HAITI

IPS: US And France Block UN Probe In Aristide Ouster

UNITED NATIONS - The United States and France have intimidated Caribbean countries into delaying an official request for a probe into the murky circumstances under which Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted from power in February, according to diplomatic sources here.

The two veto-wielding permanent members of the 15-nation Security Council have signaled to Caribbean nations that they do not want a U.N. probe of Aristide's ouster.

Any attempts to bring the issue or even introduce a resolution before the Security Council will either be blocked or vetoed by both countries, council sources told IPS.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who has been caught in the middle of the dispute, says he is unable to act unless he has a formal request to do so either by the Security Council or the 15-member Caribbean Community (CARICOM), of which Haiti is a member.

Das dürfte wohl beweisen, dass Aristide nicht freiwillig gegangen ist, sondern von den USA und Frankreich geputscht wurde

IRAQ UPRISING

Australien: US Troops Over Car Photo

AN Iraqi has died of his wounds after US troops beat him with truncheons because he refused to remove a picture of wanted Shiite Muslim leader Moqtada Sadr from his car, police said today.

The motorist was stopped late yesterday by US troops conducting search operations on a street in the centre of the central city of Kut, Lieutenant Mohamad Abdel Abbas said.

After the man refused to remove Sadr's picture from his car, the soldiers forced him out of the vehicle and started beating him with truncheons, he said.

OSAMA SPEECH

Memri.org: Osama Offers Peace To Europe

MEMRI has obtained and translated a copy of the most recent speech by Osama bin Laden, purportedly offering a peace ["sulh"] treaty to European countries that withdraw soldiers from Arab countries, while still maintaining the United States as a legitimate target. The following are excerpts from the speech:(1)

"This is a message to our neighbors north of the Mediterranean, with a proposal for a peace treaty, in response to the positive reactions which emerged there.
"What happened in September 11 and March 11 is your own merchandise coming back to you. We hereby advise you ... that your definition of us and of our actions as terrorism is nothing but a definition of yourselves by yourselves, since our reaction is of the same kind as your act. Our actions are a reaction to yours, which are destruction and killing of our people as is happening in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine.
"It suffices to see the event that shocked the world - the killing of the wheelchair-bound old man Ahmad Yassin - Allah's mercy upon him - and we pledge to Allah to avenge [his murder] on America, Allah willing.
"By what measure of kindness are your killed considered innocents while ours are considered worthless? By what school [of thought] is your blood considered blood while our blood is water?
"Therefore, it is [only] just to respond in kind, and the one who started it is more to blame..."

We Will Continue to Fight the U.S. and U.N.

"When you look at what happened and is happening, the killing in our countries and in yours, an important fact emerges, and that is that the oppression is forced on both us and you by your politicians who send your sons, against your will, to our country to kill and to be killed.
"Therefore, both sides have an interest in thwarting those who shed the blood of the peoples for their own narrow interests, out of vassalage to the White House gang...
"This war makes millions of dollars for big corporations, either weapons manufacturers or those working in the reconstruction [of Iraq], such as Halliburton and its sister companies...
"It is crystal clear who benefits from igniting the fire of this war and this bloodshed: They are the merchants of war, the bloodsuckers who run the policy of the world from behind the scenes.
"President Bush and his ilk, the media giants, and the U.N. ... all are a fatal danger to the world, and the Zionist lobby is their most dangerous member. Allah willing, we will persist in fighting them...

'I Hereby Offer [Europe] a Peace Treaty'

"Therefore, in order to thwart opportunities for the merchants of war, and in response to the positive developments that were expressed in recent events and in the public opinion polls, which determined that most European peoples want peace, I urge ... the establishment of a permanent commission to nurture awareness among Europeans regarding the justness of our causes, particularly the cause of Palestine, and that use be made of the vast media resources to this end.
"I hereby offer them a peace treaty, the essence of which is our commitment to halt actions against any country that commits itself to refraining from attacking Muslims or intervening in their affairs, including the American conspiracy against the larger Islamic world.
"This peace treaty can be renewed at the end of the term of a government and the rise of another, with the agreement of both sides.
"The peace treaty will be in force upon the exit of the last soldier of any given [European] country from our land.
"The door of peace will remain open for three months from the broadcast of this statement. Whoever rejects the peace and wants war should know that we are the men [of war], and whoever wants a peace treaty and signs it, we hereby allow this peace treaty with him.
"Stop shedding our blood in order to protect your own blood. The solution to this easy-difficult equation is in your own hands. You should know that the longer you delay, the worse the situation will become, and when that happens, do not blame us, blame yourselves...
"As for those who lie to people and say that we hate freedom and kill for the sake of killing - reality proves that we are the speakers of truth and they lie, because the killing of the Russians took place only after their invasion of Afghanistan and Chechnya; the killing of the Europeans took place only after the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan; the killing of the Americans in the Battle of New York took place only after their support for the Jews in Palestine and their invasion of the Arabian Peninsula; their killing in Somalia happened only after Operation Restore Hope. We restored [i.e. repelled] them without hope, by the grace of Allah."

BIN LADIN: TRUCE

Independent: Bin Laden's offer of truce fails to turn Europe against US

He added: "The real problem is the occupation of Palestine "genau dass ist der Punkt und aus genau diesem Grund halten die Europäer Israel für die grösste Gefahr für den Weltfrieden

European leaders flatly rejected yesterday the "truce" offered by Osama bin Laden, al-Qa'ida's leader, in exchange for the withdrawal of their countries' troops from Iraq.

The message came as many nations were under intense pressure over their support for the occupation of Iraq. The execution of an Italian private security contractor on Wednesday by Iraqi insurgents and the kidnapping of Japanese civilians has added to an already vociferous debate in those, and other, countries about the future of their forces in Iraq.

The statement by the al-Qa'ida leader was an apparent attempt to drive a wedge between America and those European countries, including Britain, that have supported the Bush administration's invasion and occupation of Iraq. It represents the first time bin Laden has offered such a truce.

'Stop shedding our blood to preserve your blood. It is in your hands'

Edited text from the tape from Osama bin Laden broadcast by al-Jazeera

"This is a message to our neighbours north of the Mediterranean.

Peace upon those who followed the right path. The greatest rule of safety is justice, and stopping injustice and aggression. The situation in occupied Palestine is an example. What happened on 11 September [2001] and 11 March [the Madrid train bombings] is your commodity that was returned to you.

The act that horrified the world; that is, the killing of the old, handicapped [Hamas spiritual leader] Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, may God have mercy on him, is sufficient evidence. We pledge to God that we will punish America for him.

Which religion considers your killed ones innocent and our killed ones worthless? Reciprocal treatment is fair and the one who starts injustice bears greater blame.

As for your politicians and those who have followed their path, who insist on ignoring the real problem of occupying Palestine and exaggerate lies and falsification regarding our right in defence and resistance, they do not respect themselves. The Zionist lobby is one of the most dangerous and most difficult figures.

I ask honest people, ulema [senior Islamic figures], preachers and merchants, to form a permanent committee to enlighten European peoples of the justice of our causes, above all, Palestine.

The door of reconciliation is open for three months of the date of announcing this. I also offer ... our commitment to stopping operations against every country that commits itself to not attacking Muslims or interfering in their affairs. The reconciliation will start with the departure of its last soldier from our country. was haben die Europäer mit dieser Forderung für ein Problem?

For those who reject reconciliation and want war, we are ready. Peace be upon those who follow guidance.

"Die Europäischen Führer wollen nicht mit "Terroristen" verhandeln. Dabei haben sie selbst Osama Bin Laden zu einem "Politiker" gemacht in dem Sie gegen einen Privatmann Krieg führen. Einen Krieg kann man rechtlich gesehen nur Staaten erklären."

ISRAEL/USA: AXIS OF EVIL

Independent: How Israel persuaded leader of the free world to see West Bank entirely their way

IRAQ UPRISING

Falluja by Jo Wilding
I'm sorry it's so long, but please, please read and forward widely. The truth of what's happening in Falluja has to get out.

April 11th Falluja

Trucks, oil tankers, tanks are burning on the highway east to Falluja.
A stream of boys and men goes to and from a lorry that's not burnt,
stripping it bare. We turn onto the back roads through Abu Ghraib, Nuha and Ahrar
singing in Arabic, past the vehicles full of people and a few
possessions, heading the other way, past the improvised refreshment posts along the
way where boys throw food through the windows into the bus for us and for
the people inside still inside Falluja.

The bus is following a car with the nephew of a local sheikh and a
guide who has contacts with the Mujahedin and has cleared this with them. The
reason I'm on the bus is that a journalist I knew turned up at my door at
about 11 at night telling me things were desperate in Falluja, he'd been
bringing out children with their limbs blown off, the US soldiers were going around
telling people to leave by dusk or be killed, but then when people fled
with whatever they could carry, they were being stopped at the US military
checkpoint on the edge of town and not let out, trapped, watching the
sun godown.

"CHECK IT CHECK IT CHECK IT"

IRAQ

BBC: US Emulates Israeli Tactics in Iraq

With sporadic fighting in Falluja and US forces moving into position
outside Najaf, the Arab press is pointing to similarities between US military
operations in Iraq and the tactics Israeli forces employ in the West
Bank and Gaza.

Such similarities are not coincidental.

The Israeli army has long experience of offensive operations in urban
areas and it is experience that the Pentagon has been eager to draw upon.

Israel and the US have developed a close military relationship over the
years.

USA

Slate: Bush's incredible definition of credibility.

"One thing is for certain, though, about me, and the world has learned
this: When I say something, I mean it. And the credibility of the United
States is incredibly important for keeping world peace and freedom."

That's the summation President Bush delivered as he wrapped up his
press conference Tuesday night. It's the message he emphasized throughout:
Our commitment. Our pledge. Our word. My conviction. Given the stakes in
Iraq and the war against terrorism, it would be petty to poke fun at Bush
for calling credibility "incredibly important." His routine misuse of the
word "incredible," while illiterate, is harmless. His misunderstanding of
the word "credible," however, isn't harmless. It's catastrophic.

ISRAEL

Guardian: The end of Zionism by Avraham Burg
Israel must shed its illusions and choose between racist oppression and democracy

The Zionist revolution has always rested on two pillars: a just path and an ethical leadership. Neither of these is operative any longer. The Israeli nation today rests on a scaffolding of corruption, and on foundations of oppression and injustice. As such, the end of the Zionist enterprise is already on our doorstep. There is a real chance that ours will be the last Zionist generation. There may yet be a Jewish state here, but it will be a different sort, strange and ugly.
There is time to change course, but not much. What is needed is a new vision of a just society and the political will to implement it. Diaspora Jews for whom Israel is a central pillar of their identity must pay heed and speak out.

The opposition does not exist, and the coalition, with Ariel Sharon at its head, claims the right to remain silent. In a nation of chatterboxes, everyone has suddenly fallen dumb, because there's nothing left to say. We live in a thunderously failed reality. Yes, we have revived the Hebrew language, created a marvellous theatre and a strong national currency. Our Jewish minds are as sharp as ever. We are traded on the Nasdaq. But is this why we created a state? The Jewish people did not survive for two millennia in order to pioneer new weaponry, computer security programs or anti-missile missiles. We were supposed to be a light unto the nations. In this we have failed.

It turns out that the 2,000-year struggle for Jewish survival comes down to a state of settlements, run by an amoral clique of corrupt lawbreakers who are deaf both to their citizens and to their enemies. A state lacking justice cannot survive. More and more Israelis are coming to understand this as they ask their children where they expect to live in 25 years. Children who are honest admit, to their parents' shock, that they do not know. The countdown to the end of Israeli society has begun.

"CHECK IT CHECK IT"

IRAQ UPRINSING

Rense: Americans Slaughtering Women & Children In Falluja

....After we delivered the aid, three of my friends agreed to ride out on the one functioning ambulance for the clinic to retrieve the wounded.

Although the ambulance already had three bullet holes from a U.S. sniper through the front windshield on the driver's side, having westerners on board was the only hope that soldiers would allow them to retrieve more wounded Iraqis.

The previous driver was wounded when one of the sniper's shots grazed his head.

Bombs were heard sporadically exploding around the city, along with random gunfire.....

IRAQ UPRISING

Pacifica: US Marines Shoot Ambulances in Fallujah

BAGHDAD, IRAQ -- Speaking from his ranch in Crawford, Texas the
President the United States, George W. Bush told reporters American soldiers have
acted against, quote: "lawlessness and gangs" in Iraq in the past week.
The American theater commander in Fallujah told Britain's Guardian
newspaper 95 percent of those killed in the assault on the city are armed militants.
But that's not the story coming from Fallujah's temporary emergency
clinics. This Baghdad doctor has spent most of the last week in Fallujah. His
name is being with-held for his own safety.

"When you see a child five years old with no head what can you say?"
asks one doctor in Fallujah, whose name is being with-held for his own
safety. "When you see a child with no brain just an open cavity what can you
say? When you see a mother just hold her infant with no head and the shells
are all over her body."

So many Fallujahans have been killed by the US Marines that residents
have resorted to digging mass graves. The City's foot-ball stadium now holds
more than 200 dead bodies:

"We buried many in the stadium for football until it became full. When
you are burying you cannot stay long because they (US Marines) will just
shoot you. So we use the shovel. Just dig a big hole and put a whole family
in the hole and leave as soon as possible so we are not shot."

IRAQ: INTIFADA

LA Times: Fury Ignites Solidarity in Iraq, By Naomi Klein

BAGHDAD - April 9, 2003, was the day this city fell to U.S. forces. One
year later, it is rising up against them.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld claims that the resistance is just
a few "thugs, gangs and terrorists." This is dangerous, wishful thinking.
The war against the occupation is now being fought out in the open, by
regular people defending their homes - an Iraqi intifada.

"They stole our playground," an 8-year-old boy in Sadr City told me
this week, pointing at six tanks parked in a soccer field next to a rusty
jungle gym. The field is a precious bit of green in an area of Baghdad that is
otherwise a swamp of raw sewage and uncollected garbage.

Sadr City has seen little of Iraq's multibillion-dollar
"reconstruction," which is partly why Muqtader Sadr and his Al Mahdi army have so much
support here. Before U.S. occupation chief L. Paul Bremer III provoked
Sadr into an armed conflict by shutting down his newspaper and arresting and
killing his deputies, the Al Mahdi army was not fighting coalition
forces; it was doing their job for them.

IRAQ

Independent: The planners of the war in Iraq have just one answer to their critics: 'shut up' By Robert Fisk (complete)
Thanks to the subservience of many members of the press, the US administration has had an easy time

Just shut up. That's the new foreign policy line of our masters. When Senator Edward Kennedy dubbed Iraq "George Bush's Vietnam", US Secretary of State Colin Powell told him to be "a little more restrained and careful" in his comments. I recall that when the US commenced its bombing of Afghanistan, the White House spokesman claimed that some journalists
were "asking questions that the American people wouldn't want asked". Back inthe early 1980s, when I reported on the Iranian soldiers on a troop train to Tehran who were coughing Saddam's mustard gas out of their lungs in blood and mucus, a Foreign Office official told my then editor on The Times that my dispatch was "not helpful". In other words, stop criticising our
ally, Saddam.

So maybe the policy has been around for quite a while. When the occupation authorities deliberately concealed the attacks against US troops after the start of the Iraq occupation last year, journalists who investigated this violence were told that they weren't covering the big picture, that only small areas of Iraq were restive. And there was a lot of clucking of
tongues when a few of us decided to take a close look at US proconsul Paul Bremer's press laws last year. A whole team of "Coalition Provisional Authority" lawyers was set up to see how they could legalise the closure and censorship of Iraqi newspapers that "incited violence". And whenever we raised questions about it, the CPA spokesman - and its current
attendant lord, Dan Senor, used the same phrase last week - would announce that "we will not tolerate incitement to violence".

So when Bremer's own closure last week of Muqtada Sadr's silly little weekly - circulation about a quarter that of the Kent Messenger - incited the very violence he supposedly wanted to avoid, what did the American High Commissioner announce? "This will not be tolerated." One of the paper's major sins was to have condemned Paul Bremer for taking Iraq down
"Saddam's path", an article which Bremer condemned in painstaking detail in his signed letter - in execrable Arabic - to the editor of the miscreant paper.

Now I'm all against incitement to violence. Just like I'm against incitement to war by the use of fraudulent claims of weapons of mass destruction and secret links to al-Qa'ida. Just like I'm against the use of Saddam's army against Iraqi cities and the use of America's army against Iraqi cities. For let's remember that some of Muqtada Sadr's dangerous militiamen fought Saddam in the 1991 insurgency - the one we supported and then betrayed. Saddam, of course, knew how to deal with resistance. "We
will not tolerate...," he told his commanders. And we all know what that meant. No, the Americans are not Saddam's army. But the siege of Fallujah is likely to give that city the heroic status among future generations of Iraqi Sunnis as Basra - surrounded by Saddam's hordes in 1991 - holds among Iraqi Shias today.

But still, we must shut up. I remember how last autumn the cabal of right-wing neo-conservatives who urged the Bush administration into this war suddenly went to ground. What was this so-called neo-conservative
lobby behind Bush and Cheney, a New York Times columnist demanded to know, these so-called former Likudist supporters of Israel? When one of them, Richard Perle, turned up on a radio show with me a few weeks ago, he insisted
that things were getting better in Iraq, that we were all en route to a cracking little democracy in Mesopotamia.

The moment I suggested that this was a massive case of self-delusion, Perle replied that Fisk had "always been for the maintenance of the Baathist regime". I got the message. Anyone who condemned this bloody mess was a secret Baathist, a lover of the dictator and his torturers. Thus far have the falcons of Washington fallen.

Of course, the "shut-up" principle works both ways. Back on 16 March 2003, when the world was obsessed with the war that would break out in Iraq three days later, a tragedy occurred on another battlefield 500 miles west of
Baghdad. On that day, an Israeli soldier and his commander drove a nine-ton Caterpillar bulldozer over a young American peace activist called Rachel Corrie who was unarmed, clearly visible in a fluorescent jacket and trying to protect a Palestinian home that the Israelis intended to destroy. The Caterpillar was part of the regular US aid to Israel. Israel acquitted
its own army of responsibility for Rachel's death - which was taped on video by her appalled friends - and the Bush administration remained gutlessly silent.

Rachel's grieving mother Elizabeth has been a picture of dignity. US citizens, she wrote, "should ask themselves how it is that an unarmed US citizen can be killed with impunity by a soldier from an allied nation receiving massive US aid... When three Americans were killed, presumably by Palestinians, in an explosion on October 15th, 2003 ... the FBI came
within 24 hours to investigate the deaths. After one year, neither the FBI nor any other US-led team has done anything to investigate the death of an American killed by an Israeli."

Well, the answer is that Bush and his administration know how to shut themselves up when it pays them to do so. That's what Condoleezza Rice initially tried to do when summoned before the 11 September hearings. And, thanks to the subservience of many members of the White House and Pentagon press corps, the administration has an easy time. Why, for example, no
press conference questions about Rachel Corrie?

It seems that as long as you say "war on terror", you are safe from all criticism. For not a single American journalist has investigated the links between the Israeli army's "rules of engagement" - so blithely handed over to US forces on Sharon's orders - and the behaviour of the US military in Iraq. The destruction of houses of "suspects", the wholesale detention
of thousands of Iraqis without trial, the cordoning off of "hostile" villages with razor wire, the bombardment of civilian areas by Apache helicopter gunships and tanks on the hunt for "terrorists" are all part of the Israeli military lexicon.

In besieging cities - when they were taking casualties or the number of civilians killed was becoming too shameful to sustain - the Israeli army would call a "unilateral suspension of offensive operations". They did this 11 times after they surrounded Beirut in 1982. And yesterday, the American army declared a "unilateral suspension of offensive operations" around
Fallujah.

Not a word on this mysterious parallel by America's reporters, no questions about the even more mysterious use of identical language. And in the coming days, we shall - perhaps - find out how many of the estimated 300 dead of Fallujah were Sunni gunmen and how many were women and children. Following Israel's rules is going to lead the Americans into the same disaster
those rules have led the Israelis. But I guess we'll shut up about it.

In the end, I suspect, the Iraqis will probably have a greater say in the US presidential elections than American voters. They will decide if President Bush loses or wins. The same may apply to Mr Blair. Funny thing, that a far away people, just 26 million, can change our political history. As for us, I guess we'll be expected to shut up.

IRAQ: UPRISING

Juan Cole: Fallujah Bloodbath threatens US-Appointed Iraqi Government with
Collapse
(Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan)

AP reported that the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) issued
a demand early on Saturday that the US cease its military action against
Fallujah and stop employing "collective punishment."

Not only has what many Iraqis call "the puppet council" taken a stand
against Bush administration tactics in Iraq, but individual members are
peeling off. Shiite Marsh Arab leader Abdul Karim al-Muhammadawi
suspended his membership in the council on Friday. A Sunni member, Ghazi
al-Yawir, has threatened to resign if a negotiated settlement of the Fallujah
conflict cannot be found. Old-time Sunni nationalist leader Adnan
Pachachi thundered on al-Arabiya televsion, "It was not right to punish all the
people of Fallujah, and we consider these operations by the Americans
unacceptable and illegal."

For him to go on an Arab satellite station much hated by Donald
Rumsfeld and denounce the very people who appointed him to the IGC is a clear
act of defiance. There are rumors that many of the 25 Governing Council
members have fled abroad, fearful of assassination because of their association
with the Americans. The ones who are left appear on the verge of
resigning.

This looks to me like an incipient collapse of the US government of
Iraq.
Beyond the IGC, the bureaucracy is protesting. Many government workers
in
the ministries are on strike and refusing to show up for work,
according to
ash-Sharq al-Awsat. Without Iraqis willing to serve in the Iraqi
government, the US would be forced to rule the country militarily and
by
main force. Its legitimacy appears to be dwindling fast.