30 September 2007

30/9/07

Uncovered Violations Against the Detainees
Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq (AMSI)
Major Criminal Office called as – Criminal Investigation Office- related to Police Commandership in Salahaddin province as killed one of the detainee from the same city after torturing him awfully. They have tortured him by using electricity on his body and hitting him with hard bodies out of investigation methods. This torture was far away from all heaven and constitutional laws which has to be applied to the suspected arrests and others. The forces of this office (known by all people of the city with their terrible and awful practice inside and outside of the headquarter) arrested Usama Ahmad Daham Abu Al-Ishaq as suspected on Wednesday 18 September 2007 at 01:00 midnight taking him to the head office in the presidency place. Next day on Wednesday 19 September 2007 at 11:00 his dead body was delivered to the forensic medicine in Tikrit General Hospital. Observation on his body showed the electricity signs and badly hit with injuries on his body claiming that the suspected tried to escape from the office guard on the way to the river. He jumped from the mountain, and then fell on the ground. He was dead upon with the broken bones in his body…

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Iraq: Genocide by All Definition
Gideon Polya, MWC NEWS
Excess deaths (avoidable deaths, deaths that should not have happened) provide a key, fundamental, bottom-line measure of the human consequences of human actions. Excess deaths can be violence-related (from bombs and bullets) or non-violent (due to deprivation). Recent authoritative estimates of violence-related post-invasion excess deaths in occupied Iraq (as of September 2007) are of 1.2 million (from the expert UK ORB polling company) and 0.8 million (from the top US Bloomberg School of Public Health group at Johns Hopkins University who estimated 0.6 million violent deaths as of July 2006)…

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Scenes From An Iraki Childhood (American “Regrets” Edition)
Mohammed Ibn Laith, Gorilla’s Guides
The Americans bombarded a civilian apartment block at No: 139 60th street, Al Saha in Dora (South Baghdad) on Friday morning. They started at around 1 a.m. continuing for several hours. Aswat Al Iraq’s official source said that they killed eight people and wounded seven others. Residents told Aswat Al Iraq that the Americans killed ten and wounded ten others. All of the dead and wounded were civilians. While an official at Al-Yarmouk hospital told AFP that 13 people — seven men, two women and four children — were killed and 10 men and a woman were wounded in the air strike. He said all the casualties were civilians. The American military said they “regretted” if women and children were killed. That’s the headline that AFP gave their report. US regrets if women and children killed in Baghdad raid Photo 1: All of the dead and wounded caused by the American bombing of Al Saha in Dora were civilians. Among the civilians wounded by the American bombing was this boy. The doctors in Al Yarmouk told Reuters they had had to amputate his leg..

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The futility of betting on US for Peace in Palestine
News Analysis by Khalid Amayreh
While logistical preparations are underway for the November peace conference, reportedly to take place in Annapolis, there are few signs, if any, suggesting that the much-heralded American sponsored effort will succeed in achieving what dozens of previous conferences, meetings, and initiatives failed to achieve. In fact, nearly all key players who would participate in the conference or be invited to it are voicing deep skepticism as to the prospects of a breakthrough, mainly due to Israel’s persistent refusal to give up stolen Palestinian land and allow the thoroughly tormented Palestinian refugees, uprooted by ethnic cleansing, to return home…

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Mother of Palestinian captive dies after IPA denied her visit to her son
Palestinian Information Center
The Nafha society that caters for Palestinian prisoners and ex-prisoners affairs has announced Friday the death of mother of Palestinian captive Salamah Aziz Marie after the Israeli prison authority (IPA) denied her a visit to her son. According to Marie’s brother, the mother was scheduled to visit her son last Monday, but the IPA turned her back home without meeting her son. Under international laws and conventions on prisoners, family visits are sanctioned right granted to all captives without discrimination; yet the Israeli occupation government defied those laws and conventions and flagrantly denied Palestinian captives such visits without being punished by the international community (…) Close to 200 Palestinian captives had died in Israeli jails since 1967, most of them due to deliberate medical neglect on the part of the IPA, records of the PA ministry on prisoners’ affairs confirmed. Local and foreign human rights and legal organizations had earlier accused the Israeli occupation government of using Palestinian captives as “guinea pigs” to test Israeli new drug products…

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Julien Salingue interview: Rebuilding Palestinian Resistance and Solidarity
Peacepalestine
…Regardless of the current evolution of the situation in Palestine, I think that it is essential to remember that the most fundamental contradiction that exists right now, as it always has, is the one between the Zionist project and the national rights of the Palestinian people. The establishment of a Jewish State in the greatest possible portion of Palestine meant and always means colonisation, expulsion and repression. This is the structural contradiction, which includes the current situation with it. Evidently this does not mean that things shall be simplified, and the blame for the dead end shall be put also on the contradictions in the Palestinian “camp”, especially in the current moment, but these contradictions must be thought about within the general framework of the negation of rights for the Palestinian people that is part of the Zionist project…

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The Blackwater massacre: the victim’s story
Eli Stephens, Left I on the News
Lots of coverage in the media about the most recent Blackwater massacre of 11 Iraqi civilians, the banning/un-banning of them, etc. Little to no coverage of the victims. McClatchy’s Leila Fadel (discussed here a few days ago) went to meet with them, and writes about them on her blog (not yet published as far as I can tell): It all starts to run together sometimes. But the things that will stay with me over my break are Afrah’s tears. I sat in her home this past week to talk about her mother Ghania. Afrah was the woman’s favorite among her eight children. Often her sisters would complain that she and Ghania were always together. Afrah talked about her kindness, Ghania would hide away her favorite foods for her or pick up clothes or trinkets from the market that reminded her of her daughter. Ghania is gone, killed at the back of a bus by what witnesses said were bullets from Blackwater security guards on Sept. 16 in Nisour square…

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Hamas: Dugard statement reveals UN and Quartet’s bias in favor of Israel
Palestinian Information Center
The Hamas Movement has appreciated the statement of John Dugard, the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, in which he accused the UN and the international Quartet Committee of bias in favor of Israel and of ignoring reports on Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people. Sami Abu Zuhri, the Hamas spokesman in the Gaza Strip, said in a press release on Sunday that the statement reveal the UN and its Secretary General’s bias in favor of Israel including giving a blind a eye to its crimes against the Palestinian people. The statement also exposes the Quartet Committee’s role in favor of Israeli occupation, which proves that it is no mediator but rather was found to serve occupation and its goals, he said…

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The insidious American implanting of sectarianism – through corruption
Imad Khadduri, Free Iraq
…”Note, in pages 14 and 15 [of the above U.S. Embassy report] how Corruption cases are divided into Shia/Sunni/Kurd. Since when do belief and ethnic background make a difference when it comes to stealing? Perhaps this demonstrates how the State Dept is preparing for partitioning Iraq?” As for the the Democratic US Senator Joseph Biden who championed partitioning Iraq into three separate regions — Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni — with a central government in Baghdad since May 1, 2006 and whose bill was passed by the Senate on September 27, 2007: “I am a Zionist,” stated Senator Biden. “You don’t have to be a Jew to be a Zionist.”

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Why Clinton is Culpable
Iraq’s WMD Myth
ANDREW COCKBURN, CounterPunch
A former senior UN diplomat has revealed to me details of how, just over 10 years ago, the Clinton administration deliberately sabotaged UN weapons inspections in Iraq. American officials were fearful that Iraq would be officially certified as weapons-free, a development that was seen as a political liability for Bill Clinton. Thus the stage was set for the manufacture of the Iraqi WMD myth as the excuse for George Bush’s catastrophic invasion of Iraq. It was March 1997. For six years the UN inspectors had been probing the secrets of Saddam’s weapons programs, in the process destroying huge quantities of chemical munitions and other production facilities. To enforce Saddam’s cooperation, Iraq was subject to crushing sanctions…

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UNINFORMED COMMENT
Malcom Lagauche
…In Cole’s latest column, he assesses the recent transcripts of a conversation between the former Prime Minister of Spain, Jose Maria Aznar and George Bush shortly before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. (At least the people of Spain were smart enough to vote Aznar out of office and his successor immediately pulled Spain out of the “coalition of the willing” in the participation of sending soldiers to Iraq. The idiotic U.S. population kept Bush in power in the 2004 elections.) Information came forth that Saddam Hussein had told George Bush that he would step down as president of Iraq if he was granted safe access to another country. Bush said he turned down the request. Talk about re-writing history. Before the invasion, Bush publicly said that Saddam and his family could safely leave Iraq within 48 hours to avert the U.S. from hunting him down. Of course, Saddam refused. Prior to this “offer,” Saddam Hussein told the world that he would never leave Iraq. Now, instead of history stating that Bush, in the good old tradition of the Wild West, gave Saddam an ultimatum to “get out of Dodge before sundown,” the official story has been changed to say that Bush would not allow Saddam to leave Iraq. It is odd that few have questioned this 180-degree turn in historical recognition…

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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Saturday, 29 September 2007
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice. www.freearabvoice.org
In a dispatch posted at 10:02pm Makkah time Saturday night, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that the US military admitted that two of its soldiers had been killed in separate attacks to the south and north of the occupied Iraqi capital. Mafkarat al-Islam reported the US army as acknowledging that one of its soldiers was killed by small arms fire in an attack to the south of Baghdad. The US military also announced that one of its Special Forces soldiers was killed by Resistance gunfire in Diyala Province, northeast of Baghdad, on Saturday. In keeping with the American practice of concealing information regarding the nature and extent of US casualties in Iraq, the US statements failed to provide any further details as to where and under what conditions the American troops were killed…

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Sadrists, Fadhila deny dialogue to form parliamentary bloc
Voices of Iraq
The Sadrists, or Iraqis loyal to Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, and al-Fadhila (Virtue) Party, denied on Sunday engaging in any dialogue with other groups to form a new parliamentary bloc. “What is going on now is endeavors to try to bring views closer, but the Sadrists are not planning to enter into any blocs at present,” Nassar al-Rubaie, the spokesman for the Sadrists, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI). Ezz al-Din al-Dawla, a member of parliament from the Sunni Iraqi Accordance Front (IAF), had said on Saturday that the IAF, Fadhila, the Sadrists, the former premier Iyad Allawi’s Iraqi National List (INL), Saleh al-Motlak’s Sunni National Dialogue Front (NDF), and other members representing the ethnic Turkoman and religious Yazidi minorities in parliament have held consultations to form a parliamentary bloc…

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Parliamentary blocs negotiate setting up expanded front
Voices of Iraq
MP Izz al-Din al-Dawlah said on Saturday the parliamentary blocs of Accordance, Fadhila (Virtue), Sadrist, Iraqi National List, National Dialogue, Turkmani, and Yezidist had made progress in negotiations to establish an expanded front within the House of the Representatives to combat the U.S. Senate resolution on dividing Iraq. “Great progress has been made in the negotiations since the blocs have realized that the latest security and political developments require a unified decision,” Al-Dawlah, from the Sunni Accordance Front, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI). The negotiating blocs represent Arab Sunnis (the Accordance and National Dialogue), Shiites (Fadhila and Sadrists), secular (Iraqi National List), Turkmans, and Yezidists. “If the government does not handle the security situation and the services rendered to citizens, we will try to form a constitutional government through agreement within these blocs,” said the Sunni legislator noting, “so far we did not discussed a no-confidence-vote against Maliki’s cabinet.”…

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Iran’s parliament names US army and CIA “terrorist”
Xinhua
Iranian lawmakers on Saturday branded the US troops and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as terrorist groups, according to a statement released by the Iranian state media. The statement said that more than 200 Iranian parliament members (MPs) labeled the US army and the CIA as terrorists since they support terrorism. It is apparently a sharp reaction tit for tat over the decisions of their US counterparts calling for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as a “foreign terrorist organization.”…

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Weekly Report: On Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory No. 38/2007 ( 20 – 26 September 2007 )
Palestinian Center for Human Rights – PCHR
# 13 Palestinians, including a child, were killed by IOF in the Gaza Strip.
# 5 of the victims were extra-judicially executed by IOF.
# 47 Palestinians, including 12 children and a journalist, were wounded by IOF.
# 30 of these Palestinians, including 6 children, were wounded by IOF in Beit Hanoun.
# IOF shelled space areas and agricultural lands in the Gaza Strip.
# IOF conducted 33 incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank and 4 ones into the Gaza Strip.
# IOF arrested 85 Palestinian civilians in the West Bank and 4 ones in the Gaza Strip.
# IOF razed 258 donums of agricultural land and demolished 23 houses in the Gaza Strip…

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Iraq and the Iowa primary
Arablinks
Preachers including those representing the Ayatollah Sistani warned in their Friday sermons yesterday against foreign interventions aimed at breaking up Iraq, implicitly and sometimes explicitly denouncing the Biden plan. But at the same time, a spokesman for the major Sistani client SIIC said the mention of federalism in the “National Pact” announced last week by Tareq al-Hashemi was a positive step and one that should be subject to further inter-party discussions and elaboration. In other words: The three-part federalism scheme is alive and well as a GreenZone collaboration, with the new, tentative, involvement of Hashemi and his Islamic Party (Sunni). But the foreign trumpeting of such a scheme is denounced as a scheme for partition. The apparent contradiction is easily understood. It isn’t that anyone has ever doubted American influence on the Green Zone politicians like Hakim and Hashemi. What is new with Biden is the blatant nature of the foreign pressure for a dismemberment of the country…

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88% of Kurdistan people consider president’s post step toward establishing state- survey
Voices of Iraq
A survey of 1,000 individuals carried out by an independent Kurdish organization revealed that 88% of those questioned consider the introduction of the Kurdistan president’s post as a “step toward establishing an independent Kurdish state.” “The sample included people of different ages, classes, religions, factions, denominations and ethnicities: Kurds, Turkmen, Chaldoassyrians, Arabs, and others. It also included people of both sexes and covered the region’s three provinces: Arbil, Sulaimaniya and Duhuk, in addition to neighborhoods with a Kurdish majority in the northern provinces of Kirkuk and Ninewa,” according to the survey conducted by the Point Organization for Opinion Polls and Strategic Studiesand received by the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI) on Saturday…

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Blackwater and Private Military Firms in Iraq
The Good, the Bad and the Iraqi
WAJAHAT ALI, CounterPunch
The black heart of outsourcing core, military functions to Private Military Firms (PMF’s) revealed itself yet again this week with the most recent (of many) Blackwater scandals. Blackwater, the North Carolina based private security firm with 1,000 employees currently deployed in Iraq, first came to prominence as the contracted, personal bodyguards of former Coalition Provisional Authority head Lt. General Paul Bremer. Unfortunately, Blackwater’s international reputation has blossomed due to its notoriety warranted by irresponsible and violent acts in Iraq. These incidents, which seem like a recurring, annual trend, emphasize the crucial, prescient need to closely examine PMF’s roles, responsibilities, and most importantly—legal accountability—in the “War on Terror.” Recently, Iraqi investigations revealed Blackwater employees were responsible for nearly 6 violent episodes this year resulting in 10 deaths and countless wounded civilians. However, on September 27, The State Department, for the first time, publicly stated Blackwater’s security personnel has actually been involved in 56 shootings while guarding American diplomats in Iraq so far this year alone…

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War News for Saturday, September 29, 2007
Iraq today
MNF-Iraq is reporting the death of a Task Force Lightning Soldier by enemy gunfire in Diyala province, Saturday, September, 29th, 2007. MNF-Iraq is reporting the death of a Multi-National Division – Baghdad soldier in a small arms fire attack in a southern neighborhood of Baghdad on Saturday, September 29th., 2007. A Multi-National Division-Baghdad Soldier was killed during a small arms fire attack while conducting combat operations in a southern section of the Iraqi capital Sept. 29…

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Death from Cholera disclosed in Anbar
Voices of Iraq
A death from Cholera was disclosed on Sunday by health authorities in the western Iraqi province of Anbar. “A five-year-old child died of Cholera on Saturday in Hit Public Hospital of Anbar province,” Dr. Ahmed al-Hiti from Hit hospital told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI). Al-Hiti added “this is the first death resulting from the epidemic in Anbar province.” Hit town is located to the west of Ramadi, capital city of Anbar, which lies at 110 km west of Baghdad. The total deaths from Cholera in Iraq so far is 13, including nine in Sulaimaniya, one in Kirkuk, one in Ninewa, one in Baghdad and one in Anbar according to statistics released by Iraqi medical authorities…

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