Saturday, May 21, 2005

NEWSWEEK

ICH: Cowardice In Journalism Award For Newsweek
Goebbels Award for Condi by Greg Palast

"It's appalling that this story got out there," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on her way back from Iraq.What's NOT appalling to Condi is that the US is holding prisoners at Guantanamo under conditions termed "torture" by the Red Cross. What's not appalling to Condi is that prisoners of the Afghan war are held in violation of international law after that conflict has supposedly ended. What is NOT appalling to Condi is that prisoner witnesses have reported several instances of the Koran's desecration.

TERRORISM

Asia Times: The US's gift to al-Qaeda
by Pepe Escobar

Al-Qaeda and all the other components of the Salafi-jihadi (or Islamist) front are on the verge of scoring a major double blow. Unlike September 11, now their fight not only is being recognized by top Islamic scholars as legitimate, but they have also managed to capitalize on major blunders in the "war on terror" to strengthen the anti-imperialist, anti-US impulse among global, moderate Muslims. How did that happen?

IRAQ: LIES

Juan Cole: The lies that led to war

A leaked British memo, and other documents, make it clear that Bush intended all along to invade Iraq -- and lied about it to the American people. The full gravity of his offense has not yet sunk in.

CHECK IT

Friday, May 20, 2005

IRAQ: US BEHIND TERROR?

Globalresearch: A warning to car drivers (in Arabic) May 11, 2005

“A few days ago, an American manned check point confiscated the driver license of a driver and told him to report to an American military camp near Baghdad airport for interrogation and in order to retrieve his license. The next day, the driver did visit the camp and he was allowed in the camp with his car. He was admitted to a room for an interrogation that lasted half an hour. At the end of the session, the American interrogator told him: ‘OK, there is nothing against you, but you do know that Iraq is now sovereign and is in charge of its own affairs. Hence, we have forwarded your papers and license to al-Kadhimia police station for processing. Therefore, go there with this clearance to reclaim your license. At the police station, ask for Lt. Hussain Mohammed who is waiting for you now. Go there now quickly, before he leaves his shift work”.

The driver did leave in a hurry, but was soon alarmed with a feeling that his car was driving as if carrying a heavy load, and he also became suspicious of a low flying helicopter that kept hovering overhead, as if trailing him. He stopped the car and inspected it carefully. He found nearly 100 kilograms of explosives hidden in the back seat and along the two back doors



WEAPONIZATION OF SPACE

Finacial Times: Russia urges US to avoid space arms race

Russia would consider using force if necessary to respond if the US put a combat weapon into space, according to a senior Russian official.

According to a New York Times report yesterday, the Bush administration was moving towards implementing a new space policy that would move the US closer to placing offensive and defensive weapons in space. Russia, China and many US allies oppose any weaponisation of space, partly out of concerns that it would lead to an extremely expensive post-cold war arms race.


NY Times: Air Force Seeks Approval for Space Weapons Programs

The Air Force, saying it must secure space to protect the nation from attack, is seeking President Bush's approval of a national-security directive that could move the United States closer to fielding offensive and defensive space weapons, according to White House and Air Force officials.

The proposed change would be a substantial shift in American policy. It would almost certainly be opposed by many American allies and potential enemies, who have said it may create an arms race in space.

Thursday, May 19, 2005

NEW STAR WARS MOVIE ONLINE

BoingBoing.net: Star Wars III online

according to Boingboing.net the first copy of Stars Wars Episode III was leaked as a workprint to the internet. It has a timecode and watermarks ans should be watchable.

"i will not post any links because the film will be all over the internet by now"

Wednesday, May 18, 2005

SYRIA

Daily Star: Rice warns Syria to close its borders to terrorists

.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sharply criticized Syria on Monday for what she called unwillingness to close its borders to terrorists she said are to blame for some of the violence in Iraq. "Their unwillingness to deal with the crossings of their border into Iraq is frustrating the will of the Iraqi people," and leading to the deaths of innocent Iraqis, Rice said en route home from a surprise trip to see Iraq's new leaders.


Turkish Press: Syria demands US prove Iraq insurgent claims

DAMASCUS - Syria on Tuesday demanded that US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice provided proof of her renewed allegations that Damascus is supporting insurgents fighting in neighbouring Iraq.

"Who are these terrorists and where is Rice's proof for repeating these accusations against Syria? No one will say," the official Tishrin newspaper said.

"What is important (for Washington) is that Syria remain under pressure in order to satisfy American neoconservatives and Israelis


UZBEKISTAN

Some Facts: In 2002, the United States gave Uzbekistan $500m (€396m) in aid (as opposed to $36m (€28.5m) four years earlier) of which $120m (€95.1) went to the army and $79m (€62.5m) to the notorious SNB, Karimov's secret police. It was the SNB who boiled Muzafar Avazov, an Islamist activist, to death, having already beaten him severely and ripped his fingernails out.

UZBEKISTAN

Irish Independent: Boiling butcher's bill is paid for by Bush

ISLAM KARIMOV, President of Uzbekistan, boils people alive. Why? For the same reason Saddam Hussein put his enemies in a shredder: because, at the time, he could.
When the West is your pal you are able, quite literally, to get away with murder. And what murder!

It is a surprise Karimov has time for governing at all, once he has spent the morning formulating new ways to poach, grill, tenderise, smoke and flambe his citizens to death. Boiling water, electrocution, chlorine-filled gas masks, drowning, rape, shooting, savage beatings, Karimov's Uzbekistan is the absolute market leader in torture right now.
The CIA would not shop anywhere else, which is why a mysterious Gulfstream 5 executive jet routinely delivers terrorist subjects from Afghanistan there for interrogation and, perhaps, percolation.

Craig Murray, the former British Ambassador, drew attention to this last year, and the noted socialist Tony Blair acted immediately. He sacked him.

UZBEKISTAN

Telegraph: Refugees Put Uzbek Dead In Thousands

Refugees who fled from the massacre committed by Uzbek security forces agreed on one thing yesterday: the number of dead is not 500 - the most common reported figure - but could be in the thousands.

As reports continued to come in of clashes spreading outside the town of Andizhan, a sergeant in charge of the bridge at the border village of Kara Suu said he believed that 2,000 had been massacred during three days.

There is no way to confirm numbers offered by refugees, but it seemed likely that when the truth emerges, the massacre in Uzbekistan, an American ally in the fight against terrorism, could become the deadliest assault on civilians since the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.

Rakhmat, a trader who crossed the hastily rebuilt Kara-Suu river bridge, said he saw desperate refugees drown in the river swollen by spring rains. "President Islam Karimov took that bridge down in 1999 because he didn't want us trading in Kyrgyzstan, that's half the reason why there were protests in Andizhan, it was poverty not politics that drove people on to the streets.

"It was chaotic. I saw several people drown as they tried to cross the bridge. Anyone who says the protest was the work of militant Islamists is lying. It was the people, tired, poor, hungry people, not extremists, who took to the street. Anything else is Karimov's propaganda," he added.

* Alec Russell, in Washington, writes: The Bush administration yesterday toughened its stance towards President Karimov, calling on him to ease his repressive control over the country. In the strongest language to date, the State Department said yesterday it was "deeply disturbed" by reports that soldiers in Uzbekistan fired on unarmed civilians.

Dmitry Solovyov in Andizhan: Uzbekistan 'Crackdown' Death Total Now Over 600

least 600 people were killed in a military crackdown following protests in the Uzbek city of Andijan, the head of a local non-governmental organisation who saw the bodies said today.

Families of hundreds have buried their dead as witnesses told of bloody mayhem in which women and children were shot "like rabbits".

Five hundred bodies lay stored yesterday in one of the eastern city's schools, said the head of the Animokur organisation, Gulbahor Turdiyeva. Another 100 were packed in a nearby construction college, she added in a telephone interview.

In the last few decades of american foreign-policy the americans always prefered undemocratic pro-western strongmen to real democracy as long as they could provide "stability" for american business interests . No one should wonder why there's no cia-backed velvet revolution in Uzbekistan. America still has this "He's a son of a bitch but at least he's our son of a bitch" mentality. But at least the State Department is " "deeply disturbed" by the fact that the neo-stalinist regime of Azimov is killing unarmed civilian protesters in their thousends. This is another proof that the whole democracy-this democracy-that talk is all Propaganda

OCCUPIED TERRITORIES: NUCLEAR WASTE

IPC: Minister of Health Asserts Israel Buried 80 Tons of Nuclear Waste in oPt

GAZA, Palestine, May 16, 2005 (IPC) - - The Minister of Health, Dr. Thohni Al Wuheidi, asserted that the Israeli authorities have buried 80 tons of Nuclear waste near the city of Nablus.

The Minister added that the waste were buried 300 meters away from Nablus, while the burial of more nuclear waste was still being completed around the rest of Gaza Strip and West Bank cities, especially those with high population intensity such as Nablus, Hebron and Gaza.

GALLOWAY ON CAPITOL HILL

Telegraph: Galloway Assault OnCapitol Hill

George Galloway confronted the American senators who have accused him of accepting oil allocations from Saddam Hussein yesterday in one of the most extraordinary and ill-tempered exchanges seen on Capitol Hill.

At one point the newly elected MP for Bethnal Green and Bow was accused of "evasion" and of choosing to ignore the questions that were being put to him.

Mr Galloway told the hearing room packed with 300 people: "You have nothing on me Ö other than my name on lists." Many of the lists had been "drawn up after the installation of your puppet government in Baghdad", he said.

In a bass voice rising with indignation to fill the august chamber, Mr Galloway insisted that he had been "an opponent of Saddam when British and American governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas".

MEDIA WATCH: NEWSWEEK

Mediachannel: Newsweek Got it Right

CAMBRIDGE, MA, May 15, 2005 — Contrary to White House spin, the allegations of religious desecration at Guantanamo published by Newsweek on May 9, 2005, are common among ex-prisoners and have been widely reported outside the United States. Several former detainees at the Guantanamo and Bagram prisons have reported instances of their handlers sitting or standing on the Quran, throwing or kicking it in toilets, and urinating on it. Prior to the Newsweek article, the New York Times reported a Guantanamo insider asserting that the commander of the facility was compelled by prisoner protests to address the problem and issue an apology

Juan Cole: Has Newsweek Retracted?

Update: Riverbend weighs in with an Iraqi nationalist point of view on the allegations of Koran desecration in US military prisons. She points out that many Iraqis will find them plausible, given that we know that the interrogators have not shown respect for basic human dignity. Occasional US mosque invasions likewise lend credence to the charges, especially to Sunni Iraqis.

It is being yet again alleged that Newsweek has formally retracted the Guantanamo Koran desecration story, under enormous pressure from the White House. But here is what exactly the magazine's statement said:

"Based on what we know now, we are retracting our original story that an internal military investigation had uncovered Koran abuse at Guantanamo Bay," Newsweek Editor Mark Whitaker said in a statement issued here.'

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

IRAQ: CRIME OF THE CENTURY

Axis of Logic: Stop the Crime of the Century

In Iraq, there is a crime of breathtaking proportions taking place. Breathtaking, but not necessarily surprising. We know from the historical record that governments will lie and deceive, and we've rarely seen one as immoral and venal as the Bush administration
.
What has turned this crime into an astonishing demonstration of the depth of American democracy's decay is the complicity of the media establishment in hiding the original crime, and in thus doing so, ripping a gaping hole in the fabric of our political system.

Did you know that there now exists in the public domain a 'smoking gun' memo, which proves that everything the Bush administration said about the Iraq invasion was a lie? If you live in Britain you probably do, but if you live in the United States, chances are minuscule that you would be aware of this.

IRAQI RESISTANCE

Free Arab Voice: Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Sunday, 15 May 2005.

Iraqi Resistance hails victory as US ends “operation matador” retreats from battle zone.

US forces announced the end on Sunday of their so-called “operation matador” against Iraqi Resistance forces in the area of al-Qa’im on the border with Syria. The announcement followed seven days of bitter fighting and grueling combat acknowledged for its difficulty by the occupation forces in several of their official press conferences – designed to put as positive a face on the American operations as possible.

Resistance fighters confirmed that the US forces withdrew from the area around the city after failing to break in. It was a battle that the people are still talking about because the greatest army in the world was unable to take a city of 50,000 people even after seven days of concerted efforts to do so. In the end all the invaders could do was announce their “victory” and leave.