Reuters 35 dead had been brought in and that he believed other bodies had still not been retrieved because access to the area was limited by continuing military operations…
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Five police chiefs arrested after mass kidnapping
Paul Schemm
FIVE police chiefs have been detained after armed men in military-style uniforms seized scores of people from a Sunni-led ministry in broad daylight yesterday. The raid on a higher education ministry building in a normally peaceful area of the capital came as Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki faced growing criticism from his US backers for not doing more to rein in Shiite militias with alleged links to the security forces. The hostages seized from the ministry’s scientific research institute in the middle-class neighbourhood of Karrada included visitors as well as staff, in one of the largest mass abductions of Iraq’s sectarian dirty war. Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh acknowledged that the mass abduction was the work of militiamen who had infiltrated the interior ministry and were carrying out “organised” killings…
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Iraq hostages ‘freed’
Reuters
State television Iraqiya said most of the hostages seized at a Higher Education Ministry building today had been freed in operations by security forces in Baghdad. Iraqiya quoted an Interior Ministry spokesman as saying operations were continuing to free the remaining hostages (…) Amid new suspicions of police complicity in the latest and biggest mass kidnapping, the interior minister hauled in police chiefs to explain how dozens of gunmen swept into the Higher Education Ministry annexe, rounded up those inside, and drove them off in broad daylight toward a Shi’ite militia stronghold. Women were left behind after having their mobile phones confiscated. Some of those released earlier in the day said they were driven to Sadr City, a Shi’ite militia stronghold in eastern Baghdad, Higher Education Minister Abd Dhiab said…
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The New US Embassy Compound: A Shrub Grows in War Torn Baghdad
Steve Peacock, Globalresearch
The U.S. State Dept. may designate a one-million-dollar landscaping “allowance” for the New Embassy Compound (NEC) under construction in the heart of war-torn Baghdad, Iraq — and that’s just for the first year, according to a draft planning document located by The Peacock Report. The compound is within a 64-acre tract envisioned along the Tigris River, where the Iraqi government already has allocated a total of 104 acres for official U.S. business…
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NATO QUEBEC CONFERENCE: NATO Involved in flawed Afghanistan Bomb, Brute and Bribe Operation
Joan Russow (PhD), Global Compliance Research project
…Since 2001, most of the NATO countries have been belligerents in Afghanistan. The current “mission” described as a 3D – defense, development, and diplomacy- mission violates a fundamental international principle that a belligerent state should never be involved on the ground in reconstruction. NATO states are supporting a 3 B campaign: BOMB, BRUTE, and AND BRIBE OPERATION. Bombing a village, blasting in doors, brutally killing and wounding citizens and ignoring culture and then bribing with funds for reconstruction of hospitals to heal the victims are beyond any claims of legitimacy…
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Open Letter to Robert Gates
Stan Goff
…The Republicans appointed you to make Donald Rumsfeld their sacrifice after the election; and most of the Democrats will welcome you in order to manipulate their constituents into believing that the war can be managed until the defeat can be dropped in someone else’s lap. That’s the point of my open letter, sir. Donald Rumsfeld didn’t lose the war. It was never winnable. Not only that, the United States never had any legal or moral right to impose an armed occupation in Iraq. And the fundamental fact that the vast majority of Iraqis do not accept the occupation, and are willing to fight to resist it, cannot be changed by better management. Killing time until politicians can figure out how to save face is killing people — Iraqi and American. Every day that goes by with this US occupation distorting the political landscape of Iraq is forcing Iraqi groups to deal with one another in light of who is and who is not with the Americans, instead of dealing with one another as Iraqis… as the residents of Iraq. In other words, sir, the American occupation of Iraq is the primary source of inter-Iraqi bloodshed…
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DAILY WAR NEWS FOR TUESDAY, November 14, 2006
Today in Iraq
Iraqi medical officials said at least 30 people were killed in violence overnight in Ramadi in what local police described on Tuesday as a U.S. military raid. Local residents, who declined to be named for fear of reprisals, said U.S. tanks had fired into the area and that those who died were not militants. They criticised the U.S. forces and Shi’ite-led Iraqi government. Several said young men gathered to play a traditional street game had been attacked. Abdullah Salih, a doctor at Ramadi’s main hospital, told Reuters 35 dead had been brought in and that he believed other bodies had still not been retrieved because access to the area was limited by continuing military operations (…) Gunmen wearing Iraqi police commando uniforms kidnapped up to 150 staff and visitors in a lightning raid on a government research institute in downtown Baghdad on Tuesday, the largest mass abduction since the start of the U.S. occupation. Iraq’s higher education minister instantly ordered all universities closed until security improvements are made…
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How to say ‘NO’ to peace?
Sabbah’s blog
So, who can volunteer to tell the Israeli nation that their “top ranked elected terrorist” (a.k.a. Olmert) don’t want peace with Palestinians? The humble man announced that he remained attached to the internationally-backed “roadmap to peace” based on Bush’s vision of a Palestinian state living side-by-side with Israel, which by the way he never followed. (eg. settlements expansion and continuous invasions of occupied lands). I guessed that a couple of days, and as expected, Palestinians agreed to an international peace conference with Israel, but Olmert says that BUSH don’t want Israel to agree to that. Yes, you read it right, Bush told Olmert, “Ya Habibi, No to International Peace Convention. Focus on War on Iran.” In return, Olmert confirmed that his stance against an international peace convention was backed by the American president. Funny, isn’t it? They are just tossing the ball between them because they will not benefit from something called PEACE!…
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Self-help fronts reported to be forming to fight the Iranians
Arablinks.blogspot.com
…Today the news service Quds Press reports on something similar in Diyala province, directly north of Baghdad. There have been reports of AlQaeda/Islamic Emirate activity in that region, but this effort is described as a defence not against AlQaeda or the Islamic emirate, but rather against the Iranian influence. The report says: “Ten political and civic groups have formed a broad front to protect Diyala from Iranian influence, which has turned the city of Diyala into one of the most violent in the country, after Baghdad”. The announcement said the new coalition “will take upon itself the protection of Diyala from Iranian control” (…) The initial announcement said the security situation in the province is intolerable, with problems including killing of patriotic citizens by both the forces of the Interior Ministry and the Defence Ministry of the government, so that not only has civic life has for all intents and purposes come to a halt, but people are frightened even in their own homes…
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CIA acknowledges existence of presidential order authorizing it to detain, interrogate terror suspects overseas
RAW STORY
In response to an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit, the CIA has finally acknowledged the existence of a presidential order authorizing the agency to detain and interrogate terror suspects overseas. “For more than two years, the CIA had refused to either deny or confirm the existence of the documents and had argued in court that doing so could jeopardize national security,” the ACLU notes in a press release received by RAW STORY…
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Iraqi Spokesman Calls Al-Sadr a Man of Restraint
Mark Finkelstein, CNSNews.com Correspondent
A quick withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq “would be a great gift to terrorist groups,” a spokesman for Iraq’s Shi’ite-led government said here. Dr. Ali Aldabbagh said it was the “responsibility” of the entire international community, including countries in the Middle East, to help Iraq quell the insurgency. In a one-on-one interview with Cybercast News Service Monday, Aldabbagh also described leading anti-American militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr as a man of restraint – on the same day that U.S. forces reportedly launched an assault on followers of the controversial Shi’ite cleric. Aldabbagh, chief spokesman for the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, said Iraqis were trying to assume control of their own security, but that Iraqi security forces were currently unable to do the job alone. That was evident again on Tuesday, when gunmen – presumably Shi’ites – kidnapped more than 100 men from a Baghdad research institute run by Iraq’s higher education ministry. Those abducted, reportedly all or mostly Sunnis, included employees, guards, and even visitors to the building. According to press reports, the gunmen were seen checking the men’s identity cards: “They picked only the Sunni employees. They even took the man who was just delivering tea,” an eyewitness told Reuters…
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Principles Over Realism
The Zero-State Solution
Kim Petersen, www.dissidentvoice.org
… Gordon sees the one-state solution as ideal, but finds the “realistic” solution is two states. “A one-state solution won’t pass,” said Gordon. It is noteworthy, and of great concern, how the proffered reasoning or realism overrides (exculpates) principles. This argument based on a perceived realism (reality depends on the observer, hence the aphorism “perception is reality”) is problematic. The argument could well be used against Israel in the future. The logic Gordon posits is that if a people become refugees and they have sufficient wherewithal to eventually steal the territory of another people, then, with the passage of time, the reality of the situation will be such that the land seized will belong to the thieves. What is to stop land seizure then? Is this not a recipe for a never-ending cycle of conquest by the powerful? The reality, for this writer, is that if someone is forcefully expelled from their home, they will likely fight until they get their home back; otherwise, the struggle will pass to their children and to their grandchildren…
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Up to 150 people kidnapped from Baghdad research institute in largest mass kidnapping since the start of the U.S. occupation
Associated Press
Gunmen dressed as police commandos kidnapped up to 150 staff and visitors in a lightning raid on a Baghdad research institute Tuesday, the largest mass abduction since the start of the U.S. occupation. Iraq’s higher education minister immediately ordered all universities closed until security improvements are made, saying he was “not ready to see more professors get killed. “I have only one choice which is to suspend classes at universities. We have no other choice,” Abed Theyab said in an address to parliament. Theyab said he had repeatedly petitioned for more university security from the ministries of defense and interior, who command the police, but had received none…
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