URUK Net 8 March, 2010: The Obama Killing Machine in Afghanistan
The “under-reporting” of civilians killed by foreign forces
by Prof. Marc W. Herold
March 8, 2010 –
Let the numbers tell the story. The following presents a detailed summary and analysis of Afghan civilians killed directly – so-called impact deaths – by U.S/NATO forces in Afghanistan during a single month, February 2010. The Obama killing machine left 80-86 dead Afghan and Pashtun civilians. By contrast, the number in February 2009 was 50. The intent here is to set the record straight as regards Afghans killed by the U.S/NATO, and in so doing challenge the UNAMA to move beyond its “faith-based” counting. Regrettably, data put out by the UNAMA gets widely cited less for its validity (which cannot be fact-checked given the organization’s refusal to publish disaggregated data) and more because of a vague public yearning to believe (have faith in) in the U.N’s alleged impartiality and credibility. As I have repeatedly demonstrated, the UNAMA data barely captures one-half of the Afghan civilians killed by U.S/NATO direct actions and by so doing serves Obama and the Pentagon in their news management effort…
Read the full article: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=63977
Women of Resistance
Irish4Palestine
March 8, 2010 – Never underestimate the strength of women in resistance and struggle. Given that I come from an oppressed country where once, like the Palestinians today, have also had to struggle for Freedom, Justice and Equality. And today being International Women’s Day, I have to write about the women of Palestine and Ireland. As the women in my life would remind me, they played an important role in our struggle, and just like in Ireland, the women of Palestine do this everyday…
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Fiction of Marja as City Was U.S. Information War
By Gareth Porter*
March 8, 2010 – For weeks, the U.S. public followed the biggest offensive of the Afghanistan War against what it was told was a “city of 80,000 people” as well as the logistical hub of the Taliban in that part of Helmand. That idea was a central element in the overall impression built up in February that Marja was a major strategic objective, more important than other district centres in Helmand. It turns out, however, that the picture of Marja presented by military officials and obediently reported by major news media is one of the clearest and most dramatic pieces of misinformation of the entire war, apparently aimed at hyping the offensive as a historic turning point in the conflict. Marja is not a city or even a real town, but either a few clusters of farmers’ homes or a large agricultural area covering much of the southern Helmand River Valley…
Read the full article: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=63984
International Women’s Day – Gazan mothers despair electricity crisis
World Vision Middle East/Eastern Europe/ Central Asia office
March 8, 2010 – This International Women’s Day, March 8, candles will be lit across homes in Gaza – not in celebration of women, but because an electricity crisis has plunged Gazan families into darkness – and desperation. According to Oxfam International, only 48% of the 3.5 million litres of fuel and 36% of the 1,750 tonnes of cooking gas needed per week in Gaza are being delivered. Since the European Commission stopped the funding of fuel in the Gaza Strip, its one and only power plant has seen a severe shortage of fuel and it is now running on just one of four turbines…
Read the full article: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=63974
Voices from Iraq
Omar Chatriwala
March 8, 2010 – Millions of Iraqis turned out to cast their ballots across the country on Sunday, choosing from more than 6,000 candidates from 86 political groups looking to gain seats in the 325-member assembly. For this crucial event in Iraq’s history, Al Jazeera partnered with YouTube to hear directly from the Iraqi people using Flipcams distributed across the country…
Read the full article: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=63986
Jewish settlers attempt to seize water spring in Palestinian village
Palestinian Information Center
March 8, 2010 – Tens of armed Jewish settlers on Monday attacked Palestinian citizens’ lands in Qarawat Bani Hassan village, Salfit district, and started bulldozing an area where a water spring is located, the municipality chief of the village said. Abdul Karim Rayyan said that the armed settlers were working on the site with the protection of Israeli occupation soldiers, noting that those settlers had recently established settlement outposts on citizens’ lands in the same area…
Read the full article: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=63990
UPDATE: Boy critically injured by Israeli Forces in An Nabi Saleh in a coma
International Solidarity Movement
March 8, 2010 : Ehab Fadel Beir Ghouthi, who was shot by Israeli Occupation Forces on Friday during the weekly demonstration has been in intensive care since reaching the hospital in Ramallah. On Monday 8 March, after a few days of slow improvement he was reported to have gone into a coma. Doctors have not been able to give precise information about his condition…
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The Russell Tribunal on Palestine – Barcelona Session
Stephen Lendman
March 8, 2010 – Launched on March 4, 2009, “The Russell Tribunal on Palestine (RTP) seeks to reaffirm the primacy of international law (to settle) the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (by focusing on) the enunciation of law by authoritative bodies (and) address(ing) the failure of application of law even though it has been so clearly identified. (It begins where the International Court of Justice) stopped: highlighting the responsibilities arising from the enunciation of law, including those of the international community, which cannot continue to shirk its obligations.”…The RTP found Israel in violation of breaching virtually all international humanitarian laws as well as ones covering the rules of war and occupation…
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Full-Circle of The Waiting Game: Total Boycott Against Total Occupation
Antoine Raffoul
March 8, 2010 – Reading Rifat Kassis’s Opinion: Moment of truth (e.i. 4 March 2010) we are inspired now to put a halt to the arguments that call for a selective boycott of Israel, and to those voices which warn us Palestinians (and many internationalists, for that matter) who criticise Israel for fear of being labelled ‘anti-semites’ (although we are Semites). We challenge politicians who call for yet another round of talks (proximity or otherwise) on the Palestine/Israel question. Shall we count how many of these talks have we had in the last 62 years? A boycott cannot be selective anymore…
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Report: 3 children detained by Israeli forces while gathering herbs
Ma’an News
March 8, 2010 – Three Palestinian children were detained by Israeli soldiers on Sunday as they gathered herbs in At-Tuwani village, southern Hebron, a peace organization reported. The children, two 13-year-olds and one 14-year-old, were with members of the Nonviolent Peace Corp group, Operation Dove, on privately owned land on Khelly hill, near the Ma’on settlement, when Israeli soldiers arrived in a jeep, a statement by the organization said…
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Seventh British soldier killed in Afghanistan in just nine days
Daily Mail
March 8, 2010 – A British soldier has been killed in an explosion while on foot patrol in Afghanistan, the Ministry of Defence said today. The soldier, from 1 Rifles, died following the blast near the Sangin district of Helmand Province yesterday afternoon. His family have been informed, the MoD said. The death was not connected to Operation Moshtarak…
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Is Europe Planning Seal of Approval for Israeli Settlers?
Israel Set to Join Club of Richest Nations
by Jonathan Cook
March 8, 2010 – An exclusive club of the world’s most developed countries is poised to admit Israel as a member even though, a confidential internal document indicates, doing so will amount to endorsing Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian and Syrian territories. Israel has been told that its accession to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is all but assured when the 30 member states meet in May. But a draft OECD report concedes that Israel has breached one of the organisation’s key requirements on providing accurate and transparent data on its economic activity…
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INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY… AND THE WOMEN I LOVE
Steve Amsel, Desertpeace
March 8, 2010 – First, a question… why is there a special day designated for women? For centuries women took a ‘back seat’ in all social and political issues, forbidden to work, vote, and receive an education… Yet they fought these injustices and won. Doing so, they proved that they are truly equal.. in fact in many cases superior to men. Women are special! The first person to kiss us at our birth was a woman. The person that carried us for nine months with much discomfort and pain was a woman. For this woman, there is yet another special day set aside; Mother’s Day. As a political activist, it was mostly women that inspired me to become what I am today… to name just a few there was…
Read the full article: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=63973
Iraq – IHEC Publishes Rates of Participation in the Parliamentary Elections
Reidar Visser
March 8, 2010 – The figures of participation in the parliamentary elections just released by IHEC seem to suggest continued high participation in Kurdistan, but growing voter apathy and disillusionment elsewehere in Iraq, particularly south of Baghdad where the rates have fallen quite dramatically since December 2005. At the same time, it should be noted that these figures are not entirely unlike those of the local elections in January 2009 which enabled resounding wins for Nuri al-Maliki in Baghdad and Basra…
Read the full article: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=63988
Israel approves West Bank settlement expansion
Ma’an News
March 8, 2010 – The Israeli government authorized the building of 112 new homes in an illegal West Bank settlement on Monday, in spite of a declared halt to settlement expansion in November, Israeli media reported. Israeli Environment Minister Gilad Erden told Army Radio that the Beitar Illit settlement, near Bethlehem, would see further expansion, but that the latest construction did not constitute a breach of the 10-month partial moratorium…
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“Colonizing” African Land For Food
IslamOnline
March 7, 2010 – Facing food shortages, rich countries are turning to poor African countries to cultivate vast swatches of fertile land to guarantee supplies for own peoples, a move seen as a new brand of colonization. “The foreign companies are arriving in large numbers, depriving people of land they have used for centuries,” Nyikaw Ochalla, an Ethiopian from the Gambella region, told the Guardian on Sunday, March 7. “There is no consultation with the indigenous population.”…
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High standards at The Washington Post
Glenn Greenwald
March 8, 2010 – By publishing a book that clearly and unapologetically defends the Bush torture regime, Marc Thiessen catapulted himself from obscure, low-level Bush speechwriter into regular Washington Post columnist, joining fellow torture defenders Charles Krauthammer and Bill Kristol. Today, Thiessen’s column defends the Liz-Cheney/Kristol smear campaign against DOJ lawyers…
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Military Resistance 8C5: The Man From Holiday Inn – 7 March 2010
Thomas F. Barton
The Occupations’ New Boss For “Liberated” Marjah Served Four Years In A German Prison For Stabbing His Step-Son: Previously Employed “Busing Dishes And Delivering Room-Service Meals” At Holiday Inn: Occupation Dictatorship Spokesman Says “This Country Is Not Going To Be Run By Choir Boys”.
The Occupations’ pet in Marjah March 7, 2010. Zahir has a violent criminal record in Germany, but Western officials said Saturday they are not pushing to oust him. We have people in the government who committed huge crimes but they are holding big positions so what about them?” said Mullah Abdul Salam, the district chief of Musa Qala. Such allegations of crimes include drug trafficking and corruption.
Read the full article: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=63970
Military Resistance 8C4: Prescription For Death – 7 March 2010
Thomas F. Barton
Prescription For Death: “I Feel Flat Out That Psychiatrists Are Directly Responsible For Deaths In Our Military, For Some Of These Suicides,” Said Retired Col. Bart Billings: Soldiers Father Says “What Killed Him Was All Those Drugs They Gave Him”. Army Won’t Say How Many Were Given Deadly Drugs. Billings, who testified Feb. 24 before Congress on the topic, believes the military’s spike in suicides over the past few years directly correlates with the types and quantities of psychotropic medications often prescribed for post-traumatic stress disorder and other psychiatric problems.
Read the full article: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=63969
Israel may be “no more rogue than America”, but it behaves like a rogue state nevertheless
Ibrahim Hewitt E-mail Print
March 8, 2010 – Andrew Roberts is a historian of note, but his robust defence of the state of Israel in the Financial Times (Israel is no more rogue than America, 3 March) is missing in both objectivity and accuracy. Indeed, if the title of his article is anything to go by, then he has missed the point altogether. If two rogues stand together, that doesn’t make one any less culpable than the other per se. Nor does it mean that innocence and justification for wrongdoing can be presumed. The struggle in the land called holy by Jews, Christians and Muslims is one that prompts strong feelings on all sides of the argument. In his response to FT articles by Henry Siegman and David Gardner, Mr. Roberts makes some staggeringly inaccurate claims, twisting reality to suit his argument. For example, does nuclear-armed Israel really warrant his description as “doughty, brave, embattled, tiny, surrounded, yet proudly defiant”? This is the country with one of the most powerful and best equipped armed forces in the world, backed by the world’s remaining superpower. It is the state doing the occupying, not being the victim of occupation. Roberts is asking us to stretch our imaginations a little too much…
Read the full article: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=63979
Sunday March 7, 2010 : 54 Iraqis Killed, 140 Wounded
Margaret Griffis
March 7, 2010 – As predicted Iraq suffered a barrage attacks during the election day, particularly in Baghdad where scores of blasts were heard across the city. At least 54 Iraqis were killed and 140 more were wounded. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates claimed he saw very little election-related violence, but the reports coming from Iraq itself indicate otherwise…
Read the full article: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=63971
Hopefully Related posts:
- URUK Net 25 March, 2010 Part 2: Obama and the age of permanent war
- URUK Net 22 March, 2010: VICTIMS OF URANIUM MUNITIONS USED BY THE US FORCES IN AFGHANISTAN
- ICH 2 March, 2010: Two Suspects Entered U.S. After Killing In Dubai
- URUK Net 12 March, 2010 Part 2: Nato ‘covered up’ botched night raid in Afghanistan that killed five (including two pregnant women)
- URUK Net 4 April, 2010: US Special forces 'tried to cover-up' botched Khataba raid in Afghanistan
- URUK Net 4 April, 2010: US Special forces ‘tried to cover-up’ botched Khataba raid in Afghanistan
- URUK Net 5 April, 2010: How Americans are propagandized about Afghanistan
- Global Research Selected Articles: Obama's Health Plan and the Impoverishment of the Middle Class 22-30 March, 2010
- URUK Net 27 April, 2010 Part 2: A US-Sponsored Terror Network – Death Squads in Afghanistan
- URUK Net 9 April, 2010: Can the US Triumph in the Drug-Addicted War in Afghanistan? Opium, the CIA and the Karzai Administration