URUK Net 19 March, 2010: Families Sue Over Guantanamo Deaths
Seven Years of War: On Anniversary of US Invasion, Iraqi Feminist Yanar Mohammed Says Iraq Is No Different Under Obama than Bush
Democracy Now!
March 19, 2010 – Today marks the seventh anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq. We go to Baghdad to speak with Yanar Mohammed, president of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq. “Privatization, no security for the working class, much investment for multinational companies,” Mohammed says. “We have a democracy which has brought forward groups which are transformations of the first political forces…militias [that are] now politicians…sitting in the Green Zone.”…
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Families Sue Over Guantanamo Deaths
By William Fisher
March 19, 2010 – The families of two prisoners who died at the U.S. Navy Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, are asking a federal court to reconsider its ruling dismissing their lawsuit, which seeks to hold federal officials and the U.S. government accountable for their sons’ torture, arbitrary detention, and ultimate deaths. According to their lawyers, the Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR), the families’ request is based on newly discovered evidence from four soldiers who describe a cover-up by the authorities and say they were ordered not to speak out. The soldiers’ accounts were reported in Harper’s Magazine in January…
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Iraq snapshot – March 19, 2010
The Common Ills
March 19, 2010 – …As bad as starting an illegal war is continuing one. At the tent meetings of the Cult of St. Barack throughout America in early 2008, Barack was fond of screaming into his mike, “We want to end the war now!” Of course Samantha Power, while still his chief foreign policy advisor, told the BBC News that Barack didn’t know what he was going to do about Iraq and wouldn’t make a decision until after he was in the White House. That didn’t stop Barry O from letting the people think he was Mr. Peace and Mr. End The War Now! War Criminal Barack Obama speaking in Santa Barbara in early 2008: “And most of all the American people are tired of this disastorous war in Iraq that should have never been authorized and should have never been waged. A war that has cost us half-a-trillion dollars and thousands of lives and has not made us more safe but has diminished our standing in the world. They want an end to that! And they want an end now!…
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Two Cheers for Netanyahu
Exposure of Obama Complete
by John Walsh
March 19, 2010 – …Netanyahu, however, deserves the undying gratitude of every real progressive in the U.S. This past year has been like a dance of the seven veils for Obama. They had been all teased away, save for one. The veil of peace, the veil of civil liberties, the veil of environmentalism, single-payer, nuclear disarmament (ripped away by a big new budget for nukes), opposition to the banksters – stripped away one by one. The only remaining vestment was opposition to Israel’s colonies. And Bibi tore that one off between breakfast and (delayed) dinner, leaving Obama standing as naked as Ishtar or Salome. So thanks, Bibi, for finishing the job. Now that it’s done we can expect all those who aggressively championed candidate Obama to broadcast effusive apologies for so doing. Let us never forget that Obama was not just the candidate of the Democrats but the hands down choice of the most “progressive” wing of the Party, its dream candidate. By revealing Obama for what he is, the limitations of the Dems are laid bare. Obama is all we can expect from them, and it is not much…
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A Moral Vest
Dr. June Terpstra
March 19, 2010 – In the film, Fidel, The Untold Story, there is an interview with Fidel Castro where he says he does not need a Kevlar vest to protect him from countless CIA assassination attempts because he wears a moral vest. I am back in Havana, Cuba today after visiting a natural medicine clinic in Santa Clara, Cuba; an agricultural cooperative in Matanzas, Cuba; a teacher training arts school in Matanzas; and ELAM, the incredible Latin American Medical School that trains and sends doctors to work all over the world. With each program or institution visited I wonder what it would be like to live in a country with values of social justice instead of values of profit and plunder. There are countless examples of those who wear a moral vest here in Cuba…
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With a veil on their heads and a blindfold over our eyes:
Contribution to the celebration of International Women’s Day
Agustín VELLOSO
March 19, 2010 – The national press continues to include articles of opinion and letters to the editor relating to the veil. It would seem that this garment has become a problem for Western society, where its use is really not noticed, even though, curiously, this does not seem the case where its use is widespread. The truth is that this insignificant garment, as well as covering the heads of Muslim women, is useful for covering up the situation of Spanish women. Are these journalists less than fifty years old? Because unless this is the case, they should recognise their mothers and aunts in this photograph…
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UN envoy slams Afghan peace sabotage
The Morning Star,
March 19, 2010 – The former UN envoy to Afghanistan has suggested that Pakistan and the US may have deliberately sabotaged efforts to find a peaceful solution to the war recently by arresting senior Taliban militants at secret peace talks. Kai Eide, a Norwegian diplomat who just stepped down from the UN post, said that reconciliation talks that he and other UN officials had with senior resistance fighters were beginning to bear fruit until the process abruptly “halted following the arrests that took place in Pakistan.”…
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West Bank: Protesters challenge village closures
Ma’an News
March 19, 2010 – Palestinian and international protesters joined half a dozen demonstrations across the occupied West Bank on Friday afternoon, in the first reaction to Israel’s declaration of two villages as “closed military zones” last week. An American citizen was seriously injured after being struck in the arm by Israeli fire in Nabi Saleh, near Ramallah, onlookers said. Her colleagues from the International Solidarity Movement later identified her as Ellen Stark. An ISM statement said she was “shot from less than four meters away with a rubber bullet, which lodged in her left arm, breaking her wrist.”…
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America’s “Houdini Recovery” under IMF-Type Austerity
by Stephen Lendman
March 19, 2010 – It’s what economist David Rosenberg calls recovery given plenty of supportive evidence, including: — over five million homeowners behind on their mortgage payments; — at record levels, foreclosures are alarmingly high; moreover, “the foreclosure pipeline is enormous;” — “housing, the quintessential leading indicator,” turning lower again in starts, sales and prices; — instead of a normal 5 – 6 months home supply, the market has a 21 month overhang, including shadow inventory from the foreclosure pipeline; — mortgage applications for new home purchases down 13.9% on top of last year’s 29.4%; — over six million Americans unemployed for at least six months, “a record 40% of the ranks of the joblessness” — over 11 million full-time jobs lost since late 2007, and well over four and a half million since Obama took office, despite pledging to create them; — millions of jobs lost despite massive economic stimulus, and when it slows, watch out…
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Iraqi Holocaust, Iraqi Genocide And 7th Anniversary Of Invasion Of Iraq
By Dr Gideon Polya
March 19, 2010 – It is the 7th anniversary of the illegal and war criminal invasion of Iraq by US, UK and Australian forces on 20 March 2003. What has been the human cost? As of 20 March 2010 post-invasion violent deaths in Occupied Iraq total 1.4 million (according to the eminent US Just Foreign Policy). Post-invasion under-5 infant deaths total 0.8 million and post-invasion non-violent excess deaths (avoidable deaths, deaths that did not have to happen) total 1.1 million (based on 2006 revision data from the UN Population Division), this being identical to an independent estimate from under-5 infant deaths. Gulf War violent deaths totalled 0.2 million and excess deaths and under- 5 infant deaths under Sanctions (1990-2003) totalled 1.7 million and 1.2 million, respectively. In the period 1990-2010 Iraqi violent deaths totalled 1.6 million, non-violent excess deaths from deprivation totalled 2.8 million, under-5 infant deaths (90% avoidable and due to US Alliance war crimes in gross violation of the Geneva Convention) totalled 2.0 million and refugees totalled 5-6 million…
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Another Year, Another Post. – 1
Layla Anwar
March 19, 2010 – …The Westerner is a bag of slimy hypocrisy…like nasal snots…and am not just talking about governments here, am talking of “people”. You’d have every aspect of your life destroyed because of their “free choice” as in “democratically” electing their governments, and they get all flustered if you give them the royal finger…and tell them — fuck you people of the lie…you are nothing but deceit…
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Another Year, Another Post. – 2
Layla Anwar
March 19, 2010 -…We were all gathered in the dark room, in one corner of the room, huddled, almost piled up on top of another…like corpses about to be collectively buried in some anonymous mass grave…there was a little candle burning, flickering, imperceptibly so…maybe the only warmth, for we were shivering… Each round we’d think the time has come…the time has come with the walls shaking and the windows shattering…we stopped replacing them…we just used garbage bags and tape instead…maybe that was a symbol for what was to come later…tape your mouth, seal your lips while your life has become a pile of garbage…
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Another Year, Another Post.- 3
Layla Anwar
March 19, 2010 – One scene leads to another, like in a labyrinth…no wonder this is a door I never wanted to open… War after War after War…back in the tunnel, swirling back…subtracting years, 1991, the fireworks of another liberation. 1980, 1973, 1967…I remember them all…one by one… What is there to say ? Apart from swinging from shivers to numbness back to shivers, back to nothing… The same scene repeats itself…windows shattering, plastic and tapes, glued to the radio for the latest news, hoping batteries won’t run out, and more sirens…all the sirens sound the same…Baghdad and beyond — same sirens, same wars… Israeli air raids in 1967 and 1973, I was there too…I laugh when I think about it, laugh sarcastically, as if Destiny wanted me to be a witness…
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Another Year, Another Post. – 4
Layla Anwar
March 19, 2010 – …The third sequence was the most telling…as I was walking down that dark street, a car pulls up on the curb, I noticed it had no lights, I felt danger…the man in the car said – have no fear I live here in this street…but he had an Egyptian accent and he was driving a car that had no Egyptian license plates…and in the dream I was not in Egypt…I knew he was lying and that I was in trouble…He got out of the car, he was a very big man, looked like a monster, he just put his hands on my mouth and he tried to rape me…I fought back as hard as I could, I wanted to scream, shout, but he suffocated my voice with his big hands, I had a small alarm in my hand, like a small siren, emitting the same sound when the bombs were about to fall…I sounded the siren, it was loud…I could hear it in the empty street, I was waiting for my “brothers” to show up — no one did… I woke up trembling…I felt so nauseous I wanted to vomit, but I had nothing in my stomach to vomit…I laid in bed for a while gathering my senses, reminding myself it was just a dream…only to realize that it was no dream, it was reality… Iraq was betrayed and raped by the Arab “brothers” first..
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Violations of Iraqi Children Rights Under the American Occupation
Souad Al Azzawi
March 19, 2010 – I pride myself in being a scientist and a researcher. I built my academic career on theories and numbers. As a teacher, I teach my students that everything is based in science – everything has a reason. That is why, I am always frustrated with myself when I find I am overwhelmed with feelings on specific topics. One such topic is the occupation of my country, Iraq. On this subject I find that I cannot always be dispassionate. I cannot be the researcher and observer and discuss it without feelings or emotions as I am sometimes expected to do. I find myself doing research on the damages caused by the war and occupation, and my head buzzes with anger, my eyes burn with tears of desperation at the state of my country. I decided, I would view it as a scientist. I would not attack the subject with emotion. I would let the numbers speak for themselves. This year I will sit back and play the part of the analyst- the researcher- on the topic that is closest to my heart. We will show that the American occupation violated children’s rights on all levels, including health care, education, social security, family unity and non separation of children from their parents through detention, imprisonment and exile. For two decades, Iraqi children, along with all other elements of Iraqi society, have been subjected to grave violations of human rights…
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The Third Intifada: “day of rage” and “day of infamy”
By Agustin Velloso
March 19, 2010 – It seems that on March 16th, the third Intifada of the Israeli era was unofficially started. Those that took place before 1948 are seldom mentioned, as if resistance was a new occurrence. People forget the Arab Brigades and the freedom fighters like Izzedin al-Qassam, who were very active during the first half of the twentieth century. This one was teacher, sheikh, and also a workers, peasants and guerrillas leader. Contrary to Abu Mazen, al Qassam faced with all his strength the French, the British and the Zionists until he died with honour…
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Video: Putting a price on Afghan life
Aljazeera.English
March 19, 2010 – What is the price of a human life? In Afghanistan, if foreign troops kill an innocent civilian by accident, families may receive compensations of around $2,500. But there is no fixed system for compensation – something that Stanley McChrystal, the top US general in Afghanistan, is now calling for…
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11 Years Later: NATO Powers Prepare Final Solution In Kosovo
Rick Rozoff
March 19, 2010 – March 17 marked the sixth anniversary of a concerted assault against Serbs and other ethnic minorities in Kosovo that resulted in 800 Serbian homes and thirty five Orthodox churches and monasteries being destroyed, 4,000 Serbs and Roma (Gypsies) forced to flee their homes, 900 hundred people injured and 19 killed. The attacks followed the accidental drowning of three ethnic Albanian youth which local separatist politicians and media attributed to the actions of Serbs and used to incite an orgy of intolerance, ethnic hostility and violence. They marked the worst, and deadliest, violence in the Balkans since NATO’s 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 and the war in Macedonia two years later launched by an offshoot of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) operating out of NATO-occupied Kosovo…
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Follow That Story!
My favorite dropped narratives
Justin Raimondo
March 19, 2010 – …Hailed by the neocons as the George Washington of “liberated” Iraq, Chalabi enjoyed access to top US government officials and was portrayed in the media as a staunch US ally, a veritable model of the kind of Arab leader that would emerge on the heels on George W. Bush’s “global democratic revolution.” Chalabi was a special guest of the President at his State of the Union speech, and hobnobbed with the powerful on his many visits to Washington…Today, Chalabi is riding high, having aligned himself with the ruling party in Iraq: the hero of the neocons is now an open Iranian agent. He played a key role in disqualifying mainly Sunni parties in the Iraqi elections, and his connections with militant Shi’ites are extensive…
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Al-Aqsa omitted from Pesach Haggadah cover
Eli Senyor
March 19, 2010 – Haggadot for Pesach distributed Thursday in kindergartens throughout religiously mixed Jaffa bore a photo of the Temple Mount on the cover, but the al-Aqsa Mosque, which is also located in the east Jerusalem compound, was conspicuously omitted. An image of a model of the “third temple” was superimposed on the photo in place of the mosque, which is one of Islam’s holiest sites. It is unclear who distributed the haggadot…
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Imperialism Re-Booted in Latin America
Canada’s Long Embrace of the Honduran Dictatorship
By TODD GORDON and JEFFERY R. WEBBER
March 19, 2010 – Peter Kent recently returned from a three day trip (February 17-20) to Honduras, proudly declaring the mission a success. As Canada’s Minister of State for the Americas, Kent is the Tory government’s point person for Canada’s growing political and economic interests in the region. Honduras has become an important focus of those interests, since the military coup last June against the moderately left-leaning president, Manuel Zelaya, swung the country sharply back to the right. Ignoring the ongoing abuses of human rights in the country under the new coupist presidency of Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo, Kent has been following through with his promise to promote the normalization of the country’s relations with the rest of the hemisphere. Lobo won fraudulent elections held in November under the military dictatorship in a context of repression and intimidation…
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Fact Sheet: The Truth About the Health Care Bill
By Jane Hamsher
March 19, 2010 – … The health care bill will come up for a vote in the House on Sunday, and as Nancy Pelosi works to wrangle votes, we’ve been running a detailed whip count on where every member of Congress stands, updated throughout the day. We’ve also taken a detailed look at the bill, and have come up with 18 often stated myths about this health care reform bill. Real health care reform is the thing we’ve fought for from the start. It is desperately needed. But this bill falls short on many levels, and hurts many people more than it helps…
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Darfur aid dollars funding West Bank settlements
By Thomas C. Mountain
Marc 19, 2010 – Persons working with aid organizations assisting the victims of the Darfur conflict have passed on the news that they have confirmed through their contacts in the so called “Save Darfur Coalition” that millions of dollars raised to help the Darfur refugees have ended up in Israeli bank accounts. These accounts help fund programs that include illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank…
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Gaza Children Terrified – Zionist F-16 Bombing Targets – Many Wounded.
Hiyam Noir
March 19, 2010 – This evening Zionist warplanes targeted the vicinity of Yasser Arafat International Airport, at the east of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.The heavy bombardment was the second aerial attack in less than 24 hours. Early on Friday morning Zionist Israeli F-16 dumped it’s deadly load on six targets across Gaza, including populated areas in the outskirts of Khan Younis – a factory and a tunnel along the Gaza-Egyptian border. At least 14 residents including children were wounded in this attack, three of them are critically injured. The wounded were evacuated to Abu Yousef Al Najjar Hospital in Rafah for treatment. Until this very moment Israeli air-crafts is still violating the airspace over Gaza…
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Entry Denied…
Marcy Newman
March 19, 2010 – Yesterday (18 March 2010) after I finished teaching at 2 PM I headed for Palestine to spend the weekend and my birthday with friends in Palestine. I arrived on the occupied side of the bridge at 4:55 PM. I used to live in Palestine, most recently last year when I taught at An Najah National University in Nablus, but I had not been back since July when I left. I arrived at the bridge, went through the routinized luggage and security screenings and headed for the passport window. The woman in the occupying army at the window asked me questions when it was my turn. She asked me what I was planning to do in “Israel,” a word and question that makes my blood boil given that I was clearly trying to enter Palestine…
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UN report criticises covert troops who committed Afghan killings
Jerome Starkey
March 16, 2010 – Covert troops who killed two pregnant women and a teenage girl in eastern Afghanistan went on to inflict “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” on the survivors of a botched night raid, a report by the UN said. The family of the victims in Paktiya province have accused Nato of trying to cover up the atrocity after an investigation by The Times revealed that two men, who were also killed, were not the intended targets of the raid. One was a police commander and his brother was a district-attorney. The unpublished UN report, which was acquired by The Times, contradicts Nato’s version of events…
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AWARD WINNING JOURNALIST MOHAMMED OMER BARRED FROM ENTRY TO US
Haymarket Books, via Desertpeace
March 19, 2010 – Effectively canceling a planned speaking tour, the US consulate in the Netherlands has put an extended hold on the visa application of award-winning Palestinian journalist and photographer Mohammed Omer, scheduled to speak on conditions in Palestine, on 5 April in Chicago. In 2008, Omer became the youngest recipient of the prestigious Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, for his firsthand reportage of life in the besieged Gaza Strip. As his prize citation explained, “Every day, he reports from a war zone, where he is also a prisoner. He is a profoundly humane witness to one of the great injustices of our time. He is the voice of the voiceless … Working alone in extremely difficult and often dangerous circumstances, [Omer has] reported unpalatable truths validated by powerful facts.”…
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Military Resistance 8C11: “The Kingdom Of The Taliban” – 19 March 2010
Thomas F. Barton
“After Dark The City Is Like The Kingdom Of The Taliban”. “The Taliban And The Marja Residents All Have Beards And Turbans So It’s Impossible To Distinguish Them”. “They Still Have A Lot Of Sympathy Among The People”. The Taliban Have “Complete Freedom Of Movement After Dark”. Homemade bombs still appear every night on roads traveled by the military. Gunfire can be heard many evenings in the center of town. Earlier this week, a Marine foot patrol hit a bomb planted near the district center, seriously wounding several of them.
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Report: Israeli settlers uproot 25 olive trees near Nablus
Ma’an News
March 19, 2010 – Settlers from Israel’s Eli area uprooted 25 olive trees from the Al-Batshisha neighborhood of Qaryut village in the northern West Bank, an official said Friday. Residents discovered the destruction Thursday morning, when they arrived at the agricultural lands approximately 600 meters away from the Eli settlement. Ghassan Daghlas, who holds the settlement file for the northern West Bank, reported the incident, which followed on the heels of the destruction of at least 40 fruit trees just north of the area the week before…
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UC Berkeley student senate votes in favor of divestment
Dina Omar
March 19 2010 – Early yesterday morning, the University of California Berkeley Student Senate (ASUC) passed a bill to divest from companies that provide military support for the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Debate began the night before at 9:00pm and ended and six hours later when the vote was held at 3:00am. The session was attended by more than 150 students, educators and concerned community supporters, forcing the meeting to be relocated to a larger room. Never before has the senate chambers been so overcrowded, signifying the importance and interest in the issue of Israel-Palestine on the Berkeley campus. Ultimately, the bill passed with 16 senators in favor and 4 against…
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Hopefully Related posts:
- URUK Net 30 March, 2010 Part 2: An interview with Omar Deghayes, following Kent screening of Outside the Law: Stories from Guantanamo
- URUK Net 25 February, 2010 Part 2: Senate Panel Blasts Blackwater Over Theft of Assault Weapons, Civilian Deaths
- CounterCurrents Newsletter 3 March, 2010: Shaker Aamer: Guantanamo’s Last British Detainee By Robert Verkaik
- URUK Net 15 March, 2010: Israel: Can We Call it “Just Another Fascist Regime in the Middle East” yet?
- URUK Net 18 March, 2010: Israel Is Boss
- URUK Net 27 March, 2010: An Unaccustomed Truth: American Commander Admits Afghan Atrocities
- URUK Net 8 March, 2010 Part 2: Palestinian Revolutionaries on International Women’s Day
- URUK Net 25 March, 2010 Part 2: Obama and the age of permanent war
- URUK Net 14 March, 2010: Video: Charges on Gaza boy “human shield”
- URUK Net 20 March, 2010: Night Riders: Afghan Atrocity and American Values