Waterboarding Approved Specifically To Justify Iraq War
Craig Murray
I have just learnt something which has convinced me that Bush, Cheney and Rice are indeed evil in the sense that Hitler was evil. I did not actually believe that until today. The excellent and much-respected Marjorie Cohn, President of the National Lawyers Guild of the USA and Professor of Law at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, has discovered that waterboarding was first approved in July 2002 by Condoleeza Rice, specifically to force confessions of l inks between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein. Everybody in the intelligence and security worlds knew there were no such links – Bin Laden and Hussein were enemies. Only torture could yield “intelligence” of such links to provide a justification of the invasion of Iraq…
Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=53723
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Gaza shifts from a state of war to a state of despair
Jason Koutsoukis
Jason Koutsoukis in Gaza City finds little has changed since the end of Israel’s offensive earlier this year. The prison-camp entry to Gaza remains unchanged since the end of the January offensive. Caged walkways, concrete turrets, remote controlled steel doors, silence. On the Palestinian side, the same group of bored porters offer carriage services of 20 shekels ($6.50) a bag across the 1500 metres to the taxi stand…
Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=53727
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Widowed and orphaned by Israeli drone strike
Eva Bartlett, In Gaza
Naama Barbakh stands in the yard beside her farmhouse in southern Gaza’s As Shoka district, east of Rafah. She gestures to the ground and the surrounding area, pointing out where the dead and dying bodies of her husband and three of her sons lay after an unmanned drone missile strike on the morning of January 4th. On January 3rd, the Israeli land invasion had begun, with tanks and troops invading Gaza and occupying areas to the east of Rafah. Barbakh, a mo ther of eight children, three martyred in the attack, explains what happened that morning…
Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=53721
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Seven Palestinian Children
Umkahlil
Tell her Bassem always smiled. Tell her that Bassem was killed because he wanted to live on and tend his own land in Bil’in. Tell her Bassem wasn’t involved in any ‘violent’ protest. Tell her he was telling the soldiers to stop throwing tear gas projectiles because a woman was wounded. Tell her when people ask ‘Where is the Palestinian Gandhi’ that Bassem is one of many Palestinian Gandhis. Tell them the morning that Bassem was killed he gave medicine to Hamis, whose skull was broken be cause he wanted to live on and tend his own land in Bil’in. Tell her that people from all of the surrounding villages came to Bassem’s funeral. Tell her that Bassem still walks with us…
Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=53735
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Center for Prisoners’ Studies reports on Gaza family denied prison visits, mother hasn’t seen baby
PNN
Eight children have not seen their mother in two years. The ninth was born in Israeli prison. Mother Fatma Azzak has not been able see him since his birth 15 months ago. Over the phone from Tel Mond Prison 40 year old Azzak says she only knows her last child through photos. “What hurts me so much also is my son six year old son Suleiman. He was just four when I was put in prison, the age when he needs so much care and te nderness,” she tells her husband. Mahmoud Azzak told the Center for Prisoners’ Studies that his wife being away is incredibly difficult…
Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=53732
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Egyptian media: Israel bombed Iranian arms ship allegedly headed for Gaza
Saed Bannoura – IMEMC
According to a report in the Egyptian newspaper El-Aosboa on Sunday, a recent attack on an Iranian ship off the coast of Sudan was carried out by the Israeli navy, with possible U.S. involvement. After January’s Israeli invasion of Gaza, there have been several incidents of Israeli attacks on what they claimed were arms shipments from Iran bound for Gaza. No Palestinian group has ever claimed a connection with Iran, and the hom emade shells fired by Palestinian resistance groups in Gaza are mainly made of homemade materials, lacking any sophistication that would imply Iranian involvement…
Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=53725
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Israel to expand largest West Bank settlement
Ma’an News
A special committee in the Israeli Housing Ministry approved a plan on Sunday to expand the illegal West Bank settlement of Ma’ale Adumim by 12,000 dunums (12,000 square meters) in spite of objections from the United States. According to Israeli Army Radio, the plan has yet to be given the green light by Housing Minister Eli Yishai. The plan would link Ma’ale Adumim, the largest settlement in the West Bank, with the nearby settlement of Qedar, seizing the land in be tween. This expansion, in addition to another planned expansion to the north of the settlement will further isolate the north of the occupied West Bank from the south…
Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=53724
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PROSECUTING TORTURE OR GROWING GARDENS?
By Carolyn Baker
… Certainly, the United States could never have been established as a nation without the massive genociding of millions of the continent’s native population and the transporting of millions of African slaves to its shores. When one fully grasps the historical realities of the torture of these populations as fundamental in America’s founding, one can only conclude that torture is a crucial underpinning of the nation’s existence. The progressive wing (CPS) of the De mocratic Party is often unwilling to confront the extent to which its own party has been engaged in torture for decades. It was their Madeline Albright who shamelessly stated that killing a half-million Arab children as a result of the sanctions on Iraq was “worth the price”…
Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=53734
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Iraqi Oil: Black Gold or Black Hole?
Nawar Alsaadi
Investors and global oil companies such as Shell Petroleum (RDS.A), Eni (E), China National Petroleum, and Exxon Mobile (XOM) who are betting on Iraq are surely to be disappointed. Ever since the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, we have heard about the unlimited potential for the Iraqi oil, often news reports would mention that Iraq has the 3rd largest oil reserves in the world and the country oil ministry often mentions its goal of having Iraq produce 6 million barrels of oil over the medium term. However, six years after the fall of Baghdad the country is nowhere close to producing 6 million barrels – as a matter of fact the country is still not producing at the same level it did before the war (2.2m barrels vs 2.5m barrels before the war)…
Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=53736
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UK campaigners score victory towards arms embargo
Yasmin Khan, The Electronic Intifada
It came as no surprise to campaigners in the United Kingdom to hear the British Foreign Minister David Miliband reveal this week that components supplied by Britain were “almost certainly” used by Israel in its recent military assault on Gaza. Despite Israel’s continued human rights abuses, the UK government has licensed millions of pounds’ worth of military equipment to Israel over the last few years including components for tanks and combat aircraft, in direct conflict with its own arms policy…
Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=53718
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A message to the world: The apartheid wall will collapse one day
PIC
Palestinian youths, and foreign activists have decided to send a unique message to the entire people of the world, objecting the racist, separation wall that the Israeli occupation authorities had built in the West Bank, and telling them that the “oppression” wall would, one day, collapse. The message is composed of 2000 words, and written on the apartheid wall, stretching three kilometers along it, and carrying one meaning that the racist wall wouldn’t stay forever, and that it would fall one day, the activists confirmed…
Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=53716
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Obama, Democrats move to block torture investigation
Tom Eley
In the face of mounting opposition from the Republican Party and the national security apparatus, President Obama and leading Democrats have indicated they will block any independent commission to investigate the widespread torture of prisoners under the Bush administration in “the war on terror.” In meetings with top Congressional Democrats on Wednesday and Thursday, Obama told lawmakers that he would oppose any investigation, including one carried out by an i ndependent commission. This marked yet another shift by Obama, who on Tuesday had indicated that he might accept the creation of a blue ribbon panel along the lines of the 9/11 Commission that investigated—and whitewashed—the events leading up to the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. in 2001…
Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=53714
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