Friday, May 07, 2004

OIL

Reuters: Oil Prices Hit $40 for First Time Since Gulf War

LONDON (Reuters) - Oil prices hit $40 a barrel for the first time in 13 years on Friday on concerns over global supply security, fostering fears that economic growth could suffer.

U.S. light crude hit a high of $40, the highest level since October 1990 after Iraq invaded Kuwait in the crisis that led to the Gulf War. London Brent rose 52 cents to $37.05.

IRAQ: TORTURE

Islamonline: Washington Post Releases New Iraq Torture Photos

WASHINGTON, May 6 (IslamOnlline.net & News Agencies) – The Washington Post splashed on Thursday, May 6, new photos of U.S. soldiers torturing Iraqi detainees.

In one of the pictures, taken from the summer of 2003 through the winter, a soldier is seen holding a leash tied around the neck of a naked Iraqi detainee grimacing and lying on the floor.

Another shows a naked detainees sprawled on top of one another while soldiers stand around them.

There is a third photograph of a naked man with a dark hood over his head, handcuffed to a cell door.

And another of a naked man handcuffed to a bunk bed, his arms splayed so wide that his back is arched. A pair of women's underwear covers his head and face.


Nazis? no, iraqi democracy.

IRAQ: US WAR CRIMES

Zmag: Smoke Them by Robert Fisk
Video Shows Wounded Iraqis Being Shot by US Helicopters


The pictures are appalling, the words devastating. As a wounded Iraqi crawls from beneath a burning truck, an American helicopter pilot tells his commander that one of three men has survived his night air attack. "Someone wounded,' the pilot cries. Then he received the reply: "Hit him, hit the truck and him.' As the helicopter's gun camera captures the scene on video, the pilot fires a 30mm gun at the wounded man, vaporising him in a second.

British and most European television stations censored the tape off the air last night on the grounds that the pictures were too terrible to show. But deliberately shooting a wounded man is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions and this extraordinary film of US air crews in action over Iraq is likely to create yet another international outcry.

Post vom 18.01.2004 mit Mpeg Video:

Rense: Video - Iraqi Farmers Slaughtered By US Apache Copter

In the video, the 'vehicle' on the left side of the frame is clearly a farm tractor...

"The clip was cut from a longer video obtained by ABC News last week and verified by a senior US army official." - WRH.com

Download the MPEG movie HERE

Der Film ist schon seit über 3 Monaten im Internet. Wieso wohl die TV Station mit der Austrahlung solange gewartet haben?

Thursday, May 06, 2004

IRAQ

Democracy Now: U.S. Assassinates Two Shiite Clerics Organizing Nonviolent Resistance

Hashim says fifteen American soldiers ordered everyone down on the ground and ran to the podium to arrest the speaker, Said Adnan Nonabi, head of Muqtada al-Sadr's office in Hillah. They placed a black hood over his head and then, Hashim says, the American soldiers turned their attention to the two sheiks in a nearby hallway.

HASHIM AL-SAFI: They shot them where they were standing, and you can see the blood on the doors. They shot them from just one or two meters away.

AARON GLANTZ: The bullets that killed the two sheiks were the only shots fired in the human rights office. The only bullet holes in the hall are amidst a blood-spattered wall where the two sheiks were shot. Fragments of the two sheiks’ brains can still be seen on the floor, corroborating claims they were shot in the head. Meantime the head of the local office of Muqtada al-Sadr, Adnan Nonabi, has disappeared into U.S. custody.


PROPAGANDA WATCH

ZMAG: Thought Control

During the last three years, the United States has moved farther to the corporatist, imperialist, fundamentalist and even fascist right than many of us thought possible. We have the "mainstream" corporate and its great public sector partner and enabler the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), to thank for much of that accelerated reactionary drift. We've got an actual FCC expert (Mike Szczepanezyk of Chicago Media Action ) here today, so I think I'll talk mainly about why media reform and the FCC matter. As I hope you agree, these subjects matter quite a bit.

Neither Dictatorship nor Democracy

I put my e-mail address at the bottom of most of my essays and if I do an especially relevant or provocative one I get messages from distant corners of the earth. One of the interesting things about these "foreign" communications is the sense they give me of the misconceptions (thoroughly understandable) that some people overseas have about life and politics in the United States.

"CHECK IT"

IRAQ: TORTURE

Reuters: U.S. Troops Mistreat Elder Iraqi woman

Wed May 5, 2004: LONDON - U.S. soldiers who detained an elderly Iraqi woman last year placed a harness on her, made her crawl on all fours and rode her like a donkey, Prime Minister Tony Blair 's personal human rights envoy to Iraq said Wednesday.

The envoy, legislator Ann Clwyd, said she had investigated the claims of the woman in her 70s and believed they were true.

During five visits to Iraq in the last 18 months, Clwyd said, she stopped at British and U.S. jails, including Abu Ghraib, and questioned everyone she could about the woman's claims. But she did not say whether the people questioned included U.S. forces or commanders
IRAQ

Informationclearinghouse: Bush?s ?Excuse and Explanation? on Arab TV Was Worthless and Demeaning

One of the problems with American ethnocentrism is that many Americans assume that because others don?t speak English as well as us, that they don?t think as well as us.

President Bush, Rumsfeld and General Myers have all fallen victim to this nonsense. Bush especially showed this ignorance in his speeches today on Al Hurrah (an American sponsored propaganda TV station that few Arabs watch) and Al Arabiyah (a Saudi TV station that gets only 24% of the Arab market). In addition, Bush pointedly refused to speak on Al Jazeera TV, the station that has over 60% of the Arab market overseas; thus, he cut off his nose to spite an independent, critical Arab TV station.

"CHECK IT"
IRAQ: UPRISING

New Zealand Herald: Siege Spells Beginning Of The End For US In Iraq

The situation in Iraq is "disintegration verging on collapse", Richard Holbrooke, former United States Ambassador to the United Nations, said last month.

It was a month that saw more American troops killed than during last year's invasion, a decisive US defeat in Fallujah, and horrific revelations about the torture and sexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American and British soldiers.

It may be years yet before the helicopters pluck the last Americans off the roof of the Baghdad embassy, but basically the game is up.
One hundred and thirty-five Americans were killed in Iraq in April, and a thousand wounded.

Meanwhile, any hope of getting the consent of Iraqis to a permanent US military and political presence in the country has gone down the drain.

The siege of Fallujah in response to the killing and mutilation of four American "security contractors" (mercenaries) at the end of March was a blunder that will be studied in military colleges for decades, the lesson being: when there is no way that you can succeed, it is wiser not to reveal your weakness by trying and failing.
IRAQ

Orange County Weekly: Operation Phoenix Rises from the Ashes of history
Death squads didn’t work in Vietnam, but the CIA is betting they’ll be great in Iraq

Never pretty, the war in Iraq is about to get a whole lot uglier. U.S. officials have begun to recruit ex-officers of Saddam Hussein’s infamous Mukhabarat, or secret police, to hunt down resistance forces fighting U.S. troops in Iraq.

According to human rights groups, the Mukhabarat was responsible for torturing and murdering tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians during Hussein’s brutal reign. Nonetheless, the CIA has already reportedly begun sending paychecks to dozens of Saddam’s former thugs, who reportedly assisted in the successful hunt for Hussein and suspected Iranian and Syrian spies in Iraq.

Ex-CIA officials have compared the program to Operation Phoenix, an agency operation that assassinated and tortured tens of thousands of mostly innocent South Vietnamese civilians between 1967 and 1970, a period that marked the most brutal years of the Vietnam War.

"They’re clearly cooking up joint teams to do Phoenix-like things, like they did in Vietnam," said former CIA counterterrorism chief Vincent Cannistraro in a Jan. 4 London Sunday Telegraph article.



FAHRENHEIT 911

Michael Moore: Michael Moore On Disney Blocking His New Film

I would have hoped by now that I would be able to put my work out to the public without having to experience the profound censorship obstacles I often seem to encounter.

Yesterday, I was told that Disney, the studio that owns Miramax, has officially decided to prohibit our producer, Miramax, from distributing my new film, "Fahrenheit 911." The reason? According to today's (May 5) New York Times, it might "endanger" millions of dollars of tax breaks Disney receives from the state of Florida because the film will "anger" the Governor of Florida, Jeb Bush. The story is on page one of the Times and you can read it here (Disney Forbidding Distribution of Film That Criticizes Bush).
OCCUPIED TERRITORIES

Independent: Israel Housing Ministry 'Funding Illegal Settlements'

JERUSALEM -- Israel has used almost £3.6m to finance illegal settlement construction in the West Bank over the past three years, more than half of it for outposts which the government is formally pledged to remove.

The cash for illegal settlement expansion channelled through the Housing and Construction Ministry was highlighted yesterday in a damning annual report from the State Comptroller, Eliezer Goldberg.

Mr Goldberg said in his report that the that the ministry had spent money on expansion projects which had not been approved by either the Cabinet or the Defence Ministry - and including construction projects where land ownership was still being disputed. His report added that the money had been allocated even as a branch of the Israeli military was investing other funds "to track down and demolish illegal construction" in settlements and outposts.

The report says that from January 2000 to June 2003, the Housing Ministry approved 77 contracts for construction projects in 33 West Bank areas, 18 of them unauthorised outposts. More than half of the funding for illegal West Bank construction went to the outposts. While all settlements on the Palestinian side of the 1949-1967 border are contended by Israel's critics to be illegal under international law, the projects identified by the Comptroller are illegal under Israeli law.


IRAQ: TORTURE

ZMAG: The Good Guys by Robert Fisk

Why are we surprised at their racism, their brutality, their sheer callousness towards Arabs? Those American soldiers in Saddam's old prison at Abu Ghraib, those young British squaddies in Basra came -- as soldiers often come -- from towns and cities where race hatred has a home:

Tennessee and Lancashire.

How many of "our" lads are ex--jailbirds themselves? How many support the British National Party? Muslims, Arabs, "cloth heads", "rag heads", "terrorists", "evil". You can see how the semantics break down

Indeed, we now depict Arabs in our films as the Nazis once depicted Jews.

But Arabs are fair game. Potential terrorists to a man -- and a woman -- they must be softened up, "prepared", humiliated, beaten, tortured. The Israelis use torture in the Russian Compound in Jerusalem. Now we torture in Saddam's old jail outside Baghdad and -- for this is where British soldiers beat a young Iraqi to death last summer -- in the former office of Saddam's most murderous chemical warfare fascist, the awful "Chemical"



IRAQ: TORTURE

Guardian: Arab World Scorns Bush's TV 'Apology'
Pressure Mounts In US Over Iraq Torture Scandal

In an unprecedented damage-limitation exercise, President George Bush told Arab TV viewers last night the treatment of prisoners by some members of the US military in Iraq had been "abhorrent" and would be thoroughly investigated.

The people of Iraq "must understand that what took place in that prison does not represent the America that I know," he said in an interview with al-Hurra, an Arabic-language channel funded by the US government.

Though Mr Bush stopped short of a direct apology for the abuse at Abu Ghraib jail, where prisoners were stripped naked and sexually humiliated, he continued: "In a democracy everything is not perfect - mistakes are made."
PEAK OIL

Le Monde/Fromthewilderness: TOWARD THE PETRO-APOCALYPSE

In a few years, the global production of conventional oil will fall, while the global demand continues to rise. The resulting shock of this structural oil famine is inevitable, so great are the dependency of our economies on cheap oil and, related to the first, our inability to wean ourselves from this dependency in a short period of time.

We can hope to soften the shock, but only if its imminence immediately becomes the unique reference point for a general mobilization of our societies, with, as a consequence, drastic consequences in every sector. The alternative is chaos. This prospect is based on the work of the American geologist King Hubbert, who predicted in 1956 the peak in US domestic production of oil in 1970. This occurred exactly as predicted.

Transposing Hubbert's approach today to other countries has given similar predictive results: at present, the production of every giant oilfield -- and only the giant ones matter -- is in decline, except in the "black triangle" of Iraq-Iran-Saudi Arabia.

The Hubbert's peak of the oil-producing Middle East should be reached around 2010, depending on the more or less rapid recovery of full Iraqi production and the growth rate of demand in China.

Since the price will soon reach $100 a barrel, this will no longer be a simple oil shock -- it will be the end of the world as we know it.

____

--Yves Cochet (Green) represents Paris in the National Assembly, and is former land and environment minister (ministre du territoire et de l'environnement


Wednesday, May 05, 2004

MEDIA WATCH

MEDIAMATTERS.ORG

Former right-wing attack journalist David Brock blasted the
conservative movement in his 2002 confessional, Blinded by the
Right. Now he has launched Media Matters, a "Web-based,
not-for-profit progressive research and information center
dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting
conservative misinformation in the U.S. media." The New York Times
reports that Brock has raised $2 million dollars in an attempt to
become a liberal equivalent of Brent Bozell's right wing Media
Research Center and that Brock is working out of the office of
former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta. Brock also has a new
book coming out this month, titled Republican Noise Machine:
Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy.
IRAQ: CHALABI

Salon: HOW CHALABI CONNED THE NEOCONS

"Ahmed Chalabi is a treacherous, spineless turncoat. He had one set of friends before he was in power, and now he's got another," says L. Marc Zell, a former law partner of Douglas Feith, now the undersecretary of defense for policy, and a former friend and supporter of Chalabi and his aspirations to lead Iraq. Feith, Zell and other neoconservatives who helped plan the war with Iraq are upset that Chalabi - the man the neocons used to call "the George Washington of Iraq" - is cozying up to Iran and ditching his promises to befriend Israel. "Chalabi appears to have recognized that the neocons, while ruthless, realistic and effective in bureaucratic politics, were remarkably ignorant about the situation in Iraq, and willing to buy a fantasy of how the country's politics worked. So he sold it to them," writes John Dizard. Joshua Micah Marshall quips: "In the popular political imagination we're familiar with the neocons as conniving militarists, masters of intrigue and cabals, graspers for the oil supplies of the world, and all the rest. But here we have them in what I suspect is the truest light: as college kid rubes who head out for a weekend in Vegas, get scammed out of their money by a two-bit hustler on the first night and then get played for fools by a couple hookers who leave them naked and handcuffed to their hotel beds. And just think, it's on your dime and with your nation's honor."
SOURCE: Salon.com, May 4, 2004

Tuesday, May 04, 2004

ISRAEL

Counterpunch: Terrorism And Assassination -
The Ultimate Deception


The recent assassinations of Hamas leaders Sheikh Yassin and Dr. Abdulaziz Rantisi are part of a long term Israeli strategy -- the latest in a series of actions taken by Israel toward the ultimate destruction of Palestinian society. Their implications may be far more reaching than many analysts have observed, and the need for re-examination of US policy in the Middle East has never been greater.

The first among Israel's objectives has been to convince the public in Israel and in the West that the destruction of Palestinian society is acceptable. Israel has succeeded in creating the wide spread perception within Israel and among American society that violence committed by the Palestinian paramilitary is reprehensible and never justified, but that the violence committed by the Israeli occupation forces is somehow defensible. Israel has unfortunately succeeded in convincing the Israeli and American public that a Palestinian life is worth less than an Israeli Jewish life. [1]

Israel's second objective has been to transfer (expel) Palestinians to areas outside Palestine. In spite of its efforts and the support of Jewish communities around the world, Israel's plan to import enough immigrants to offset the increase in the Palestinian population has failed. The plan failed even with the intense recruiting among gentiles, in Asia, Latin America and elsewhere, and even with the promise of free transportation, cash allowances, subsidized living and free housing on confiscated Palestinian land. The alternative left for the Israeli government -- long advocated by a sector of Israeli society -- has been to transfer Palestinians out of Palestine by making life for Palestinians so unbearable that they would "opt" to leave or by force if "voluntary" departure fails. This plan will eventually succeed unless Palestinian living conditions improve, which is not likely in the foreseeable future, and the world community remains alert to Israel's plan.

Israel's third and latest strategy in pursuing its objective of destroying Palestinian society has been to deceptively enlist the help of the United States, with its military might and world domination, not only as a partner, which it has already succeeded in doing as was recently confirmed and announced by George W. Bush, but also as an active combatant. This deception is no where clearer than in the case of the assassination of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and Dr. Abdulaziz Rantisi. Sharon knows that Hamas holds their leaders in high esteem and would no doubt avenge their assassination. From their side, the Palestinians know that no Israeli action of this magnitude is ever taken without first consulting with the United States and getting US approval, in spite of denial of such complicity by the Bush administration
IRAQ: FALLUJAH

Telegraph: US Demotes Saddam General In Fallujah

BAGHDAD -- The general selected by the US marines to command a new Iraqi force in Fallujah has been abruptly replaced after he denied that there were foreign fighters in the insurgent city and blamed America for fomenting the bloody rebellion there.

Maj Gen Jassim Mohammed Saleh, a former member of Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard, was trumpeted by local US commanders as the type of strong man who could pacify the 2,000 gunmen in Fallujah.

But in an indication of American desperation, it emerged that Gen Saleh had been selected even though little was known about him.

One of his main tasks was to ensure that an estimated several hundred foreign fighters were handed over to coalition forces. On Saturday, Lt Gen James Conway, the US marines commander, said the general was ready to deal with them.

Shortly afterwards, Gen Saleh said: "There are no foreign fighters in Fallujah and the local tribal leaders have told me the same.

"The reasons for the resistance go back to the American provocations, the raids and abolishing the army, which made Iraqis join the resistance."

Monday, May 03, 2004

IRAQ: US/UK TORTURE

Daily Mail: 30 More Torture Scandals Probed

Aftermath: Military Intel & CIA Ordered Abuses At Abu Gharib Prison

NEWS24: 'Shame on the Americans'

Islamonline: And They Ask, “Why Do They Hate Us?”

Teheran Times: US War Crimes - Torture Of Iraqi Prisoners Exposed

Guardian: Torture commonplace, say inmates' families

Independent: Soldiers say pictures are 'tip of the iceberg'
USA VS. CUBA

Spiegel: Powell-Kommission bereitet Castros Sturz vor


Eine Kommission der US-Regierung hat Maßnahmen für einen schnelleren Sturz von Fidel Castro in Kuba vorgeschlagen. Präsident George W. Bush erhofft sich offenbar von einem stärkeren Vorgehen gegen das Regime in Havanna Stimmen von Exilkubanern für seine Wiederwahl.
STREETART EXHIBITION ZÜRICH

Expect Us!

"Expect us!" We are out there...streetart in Zürich

The brutal invasion of the common space, and with it the elimination of the last possibilities for free interaction, have created a couple of strong counter movements.

The streetartists want to reclaim the right to express themselves free in the common space, and they are questioning the commercially controlled reality and the possibilities and offers of the consumeristic society.

Artists are organizing illegal and unathorized communication all over the world, and it is clear that this movement expresses a fundamental unsatisfaction with the existing possibilities. "Expect us" attempts to explain this unsatisfaction, and to present alternatives by showing the works of artists who have chosen to spread their messages through unconventional channels and ask them to explain why.

The danish artist/curator Christian Falsnaes and the austrian artist/organizer Bella Angora are initiators of "Expect us!". Together with the swiss galerists Jean-Claude Freymond-Guth and Esther Eppstein, they have brought the first streetartexhibition in Switzerland to Zürich.

Program :

Saturday, 1. may 2004, 18.00 : Opening of "Expect us!" Exhibition and performances from Anne Bennike (DK), Akim & friends (D), Akay (S) Bella Angora (A), Freaks Gallery (DK) and Straight up (DK) Blauer Saal, Limmatstr. 270, 8005 Zürich

Sunday, 2. may 2004, 18.00 : Message Salon shows PAC opening of exhibition with Pac (CH) and Cosmin (F) message salon, Esther Eppstein, Universitätsstr. 115/117, 8006 Zürich

Monday 3. may, 2004, 18.00 : "the public space today - streetart's importances and chances" speeches and public discussion speakers : Faile (USA) and Freaks gallery (DK) moderators : Christian Falsnaes and Jean-Claude Freymond-Guth in the auditorium of the Museum für Gestaltung und Kunst Ausstellungsstrasse 60, 8005 Zürich 21.0 0: movienight and bar in Blauer Saal, Limmatstr. 270, 8005 Zürich

Wednesday, 5. may, 2004 18.00 : "media, pirates and me" opening of exhibition with Aron Fleming Falk (S), Faile (USA) and Grrrr (CH) Les Complices*, Espace libre & Edition, Anwandstr. 9, 8004 Zürich

Friday, 7. may 2004, 18.00 : "another brick in the wall" opening of exhibition with CBS (D), Jean-Claude Freymond-Guth (CH), Mickry3 (CH) and Zaccheo Zilioli (CH) Kunsthof, Limmatstrasse (tramstop "Museum für Gestaltung"), 8005 Zürich 22.00 : Performancenight @ Migros Museum Performances from Bella Angora (A), Christian Falsnaes (DK), Geneviève Favre (CH), Mirana Belobrovaja (IL), So:ren Berner (NL), Zast & Ritsche (D) Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Limmatstrasse 270, 8005 Zürich

Sunday, 9. may 2004, 12.00 : "Artists brunch" End of festival Hof des Löwenbräu Areals, Limmatstr. 270, 8005 Zürich