Talking About Iraq

Free Muntather

2008-12-15T09:23:00.004+01:00

Iraqi journalist Muntather al-Zeidi

Our Iraqi blogger Raed started an online petition to ask for the immediate release of Montather. Please visit and sign it here. Raed is going to print the petition and hand it over to the Iraqi embassy in DC in case he is not released this week.

2008-12-05T17:24:00.011+01:00

Honestly I must say that I am getting really pissed of with all this negative babbling and demands on ordinary Muslims. As if the world would have been all a dance on evergreen landscapes if it weren’t for them.

Well guess what the Germans claimed to be Christians they killed millions of Jews, homosexuals, communists and handicapped people.

The Spanish and Portuguese claimed to be Christians when they slaughtered millions of indigenous people in America and Africa.

The British claimed to be Christians when they slaughtered people in Africa and Asia and the Belgium’s too claimed they were Christians when they slaughtered almost 6 million people in Africa.

The French said they were Christians when they killed people in Africa and Asia.

And the US politician claim they are a religious Christian nation and they decided to militarily attack a country who had not attacked them. Or just let us remember this nations actions in Laos. From 1964 to 1973 the United States dropped more than 2 million tons of ordnance on Laos. That's a planeload of bombs every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years.

Not sure about Churches in other democratic nations but here in Sweden they were found to have been investing their money in both the porn and military industry.

And Israel claims its Jewish when it hold over a million people in a death camp in Gaza. And over 10 000 Palestinians in prison without charges.

ETC ETC ETC

I live in Sweden and Sweden has a military corporation with the totalitarian dictatorship in Saudi Arabia. Sweden sold weapons to many other totalitarian regimes too who prohibit its people from a free healthy democratic development.

In Saudi Arabia if you work for human rights you get sent behind bars for allegations of terror or a threat to national security.

So on which side does Sweden and most of the democratic regimes stand on? Well they work hand in hand with the corrupted totalitarian Saudi Arabian regime making it stronger.

This happens in so many other countries and has been the tradition since many decades ago. If the regime cares more about protecting western economical interests and their personal wealth they get support.

People are starving in Egypt they want a better life a freer life away from dictator Mubarak. But what does the west and USA do? Give him military and political support.

Over and over again this happens year after year.

Democratic countries regimes support dictators because it's good for their own economic growth .

I read once that Saudi Arabia regimes weapon deal with Brittan is the reason why 20 000 Britt's have a job to go to each day.

So politician weight - demands to give Saudi Arabia's people more power to change their country - risking 20 000 Britt's losing their jobs - they have time after time chosen to keep the jobs.

Other nations people's rights have time and time again been put aside if it interfere with our own interests. And yet we seem to have no shame in our media and political debates to criticise these people for not living a life such us ours.

Even totalitarian regimes play the blame game - blaming its own people and never its own way of ruling.

So do you ever hear these democratic regimes linking their own actions in strengthening a dictator, totalitarian or corrupted regime to the fact that it is a major reason why it's so difficult for those who take and want to take responsibility to democratise their countries and make it a better society?

Now these leaders see the west regimes support to them as a green light to call their opponents who ever they may be as a threat to national security and therefore either kill them, torture them , threatened them, make their life hell or hindering them from their work.

War on terror has made it even easier to silence opponents.

I remember a few years ago when we had a huge earth quake in Pakistan. Pakistan needed help from all over the world. And what did Sweden do? Well Sweden went ahead and finalised a weapon sell for 1 milliard SEK to the dictator Mosharaf.

When angry ordinary people in Sweden protested the answer we got back was well the deal was made before the earth quake?!!!!!

The fact that Sweden as a democratic country just sold weapons to a dictator using money he stole from the Pakistani people was apparently not a problem??!!!

A few days later you hear leaders praising Swedish efforts to help with blankets and health service to Pakistan. Wouldn't it have been better to demand that Mosharaf uses 1 milliard to built better houses, schools, health centres and roads to the Pakistani people instead? Wouldn't it have been better to demand that the sum of money be used on building a free democratic healthy open society where the Pakistani people's human rights are respected?

We have so many other western democratic regimes that sell a lot of weapons to totalitarian regimes and/or have military and intelligence corporation with them.

All the time never ever admitting or taking into account that its own actions creates the problems it says its fighting.

Why do people not like us we hear? Its your active support with the regime who prohibit them from a better life they don't like. But nobody listens to that. No we still just hear they claim they hate us because they are Muslims, they have problems because they are Muslims... muslims.... islam.... muslims... threat.....islam....

No let the charade continue its only the ordinary Muslim its wrong with.

And the 18 million people who die from starvation each year are apparently not the sort of lives that need an urgent solution such a war on poverty either.

The fact is western democratic countries actions are one of the reason why there is so much destabilisations in the world today.

Another is totalitarian regimes and the extreme corruption we have in leadership in so many countries in Africa and Asia and even some European and American nations too.

A third is a result of the first two and that is that people have lost their faith in politicians ability and willingness to work for what is best for the majority. Work to end poverty, access to clean water, electricity, food, housing, free education, roads, work that gives you a salary you can live on, access to affordable health care, solidarity and respect of human rights.

People's loss of faith in politicians ability and willingness to work for what is good for the majority can develop into three different results or a combination of them together:

One is that people are so weakened mentally and/or physically that they have lost all ability and/or willingness to participate in building a better society. All their strength goes only to survive from one day to another nothing more. We sadly see this in many places. Its one of the dangers since the society problems can get extreme hard to come to terms with for those who try to work for change to a better society.

Another is that criminal, political and religious fundamentalist groups see the people who have lost faith as a place where to get support and destabilise countries and the society. And other criminal groups see the regime as a place to join to work with them to hindering a healthy development in the country. This is growing and a threat to many innocent people.

And another is the struggle of local and international NGOs together with the local people to manage the work for global solidarity. The positive outcome from grass root levels such as Fair Trade is where our support should be going! These are the groups of people who will give faith back to the ones who lost it. Some see this as a threat because more people get the power over their lives regardless of who is in power and some see it as the only pathway to sustainable peace!

So which way do world leaders want to take their nations people and the world 2009?

Continue as before, with wars, bombs, torture, lies, hate, fear and double standards?

Or will they join us who urgently want to eliminate poverty and injustice and work for global solidarity with peaceful means?

I hope many of them chose to join us - WELCOME!!!

Solidarity, empathy, caring and sharing

In honour of the future victims of Swedish-made weapons

2007-11-05T20:49:00.003+01:00

”In honour of the future victims of Swedish-made weapons”

Seen at the Place Poelaert in central Brussels

By the Swedish artist Fia-Stina Sandlund

Before the war against Iraq, Sweden sold weapons to the USA for 2,2 milliard. Today its 5,3 milliard. So some companies, its investors and employees are benefiting very much of a war in Iraq.

The fact that it is against Swedish law to sell weapons to countries in war seem to have been an issue that the government see as not important. Its new times and new rules. Times when Sweden has openly become among the nations that sacrifices other nations people for its own economical benefit.

Lets have more head of states demand the same

2007-10-27T21:15:00.000+02:00

Once in a while you come across something that just need to be republished:

Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa has refused to renew Washington's lease on the Manta air base, set to expire in 2009. U.S.

"We'll renew the base on one condition: that they let us put a base in Miami -- an Ecuadorean base," Correa said in an interview during a trip to Italy.

"If there's no problem having foreign soldiers on a country's soil, surely they'll let us have an Ecuadorean base in the United States."

Solutions to help Iraqis

2007-04-03T03:11:00.006+02:00

Solutions to help Iraqis:

The centre of it all resides in shifting from military solutions to political and humanitarian solutions.

The Iraqi government, U.S and its allies must stop all military attacks since it have only resulted in more violence, death, hate and destruction and not sustainable peace.

U.S gives Iraqis a timetable for leaving Iraq within 365 days. This is what the majority of Iraqis have been asking for years and nowadays it’s even what the majority of what people in the U.S. want too.

Until then any foreign troops are under the United Nations General Assembly rule, they represent the UN.

Accepting Indonesia’s offer of sending Indonesian, Malayisan/Asian troops for peace operation mission in Iraq.

Start/Continue a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, get more help from South Africa in this issue.

New democratic elections in 12 months.

For the coming election change the current electoral committee to one fully controlled and run by the UN. The new committee should participate in the electoral education of Iraqis.

Iraqis rule Iraq

Iraqis are offered the jobs in their country. Stop importing workforces from aboard when million of Iraqis are unemployed and all they want is to work. Start reconstruction!

Political militias are forbidden.

Foreign militias/mercenaries/private armies must leave Iraq immediately.

When the above is put in action then the group who call themselves the real Iraqi resistance must stop its military attacks on occupation troops and its allies. They are now on their way out of Iraq. Those who choose to still fight would be considered criminals and treated thereafter. And that goes both ways of course.

Put together the original Iraqi army, at least lets try. It will work as a good control mechanism on the streets in Iraq. This army is the one that include all Iraqis. This will increase the chance to more people working together with them. This will increase the stability in the Iraq cities and clarify who still does not understand that violence against Iraqis is unacceptable.

Under UNs Compensation Commission the US and all its allies become liable under international law to pay compensation for losses and damages resulting from U.S and their invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Foreign troops must be accountable under Iraqi law. The immunity that Bremer gave them is not active any longer.

Iraq becomes a member of the ICC. Until a system is set up in Iraq this is also where Iraqis who have committed crimes against their own Iraqi people will be put on trial.

All contracts and laws that have come up since the invasion must be stopped; it will be the next government to in full transparency to review them. This includes the demands from IMF and World Bank.

All foreign advisers that have been appointed by the occupation or the current Iraqi government are to leave Iraq immediately.

All foreigners who have been assigned to give courses about democracy to Iraqis until now you are to leave Iraq immediately. You are obviously incompetent and unskilled. New competent ones will take over!

All U.S. and other foreign military bases that have been built shall all be closed in 365 days. Thereafter it shall be open for Iraqis to move into. Iraqis who have lost their homes.

Parties must be based on political ideologies. Not race, not religion, not which foreign country that supports you.

The current parties that have had political or economical support from a foreign country are allowed to participate in the elections coming up in 8-12 years. This will allow “free parties” to develop and “non free parties” to come back clean!

Since the elections are in 12 months, then the first 6 months are for parties to formulate their political programs. Then we have 5 months for these political programs to be available to the Iraqi people and let the debate start! Month 12 there is election.

Independent election monitors from the UN or even better from Amnesty International.

Starting up peaceful dialogues with neighbouring countries people to work on the longer perspective for peace and democracy in the area.

Opening Amnesty International offices in every city and village in Iraq. Opening offices for well established international peace organisations in every city in Iraq. Letting these hold seminars, training sessions, and workshops on topics of human rights, solving conflicts thru non violence and working on the empowerment of civil society groups that are found in Iraq and establish more.

Also start a campaign of having these seminars and training sessions in all political parties, parliament, army units, new Iraqi police stations, Iraqi schools and work places too!

Starting an anti corruption campaign, here I believe Finland can lend a helping hand.

Starting democracy and human rights courses on TV, radio, newspapers and Internet. Here I suggest Switzerland to be the country to lend a hand!

All this can be accomplished and these suggestions work from grass root levels and up and that is what is needed if we want any country to succeed! Its clear from the last years military actions that change is needed, these suggestions are some steps towards that, they can develop and become even better too. We have to start somewhere...

For the whole world here are suggestions too:

Make Fair Trade , organic agriculture and eco friendly products the standard.

Encourage Peace journalism.

Start an international Library project for Borrowing A Living Book. This has had a huge success in Swedish libraries whom have tried it so let them help here! You can borrow a religious person, a policeperson, a manager, a blind person, an athlete, a homosexual, a teacher etc over a cup of tea or coffee. Ask questions, learn and increase the understanding which leads to a better tolerant world!

People starts seriously using peaceful means when solving conflicts and problems.

People starts seriously working on the UN Millennium Development Goals.

People starts seriously using alternatives to oil. No more repression, domination and wars for oil and gas.

People starts seriously using sustainable methods when using water resources. Let’s learn from half a century disastrous oil conflicts and avoid future wars for water.

Learn about The Story of Stuff and join us that work for a sustainable lifestyle.

Air pollution, water shortage, water pollution and loss of biodiversity are all global problems. By changes in our daily behaviour we can save our planet. Becoming a vegan or vegetarian is a good step too. What good is your freedom to vote if you can no longer breath clean air, don't have access to clean water and your soil is polluted.

Stop big corporation who put themselves above national and international laws and by it increase conflicts.

Demand that Israel's and the Palestinians legal borders are the ones from 1948 or 1967. Both have to respect this.

Close down all U.S. military bases in the world! (The United States maintains 737 military bases in 130 countries across the globe.) Let the money that has gone to the military and Pentagon instead go to U.S people's universal health care, better schools for U.S kids, getting rid of AIPAC, sustainable infrastructure and investing in a national and global education system for solving conflicts by peaceful means!

Start an International Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Regimes that disregard human rights or international law must NOT be strengthened by political, economical and military deals and support.

The sinister weapon multi billion industry’s only function is to produce products whose only purpose is to destroy societies, kill and injure children, men and women. To sell these weapons they work fulltime to make us fear and hate each other. Their survival to earn more billions is to se to it that we always have conflicts and wars.

So please join disarmament groups. Get rid of the weapon industry.

Let’s work together for global sustainable peace built on equality and solidarity for us living now and for our coming generations. Please let’s take that path!

Other suggestions are welcomed! . So are your views how to improve/change the ones I have written with arguments. This is a platform for us to move forward!

Building a world wide culture of solving conflicts with peaceful means

Iraqs traumatised children

2007-03-28T14:50:00.000+02:00

Tears

2007-03-27T11:20:00.001+02:00

Please go and read the story of Marwan Hussein, his wife Abdya and their two kids Hala, 5, and Yehia, 7

"For the past seven months, I've been selling half of our monthly food rations [distributed as aid by the Ministry of Trade to help poor families registered by the government] to raise some money to flee to Syria…”

This is how devastated Iraqis have become, they sell their food to flee Iraq : (

Yesterday I was told that yet another relative, a cousin of mine, have fled Iraq to Syria becouse of death threats. My other cousin (his brother) is totally traumatized, after people on a pickup shot his best friend in front of him. He is now hidden somewhere in Iraq wanting to leave ASAP. My thoughts goes to the friends family too.

My aunt who fled to Syria a year ago is now going back to see if she can get my other aunt Khawla out of Iraq. My aunt Khawla is the mother to my cousins I talked about and she had diabetes and because of the damn sanctions before she could not get enough medication to treat it, which led to her loosing her sight : (

Which western nation in heavens name could she have attacked with that medication?

Bush, Rice and their blood thirsty supporters, no one gave you the right to make Iraq your arena for wars you want to have. Take your stinking war with the troops that are willing to fight it for you out of Iraq to your own cities in the U.S. And let Iraqis pick up the pieces of the broken society as they have managed to do so many times before and come back!

___________________
Conflict Transformation by Peaceful Means

Survey paints a devastating portrait of life in Iraq

2007-03-19T15:25:00.000+01:00

A new national survey paints a devastating portrait of life in Iraq: Widespread violence, torn lives, displaced families, emotional damage, collapsing services, an ever-starker sectarian chasm – and a draining away of the underlying optimism that once prevailed.

STRIFE and STRESS – Such conditions create a tremendous emotional burden. Anywhere from 72 to 82 percent of Iraqis report anger about what’s happening in their country, depression, trouble sleeping and difficulty concentrating on their usual activities

– all potential indicators of traumatic stress.

Violence is the cause, its reach vast. Eighty percent of Iraqis report attacks nearby – car bombs, snipers, kidnappings, armed forces fighting each other or abusing civilians. It’s worst by far in the capital, Baghdad, but by no means confined there.

The personal toll is enormous. More than half of Iraqis, 53 percent, have a close friend or a relative who’s been hurt or killed in the current violence.

One in six says someone in their own household has been harmed. Eighty-six percent worry about a loved one being hurt; two-thirds worry deeply. Huge numbers limit their daily activities to minimize risk. Seven in 10 report multiple signs of traumatic stress.

Methodology: The poll was conducted by D3 Systems for the BBC, ABC News, ARD German TV and USA Today. More than 2,000 people were questioned in more than 450 neighbourhoods and villages across all 18 provinces of Iraq between 25 February and 5 March 2007. The margin of error is + or - 2.5%.

- The full (pdf file) can be downloaded here

- Article: Pessimism 'growing among Iraqis'

_____

Thank you Laith for brining this poll to my attention.

Iraq's growing refugee crisis

2007-03-18T16:07:00.000+01:00

Iraq's growing refugee crisis

A special report on the millions of Iraqis fleeing the war in Iraq.

- United Nations High Commission for Refugees

- Swedish Migration and Asylum Policy Ministry

When Home Becomes Hell

As its middle classes flee, Iraq is losing skills, open minds and perhaps the hope of renewal. One family's story.

An estimated 2.3 million Iraqis have fled the country since the 2003 invasion. They represent the largest displacement of people in the region since the Palestinian diaspora nearly a half century ago. About 50,000 people escape Baghdad each month. A staggering 1.7 million are displaced within Iraq, while almost 2 million more have sought refuge in Syria and Jordan, 130,000 in Egypt and 50,000 in Iran. Even Sweden is feeling the effects of this war: last year alone, 9,000 Iraqis applied for asylum there, and 90 percent of those requests were approved.

2007-03-12T20:50:00.001+01:00

2007-03-07T14:31:00.000+01:00

Just last night I read in a Swedish forum of someone who had just learned of Sweden transporting/exporting weapons to Lebanon. The Lebanese people do not need more weapons; they need dialog with each other to solve their issues. And what Sweden should do is support actions towards that. No but our weapon industry/with the knowledge of political leaders choose to export them weapons to help who ever is going to do the killing to kill more. I can not take it any longer.

I am so fed up with the talk democratic leaders have that our societies are so much for peace. We are NOT, we are a bunch of nations whose leaders chose profits of the weapon industry over human rights, over solving conflicts peacefully. And then when the consequences come and hit us back they have the nerve and blame other people for the result (ohhh it’s the Muslims who hate our freedoms). Sure our freedom to sell weapons to their regimes that kill them and who can blame them.

What is it they want is full scale war so that in a couple of years all Arabs have been killed, all Muslims have been killed and at the same time all Africans have been killed either by starvation or aids, is that it? Is that what our leaders in the democratic world are aiming at? I just don’t get it? We know that if we keep the current development of people that we have today, in about 30 years we need 5 planets to survive. So is the genius idea to kill as many as possible of Muslims, Arabs and Africans? And since it can not be done without outrage they came up with the idea that it’s war on terror and no money for food and aids? I really don’t know? But what the heck is the weapon industry exporting so much weapons to the middle east and we know how close they are with our leaders?

Sweden is now selling weapons like hell to US troops in Iraq too, even thought its against our law (not to sell weapons to countries at war) even though Sweden said the war is illegal. But yet we do it. Then we have some Swedish people who have the nerve to complain about “too many Iraqi refugees” why don’t they instead focus on demolitioning the weapon factories in Sweden that is exporting the weapons to Iraq and making the war there just getting worse and worse. Oh no but then they say that means we’ll have thousands of people being unemployed.

Rejoice Iraqis, Iraq is being destroyed your love ones being killed but be happy at least this terrible war is giving thousands of westerners a job to go to each day to do the weapons that are needed to kill you and destroy Iraq. And rejoice the Lebanese people if you thought the 80s was bad just wait until you see the new modern improved Swedish weapons that will kill you. Remember not to die too fast when you get hit, you must send a card to the people who did the bullet that killed you. You know we are told these days in Sweden by some politicians that we should be proud of our weapon exports so you better be thankful and send us that card.

And the rest of the people who live under dictatorship rejoice you too! Why do you need democratic elections, why do you need to put investments on healthcare and educations in your country, no rejoice that the democratic countries have taken that decision for you by selling weapons to your unelected regime. Smile and be happy since your loss in society developments is of great benefit for us who live in the west!

I am fed up, angry and sad that I can not stop this madness. Ten of thousands of innocent kids die each day because of starvation and no clean water – why is that not seen as an urgent need to fix by leaders who can not stop talking about protecting humans?

There are so many people all over the world who work for conflicts to be solved thru peaceful means and that military funds should go to building healthy functioning societies instead why are we not able to stop this madness....

: (

2007-03-06T21:04:00.000+01:00

So what’s new today when I think of Iraq and world politics? I am sad, fed up and angry. Meaning its just as yesterday and the day before that and the day before that and the day before…..

The Gulf Arab region has become a paradise for Western arms manufacturers

2007-03-04T21:01:00.000+01:00

Beating ploughshares into swords

The Arab Gulf is arming itself, but why, asks Ayman El-Amir

Gulf Arab states are going on a shopping spree for the purchase of sophisticated Western weaponry at an estimated cost of $60 billion.
A recent report in The New York Times, of which The Daily Telegraph had published another version two months earlier, said the lethal weapons order would include Apache attack helicopters, cruise missiles, Typhoon fighters and tanks, in addition to other war accessories. Saudi Arabia, which already has US-installed and operated Patriot anti- missile batteries, will reportedly spend $50 billion, representing the lion's share of the military package.
The UAE has earmarked almost $8 billion to buy fighter aircraft, missiles and other military materiel.
Other states vying for modern armament are Kuwait and Oman. And money is no problem.
The oil revenues of Middle Eastern producing countries in 2006 is estimated at more than $400 billion, based on an average price of $57 per barrel.
Suddenly, the Gulf Arab region has become a vendor's paradise for Western arms manufacturers. An arms race is accelerating in the region, with incalculable consequences.
The question is: for what purpose?

Second update on efforts to stop the summary execution of three Iraqi women

2007-03-04T12:35:00.000+01:00

Statement by Hana Al Bayaty, Ian Douglas, Abdul Ilah Albayaty, Iman Saadoon, Dirk Adriaensens and Ayse Berktay
(2 March 2007)

CALL FOR WORLDWIDE INTENSIFYING MOBILIZATION

Second update on efforts to stop the summary execution of three Iraqi women

Twenty-four hours ago we issued an urgent alert, stating that the defence of human rights in Iraq, as a result of US occupation and its sectarian puppet forces, is practically impossible. But the awareness by thousands of this fact explains the overwhelming mobilization we are witnessing in defence of three Iraqi women facing the gallows.

Individuals, intellectuals, women's organizations, lawyers' associations, human rights groups, trade unions and political movements effectively networked and took initiative worldwide. The popular pressure that has been built from everywhere, via numerous routes, impelled, among others:

· Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on Friday 2 March, to place a direct call to Nouri El-Maliki, expressing Turkey's alarm at the proposed execution of Wassan Talib, Zainab Fadhil and Liqa Omar Muhammad
· Ann Clwyd MP, special envoy to war criminal Tony Blair on human rights in Iraq, to write to Iraqi authorities outlining her opposition to the death penalty in all cases and calling for investigations into the circumstances of the trials of the three Iraqi women
· Abdullah Gul, foreign minister of Turkey, to announce that he would raise the issue of executions in Iraq in his 3 March meetings with foreign ministers of the Arab League
· Luisa Morgantini, vice-president of the European Parliament, to remind the Iraqi government that no state has the right to kill and that Wassan, Zainab and Liqa are prisoners of war with protected status under the Geneva Conventions
· Martin Shultz, president of the Socialist Group in the European Parliament, to remind Jalal Talabani that the European Union opposes the death penalty

Today we received information via the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention that the three Iraqi women will not be executed until an appeals court has ruled on their cases. This assurance came from Iraqi authorities. It is not enough. We demand to know the charges on which these three Iraqi women stand convicted. We demand to know the date of their appeal hearings. We demand that a public statement is made. We demand that they be afforded all due protections under international human rights and humanitarian law. If charged with resisting foreign occupation and aggression, we declare this charge illegal.

While Wassan, Zainab and Liqa are no longer anonymous, 20 million other Iraqis face imminent threats in towns and cities where occupation-sponsored death squads continue to operate with impunity and where rape and torture by US and Iraqi puppet forces is endemic. Over one million have been arbitrarily deprived of the right to life and tens of thousands more arbitrarily detained. Backward and sectarian forces have been installed in power and the achievements of the Iraqi people over the past 100 years have been reduced to ashes.

The end of oppression, of summary executions and assassinations, of arbitrary detentions, rape and torture, of mass murder, civil strife and genocide, and the destruction of civilization, culture and history, comes with the end of the occupation.

The occupation of Iraq is no less than the concrete implementation of the ideology driving the so-called war on terror; permanent war, the denial of civil liberties and the exclusion of international law from international relations that prevents the peaceful coexistence and reciprocal advancement of peoples and cultures. The depth of solidarity and defence of human dignity, justice and most basic human rights expressed in the case of these three Iraqi women is proof that humanity refuses this regression.

From Berlin to Baghdad, we salute all those that through public demonstrations, personal moral conviction, or resistance in their given situation, have linked the lives of three Iraqi women -- indeed, all Iraqi women -- to the dignity and resilience of the nation of Iraq under the hammer of a defeated occupation.

As 20 March 2007 -- the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq -- approaches, we hope all stay mobilized to secure the wellbeing of Wassan, Zeinab and Liqa. We demand the liberation of all political prisoners in Iraq.

We also call for worldwide, intensifying mobilization to stop this illegal blood-soaked occupation, struggle to uphold international law by retrieving recognition from the criminal sectarian puppet Iraqi government, recognizing the Iraqi Resistance as the sole representative of the will of the Iraqi people, and demanding the unconditional and immediate withdrawal of all occupation forces.
.
The only solution in Iraq is the sovereignty of the Iraqi people.

We stand with millions in defence of justice. We stand with millions in defence of Iraq. Our hearts are Iraqi.

Hana Al Bayaty
Ian Douglas
Abdul Ilah Albayaty
Iman Saadoon
Dirk Adriaensens
Ayse Berktay

* Selected statements and actions against the imminent execution of 3 Iraqi women can be found on: http://www.brusselstribunal.org/HangingActions.htm
* List of endorsers: http://www.brusselstribunal.org/hangingSignatories.htm
* Original statement "Hanging the Womb of Iraq" can be found on: http://www.brusselstribunal.org/hanging.htm

Killing hundreds of thousands Iraqis to get Iraqs oil

2007-03-01T11:10:00.000+01:00

New Oil Law Seen as Cover for Privatisation
Emad Mekay

WASHINGTON, Feb 27 (IPS) - The U.S.-backed Iraqi cabinet approved a new oil law Monday that is set to give foreign companies the long-term contracts and safe legal framework they have been waiting for, but which has rattled labour unions and international campaigners who say oil production should remain in the hands of Iraqis.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a close ally of Washington, called the law "another founding stone in state-building."

Yet critics, including Iraqi oil professionals, engineers and technicians in the unions, are instead advocating for technical service contracts, meaning a company would come in and offer services such as building a refinery, laying a pipeline, or offering consultancy services, get their fees and then leave.

"It is a much more equitable relationship because the control of production, development of oil will stay with the Iraqi state," said Jasiewicz.

"That is the model that Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait generally operate. There's no other country in the Middle East with the kind of oil reserves that Iraq has that would consider signing a production-sharing agreement," she said. "It's a form of privatisation and that's why those countries haven't signed these because it's not in their interests."

Its always been the oil.

What was it Bush said last year when talking about Iraq?

“If they control oil resources, then they pull oil off the market in order to run the price up, and they will do so unless we abandon Israel, for example, or unless we abandon allies.”

What did House of Representatives Subcommittee on Africa Chairman Ed Royce (R-CA) say about oil?

”African oil should be treated as a priority for U.S. national security post 9-11, and I think that post 9-11 its occurred to all of us that our traditional sources of oil are not as secure as we once thought they were” From the symposium African Oil: A Priority for U.S. National Security and African Development.

What was it Carter said about oil?
State of the Union Address 1980
January 23, 1980

“The crises in Iran and Afghanistan have dramatized a very important lesson: Our excessive dependence on foreign oil is a clear and present danger to our Nation's security.

…the overwhelming dependence of the Western democracies on oil supplies from the Middle East;

Afghanistan is of great strategic importance: It contains more than two-thirds of the world's exportable oil.

The Soviet Union is now attempting to consolidate a strategic position, therefore, that poses a grave threat to the free movement of Middle East oil.

This situation demands careful thought, steady nerves, and resolute action, not only for this year but for many years to come. It demands collective efforts to meet this new threat to security in the Persian Gulf and in Southwest Asia. It demands the participation of all those who rely on oil from the Middle East.”

And in 1991 a World Bank study found that Somalia and Sudan are highest on the list of to become oil production countries. Just incase you wonder why U.S and its allies are in Somalia.

It’s always been the oil.

The talk on the Internet & where it all started

2007-02-28T23:12:00.000+01:00

On the 11th of September the BBC reported that WTC7 collapsed before it had. Who told the BBC that this building had collapsed before it did? How did that source know it was going to collapse?

"It seems this was not a result of a new attack, it was because the building had been weakened during this morning's attacks." - BBC World News studio anchorman, talking about the collapse of WTC7 at approx. 17:10 on 09/11/2001 - approx 10 minutes BEFORE the actual collapse of WTC7.

How could that conclusion have been reached before the building ACTUALLY COLLAPSED?!

Go and ask BBC about the source of information here

If you have problmes viewing the above BBC newsclip, then you can try here.

Hanging the womb of Iraq

2007-02-28T22:10:00.000+01:00

Stop the executions!

Statement of Hana Albayaty, Ian Douglas, Abdul Ilah Albayaty, Iman Saadoon, Dirk Adriaensens and Ayse Berktay (14 Feb 2006)

[Français] - [Arabic] - [Spanish] - [Turkish] - Click here for list of endorsers.

We hope all endorse, distribute widely, organize and act. Please reply to hanaalbayaty@gmail.com

* Take Action ! Now ! Click here to read what you can do.

* Selected statements against the imminent execution of 3 Iraqi women.

Wassan Talib, 31 years old, Zainab Fadhil, 25 years old, and Liqa Omar Muhammad, 26 years old, face imminent execution in Iraq, all charged with “offences against the public welfare” by a government that cannot even provide electricity but fills the streets with dead bodies. All are in Baghdad’s Al-Kadhimiya Prison. Two have small children beside them. The 1-year-old daughter of Liqa was born in prison. All women deny the charges for which they face hanging.

We hope all endorse, distribute widely, organize and act. Please reply to hanaalbayaty@gmail.com

To read more go to The Brussels Tribunal

Conflict Transformation by Peaceful Means

2007-02-21T16:50:00.000+01:00

During the years there have been a lot of alternative peaceful solutions suggested for solving the crises in Iraq. So here again I list some suggestions, these are practical things that can be done.

The centre of it all resides in shifting from military solutions to political and humanitarian solutions.

U.S and its allies must admit that military attacks have only resulted in more violence, death, hate and destructions and not peace.

U.S gives Iraqis a timetable for leaving Iraq within 365 days. This is what the majority of Iraqis have been asking for years and nowadays it’s even what the majority of what people in the U.S. want too.

Until then any forigen troops are under the United Nations General Assembly rule, they represent the UN.

Start a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, get help from South Africa in this issue.

New democratic elections in 12 months.

Iraqis rule Iraq

Iraqis are offered the jobs in their country. Stop importing workforces from aboard when million of Iraqis are unemployed and all they want is to work.

Political militias are forbidden.

Foreign militias/mercenaries/private armies must leave Iraq immediately.

The real Iraqi resistance must stop its military attacks on occupation troops and its allies.

Put together the original Iraqi army. It will work as a good control mechanism on the streets in Iraq. This army is the one that protected Iraq in the war against Iran. This will increase the chance to more people working together with them. This will increase the stability in the Iraq cities and clarify who still does not understand that violence against Iraqis is unacceptable.

Under UNs Compensation Commission the US and its allies become liable under international law to pay compensation for losses and damages resulting from U.S invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Foreign troops must be accountable under Iraqi law. The immunity that Bremer gave them is not active any longer.

Iraq becomes a member of the ICC

All contracts and laws that have come up since the invasion must be stopped; it will be the next government to in full transparency to review them.

All “foreign advisers” that have been appointed by the occupation are to leave Iraq immediately.

All U.S. and other foreign military bases that have been built shall all be closed in 365 days. Thereafter it shall be open for Iraqis to move into. Iraqis who lost their home in this war.

Parties must be based on political ideologies. Not race, not religion, not which foreign country that supports you.

The current parties that have had political or economical support from a foreign country are allowed to participate in the elections coming up in 8-12 years. This will allow “free parties” to develop and “non free parties” to come back clean!

Since the elections are in 12 months, then the first 6 months are for parties to formulate their political programs. Then we have 5 months for these political programs to be available to the Iraqi people and let the debate start! Month 12 there is election.

Independent election monitors from the UN or even better from Amnesty International.

Starting up peaceful dialogues with neighbouring countries to work on the longer perspective for peace in the area.

Opening Amnesty International offices in every city and village in Iraq. Opening offices for well established international peace organisations in every city in Iraq. Letting these hold seminars, training sessions, and workshops on topics of human rights, solving conflicts thru non violence and working on the empowerment of civil society groups that are found in Iraq and establish more.

Also start a campaign of having these seminars and training sessions in all political parties, parliament, army units, new Iraqi police stations, Iraqi schools and work places too!

Starting an anti corruption campaign, here I believe Finland can lend a helping hand.

Starting democracy and human rights courses on TV, radio, newspapers and Internet. Here I suggest Switzerland to be the country to lend a hand!

For the whole world here are suggestions too:

Encourage Peace journalism.

People starts seriously using peacfull means when solving conflicts and problems.

People starts seriously working on the UN Millennium Development Goals.

People starts seriously using alternatives to oil. No more repression, domination and wars for oil or gas.

People starts seriously using sustainable methods when using water recourses. Let’s learn from half a centry disastrous oil conflicts and avoid future wars for water.

Air pollution, water shortage, water pollution and loss of biodiversity are all global problems. By changes in our daily behaviour we can save our planet. Becoming a vegan or vegetarian is a good step too.

Stop big corporation who put themselvs above national and international laws and by it increase conflicts.

Demand that Israel's and the Palestinian's state leagal borders are the ones from 1948. Both have to respect this.
Why not close down all U.S. military bases in the world! Let the money that has gone to the military and Pentagon instead go to U.S people's universal health care, better schools for U.S kids, getting rid of AIPAC and investing in a national and global education on solving conflicts by peacefull means instead! Does anyone have a current list/map of U.S. military bases in the world?

Join the disarment groups. The weapon industry’s only function is to produce products whose only purpose is to kill other human beings. Join disarment groups to get rid of the weapon industry.

Other suggestions are welcomed. So are your views how to improve/change the ones I have written with arguments.

Other solutions from Blogger Diablo can be read here (a must read)!

Building a world wide culture of solving conflicts with peaceful means

Baghdad Burning update about The Rape of Sabrine...

2007-02-20T10:37:00.000+01:00

The Rape of Sabrine...
It takes a lot to get the energy and resolution to blog lately. I guess it’s mainly because just thinking about the state of Iraq leaves me drained and depressed. But I had to write tonight.

As I write this, Oprah is on Channel 4 (one of the MBC channels we get on Nilesat), showing Americans how to get out of debt. Her guest speaker is telling a studio full of American women who seem to have over-shopped that they could probably do with fewer designer products. As they talk about increasing incomes and fortunes, Sabrine Al-Janabi, a young Iraqi woman, is on Al Jazeera telling how Iraqi security forces abducted her from her home and raped her. You can only see her eyes, her voice is hoarse and it keeps breaking as she speaks. In the end she tells the reporter that she can’t talk about it anymore and she covers her eyes with shame.

Please read more here

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Torture experience in the Abu Ghraib prison

2007-02-17T21:41:00.000+01:00

STATUTORY DECLARATION

I, Ali Sh. Abbas (alias Ali Shalal) of full age and an Iraqi citizen do hereby solemnly and sincerely declare as follows:

1. I am 45 years old.

2. I now live in Amman, Jordan.

3. I was an Islamic education lecturer in the city of Al-Aladamiya, Iraq

4. The purpose of making this statutory declaration is to put on record my torture experience in the Abu Ghraib prison.

5. On the 13th October, 2003 while I was going to prayer in the mosque in Al-Amraya, Baghdad, the American troops arrested me. They tied my hands to the back of my body and put a bag over my head. They took me to a small prison in a U.S. military camp in Al-Amraya.

6. The Commander of this military camp, one Captain Philips told me that he had received an order from his superior to arrest me and he did not know the reasons for my arrest. I was left alone in the prison.

7. After two days, they transferred me to the Abu Ghraib prison. The first thing they did to me was to make a physical examination of my body and abused me. Together with other detainees, we were made to sit on the floor and were dragged to the interrogation room. This so called room is in fact a toilet (approximately 2m by 2m) and was flooded with water and human waste up to my heel level. I was asked to sit in the filthy water while the American interrogator stood outside the door, with the translator.

8. After the interrogation, I would be removed from the toilet, and before the next detainee is put into the toilet, the guards would urinate into the filthy water in front of the other detainees.

9. The first question they asked me was, “Are you a Sunni or Shiia?” I answered that this is the first time I have been asked this question in my life. I was surprised by this question, as in Iraq there is no such distinction or difference. The American interrogator replied that I must answer directly the questions and not to reply outside the question. He then said that in Iraq there are Sunnis, Shiias and Kurds.

10. The interrogators wore civilian clothes and the translator, an Afro-American wore American army uniform.

11. When I answered that I am an Iraqi Muslim, the interrogator refused to accept my answer and charged me for the following offence:

(a) That I am anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic.
(b) I supported the resistance
(c) I instigated the people to oppose the occupation
(d) That I knew the location of Osama bin Ladin

I protested and said that Muslims and Jews descended from the same historical family. I said that I could not be in the resistance because I am a disabled person and have an injured hand.

12. The interrogator accused me that I had injured my hand while attacking the American soldiers.

13. The interrogator informed me that they knew that I was an important person in the community and therefore could help them. As an inducement for my cooperation, the interrogator offered medical help for my injured hand.

14. When I did not cooperate, the interrogator asked me whether I considered the American army as “liberator” or “occupier”. When I replied that they were occupiers, he lost his temper and threatened me. He told me that I would be sent to Guantanamo Bay where even animals would not be able to survive.

15. They took me to another room and took record of my thumb print, a photo of my eye and a sample of my saliva for DNA analysis. After this procedure, they tagged me by putting a band round my wrist with the following particulars: my name, a number, my religious status and whether I had previous arrest.

16. They then beat me repeatedly and put me in a truck to transfer me to another part of the Abu Ghraib prison.

17. This part of the prison, was in an open space and consisted of five sectors, surrounded by walls and barb wires and was called “Fiji Land”. Each sector had five tents and surrounded by barb wires. When I was removed from the truck, the soldiers marked my forehead with the words “Big Fish” in red. All the detainees in this camp are considered “Big Fish”. I was located in camp “B”.

18. The living conditions in the camp were very bad. Each tent would have 45 to 50 detainees and the space for each detainee measured only 30cm by 30cm. We had to wait for 2 to 3 hours just to go to the toilets. There was very little water. Each tent was given only 60 litres of water daily to be shared by the detainees. This water was used for drinking and washing and cleaning the wounds after the torture sessions. They would also make us to stand for long hours.

19. Sometimes, as a punishment, no food is given to us. When food is given, breakfast is at 5.00 am, lunch is at 8.00 am and dinner at 1.00 pm. During Ramadhan, they bring food twice daily, first at 12.00 midnight and the second is given during fasting time to make the detainees break the religious duty of fasting.

20. During my captivity in the camp, I was interrogated and tortured twice. Each time I was threatened that I would be sent to Guantanamo Bay prison. During this period, I heard from my fellow detainees that they were tortured by cigarette burns, injected with hallucinating chemicals and had their rectum inserted with various types of instruments, such as wooden sticks and pipes. They would return to the camp, bleeding profusely. Some had their bones broken.

21. In my camp, I saw detainees brought over from a secret prison which I came to know later as being housed in the “Arabian Oil Institute” building, situated in the north of Baghdad. These detainees were badly injured.

22. After one month and just before sunset my number was called and they put a bag over my head and my hands were tied behind my back. My legs were also tied. They then transferred me to a cell.

23. When I was brought to the cell, they asked me in Arabic to strip but when I refused, they tore my clothes and tied me up again. They then dragged me up a flight of stairs and when I could not move, they beat me repeatedly. When I reached the top of the stairs, they tied me to some steel bars. They then threw at me human waste and urinated on me.

24. Next, they put a gun to my head and said that they would execute me there. Another soldier would use a megaphone to shout at me using abusive words and to humiliate me. During this time, I could hear the screams of other detainees being tortured. This went on till the next morning.

25. In the morning, an Israeli stood in front of me and took the bag from my head and told me in Arabic that he was an Israeli had interrogated and tortured detainees in Palestine. He told me that when detainees would not cooperate, they would be killed. He asked me repeatedly for names of resistance fighters. I told him that I do not know any resistance fighters but he would not believe me, and continued to beat me.

26. This Israeli dressed in civilian clothes tortured me by inserting in turn first with a jagged wooden stick into my rectum and then with the barrel of a rifle. I was cut inside and bled profusely. During this time, when any guard walked past me, they would beat me. I had no food for 36 hours.

27. The next morning, the Israeli interrogator came to my cell and tied me to the grill of the cell and he then played the pop song, “By the Rivers of Babylon” by Pop Group Boney M, continuously until the next morning. The effect on me was that I lost my hearing, and I lost my mind. It was very painful and I lost consciousness. I only woke up when the Israeli guard poured water on my head and face. When I regain consciousness, he started beating me again and demanded that I tell him of the names of resistance fighters and what activities that I did against the American soldiers. When I told him that I did not know any resistance fighters, he kicked me many times.

28. I was kept in the cell without clothes for two weeks. During this time, an American guard by the name of “Grainer” accompanied by a Moroccan Jew called Idel Palm ( also known as Abu Hamid) came to my cell and asked me about my bandaged hand which was injured before I was arrested. I told him that I had an operation. He then pulled the bandage which stained with blood from my hand and in doing so, tore the skin and flesh from my hands. I was in great pain and when I asked him for some pain killers, he stepped on my hands and said “this is American pain killer” and laughed at me.

29. On the 15th day of detention, I was given a blanket. I was relieved that some comfort was given to me. As I had no clothes, I made a hole in the centre of the blanket by rubbing the blanket against the wall, and I was able to cover my body. This is how all the prisoners cover their bodies when they were given a blanket.

30. One day, a prisoner walked past my cell and told me that the interrogators want to speed up their investigation and would use more brutal methods of torture to get answers that they want from the prisoners. I was brought to the investigation room, after they put a bag over my head. When I entered the investigation room, they remove the bag from my head to let me see the electrical wires which was attached to an electrical wall socket.

31. Present in the room was the Moroccan Jew, Idel Palm, the Israeli interrogator, two Americans one known as “Davies” and the other “Federick” and two others. They all wore civilian clothes, except the Americans who wore army uniforms. Idel Palm told me in Arabic that unless I cooperated, this would be my last chance to stay alive. I told him that I do not know anything about the resistance. The bag was then placed over my head again, and left alone for a long time. During this time, I heard several screams and cries from detainees who were being tortured.

32. The interrogators returned and forcefully placed me on top of a carton box containing can food. They then connected the wires to my fingers and ordered me to stretch my hand out horizontally, and switched on the electric power. As the electric current entered my whole body, I felt as if my eyes were being forced out and sparks flying out. My teeth were clattering violently and my legs shaking violently as well. My whole body was shaking all over.

33. I was electrocuted on three separate sessions. On the first two sessions, I was electrocuted twice, each time lasting few minutes. On the last session, as I was being electrocuted, I accidentally bit my tongue and was bleeding from the mouth. They stop the electrocution and a doctor was called to attend to me. I was lying down on the floor. The doctor poured some water into my mouth and used his feet to force open my mouth. He then remarked, “There is nothing serious, continue!” Then he left the room. However, the guard stopped the electrocution as I was bleeding profusely from my mouth and blood was all over my blanket and body. But they continued to beat me. After some time, they stopped beating me and took me back to my cell.

34. Throughout the time of my torture, the interrogators would take photographs.

35. I was then left alone in my cell for 49 days. During this period of detention, they stopped torturing me. At the end of the 49th day, I was transferred back to the camp, in tent C and remained there for another 45 days. I was informed by a prisoner that he over heard some guards saying that I was wrongly arrested and that I would be released.

36. I was released in the beginning of March 2004. I was put into a truck and taken to a highway and then thrown out. A passing car stopped and took me home.

37. As a result of this experience, I decided to establish an association to assist all torture victims, with the help of twelve other tortured victims.

38. I feel very sad that I have to remember and relive this horrible experience again and again, and I hope that the people will answer our call for help. God willing.

And I make this solemn declaration conscientiously believing the same to be true and by virtue of the provisions of the Statutory Declarations Act 1960.

Iraqi refugees

2007-02-16T18:31:00.000+01:00

COALITION TO STOP DEPORTATIONS TO IRAQ
PRESS RELEASE Feb 14 2007

Some reports have at last been received about the fate of the asylum seekers forcibly removed to Iraq on February 12 from RAF Brize Norton.
Read more here

Iraqi passports not accepted as documents for travel
2007-02-16
The Swedish Migration Board decided today on a change in the Board’s regulations regarding Iraqi passports. This means that the Board will not accept S series passports as travel documents, as their quality has shown not to be good enough.
Read more here

U.N. Urges EU to Protect Iraqi Refugees
As the bloodshed in Iraq has increased, European governments have come under increasing pressure to open their doors to asylum-seekers. Many are worried that an escalation in violence in 2007 could generate a fresh wave of refugees.

So far, Sweden has received the largest number of fleeing Iraqis, followed by the Netherlands, Germany, Greece, Britain and Belgium.

The U.N. appeal came as the EU announced it would contribute $13 million more for Iraqi refugees. About 60 percent will go to help those who have fled to Syria, Jordan and Lebanon.

"Focusing on the most vulnerable groups, the aid would consist of basic health care and education as well as targeted distributions of food and essential household items," said the statement.

About 2 million Iraqis have fled the country and an additional 1.8 million are believed to be displaced inside Iraq. The refugee flow increased sharply as sectarian violence intensified over the past year.

UNHCR statistics show that 20,000 Iraqi applied for asylum in the EU last year, but Garlick said fewer than 10 percent of the applications were accepted.

Swedish Migration Minister Tobias Billstrom, speaking at a meeting of EU justice and interior ministers, appealed for greater burden-sharing among nations hosting Iraqi refugees.

More than 9,000 Iraqis were admitted to Sweden last year, and 25,000 are expected to claim asylum this year.

EU Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Franco Frattini said the large numbers of claimants was "a particular problem now for Sweden. But I don't exclude that in the future it will become a problem for other member states."
Read more here

More Iraqi refugee news here

الفرات : هلو دجله شلونج

2007-02-11T11:36:00.000+01:00

This is a discussion between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. They have a long discussion and one of the things Tigris tells Euphrates is that she is fed up and ready to leave Iraq to the Amazon.

It’s all in Arabic, so my English readers forgive me.

الفرات : هلو دجله شلونج

- دجله : انزول، استحي ولك، والله اني من الضوجه يمكن راح اطلع من العراق، راح اروح الى الامزون

شلش العراق

Baghdad, Iraq, Iraqis, friends and family are in my thougts

2007-02-10T22:53:00.000+01:00

Genocide in Vietnam is redone in Iraq

2007-02-05T18:18:00.000+01:00

Iraq: The Genocide Option
By Edward Herman

It was claimed early in 2005 that the United States was considering resort to what has been called the "Salvadoran Option" in Iraq, in which, as had been done in El Salvador in the 1980s, U.S. Special Forces would train paramilitary squads to hunt down and assassinate rebel leaders and their supporters. [1] A year earlier, it was reported that a sizable fund had been appropriated for the creation of an exile-based paramilitary unit for Iraq, and that the money would more broadly "support U.S. efforts to create a lethal, and revengeful Iraqi security force." It was expected that this would lead to "a wave of extrajudicial killings" of armed rebels, but also of "nationalists, other opponents of the U.S. occupation and thousands of civilian Baathists." [2]

The rise of the death rate in Iraq, and the evidence of large-scale assassinations and slaughters frequently carried out by uniformed men, suggests that the Salvadoran option was put in place and that it has done its work well even if failing to bring victory to the Shiite leaders and militias and their sponsors.

However, along with the Salvadoran option the U.S. military had also stepped up its own activities in one of a series of "surges," among them the assault on Fallujah in November 2004, and using the Fallujah model, with the application of massive firepower in Sunni-dominated areas, much of it from the air, moving from town to town, in an effort to kill Sunni resistance fighters and render their home bases unusable. Because of the lavish use of firepower and limited concern with Iraqi civilian casualties, this process is very costly to civilians in the area of attack. Civilians also suffer from the fact that the invading troops not only don't speak their language, but become extra hostile as they suffer casualties from a resistance that lives among the local population. This results in greater ruthlessness and increasing numbers of cases of literal direct mass murder as in Haditha. [3]

This is reminiscent of U.S. policy during the Vietnam war, where torture and multiple Haditha-type massacres, enormous firepower, napalm, B-52 bombing raids, and chemical warfare applied to jungles and peasant farms, ravaged the country, leaving much of it a wasteland, killing several million civilians, and leaving a heritage of traumatized, injured and chemically damaged people as well.

It is important to understand that the most violent warfare, including My Lai and its many many look-alikes, as well as the use of napalm and dioxin-based herbicides, was applied in the southern part of the country, which the United States was allegedly "protecting" from an invasion from the north. The methods of warfare themselves demonstrated that the alleged protection and "saving" was a lie, but it should be recognized that the reason these horrors could be applied more lavishly in the south rather than the north is that the south was controlled by the U.S. occupation and its puppet government, so that, unlike North Vietnam, the terrible violence wrought against the southern peasantry could be relatively hidden and kept from public and international scrutiny.

The U.S. attack on Vietnam may be termed the "Genocide Option," as the killing and destruction went far beyond anything that took place in El Salvador, and threatened the survival of the southern population. Southern Vietnam had its U.S.-organized death squads, with Operation Phoenix famously accounting for possibly 40,000 assassinations of NLF cadres and unknown other victims of this murder program.

El Salvador also had impressive death squads, but couldn't match the scope and intensity of the violence wrought by the United States on the distant peasant society, which brought into play all weapons in the U.S. high-tech arsenal short of the nuclear-many being tested against live experimental victims--used in enormous volume, without moral restraint (and with minimal protest from the "international community").

By 1967 the level of violence had reached a point where Vietnam scholar Bernard Fall warned that "Vietnam as a cultural and historic entity…is threatened with extinction..[as]…the countryside literally dies under the blows of the largest military machine ever unleashed on an area of this size." [4] In the south, 9,000 out of 15,000 hamlets were damaged or destroyed, along with some 25 million acres of farmland and 12 million acres of forests. One and a half million cattle were killed, and the war left a million widows and 800,000 orphans. The chemical defoliation operations were vast and their effects could take many generations to reverse, and they resulted in a further generation of malformed children (500,000 in one 1997 estimate). [5]

This was a truly genocidal attack, both in volume and threat to viability and with its demand that the resistance surrender as the condition for termination of the assault. (In a marvel of transference, the oft-expressed U.S. position was that the refusal to surrender demonstrated a low Vietnamese valuation of Vietnamese life! In a further marvel of Western impudence, the Krstic decision by the NATO-organized Yugoslavia tribunal found that "genocide" had been committed by a NATO target group [Bosnian Serbs] because killings--which explicitly spared women and children--might have ended the viability of a single small town in Bosnia.)

Another feature of the Vietnam War of relevance today is that all through its murderous course it was argued in the United States that it must go on in order to avoid a post-occupation "bloodbath"! The huge ongoing and genocidal bloodbath was needed to prevent a hypothetical one that never did materialize. [6]

The genocide option threatens Iraq, where the United States is engaged in direct military action against another virtually defenceless population-in contrast with El Salvador where proxies did the dirty work. Military technology has advanced further, and the complete amorality of the Deciders and their willingness to kill without limit to achieve their goals or save face is clear. It is important for the Deciders that not too many U.S. service personnel be killed, as this has a definite negative effect on the national willingness to move forward to "victory" (or at least temporarily fending off acknowledging defeat). If U.S. casualties can be reduced by more intensive firepower, at the expense of greater Iraqi civilian casualties, that has been and will continue to be the route taken. Furthermore, U.S. pacification violence applied to Sunni-dominated towns is implemented out of sight of the mainstream media (although not completely hidden given the bravery of some non-imbedded Western journalists and Al Jazeera).

The Bush "surge" is a desperation maneuver, and in a context of ever-stronger political objections to more U.S. personnel in Iraq and sensitivity to U.S. casualties, there is good reason to believe that the Bush answer will be even more intensive firepower in Baghdad and other cities and villages in which the insurgents mingle easily with the civilian population. Bush even warns U.S. citizens of more blood and gore "even if our new strategy works exactly as planned." Furthermore, partly via the use of the Salvadoran Option and partly by U.S. manipulation of sectarian conflict, [7] the invasion-occupation has produced a deadly civil war in which the Sunnis and Shiites engage in large-scale communal ethnic cleansing and killing, adding to the toll.

There can be little doubt that the rate of civilian killing in Iraq is about to rise from something like the recent Lancet estimate of 655,000 to a larger figure. If "genocide" was committed in Bosnia, where recent establishment analysts concluded--embarrassingly, given the earlier institutionalized total of 250,000-- that approximately 100,000 people died on all sides, including military personnel, [8] surely we have a case of genocide in Iraq just during the period 2003-2006. And Bush is about to give us more, with the Democrats and UN looking on but doing nothing to restrain the killing machine.

Wouldn't it be nice if democracy worked and a popular antiwar vote had some effect?

And if the global double standard now in force was not so gross and the perpetrators responsible for this genocidal outburst could be brought before a real tribunal in the interest of real global justice before their next surge?

Bush: 'We're fighting for our way of life'

2007-02-02T18:15:00.000+01:00

I have just returned from a vist at our Iraqi blogger 24 Steps to Liberty. Do visit him. I am so sad at the reality in Iraq today.

I have relatives who are stuck in Iraq. Some of them are waiting for visa to go to Egypt and they have been waiting for many months. My relative is a doctor and he has not been out of the house for over 3 months now, the militias are the reason. Its not that only Iraqis are under threat of attacks and getting killed from left and right its also that we have specific forces that target doctors and other well educated Iraqis. These doctors whose only wish is to help Iraqis, ease their pain and save their lives – those who kill these doctors want all Iraqis dead and not having the chance to be saved.

Honestly all this talk about attacking Iran these days makes me wonder what the hell is really going on. I mean in Iraq the USA is working hand in hand with the people that have all along been supported by the regime in Iran, so how can they be against Iran??!!

I know there are fanatics in the Iranian regime that want parts of Iraq in the same way there are fanatic in Israel that wants Iraq broken up for their own security reasons - they have the same goals. We know the US governments are extremely pro Israel so they in their turn would want what’s best for Israel and that is a broken Iraq. What we see in Iraq today is a broken and weakened country. So what ever these forces from outside might have for problems with each other they all seem to agree that a broken up Iraq is best for them.

It has been very cleverly thought out all this madness in Iraq. The only way any person/people could succeed in such a project Bush and his allies came up with, is to right away start terrorizing ordinary Iraqis. That way the masses could be controlled to NOT to go out in millions and kick the green zonians and occupation troops out. Or that educated Iraqis get a chance to give ordinary Iraqis an alternative to the green zonians and the occupation . Saddam did it by mokhabarat (secret police) and that could not be used so the terror technique was the way. I am serious, with all this madness we see in Iraq I get more and more convinced it is part of the plan to totally devastate it so that they can do what ever they want with it in the end. I know many people don’t like to bring up Israel but the fact is within their own ministry they had a policy that said that the Iraqi Iranian war was good because it would weaken Iraq to “finally” be broken into 3 parts. Well finally is here after the US illegal invasion and 13 years of genocide embargo. The fanatical people with power in neighbouring counties are reaching their goals.

The fact is the US is the super power in the world and a peaceful well developed united and truly free Iraq is not what their government wants. Because if that was what they had wanted well then they would not have started this war the way they did. They would not lie and deceive the way they do, they would not have managed this war the way they do, they would not have allied themselves with lying corrupted racist people, they would not still have close relations with dictators all over the world, they would not have disregarded ordinary Iraqis telling them over and over again to leave or at least give a timetable for leaving, they would not have tortured Iraqis, they would not have used DU weapons, they would not have volunteered to make Iraq the arena for war on terror, they would not have said we want to save American lives so lets have the war in Iraq instead and by it letting Iraqis die. Iraq is today exactly where Bush and the real team behind him wanted it to be.

Controlling the oil to protect the way of life in the west and fulfilling the wishes of some few powerful fanatical Zionists is what have mattered the last 60 years and still does.

To make the above possible these people in the US governments and allies elsewhere have made and illegal brutal Israeli occupation of Palestine for 40 years possible and they have given their full support to dictators in the region for 60 years so what we see in Iraq today is nothing to them – 4 years of some Arabs, Muslims, Iraqis living in hell and getting killed is nothing to them. The western way of life goes hand in hand with access to oil, Iraq has oil.

What was it Bush said in the interview with Rush Limbaugh when talking about Iraq last year?

If they control oil resources, then they pull oil off the market in order to run the price up, and they will do so unless we abandon Israel, for example, or unless we abandon allies.

What was it President Jimmy Carter said in the state of the union Address 23 of January 1980?

Jimmy Carter
State of the Union Address 1980
January 23, 1980
The crises in Iran and Afghanistan have dramatized a very important lesson: Our excessive dependence on foreign oil is a clear and present danger to our Nation's security.

…the overwhelming dependence of the Western democracies on oil supplies from the Middle East…

… Afghanistan is of great strategic importance: It contains more than two-thirds of the world's exportable oil.

…The Soviet Union is now attempting to consolidate a strategic position, therefore, that poses a grave threat to the free movement of Middle East oil.

…This situation demands careful thought, steady nerves, and resolute action, not only for this year but for many years to come. It demands collective efforts to meet this new threat to security in the Persian Gulf and in Southwest Asia. It demands the participation of all those who rely on oil from the Middle East.

And what did the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Africa Chairman Ed Royce (R-CA) say at the symposium African Oil: A Priority for U.S. National Security and African Development?

African oil should be treated as a priority for U.S. national security post 9-11

And what's with US military attacks in Somalia?

Could it be because of the World Bank coordinated geological study done in 1991 that found Somalia and Sudan to be on the top of the list of prospective commercial oil producers in the world.

OIL OIL OIL, GAS GAS GAS , RECOURSES RESOURSES RESOURSES its all wars and interventions for that.

If a couple of a hundreds of thousands Asians or Africans die here and there or live in poverty and without freedoms that is not the issue. The issue is that these western leaders and the big corporations that are behind them are becoming richer and saving their peoples way of life. All this is done with the help of corrupted regimes they themselves protect in Asia and Africa. Regimes that are oppressing millions of their own people for millions in a western bank and a handshake photo with a democratically elected western politician from time to time.

So what did Bush say?

'We're fighting for our way of life'

This means western access to oil, the Zionist lobby gets what ever it wants and that no freaking Asian or African tells us

but what about our way of life?

The Secret Government is still active today too

2007-01-25T23:08:00.000+01:00

Dear readers my cyber friend Annie gave me a link to a documentary showed in the US in the eighties. This I want to share with you.

The Secret Government ... The Constitution in Crisis

* * * *
LIVES IN THE BALANCE
By Jackson Browne

I've been waiting for something to happen
For a week or a month or a year
With the blood in the ink of the headlines
And the sound of the crowd in my ear
You might ask what it takes to remember
When you know that you've seen it before
Where a government lies to a people
And a country is drifting to war

And there's a shadow on the faces
Of the men who send the guns
To the wars that are fought in places
Where their business interest runs

On the radio talk shows and the T.V.
You hear one thing again and again
How the U.S.A. stands for freedom
And we come to the aid of a friend
But who are the ones that we call our friends--
These governments killing their own?
Or the people who finally can't take any more
And they pick up a gun or a brick or a stone
There are lives in the balance
There are people under fire
There are children at the cannons
And there is blood on the wire

There's a shadow on the faces
Of the men who fan the flames
Of the wars that are fought in places
Where we can't even say the names

They sell us the President the same way
They sell us our clothes and our cars
They sell us every thing from youth to religion
The same time they sell us our wars
I want to know who the men in the shadows are
I want to hear somebody asking them why
They can be counted on to tell us who our enemies are
But they're never the ones to fight or to die
And there are lives in the balance
There are people under fire
There are children at the cannons
And there is blood on the wire

* * * *

Here is a new version of the above song's video, this time it's the war against Iraq and Afganistan that's the focus.

New video

Stop the military attacks is what Iraqis need - selling more weapons is good for western economies - who wins?

2007-01-10T19:42:00.000+01:00

Iraq Army to receive 16 helicopters and 4,000 armoured vehicles
Azzaman, January 8, 2007

Iraq has signed contracts for the purchase of armoured vehicles and other weapons with European and U.S. weapons companies, a statement by the Defence Ministry said.

The statement did not say how much the contracts were worth but a defence spokesman said the value of Iraqi weapons purchases was conditional to budget allocations which he did not specify.

But the statement said most of the weaponry will come from the United States and will be a gift to the troops as part of U.S. moves to strengthen Iraqi forces.

It said the U.S. has pledged to supply the army with 4,000 armoured vehicles and 1,800 Humvees and 16 helicopter gun ships.

The statement said the weapons were to arrive in March.

It said the ministry was doing all in its power to obtain the kind of weapons that will give the army an edge over “the terrorists.”

It’s disgusting to see how these incompetent criminals that rule Iraq from the inside and from the Bush’s team outside are so assured of themselves that they can continue the same failed death path of managing Iraq without any hesitation at all.

Iraqis dying in thousands each month the last three years, a totally destroyed country and refuges in millions is apparently not enough for them to realize that military attacks will not bring peace to Iraq.

No the problem the Iraq defence minister and his US advisors think is lack of weapons???????? What the hell?????? The most well equipped army in the world is running around all over Iraq and they are not stopping anything just making things worse. These imported weapons will be used to kill more Iraqis and take away some more millions of the budget to products which only use is to kill people.

Are you proud of yourself European and US weapon companies? I bet you are high on conflicts in Iraq and elsewhere in the world today – getting more orders – getting richer. I mean no politician would dare stop you from your deals – you give employment to thousands of people in the west, your deals give billions in cash for the stock market in the west, right into the pockets of western people investing in them… “democracies are peace loving countries” is the biggest lie we live.

Am I angry? YES

______________________
Below update 11 January

My reader Redfox left a very important comment on my blog today.

in our western oh so democratic "democracies" people's protests don't count. Our "democracies" have been taken over by the corporations, and the only value they know is money. Their capitalist greed is infinite, and if we, the people, don't stop them, they will complete Hitler's design for our planet.

This reminds me of Canad’s most successful documentary named THE CORPORATION. The film is based on the book The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power by Joel Bakan.

THE CORPORATION documentary puts the corporation on the psychiatrist's couch to ask "What kind of person is it?" It's a very ugly picture that is reviled I can tell you.

I have seen it when it was shown on Swedish TV a couple of years a go. My suggestion to all of you is that it’s a must see! Some interviews are so shocking; how open these executives are about their views about the future – where corporations will be above governments in the world. We are already there today : (

A war for oil in Iraq where oil deals benefiting the west goes before life of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Even thousands of US soldiers life don’t count. This war says volumes about western oil companies influence over international politics. Corporation rules and if they don’t get as they want well then the stock market collapse or our way of life will be threaded one way or another – as a reminder to how they control every fibre of our life nowadays.

Go here to learn more about the documentary: The Corporation

So what did Redfox say one more time:

in our western oh so democratic "democracies" people's protests don't count. Our "democracies" have been taken over by the corporations, and the only value they know is money. Their capitalist greed is infinite, and if we, the people, don't stop them, they will complete Hitler's design for our planet.

I agree with Redfox comment 100%. I had a post before about Sweden’s weapons being sold the US army in Iraq.

Even though the Swedish government told us the people that the war was illegal and even though it’s against Swedish law to sell weapons to countries in war these weapon corporations get away with it.

I have talked to Swedish Peace and was told that their experience during many years is as if there is a system put in place that stops all legal actions taken by the people against these corporations and politicians approving the deals.

Army Corporations are known to put themselves above the law in other democratic countries too. Does anyone have an update what is happening with the Saudi Arabian weapons deal/scandal in the UK? Has Blair stopped the “inquiry”? Will the dictatorship of Saudi Arabia still be sold British weapons as it has been the last 20 years? Is it still the same story that in “our western oh so democratic “democracies”” we still choose to helping suppress other nations people if it’s good for our corporations and our peoples way of life?

The dictatorship in Saudi Arabia who have been buying weapons from the UK the last 20 years giving jobs to more then 10 000 people is good for business – value of money speaks louder then those who are against supporting dictatorships. This behaviour is now imported to Sweden – some argue not so strange since many of the weapon companies in Sweden have a big British ownership…My reader Bruno from South Africa said it’s the same in South Africa. The government was against the war in Iraq but still you have weapon companies selling stuff to the US army over there…I wonder what sort of ownership its there? What laws do South Africa have regarding selling weapons to countries in war or dictatorships?

In the end of the month I am off to the capital Stockholm to a meeting with the Swedish Peace organisation and I hope I will be part of a team that will this time succeed in changing history! By:

- Stopping the sell of arms to the US army in Iraq – no more weapons to kill Iraqis

- Stopping the military business between Sweden and the dictatorship of Saudi Arabia

- Stopping the military business between Sweden and the dictatorship of Pakistan

- Stopping ALL EU weapon deals with undemocratic countries

- Stopping ALL world weapon deals period

I remember some parts of a Swedish short film – a Swedish father is on the verge of getting sacked from his job. The only way it will not happen is if a huge weapon deal goes ahead. The film ends with the father celebrating with his family for not loosing his job and at the same time a family in another country gets a Swedish missile hit on its house.

The war in Iraq is illigal

2007-01-04T01:25:00.000+01:00

"The war in Iraq is in fact illegal. It is my obligation and my duty to refuse any orders to participate in this war. An order to take part in an illegal war is unlawful in itself. So my obligation is not to follow the order to go to Iraq."
- Lt. Ehren Watada

Read more here

US soldies in Iraq or on your way to Iraq, do what Lt. Ehren Watada is doing. REFUSE TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS ILLIGAL WAR

IVAW Update

Latest News on War Resisters

US Army medic and Conscientious objector, Agustin Aguayo faces up to seven years prison for escaping when the US Army in Schweinfurt tried to bring him to Iraq by force. Army Specialist Aguayo will be arraigned at Leighton Barracks in Wuerzburg, Germany, at 11:30 AM on Monday, January 22, 2007 on court martial charges of desertion and missing movement.
Click here for more info.

On January 16th, a Fort Lewis military court ruled that Lt. Ehren Watada cannot present defense arguments relating to the legality of the Iraq War. The effect of this ruling is that the court martial proceedings scheduled for February 5th will be a mere formality, and Lt. Watada still faces up to six years in prison for his courageous stand against the Iraq War.
Click here for more info.

Click here for more IVAW Updates

Torture, illigal detentions and mass killings as a way to rule Iraqis

2006-12-30T20:58:00.000+01:00

Saddam Hussein's death

If it was up to me I would have put him on trial at the ICC and then life in prison. But it was not up to me.

So what can we learn out of this? Politicians who are responsible for a system where many Iraqis are killed and tortured in the name of national security or pure revenge will be killed sooner or later.

Saddam got his share today; sooner or later Maliki, Blair, Bush and their closest teams will share the same fate .

TO: Maliki, Hakim, Chalabi, Barazani, Jaafari, Allawi and all others that came with the US, and TO: Blair, Bush, Aznar, Berlusconi, Howard and all those who belong to their closest teams.

What YOU see in Saddam today is your future. It is what you rightfully deserve for supporting torture, illigal detentions and mass killings as a way to rule Iraqis.

If it was up to me I would put YOU ALL on trial at the ICC and then life in prison. But I may not get what I want so you will just end up as Saddam did today. Executed.

The west is becoming a Police State

2006-11-27T23:27:00.000+01:00

When I lived in Iraq one of the things I longed for was living a life where my personal integrity was respected. Not being afraid that the phone might be tapped, that mail have been opened or that someone sitting next to me might be spying on me in case I held some views the government did not approve of.

When I came back to Sweden after living in Iraq for many years it took me quite some time before I felt comfortable talking on the phone or talking with governmental agencies. I knew I was in Sweden and here it was a free society but many years in Iraq had affected me. Mentally I knew it was safe but emotionally I got worried, did I say the right thing, was I being spied upon etc…A person who has not lived in a surveillance society might find it very difficult to understand how utterly controlled one becomes when it is a government that decides what the proper views are.

After some time I finally felt emotionally comfortable. The days of surveillance were over!

I remember that before the US war on Iraq there were arguments that Iraqis should finally have freedom of speech and not being spied on and documented in governmental files. What was not included in that argument was that while Iraqis would not be surveillanced by people working for Saddam the rest of us in the west would soon be survellianced in much more insidious ways by our own governments.

The other day in a forum the debate was about the surveillance society we are turning into. The argument by people that are for it was that as long as you are not doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about. Then someone suggested that’s when you tell a guy “well then let me see your wife take a shower. I mean as long as she is not doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about.”

What the EU and the US governments are doing is to turn our societies into a controlled surveillanced one under the pretext of a “war on terror” and “protection of the public”. They do this while the majority of people seem to be hypnotised by the argument “as long as I am not doing anything wrong I have nothing to worry about”.

Well we’ve got a lot to worry about.

Our governments have been doing a lot of things wrong. Lies, killing innocent people, putting innocent people in prison without trial, an illegal war based on lies, setting up secret prisons all over the world and torturing people. They can NOT be trusted and should never be given the power over our lives. Ask yourself who is surveillancing THEM?

Just look at how our governments in the west is selling weapons and giving support to both the dictatorship in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan that speaks volumes about what sort of controlled society and police state we’ll soon have if we don’t make our protests more effective.

---------------------

* Word on the street ... they’re listening
Police and councils are considering monitoring conversations in the street using high-powered microphones attached to CCTV cameras, write Steven Swinford and Nicola Smith.

The microphones can detect conversations 100 yards away and record aggressive exchanges before they become violent.

The devices are used at 300 sites in Holland and police, councils and transport officials in London have shown an interest in installing them before the 2012 Olympics.

The interest in the equipment comes amid growing concern that Britain is becoming a “surveillance society”. It was recently highlighted that there are more than 4.2m CCTV cameras, with the average person being filmed more than 300 times a day. The addition of microphones would take surveillance into uncharted territory.

* Sign our pledge on Internet freedom
Chat rooms monitored. Blogs deleted. Websites blocked. Search engines restricted. People imprisoned for simply posting and sharing information.

The Internet is a new frontier in the struggle for human rights. Governments – with the help of some of the biggest IT companies in the world – are cracking down on freedom of expression.

Amnesty International, with the support of The Observer UK newspaper, is launching a campaign to show that online or offline the human voice and human rights are impossible to repress.

In November 2006, governments and companies from all over the world will attend a UN conference to discuss the future of the Internet. You can help us send a clear message to them that people everywhere believe the Internet should be a force for political freedom, not repression.

Sign our pledge on Internet freedom by clicking here

* Analysis: 'Total Information' lives again
The new system is bound to attract controversy because of its similarity to the Total Information Awareness or TIA program, a project run by the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

That program also aimed to detect patterns of suspect terrorist behavior by data-mining huge stores of information about everyday transactions like credit card purchases, telephone calls and travel records.

Alarmed by the privacy and civil liberties implications of the program, Congress in 2003 cut all funding for it, but research continued in different agencies, funded by appropriations in the classified intelligence annex to the Defense Department budget.

Most of that continuing research was conducted by the Advanced Research and Development Activity, a unit formerly based at the National Security Agency but now part of Negroponte's office. The National Journal, which first revealed the existence of Tangram last week, said that office would oversee the new program, too.

"The administration has flat out ignored Congress," said Sparapani. "They renamed it, re-tied the bow around it and off they went."

* US licence to snoop on British air travellers
Britons (all EU members too) flying to America could have their credit card and email accounts inspected by the United States authorities following a deal struck by Brussels and Washington.

By using a credit card to book a flight, passengers face having other transactions on the card inspected by the American authorities. Providing an email address to an airline could also lead to scrutiny of other messages sent or received on that account.

* Terrorist Profiling, Version 2.0
Intelligence and privacy experts who reviewed the document said that it reaffirms their long-held belief that many computerized terrorist-profiling methods are largely ineffective. It also raises significant privacy concerns, because to distinguish terrorists from innocent people, a system that's as broad as Tangram purports to be would require access to many databases that contain private information about Americans, the experts said, including credit card transactions, communications records, and even Internet purchases.

* Leading surveillance societies in the EU and the World

Each year since 1997, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and Privacy International have undertaken what has now become the most comprehensive survey of global privacy ever published. The Privacy & Human Rights Report surveys developments in 70 countries, assessing the state of technology, surveillance and privacy protection.

The most recent report published in 2006 is probably the most comprehensive single volume report published in the human rights field. The report runs to almost 1,200 pages and includes about 6,000 footnotes. More than 200 experts from around the world have provided materials and commentary. The participants range from law students studying privacy to high-level officials charged with safeguarding constitutional freedoms in their countries. Academics, human rights advocates, journalists and researchers provided reports, insight, documents and advice.

This year Privacy International took the decision to use the report as the basis for a ranking assessment of the state of privacy in all EU countries together with eleven benchmark countries. This project was first considered in 1998 but was postponed pending availability of adequate data. We now have the full spectrum of information at our disposal and we hope to publish the rankings on an annual basis.

* No privacy for laptops
"Currently we don't know what happens to all the files and information that is copied by customs once a person is not found to have anything incriminating. This is something that needs to be resolved, as there remains the threat of misuse. The one thing that is certain is that the customs and border authority can share the information with all other U.S government agencies,".

* Airport to track passengers
The UK’s third largest airport is looking to use RFID to help boost retail sales by tracking passenger movements.

* Allt fler arbetsgivare använder GPS för att lokalisera firmabilar och anställda.
More and more employers use GPS to keep track on company cars and employees.

* Surveillance technology
IBM, the leading provider of global security services, today introduced a service product that contains the industry’s most advanced digital surveillance technology, code-named “S3.” IBM’s new Digital Video Surveillance (DVS) service product leverages IBM hardware, software, research and services to enable real-time access to critical security information, providing businesses the ability to detect patterns or search for particular attributes and alert authorities of any suspicious or anomalous behaviour in real-time.

* Even if they're off, cellphones allow FBI to listen in
"This is a kind of surveillance we've never really seen before. The government can and will exploit whatever technology is available to achieve their surveillance goals. This is of particular concern, considering the proliferation of microphones and cameras in the products we own," said Kevin Bankston, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

* Olympics audio surveillance row
A new civil liberties controversy has flared up over the news that police chiefs are considering using high-powered microphones to "eavesdrop" - as critics will see it - on crowds at the London 2012 Olympics.

"As you walk down the street you expect to be able to have a private conversation," he said.

"If you can't guarantee that - and here is someone speaking who has been pretty tough in terms of what should be available to protect society - I believe we have slipped over the edge."

* EU: Phone and internet records to be kept for 2 years for police access

* Britain is 'surveillance society'
Fears that the UK would "sleep-walk into a surveillance society" have become a reality, the government's information commissioner has said.

Richard Thomas, who said he raised concerns two years ago, spoke after research found people's actions were increasingly being monitored.

Researchers highlight "dataveillance", the use of credit card, mobile phone and loyalty card information, and CCTV.

Monitoring of work rates, travel and telecommunications is also rising.

There are up to 4.2m CCTV cameras in Britain - about one for every 14 people.

But surveillance ranges from US security agencies monitoring telecommunications traffic passing through Britain, to key stroke information used to gauge work rates and GPS information tracking company vehicles, the Report on the Surveillance Society says.

It predicts that by 2016 shoppers could be scanned as they enter stores, schools could bring in cards allowing parents to monitor what their children eat, and jobs may be refused to applicants who are seen as a health risk.

* How we are being watched
Legal and logistical obstacles stand in the way of a massive Big Brother-esque database but information is being gathered on almost everything we do.

Everything from shopping tags to mobile phones has the potential to be watching us.

* Consumer concern over RFID tags
At least once consumer group - Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (Caspian) - has claimed that RFID chips could be used to secretly identify people and the things they are carrying or wearing.

All kinds of personal belongings, including clothes, could constantly broadcast messages about their whereabouts and their owners, it warned.

* Spy Blog - SpyBlog.org.uk
This United Kingdom based blog attempts to draw public attention to, and comments on, some of the current trends in ever cheaper and more widespread surveillance technology being deployed to satisfy the rapacious demand by state and corporate bureaucracies and criminals for your private details, and the technological ignorance of our politicians and civil servants who frame our legal systems.

The hope is that you the readers, will help to insist that strong safeguards for the privacy of the individual are implemented.

---------------------

The best way to avoid having a bunch of angry people from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan or any other country attack the west is by changing western countries behaviour in those countries.

- Stop committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Iraq or any other country.

- Stop selling weapons to the military dictator Mosaref and working with him as a close partner against his own people.

- Stop killing innocent Afghani people and then hiding it by saying they were Taliban or yet another mistake.

- Stop selling weapons and giving support to the religious dictatorship in Saudi Arabia.

- Stop supporting the apartheid state of Israel.

- Find a solution to the Kashmir problem.

- Start taking the millennium goals more seriously.

ALL these are actions that must be taken if we want peace in the whole world. These sorts of actions must be taken by the democratic governments if they really want to protect their people.

People on the top are very aware of that oil is ending and it will have enormous impact on the way our societies function. Climate change is happening and it will have enormous impact on millions of people. These are threats to the continuation of “our way of life” in the west.

When I look at it, it’s very clear that western democratic governments are engaged in a sinister manipulating game which objective is to keep people living in the west under strict surveillance so that some of us don’t engage in changing the world to a more just one. And at the same time keep people in countries outside the west poor and/or oppressed ready to be sacrificed when our own way of life is threatened.

Do we want an equal peaceful world with true democratic values?

2006-11-11T21:55:00.000+01:00

Does the west really want an equal peaceful world with true democratic values?

A couple of weeks ago two documentaries were shown on Swedish TV. They were about Sweden selling weapons to the US army fighting in Iraq and about selling weapons to Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other counties. They even talked about Swedish mines used in the war between Iraq and Iran.

Before US bombs started falling on Iraqis our Swedish PM said that US decision to go to war without a UN mandate is a clear and very serious crime against international law (SVT 18/3-03). The war in Iraq was against and is against international law . That I believed meant that Sweden did not support the invasion. What I have found out now is that Sweden has all along been selling weapons to US forces fighting in Iraq. So the Swedish government has not only lied to its people they have even gone against Swedish law with these weapon deals.

I remember telling my husband, what if all these leaders saying they are against Bush’s war is just a theatre to calm people who are against the war down? You know makes us people who live in the west feel we have some sort of decency and that it’s really just the Bush administration that’s the problem. I don’t know? He told me Nadia it can’t be that way, it’s too much. But what I do know now is that my fears and especially the gut feeling I had was right. I was told lies and I was deceived in an utterly awful way. Forgive me for not knowing better.

These are the deals between democratic Sweden and theocratic dictatorship of Saudi Arabia

Nr 59
A deal with Saudi Arabia about Military Corporation
Stockholm 15^th of November 2005

Nr 47
General corporation deal with Saudi Arabia Riyadh
17^th of January 2004

These deals are in Swedish and English. If one wants the Arabic version then you ask for it at the department of human rights and the foreign office. Trust me I am not kidding here.

So Sweden is engaged in prompting democracy in the world we are often told, how does that go together with strengthening a theocratic dictatorship such as Saudi Arabia?

In the documentary we are told that the strongest approval a government can get is by selling them weapons. So what does that tell us about Sweden? We already know that Britain have been selling Saudi Arabia weapons for many decades and yet we still have the nerve to complain about lack of democracy in that region. What’s wrong with these Muslims don’t they develop? We hear people mumble in democratic countries. Where is the mumble that we are not letting them be free?

In the deal Nr59 its written:

Noting that the cooperation of the two countries promotes internal peace and stability

Doesn’t the Swedish government understand how a dictatorship achieves “stability”? Of course they do, I mean after all we heard them talk about how brutal Saddam was.

Were did the talk about that democracies are peaceful go? Were did the talk about dictators are a threat? Were did the respect of human rights go?

Is it oil and greed that makes us behave like this? Is it racism that we see ourselves better then the Africans and Asians? Is it survival of the fittest game we are playing? The world can’t hold too many of us we have learned; so we are sacrificing a couple of million Africans and Asians so we can continue. Is that it?

With the above so fresh the following was written by me first in Swedish and now its here in English.

________________

Western double standards and unsustainable lifestyle are the threats to international peace and security.

As long as the west continues to sell weapons to undemocratic regimes in the world there will be people who believe what we are doing is terrorism against them. That our whole system of promoting democracy is just lies.

The Iranian regime is a threat to its people in the same way Saudi Arabia’s regime is a threat against its people and Pakistan’s regime against its. That we choose to give military, political and economical support to two of these makes us loose our truthfulness when criticizing the third.

Thus we are helping in oppressing these people thru increasing the power for the current military and religious dictatorships. We give our approval to these regimes torture and way of ruling. This means that we in the so called democracies are committing the same crime as totalitarian dictatorships do. The difference is that we in the west have more power and can bury it, deny our involvement or simply just not care. We decide who is a good dictator and who is a bad dictator.

Saddam was a good dictator in the 80s even thought it was then he committed many of his most cruel crimes against humanity. But he was pro-west and that we were satisfied with.

The religious regime in Iran was good for Israel in the 80s. Then weapons were sold to Iran. Now the regime is bad and must be bombed they tell us.

The Shah was also a good dictator. He was pro-west, so the torture and oppression we could easily disregard. He threatened, like other good dictators, “only” his own people.

But democratically elected Mosaddaq was bad. He wanted to nationalize the oil – that was something we in the west were not happy about. We decide over their oil because we have the power in the world! We decide of course over their other resources too.

Mubarak is a good dictator. So he can stay till he dies, or until his son takes over.

ElAsad in Syria is a bad dictator. But we still send our prisoners over there. Then he right away becomes a partner and therefore a good dictator.

In the 70s we gave economic and military support to extreme fundamentalist Islamic group’s because that was good for us then (The Bernard Lewis-plan)! Today the same groups are bad.

And most of all we decide when going against International law must be punished and when we just don’t care.

The list can be much longer. We are playing with million people’s lives over many decades. This we don’t call for terror or crime, oh no. We in the west have the power and we decide. We rap it in in words such as “we had to do it to promote stability”. Stability for whom if I may ask?

Our ”democratic values” about equality, freedom, solidarity and human rights quickly become hollow and empty when other people are concerned who happen to live in areas with important resources. Torture becomes good. The right to freedom becomes bad and synonym with terrorism.

Our economical and military power makes it possible for us to disregard our own crimes in the world. We decide! What the Turks did against the Armenians were crimes against humanity we say. But what we white Europeans did in Africa under a very long time, where several million people were massacred just in Congo, we refuses to admit to as a crime against humanity. This double morality is our biggest threat.

This is a pattern that we in the west have used the last 60 years in the Middle East. When we don’t like regimes we remove them with coups like in Iran in the 50s (operation Ajax). When the undemocratic regimes are good for us we stuff them up with weapons, political and economical support. It’s we who are the threat in the Middle East. It’s we who are playing with million of people’s lives thru selling weapons to brutal undemocratic greedy corrupt regimes.

We can not continue condemn one dictator and give weapons to another. We can not continue condemning torture in one country when we ourselves do torture. We can not condemn controlled media in one country when we ourselves sell censorship programs to another. This is an unsustainable development.

No international peace and security can happen as long as we continue with this behaviour. The oppressed masses are never given a chance to develop a free society. We are fostering mockery, hate and contempt to our system. Its time WE change.

What is meant by democratic values?

2006-11-09T18:16:00.000+01:00

Why I am asking is that over the last years we heard western politicians use this phrase we have to protect our democratic values, they (referring to the terrorists) hate our democratic values.

So my question is:

Q1.What is meant by democratic values?

Q2. What democratic values are involved when the west sells weapons to religious dictators such as Saudi Arabia and military dictators such as Pakistan.

What sort of people do criminals surround themselvs with?

2006-10-27T19:34:00.000+02:00

I saw a documentary about a Swedish man who had served his sentence in prison for crimes committed. Now afterwards he wants to live a normal life, contribute to society in a correct way.

Once when he was sitting having dinner with friends the filmmaker asked him “aren’t you afraid that criminals/criminal gangs will lure you back?” His friend comes in and wants to answer and says that criminal gangs would not want him in their team. He would be a burden and a threat to them. Because now he has started thinking about what’s right and wrong. And that’s NOT the sort of person criminals want around them.

Bush and the team have acted as a bunch of criminal liars when it comes to the war against Iraq. They sold the war based on lies, deceit and propaganda. So what sort of Iraqis would they surround themselves with?

Last night I saw a video Baghdad a doctor's story filmed by an Iraqi doctor at Al-Yarmouk Hospital. The hospital’s staff are all so brave. It is people like them that represent Iraq to me.

This I can bet my life upon: Kind-hearted honest Iraqis like the 3 ambulance staff and the Iraqi surgeon would have saved the whole nation and put it back on a healthy path way back in summer 2003, had they been given the chance to rule Iraq.

That’s not, however, the sort of people the criminals at the white house and the green zone wish to surround themselves with.

Reckless leaders

2006-10-26T17:49:00.000+02:00

What we see in Iraq today is genocide, mass murder and war crimes. Ordinary Iraqis are beige killed left and right by occupation troops, by government militias, by foreign contractors, by terrorist and by ordinary criminals. No one is safe anymore. This has been going on since the invasion and has gotten worse and worse each month. A lot of Iraqis saw the turmoil as a result of an occupation people wanted to end, so they said it peacefully thru voting, thru demonstrations, some thru armed struggle and others also true pure simple debate. No one listened to them/us, instead Bush said NO TIMETABLE FOR WITHDRAWAL. He even argued that if he gave a timetable it would mean the terrorists would have won. Strange that he does not see it as democracy would have won since the majority of Iraqis wanted a timetable. Following their wishes of the majority is what democracy is all about, how does he not see that as a good reason to give a timetable?

So he and his Iraqi puppets thought the hell with Iraqis. And rest assured, hell is what Iraqis got.

Now the US has the nerve to give Maliki a TIMETABLE TO CURVE VIOLENCE. Strange isn’t it? So what does Mr.Maliki think about that? “We do not believe in a timetable and no one will impose one on us," is his comment. So he too thinks the hell with Iraqis. And rest assured, that is exactly what Iraqis have been experiencing the last years and he wants them to continue to live in hell.

Bush and his team and the Iraqi government (yes all of them) care NOTHING about the ordinary Iraqis that are being killed every single minute of the day. Reckless leaders such as these have no credibility what so ever when it comes to caring about ordinary Iraqis. So what can I make of this? Honestly the only thing that makes real sense is that they want Iraq destroyed. Some might argue Iraq is already destroyed – well that’s true but apparently not enough for that group. Some might argue it does not make sense why would they jeopardise (especially Bush) their careers like that? I don’t know the exact answer to that. The truth is, however, surely hidden in some unholy combination of the factors Greed, Hate, Oil, apartheid-Israel, Racism, and the accelerated return of Christ.

So what's happening over here?

2006-10-25T16:28:00.000+02:00

On the 4th of November an Iraqi exhibition starts in my town it continues until the end of January 2007! Its at Umeå University museum Bildmuset. Participants are Sinan Antoon, Arab Image Foundation, Hana Al-Bayaty, Sawsan Darwaza,Tariq Hashim, Dahr Jamail, Koutaiba Al-Janabi, Nedim Kufi, Faisel Laibi, Harb Al-Mukhtar, Loretta Napoleoni, Maysoon Pachachi, Salam Pax, Talal Refit, Samir, Baz Shamoun and curator Catherine David.

There is also the movie Weapons of Mass Deception showing this week.

There were two wars in Iraq--a military assault and a media war. The former was well-covered; the latter was not. Until now... Independent filmmaker, Emmy-award winning TV journalist, author and media critic, Danny Schechter turns the cameras on the role of the media. His new film, WMD, is an outspoken assessment of how Pentagon propaganda and media complicity misled the American people, while selling the war to influence international public opinion. Schechter compares and contrasts coverage on a global basis, including exclusive material and insider interviews. WMD is a serious film that exposes the media role—in the biggest scandal of our time. The selling of the illegal war against Iraqis.

Other movies that are showing this autumn and winter are The Iron Wall

A documentary about the illegal Jewish settlements in Palestine, the wall that would make them permanent and the effects of that on the peace process.

Orwell Roll’s in His Grave

A marvel of passionate succinctness, Robert Kane Pappas' docu critically examines the Fourth Estate, once the bastion of American democracy. Docu asks, "Could a media system, controlled by a few global corporations with the ability to overwhelm all competing voices, be able to turn lies into truth?

And finaly the documentary SIR! NO, SIR which is about the unknown history of some US soldiers anti war stance during the Vietnam war.

Boycott Israel now is continuing its work with talks about “The situation in the refugee camp Deheisha” on the 15th of November with Jessica Åberg. On the 13th of December Peder Aléx is invited to talk about “Boycott against South Africa then and Israel now”

Religious Fundamentalism in the White House

2006-10-24T23:00:00.000+02:00

About “Rums bin Feld”

”He leads in a way that the good Lord tells him is best for our country,”

This is the centre of dangerous violent religious fundamentalism.

Garden Design from Iraq

2006-09-22T19:28:00.000+02:00

It’s Friday and this weekend I am of with my husband to our weekend cottage that we bought this summer.

For those of you who are interested in gardening, we will be busy; digging and turning the clay soil and then ad gravel and organic material to it. Preparing for next spring’s planting project, we have a beautiful garden design waiting to become real!!!!

Apple, maple, mountain ash and cherry trees are just some of many things that will be growing there next summer!

I am bringing one of my good memories from Iraq to this garden. In Amara my grandparents had 2 huge pergola pathways which were covered with grapes. In the house I lived in Baghdad we had a pathway pergola too, filled with delicious grapes. In this new garden we are setting up 2 pergolas!!! We’ll let Clematis and Honeysuckles cover it while the grapevine gets used to the cold climate in Lapland.

: )

Stupidity? No its pure hateful actions to divide and destroy Iraq

2006-09-20T10:33:00.000+02:00

We have 3 years of proof that the actions of the US and Iraqis in government are only making things worse. Iraq is destroyed. People who insist on continuing the same path are NOT honest about saving Iraqis or Iraq.

The Iraqis in government and people of the occupation are focused on killing and torturing who ever they don’t agree with. Working on all levels frantically to break up Iraq and make Iraqis hate and fear each other. And most seem to have a strong focus on stealing money from Iraq and grabbing more power on all levels.

Because of 3 years of dreadful actions there are no good solutions left in Iraq there are only less awful.

I believe the way forward is for Iraqi political militias to be dismantled and for the US together with the Iraqi government to give a departure date of all occupation troops. The immediate lifting of the immunity the US gave itself; they should be prosecuted in Iraq for crimes it has and is committing there. Stop all US military interventions in Iraq.

We knew that the Israelis were training Kurdish militias in northern Iraq and this is one of many bad actions that prove that apartheid Israel and these Kurdish groups has no intensions for uniting Iraqis or keep Iraq as a united country (thanks Ladybird for this update).

US working together with religious fanatics with their militias is one of many bad polices that never had the intension of keeping Iraq as a secular society.

Criminal and corrupted Iraqis like Chalabi and others working with the US is yet one of many bad actions that shows that neither did the US nor these Iraqis in charge of Iraq have the intentions of making Iraq a country were law and order is followed or human rights respected.

Iraq is destroyed there are no good solutions left only less awful.

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Technorati Tags: iraq, israel, Iran, corruption

Breaking up Iraq thru death squads

2006-09-18T10:55:00.000+02:00

16 of october 2006 more updates on Chalabi's death squads. Thank you LadyBird for this important news.

-----------

Dear readers today I want to link to Lady Bird’s blog :

Iraq

’s “Death Squads” revisited: Chalabi leads “Death Squads” in Iraq

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Technorati Tags:iraq

U.S. and Iraqi officials with yet another stupid plan

2006-09-16T14:00:00.000+02:00

Make Baghdad safe???

The Iraqi government is now planning on digging a water trench around Baghdad as a last resort for safety. I on the other hand think that today just by:

- Dismantling the terrorist political militias in Iraq that we know are killing innocent Iraqis.

- Demanding a timetable for occupation troop’s withdrawal that we know the majority of Iraqis want.

- The Government and its protective occupation troops starting respecting Iraqis human rights, ending their torture chambers and brutal military attacks.

- Taking real honest actions in ending the corruption by people in the Iraqi government and the people they employ.

- Starting working FOR the Iraqi people for REAL

Will have better effects on making the WHOLE of Iraq safer.

So the Iraqi government why do you find it impossible to dismantle your political militias? YOU know they are committing terrible crimes, the whole world knows. They are committing the sort of crimes you say you want to end. So how will a water trench around Baghdad save Iraqis from your militias torture and death squads who are already INSIDE the city?

And U.S. officials who “approved” the plan what does that mean? Since Iraq IS sovereign in your view?

It seems this "plan" goes very well along with all other stupid U.S. plans we have seen in Iraq. It’s the same people who came up with; bombs, missiles and chemical weapons to represent democracy, torture to represent human rights, stealing Iraqi funds to represent good values and morals, ethnic division to represent unity and “bring it on” to represent hospitality. Which all have led the country from bad to worse and then to hell.

Iraqi cities lacking trenches around them IS NOT the problem in Iraq.

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Technorati Tags:iraq

Release Dr Fadhil Al-Bedrani and all members of his family who were taken into US military custody 12 September

2006-09-16T13:16:00.000+02:00

مناشدة للافراج الفوري عن الدكتور فاضل البدراني.

عضو الهيئة الاستشارية في محكمة بروكسل حول العراق و المشارك في المحكمة العالمية حول العراق.

اعتقل من قبل القوات الامريكية

الجمعة، ١٥ أيلول ٢٠٠٦، بروكسل.

تطالب محكمة بروكسل اليوم حكومة الولايات المتحدة الافراج الفوري عن الدكتور فاضل البدراني وجميع افراد عائلته والذين احتجزتهم القوات الامريكية في الثاني عشر من أيلول ۲۰۰٦.

دكتور فاضل البدراني وهو أستاذ في الصحافة وكاتب وطني بارز معروف بموقفه المعارض للاحتلال ومعروف بتقاريره التي تبث على قناة الجزيرة ووكالة الانباء رويترز وال بي. بي. سي. وكان يقول البدراني عن صعوبة تلقي وخروج المعلومات من العراق ووصولها الى وسائل الاعلام لنشرها "نحن نكتب وهم يمنعون".

مع عدم توافر المعلومات الكافية في الوقت الراهن قإن المعلومات التي وصلتنا تفيد باعتقال ٦٥ من أفراد عائلة الدكتور البدراني لحظة اعتقاله. وقد اوردت التقارير نبأ مقتل فايز البدراني شقيق الدكتور البدراني وهو طالب في كلية العلوم الاسلامية على يد القوات الاميركية. كما اوردت وكالة الانباء رويترز في أب ٢٠٠٥ مقتل عبدالقادر محمد البدراني في الفلوجة وهو أخ آخر للدكتور البدراني على يد القوات الاميركية والجماعات العراقية المتعاونة معها.

تدين محكمة بروكسل اعتقال الدكتور فاضل البدراني وعائلته بشدة وتطالب بمعاملته معاملة جيدة كما تطالب بالافراج الفوري عنه وعن أفراد عائلته وعن كافة المعتقلين السياسيين في العراق.

ندعو كافة وكالات الانباء ومنظمات حقوق الانسان ومؤسسات الصحافيين الدولية والمحلية و مؤسسات الدفاع عن حرية التعبير عن الرأي التضامن والوقوف الى جانب الدكتور فضل البدراني واتخاذ الاجراءات السريعة اللازمة التي ستساعد في الافراج عنه وأفراد عائلته.

في اسبوع واحد تم فيه اغتيال ثلاثة صحفيين واعتقال اخرين وأخذا بالاعتبار اغتيال وقتل أكثر من ۱٤٠فردا عاملا في مجال الاعلام منذ العام ٢٠٠۳، فإن اعتقال الدكتور البدراني يأتي ليبين حملة قوات الاحتلال الامريكية ضد حرية التعبير في العراق، ويتعدى الامر ذلك ليبين ان الاحتلال قد فشل في العراق وان الاضطهاد والاخضاع هو ما تبقى منه.

يجب انهاء الاحتلال.

لجنة محكمة بروكسل التنفيذية.

الرجاء المساعدة في نشر وتوزيع هذه المناشدة. للاستفسار:

info@brusselstribunal.org

The BRussells Tribunal today demands that the US government immediately release Dr Fadhil Al-Bedrani and all members of his family who were taken into US military custody 12 September 2006.

Dr Fadhil Al-Bedrani is a professor of journalism and a prominent patriotic writer known for his anti-occupation stand and whose reports appear on Al-Jazeera as well as Reuters and the BBC. When talking about the difficulty of getting news out of Iraq and into mainstream media, he said: “we report but they censor.”

Little information is yet available, but some reports say that as many as 65 members of Dr Al-Bedrani’s family were arrested with him. It is also reported that US forces killed Dr Al-Bedrani’s brother, Fayez Al-Bedrani, a student at the Islamic Sciences College. Another brother, Abdul Qadir Mohamad Al-Bedrani, also a reporter for Reuters, was shot by the US and Iraqi troops in Fallujah in August 2005.

The BRussells Tribunal condemns the detention of Dr Fadhil Al-Bedrani and his family and demands assurances of his wellbeing and that of his relatives, as well as his immediate release and the release of all family members, and all political prisoners in Iraq.

We call on all news agencies, human rights organisations, national and international press associations and freedom of expression advocacy groups to stand in solidarity with Dr Al-Bedrani and take immediate action to help secure the release of both him and his family.

In a week in which three journalists in Iraq have been assassinated and others arrested, and in the context of over 140 Iraqi media workers killed since 2003 *, Dr Al-Bedrani’s arrest illustrates a deepening campaign of the US occupation against freedom of speech in Iraq. It further illustrates that the US plan for Iraq has failed and that all the US can now propose is repression.

Occupation should end.

The BRussells Tribunal Committee.

Please circulate this appeal widely.

Extraordinary Rendition, Torture and Disappearances in the "War on Terror"

2006-09-16T12:02:00.000+02:00

Human rights groups and several public inquiries in Europe have found the U.S. government, with the complicity of numerous governments worldwide, to be engaged in the illegal practice of extraordinary rendition, secret detention, and torture.

The U.S. government-sponsored program of renditions is an unlawful practice in which numerous persons have been illegally detained and secretly flown to third countries, where they have suffered additional human rights abuses including torture and enforced disappearance. No one knows the exact number of persons affected, due to the secrecy under which the operations are carried out.

"Outlawed" (A 27 minutes documentary) tells the stories of Khaled El-Masri and Binyam Mohamed, two men who have survived extraordinary rendition, secret detention, and torture by the U.S. government working with various other governments worldwide.

This documentary can be viewed from this link:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3080182736973832540

Torture and ill-treatment in the 'war on terror' must STOP, take actions.

I cross over borders but I'm still there now

2006-09-10T20:19:00.000+02:00

So many Iraqis have already left Iraq, so many are on their way doing so and others wish they could do it.

Leaving a country you love reminds me of the lyrics to one of the songs in the musical CHESS sang by the well known Swedish singer Tommy Körberg.

He sings with an enormous powerful voice to a heartbreaking music about his love for his country that is falling apart. Some of the sentences here used to bring tears to my eyes when I listened to it in Iraq, at the time it was Sweden I had left and missed so terribly much. These days other parts remind me of Iraq and what many of the Iraqis that have left her or are on their way leaving her might be feeling.

These are the lyrics:

No man, no madness
Though their sad power may prevail
Can possess, conquer, my country's heart
They rise to fail
She is eternal
Long before nations' lines were drawn
When no flags flew, when no armies stood
My land was born

And you ask me why I love her
Through wars, death and despair
She is the constant
We who don't care
And you wonder will I leave her -- but how?
I cross over borders but I'm still there now

How can I leave her?
Where would I start?
Let man's petty nations tear themselves apart
My land's only borders lie around my heart

Let the figures speak for themselves

2006-09-09T16:56:00.000+02:00

If anyone knows of a similar chart with the heading:

Occupation attacks in Iraq, please give me the link.

Israel's and US's human shields

2006-08-26T18:04:00.000+02:00

Just some thoughts about if:

If the US and Britain attacks Iran, then Iran has the right to protect itself. Ten of thousands of US and British troops are in Iraq which makes them potential targets. However these US troops are in Iraqi cities; meaning these troops are using Iraqi civilians as their shields. They are putting innocent Iraqis lives in tremendous danger. Isn’t this another US and British war crime against the Iraqi people hiding around the corner?

If in self-defence Iran attacked US and British forces and missiles missed their targets by “mistake” (as the US call it) and hit innocent Iraqis; what will the Iraqi government do? Could it then finally be expected that they will demand the immediate withdrawal of all occupation troops and peple out of Iraq? Or will they still once again be ready to sacrifice even more innocent Iraqis? What will US and British troops do? Can it finally be expected that they will wise up and realize they are committing too many war crimes just by being in Iraq and with that refuse to fight and demanding to be sent home?

If Israel attacks Iran, then Iran has the right to protect itself. Then the thousands of “foreign peacekeepers” that have been demanded by Israel to be stationed alongside its northern border might be used by Israel as human shields. So if Iran in self-defence after being attacked by Israel attacked Israel and one missile missed its target by “mistake” (as Israel call it) and hit the European peacekeepers. What will the EU do then?

2006-08-23T01:02:00.000+02:00

I am back for a short while and then life outside the net needs my full attention once again. Just checked my e-mail today and my blog and wanted to thank all the friends who have asked about me. I am fine; it’s just that a lot of stuff outside the Internet life have to be taken care of and most of the time I have no access to Internet. I miss you all too.

Keep up the good work on all levels you choose to do it!

How many more Iraqis must die for the American people?

2006-06-17T18:30:00.000+02:00

With regards to the US house passing an Iraqi Resolution

"Retreat is not an option in Iraq,'' declared House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio. "Achieving victory is our only option, for the American people and our kids."

Since US politicians and their supporters want their war, I demand of them to take their war out of Iraq, show some courage and invite your enemies to your country instead, fight your war inside your own borders.

This is from an interview with Bremer 24 Augusti 2003. It needs to be remembered so you can see how the US administration took the liberty to force war on terror on the Iraqi people:

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: How many? (he is referring to what Bremer calls terrorists)

AMBASSADOR L. PAUL BREMER: I think for the American people to understand •• well, probably several hundred, probably several hundred. And I think most Americans understand that it's better for us to fight and win this war here than to have to fight it on the streets of the United States.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: You know, you've said that before. And I want to now play something that you've said, and also President Bush and General Sanchez, along those same lines and get you to respond. Let me put it up right now.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH (From video): There are some who feel like the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is, bring them on. We've got the force necessary to deal with the security situation.

GENERAL JOHN ABIZAID (From video): This is what I would call a terrorist magnet where American being present here in Iraq creates a target of opportunity, if you will, but this is exactly where we want to fight them. We want to fight them here, we're prepared for them, and this will prevent the American people from having to go through other attacks back in the United States.

AMBASSADOR L. PAUL BREMER: It's the kind of thing that we've seen before in so many places, and it's something that we have to beat, and I must say, I think we must now defeat it here in Iraq, better to fight it here than to fight it somewhere else like the United States.

They have no right to scarify Iraqis this way. Iraqis mission in life is NOT to die for the American people. The war on terror is a war that should be fought on the US mainland.

This is a vicious crime against the Iraqi people and one of the many proofs that in the eyes of US politicians and their supporters Iraqis lives are worth nothing to them. Its an even bigger proof of how spineless these U.S politicians and their supporters really are.

So once again US politicians and the supporters who want the war, I demand of you to take your war out of Iraq, show some courage and invite your enemies to your country instead.

Fight your war inside your own borders.

John Boehner the House Majority Leader I am sure you understand that it is Iraqis national interests that the US takes ITS war out of Iraq into the US were it really belongs and have support by people like you.

And when Americans are dieing in the streets you can be ready to tell them what ever you want.

I on the other hand will give my full and honest support to the all the Americans who want the warmongler people out of office!

Football for a united and peaceful Iraq

2006-06-17T16:27:00.000+02:00

An Iraqi children’s football project have started. Under the banner:

Football for a united and peaceful Iraq

Nabil who is the project manager believes sports helps in bringing peace, stability and unity.

The football projects starts in Najaf, then it takes cities in the south, middle and north. This will provide Iraqi children a chance for happiness, play, fun and sports competitions. We all know how much this is needed for them these days. It will give them the experience that their parents care about them and that there are people who support them on both a family and a society level.

I salute Nabil for his efforts and wish all success to his project! I also hope I have understood correctly that this is a project that includes both boys and girls. Sports are indeed loved by a lot of children and it’s a perfect thing to spend time on, build a healthy body, relationships and friendship. All these things will help Iraqi kids get some hope back and it will strengthen the unity of Iraqis!

Solutions

2006-06-03T23:38:00.000+02:00

I'll be away until the 13th of June. I'll make my last post a rerun of some suggestions of solutions needed for Iraq.

I demand ending the military and economically occupation of Iraq.

I demand complete withdrawal of all occupation troops, all contractors, all mercenaries and all civil occupation people from Iraq.

I demand that the immunity law that was given to the above is no longer active.

I demand all occupation military bases and new embassies to be closed. They are now the property of Iraqis.

I demand the Iraq government and Iraqi politicians put a stop to the crimes of their militias, we know you have the power to do so, so do it.

I demand that the Iraqi resistance to the occupation declares on all possible ways that it will stop its attacks against occupation troops when they are on their way out of Iraq.

I demand from all the ordinary criminal Iraqis to wake up and start put your enormous energy to build a peaceful Iraq instead.

I demand honesty and unity from all of us Iraqis. The loyalty should be to Iraq.

Quote of the day:
Omar Saed, 55, a university lecturer in Baghdad, said: "We'd like to send a brief letter to all the world: 'Please stop the American troops killing any more people.' We need full cooperation from all to help us avoid any more incidents like what happened in Haditha and Ramadi and all the other Iraqi cities."

There is also news about Iraqi lawyers demanding occupation troops to be prosecuted for their war crimes and crimes against humanity in an international court.

The family of Faiz Harat Khalaf

2006-06-02T00:26:00.000+02:00

According to the report of the Ishaqi police directorate. American forces used helicopters to drop troops on the house of Faiz Harat Khalaf situated in the Abu Sifa village of the Ishaqi district. The American forces gathered the family members in one room and executed 11 people, including 5 children, 4 women and 2 men, then they bombed the house, burned three vehicles and killed their animals.

The Iraqis that were executed:

Turkiya Muhammed Ali, 75 years
Faiza Harat Khalaf, 30 years
Faiz Harat Khalaf, 28 years
Um Ahmad, 23 years
Sumaya Abdulrazak, 22 years
Aziz Khalil Jarmoot, 22 years
Hawra Harat Khalaf, 5 years
Asma Yousef Maruf, 5 years
Osama Yousef Maruf, 3 years
Aisha Harat Khalaf, 3 years
Husam Harat Khalaf, 6 months

May they rest in peace, may all Iraqis killed in this illegal war rest in peace.

May their families and friends find strength somewhere to cope with their loss.

___________

3rd June update: This is US justice for Iraqis
Troops cleared of Iraq wrongdoing
Saturday, 3 June 2006
A US military investigation has found there was no misconduct by US troops over Iraqi civilian deaths in the town of Ishaqi, a spokesman says.

A comment I read in the Washington Post about US soldiers killing Iraqis says a lot.

I wonder what the reaction would be if the killed were Israelis or Americans and the military were arabs. Would our reaction be also "stuff happens"? The soldiers had been under stress and a buddy was killed therefore it is understandable that they "snapped"? Ends of story.

I VERY MUCH DOUBT IT.
WE WOULD BE SCREAMING OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!
THEY ARE BARBARIENS, WE WOULD NEVER DO SOMETHING LIKE THAT.

US people who are against your presence in Iraq, you are millions, PLEASE DO MORE TO GET ALL YOUR TROOPS OUT OF IRAQ!

End United States acts of state terrorism against Iraqis.

___________

1 June update
New 'Iraq massacre' tape emerges
Thursday, 1 June 2006
The BBC has uncovered new video evidence that US forces may have been responsible for the deliberate killing of 11 innocent Iraqi civilians.

Iraqi police report details civilians' deaths at hands of U.S. troops
By Matthew Schofield,
Posted on Sun, Mar. 19, 2006
Knight Ridder Newspapers
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi police have accused American troops of executing 11 people, including a 75-year-old woman and a 6-month-old infant, in the aftermath of a raid last Wednesday on a house about 60 miles north of Baghdad.

Children of Abraham: Death in the Desert
Written by Chris Floyd
Movie at this link

___________

US TROOPS lay down your weapons in Iraq. Committing war crimes thru state terrorism against Iraqis who live in their own country DOES NOT make your family in the US safe. Who ever still tells you "that is what Iraq is all about" is a liar. You should really have common sense to understand that.

The more Iraqis you kill the more Iraqis will hate you and the more attacks against you there will be. Don't you see this after 3 years in Iraq?

Lay down your weapons and join the Iraq Veterans against the War.

Let Iraqis decide their way forward

2006-06-01T10:41:00.000+02:00

Iraqis rejoice, there is no need anymore for elections in Iraq! We have Wayne Downing, Barry McCaffrey, Michael Vickers, Fouad Ajami, Raad Alkadiri, some military men I don’t know, some scholars who are students of Iraq (what ever that means) I don’t know either, Sistani and the one and only Amir Taheri! These people are representing us in meetings with Bush!

Taheri, he will tell the truth! Or will he come up with more front page lies.

Press Briefing by Tony Snow

James S. Brady Briefing Room

May 30, 2006

Q Can you give us a readout on the President's meeting this morning with the Iraq experts?

MR. SNOW: Yes. Oh, my goodness, I forgot to bring the list. But actually -- do you have the list, Fred? Yes, it was an interesting meeting. What you ended up having was -- I've got all the names but one written down here. We had Wayne Downing, Barry McCaffrey, Michael Vickers, Amir Taheri, Fouad Ajami and Raad Alkadiri. And you had a combination there of military men and also scholars who are students of Iraq. And it was an interesting discussion that touched upon cultural issues, on political issues, on the state of affairs in Iraq. You had a number of people who've been there recently, General McCaffrey having returned just last month from his latest visit. Fouad Ajami last year had the occasion to sit down and speak with the Ayatollah Sistani, Ali al Sistani.

The President wanted to hear about that. And what he really wanted first was to get their honest opinions -- and, again, these were honest opinions -- about how things are going in Iraq, about the status and viability of the government, and what the United States needs to do on the way forward. The one thing that was of mutual agreement is that, number one, this is an important enterprise, and number two, that we can and will win it. But those are sort of the general outlines of the conversation.

Bush if you want an interesting discussion about Iraq I suggest you talk to ordinary Iraqis. Why did you not go and listen to Faiza and Dahlia's testimonies to your Congress? Even our PM would have been better then these people. Ordinary Iraqi people are the ones that should tell you about their culture and how their lives are today if you really want to know the truth.

Haven’t you read or heard about Taheri’s enormous big lie last weeks? If you haven’t well then you have the wrong staff working for you. If you have and you still think the he is the man you want an opinion from. Well then that says more about you then it does of Taheri.

Bush, since you want honest opinions this is mine:

The United States is committing acts of state terrorism against Iraqis.

Get your troops out of Iraq. End your illigal occupation of Iraq and let Iraqis decide their way forward!

Peace/
Nadia

2006-05-30T14:03:00.000+02:00

Most of the terror that we see in Iraq today came with the US invasion.

Cheney have said war on terror will be a long war.

The US have for over 100 years made a lot of nation’s people angry for its meddling and crimes against them. So it has its huge share of enemies.

The US administration have made it clear they will fight their war in Iraq in order to save US people from going thru what Iraqis are going thru today.

That is why I want an Iraqi government who is strong in the meaning that it will tell ANY US administration take your war of terror elsewhere. We are NOT willing to scarify Iraqis for you any longer.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: How many? (asking about how many terrorists are there in Iraq?)

AMBASSADOR L. PAUL BREMER: I think for the American people to understand ·· well, probably several hundred, probably several hundred. And I think most Americans understand that it's better for us to fight and win this war here than to have to fight it on the streets of the United States.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: You know, you've said that before. And I want to now play something that you've said, and also President Bush and General Sanchez, along those same lines and get you to respond. Let me put it up right now.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH (From video): There are some who feel like the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is, bring them on. We've got the force necessary to deal with the security situation.

GENERAL JOHN ABIZAID (From video): This is what I would call a terrorist magnet where American being present here in Iraq creates a target of opportunity, if you will, but this is exactly where we want to fight them. We want to fight them here, we're prepared for them, and this will prevent the American people from having to go through other attacks back in the United States.

AMBASSADOR L. PAUL BREMER: It's the kind of thing that we've seen before in so many places, and it's something that we have to beat, and I must say, I think we must now defeat it here in Iraq, better to fight it here than to fight it somewhere else like the United States.

Ruthless occupiers

2006-05-29T22:16:00.000+02:00

Loach triumphs at Cannes with Irish movie echoing Iraq occupation

British director Ken Loach with his film “The Wind That Shakes The Barley" won the festival's top prize, the Palme d'Or.

A movie that show the brutality of 1920s occupied Ireland which the director said was equally applicable to today's Iraq.

It tells the tale of Ireland's struggle for independence from Britain through the experiences of a young doctor who joins a rag-tag band of guerrillas fighting the ruthless British occupiers. Mr. Loach said:

"Maybe if we tell the truth about the past, maybe we tell the truth about the present"

Death Squads

2006-05-27T21:05:00.000+02:00

This is from Alrabita Aliraqia/ Iraqi League site

Two Iraqi guys who witnessed the killing of Ayad Al-Munthari in Baghadad followed carefully the car of the killers. It went towards Abu Graib and they saw the car being allowed to enter the gates of it.

So who are these killers?

A bunch of Iraqi prisoners the US let out on permission? I find that hard to believe.

From this story they seem to be US paid assassins and terrorists.
---------------
May Ayad and his brother Muhsen Al-Munthari rest in peace.

--------------
Update: This story is in Arabic, go to http://iraqirabita.org/ look for the same photo as the above, that's where the story is.

To Bush, Blair and the so called Iraqi government

2006-05-27T06:41:00.000+02:00

Iraqis don't need any more of US and UK "mistakes" or "thousands of tactical errors" in Iraq. Its time for the US, UK and their allies to leave Iraq.

Jawad al Maliki and the Iraqis in government what are you doing about it, are you in charge? Or will you allow scarifying Iraqis a couple of more years?

Update:
In Haditha, Memories of a Massacre

Iraqi Townspeople Describe Slaying of 24 Civilians by Marines
By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, May 27, 2006; Page A01

BAGHDAD, May 26 -- Witnesses to the slaying of 24 Iraqi civilians by U.S. Marines in the western town of Haditha say the Americans shot men, women and children at close range in retaliation for the death of a Marine lance corporal in a roadside bombing.

Aws Fahmi, a Haditha resident who said he watched and listened from his home as Marines went from house to house killing members of three families, recalled hearing his neighbor across the street, Younis Salim Khafif, plead in English for his life and the lives of his family members. "I heard Younis speaking to the Americans, saying: 'I am a friend. I am good,' " Fahmi said. "But they killed him, and his wife and daughters."

The 24 Iraqi civilians killed on Nov. 19 included children and the women who were trying to shield them, witnesses told a Washington Post special correspondent in Haditha this week and U.S. investigators said in Washington. The girls killed inside Khafif's house were ages 14, 10, 5, 3 and 1, according to death certificates.

Haifa Zangana Interview

2006-05-26T09:13:00.000+02:00

Haifa Zangana Interview
05/25/06 Dateline SBS

Haifa Zangana is an Iraqi, she is also a writer and an activist for women's rights in her savagely battered homeland. She was an opponent of Saddam Hussein and his regime; indeed, she was imprisoned and tortured by the dictator.

HAIFA ZANGANA: To start with, we have to make it clear that the withdrawal that Tony Blair's talking about, or Bush, is different about the withdrawal we're talking about. I am talking about the complete withdrawal of troops. That doesn't mean they go around and build bases, American bases in Iraq which they are doing at the moment. There are more than 14 bases building. And there is the biggest embassy in the world. And no signing of long-term binding agreements, not on behalf of Iraqi people but on behalf of these interim governments or the puppet governments at the moment. This is second.

Third - there should be a compensation for all the crimes being committed against Iraqi people, whether in life or the destruction of the country. So we're talking about a different kind of withdrawal. They said the country is going to descend into civil war. But we it have already. Those occupation forces there, they are encouraging it because they are emphasising the force of one militia against the other, even supplying weapons to certain militias against the other. So who is encouraging civil war?

There is no civil war among Iraqi people themselves. There are the militias fighting. And there is another kind of war which no-one is talking about. This is really the fighting of Iraqi resistance against the occupation forces.

Click here to see the video interview (8 minutes).

Click here for the link to find the transcript.

What did the US do in Fallujah?

2006-05-23T22:12:00.000+02:00

Iraq doctor brings evidence of US napalm at Fallujah

EVIDENCE to support controversial claims that napalm has been used by US forces in Iraq has been brought to Australia by an Iraqi doctor.

Dr Salam Ismael, of the Baghdad-based group Doctors for Iraq, said the evidence pointed to the use of napalm on civilians during the second siege of Fallujah in November 2004.

So the new Iraqi government what is your view about this war crime and what will YOU do about it? Will you use maximum force and demand US troops to leave Iraq?

Confessions Of An Iraqi War Veteran

2006-05-23T08:41:00.000+02:00

Confessions Of An Iraqi War Veteran

Jessie Macbeth - Former Army Ranger and Iraq War Veteran, tell it like it is; how US soldiers are killing innocent Iraqis. This is a 20 minutes interview.

"We are terrorising that nation and we are getting away with it”

So the new Iraqi government what will you do about this terror? Will you use maximum force to kick out US troops?

US must withdraw from Iraq now

2006-05-18T12:40:00.000+02:00

Just visited TAI and he had a very important update. Thank you TAI.

More on the atrocity committed by US troops against innocent Iraqi women and children.

Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa held a news conference on Wednesday in which he outlined what a military investigation into last November's incident in which 23 Iraqis were killed in the town of Haditha, Iraq.

The following are some of his statements:

"There was no firefight. There was no IED (improvised explosive device) that killed those innocent people."

"Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them. And they (US troops) killed innocent civilians in cold blood. That is what the report is going to tell."

"I understand the investigation shows that in fact there was no firefight, there was no explosion that killed the civilians on a bus."

"There was no bus. There was no shrapnel. There was only bullet holes inside the house where the Marines had gone in. So it's a very serious incident, unfortunately. It shows the tremendous pressure these guys are under every day when they're out in combat and the stress and consequences."

"One man was killed with an IED. And after that, they actually went into the houses and killed women and children."

Remember when this first came out? Iraqis were called liars.

I am not interested in words anymore. I want to see actions that US and its allies troops are leaving Iraq now.

The US needs to quit interfering in Iraq. The majority of the Iraqi people have said it clearly in polls they want the US occupation to end. Iraqis want to reclaim sovereignty and independence, free from outside interference! The US army in Iraq is a very important reason for the problems there.

And as the Bush administration put demands on Syria in Lebanon lets demand the same. Not only must US occupation troops withdraw, the occupation ministry advisers, the mercenaries and secret service must go as well.

Iraq must be permitted to run its own political affairs. And as I said before it will not be raining peace on Iraqis just because occupation troops withdraw. But this is a step forward to fulfilling the wishes of the Iraqi people. That is a huge step forward and lets take it from there.

The US administration is NOT an honest broker in Iraq and they have over 120 000 troops that make them able to commit their war crimes against the Iraqi people. ENOUGH.

The joined Independence/Esteklal petition from Code Pink, please send it out to as many people you know. Ask them to sing it in support of ending this brutal US occupation of Iraq.

Whether it is controlling Iraqi oil, whether it is Israel’s security, whether it is corporations who want access to new markets, whether it is democracy thru bombs and killing innocent Iraqis, whether it is a policy to divide up Iraq for what ever reasons, whether it is people who hate Arabs and Islam, whether it is personal revenge for what ever reason, whether it is people who think they are cool running around Iraq as if they were in a Hollywood war movie, whether it is pure greed or lust for power or whether it is a policy to fulfil the Armageddon and the return of Messiah, Jesus Christ… I don’t care.

Get out of Iraq. Give Iraq back to Iraqis.

All foreign troops and foreign fighters MUST withdraw from Iraq now. No more sacrificing Iraqis and Iraq.

Esteklal/Independence

2006-05-17T22:34:00.000+02:00

CODEPINK and Global Exchange Advertisement in Iraqi Newspaper

Click here to view the advertisement which is being placed in Iraqi newspapers with the help from Raed, calling on both nations -- Iraqi and US -- to join together to demand an end of the US occupation of Iraq.

Please sign the Petition here

Esteklal
We, the people of the United States, Iraq and people worldwide, have had enough of the senseless war in Iraq. We've buried too many of our loved ones. We've seen too many lives crippled forever by physical and mental wounds. We've watched in horror as our precious resources are poured into war while our families' basic needs of food, shelter, education and healthcare go unmet. We've had enough of living in constant fear of violence and seeing the growing plague of hatred and intolerance seep into our homes and communities.

We have seen how the foreign occupation of Iraq has fueled an armed movement against it, perpetuating an endless cycle of violence. We join together—across borders—to demand
the withdrawal of all foreign troops and foreign fighters from Iraq;
no permanent foreign bases in Iraq;
Iraqi control of its oil and other resources;
and a massive reconstruction effort that prioritizes Iraqi contractors, and is financed by the countries responsible for the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

United in diversity

2006-05-15T18:10:00.000+02:00

On the 9th of May it was Europe Day. The motto of the European Union is

"United in diversity"

So how did the EU start and why?

“For centuries, Europe was the scene of frequent and bloody wars. In the period 1870 to 1945, France and Germany fought each other three times, with terrible loss of life. A number of European leaders became convinced that the only way to secure a lasting peace between their countries was to unite them economically and politically.”

This got me thinking about Iraq and the Arab world. Europeans were and still are convinced that securing lasting peace is by uniting. They have proven it to be true!

When Bush discuss Iraq as a model for peace he chose Iraqis and non Iraqis who think that Iraq should be broken up in three parts, relieved of its Islamic identity and become non-Arab. He clearly seems to lack the understanding the founders of EU had.

"United in diversity"
this is what should be promoted in Iraq!

Slowing down the democratization process

2006-05-01T22:41:00.000+02:00

One of the most dangerous things for Israel could be a free democratic Arab world. There would be such a clear policy from the neighbouring countries that the occupation of Palestine must end. So what is the solution?

Have Arabs under dictatorships, well then that has been done the last 60 years with the admitting of Rice herself last year and it seems they will continue to do it but rap it up in words of war on terror restricts your freedoms this time.

A couple of months ago I hade a debate don’t remember were right now but it was on the net, and it was because I had read on the Middle Eastern Forum the following about their mission (slowing down the democratization process) referring the ME democratisation of course. My thoughts were how can they achieve that? How do you slow down such a process? Look at Egypt today “President Hosni Mubarak to extend the country's 25-year old emergency laws another two years, effectively ending a recent cycle of reform in which much more was promised than delivered.” Isn’t that mission accomplished indeed?!

By the way today when I went back to Middle Easter Forum to check it out once again (slowing down the democratization process) had interestingly been changed to (better managing the democratization process). Say hi to Orwell!

Grameencredit, Fairtrade and UN Millennium Development Goals

2006-04-29T11:33:00.000+02:00

I believe that Grameencredit can help a lot of Iraqi families help themselves.

Grameencredit

a) It promotes credit as a human right.

b) Its mission is to help the poor families to help themselves to overcome poverty. It is targeted to the poor, particularly poor women.

c) Most distinctive feature of Grameencredit is that it is not based on any collateral, or legally enforceable contracts. It is based on "trust", not on legal procedures and system.

d) It is offered for creating self-employment for income-generating activities and housing for the poor, as opposed to consumption.

e) It was initiated as a challenge to the conventional banking which rejected the poor by classifying them to be "not creditworthy". As a result it rejected the basic methodology of the conventional banking and created its own methodology.

f) It provides service at the door-step of the poor based on the principle that the people should not go to the bank, bank should go to the people.

g) In order to obtain loans a borrower must join a group of borrowers.

h) Loans can be received in a continuous sequence. New loan becomes available to a borrower if her previous loan is repaid.

i) All loans are to be paid back in instalments (weekly, or bi-weekly).

j) Simultaneously more than one loan can be received by a borrower.

k) It comes with both obligatory and voluntary savings programmes for the borrowers.

l) Generally these loans are given through non-profit organizations or through institutions owned primarily by the borrowers. If it is done through for-profit institutions not owned by the borrowers, efforts are made to keep the interest rate at a level which is close to a level commensurate with sustainability of the programme rather than bringing attractive return for the investors. Grameencredit's thumb-rule is to keep the interest rate as close to the market rate, prevailing in the commercial banking sector, as possible, without sacrificing sustain-ability. In fixing the interest rate market interest rate is taken as the reference rate, rather than the moneylenders' rate. Reaching the poor is its non-negotiable mission. Reaching sustainability is a directional goal. It must reach sustainability as soon as possible, so that it can expand its outreach without fund constraints

m) Grameencredit gives high priority on building social capital. It is promoted through formation of groups and centres, developing leadership quality through annual election of group and centre leaders, electing board members when the institution is owned by the borrowers. To develop a social agenda owned by the borrowers, something similar to the "sixteen decisions", it undertakes a process of intensive discussion among the borrowers, and encourage them to take these decisions seriously and implement them. It gives special emphasis on the formation of human capital and concern for protecting environment. It monitors children's education, provides scholarships and student loans for higher education. For formation of human capital it makes efforts to bring technology, like mobile phones, solar power, and promote mechanical power to replace manual power.

Fairtrade

I also believe that encouraging FAIRTRADE in Iraq is the perfect assurance for a sustainable Iraqi society.

It will give consumers whether Iraqi or International a guarantee that human rights have been in focus under the production of the product. The Iraqi producer is guaranteed a long business relationship and a price that is above production costs. For very small Iraqi producers it would mean a chance for payment in advanced too.

Fairness, equality and respect for human rights are fundamental principles in the Fairtrade business. It also encourage environmental friendly cultivation and productions!

This is indeed an assurance for a sustainable Iraqi society!

UN Millennium Development Goals

Together with Fairtrade, Grameencredit and UN Millennium Goals the whole world will have a good chance to be a better place!

1)UN Millennium Development Goals
Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

2)Achieve universal primary education

3)Promote gender equality and empower women

4)Reduce child mortality

5)Improve maternal heath

6)Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases

7)Ensure environmental sustainability

8)Develop a global partnership for development

Justice for all

2006-04-27T10:40:00.000+02:00

The United Nations Compensation Commission is a subsidiary organ of the United Nations Security Council. It will process claims and pay compensation for losses resulting from US’s invasion and occupation of Iraq. Compensation is payable from a special fund that receives a percentage of the proceeds from sales of all US products and services.

The Security Council established US’s legal responsibility for such losses in its resolution ULOST of 9 April 2007:

US...is liable under international law for any loss, damage, including environmental damage and the depletion of natural resources, as a result of US’s unlawful invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Resolution ULOST was adopted under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations, which concerns action with respect to threats to the peace, breaches of the peace and acts of aggression.

The Security Council created a fund to pay compensation for losses, damage and injury resulting directly from US’s invasion and occupation of Iraq, and directed the Secretary-General to develop and present to the Security Council recommendations for setting up the fund as well as a commission to administer it. The Secretary-General was also directed to recommend mechanisms for determining the appropriate level of US’s contribution to the fund, taking into account the lowest requirements of the people of US, US’s payment capacity and the needs of the US economy.

Three days after the adoption of resolution ULOST, the US, in a letter to the Secretary-General and the President of the Security Council, accepted the terms of the resolution, thereby accepting legal responsibility for damage directly caused to the Iraqi society by its illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq.

End the occupation of Iraq

2006-04-26T18:07:00.000+02:00

I demand ending the military and economically occupation of Iraq.

I demand complete withdrawal of all occupation troops, all contractors, all mercenaries and all civil occupation people from Iraq.

I demand that the immunity law that was given to the above is no longer active. From this moment they are punishable under Iraqi law for crimes committed in Iraq and against Iraqis.

I demand all occupation military bases and new embassies to be closed. They are now the property of Iraqis.

I demand the Iraq government and Iraqi politicians put a stop to the crimes of their militias, we know you have the power to do so, so do it.

I demand that the Iraqi resistance to the occupation declares on all possible ways that it will stop its attacks against occupation troops because they are now on their way out of Iraq.

I demand from all the ordinary criminal Iraqis to wake up and start put your enormous energy to build a peaceful Iraq instead.

I demand honesty and unity from all of us Iraqis.

I tell all sorts of people in Iraq who are involved in terrorist activities with the above demands fulfilled it will get more difficult for you to operate in Iraq and it will get easier for Iraqis to see who you are and catch you to be prosecuted under Iraqi law.

So occupation troops and occupation people pack your bags and leave Iraq!

Guilt, memories and a beautiful Iraqi smile

2006-04-26T17:07:00.000+02:00

A couple of times each day I update myself about Iraq. These last days each time I feel like someone is strangling me during my updates. It gets harder and harder to breath; I get pain in my throat and around my heart because of sadness of what is happening to Iraqis inside Iraq and me not being able to make life better for them. I have guilt for living a safe life; I have guilt being able to live a normal life. Then I feel anger for acknowledging my feelings like this.

When Iraq came into my consciousness: I was born in northern Sweden to an Iraqi father and a Swedish mother. I had a memory from early childhood; a man was holding me so I could see all the different choices of ice-cream I had, I remember pointing and he then saying something to the man behind the counter, I can almost feel how close my face is to the face of the man holding me when looking at him, and then I remember how he smiles back at me!

It was in my early teens that I learned it was a memory from an ice cream bar in Amarah, the man was my uncle Khalid!

That is my first memory from Iraq!

2006-04-25T22:07:00.000+02:00

“We hope Iraq will be the first domino and that Libya and Iran will follow. We don't like being kept out of markets, because it gives our competitors an unfair advantage.”
John Gibson, Chief Executive of Halliburton Energy Service Group

“Iraq possesses huge reserves of oil and gas, reserves I would love Chevron to have access to.”
Ken Derr, the former C.E.O. of Chevron

“Whoever controls the flow of Persian Gulf oil has a stranglehold not only on our economy but also on the other countries of the world as well.”
Dick Cheney

“The new oil law, when it’s put in place, is going to be very good for U.S. oil companies.”
Abdul-Mahdi

“So I think this is very promising to the American investors and to American enterprise, certainly to oil companies.”
Abdul-Mahdi, at the National Press Club in Washington, DC

The 3rd anniversary of the US invation

2006-04-11T15:01:00.001+02:00

The other day when surfing the net I bummed into Bruno at Mama's. I have read a lot of his comments in discussions on the Internet and this time wondered if I could sort of reprint the latest as a Guest Blogger, I was happy that he agreed. Thank you Bruno!

These are his reflections on the 3rd anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq.

I have been following this invasion from before the war, and it is clear to me that the reason that Iraq is such a mess at the moment is because the Americans did not consider the desires of ordinary Iraqis when they decided to re-make Iraq into a place of their own choosing.

I agree that many Iraqis were, and are, glad that Hussein is gone.

But don’t believe that the Americans had a problem with Hussein for what he did.

No, they had a problem with Hussein because he decided to put himself in front of the needs of America.

One of the first things the Americans did after the Iraqi regime fell, was to gather up all the Ba’athists that would work with them, and incorporate them into a new security structure. These were the same people who were working for Saddam in the first place! So: the question is not whether the Iraqis were Ba’athist or not, the question was whether the Iraqis were Pro-American or not.

Very early in the occupation municipal elections had been planned, but these were cancelled by the Americans when it seemed that the ‘wrong’ Iraqis might win.

Instead of listening to the Iraqi people, what did America do?

They brought in a bunch of thugs like Allawi (who was at one time a Ba’athist associate of Saddam) and crooks like Chalabi who stole millions of dollars from the Jordanian people. Then, when it became clear that Iraqis would not listen to these CIA-paid stooges, the US tried to create a system of “caucuses” where it could hand – pick the ‘right’ Iraqis it wanted in order to run Iraq from afar.

Was this listening to the Iraqi people?

Clearly, no.

Iraq is in a mess because America would rather destroy Iraq than have it fall under the influence of the ‘wrong’ sorts of Iraqis. Even now, this is true, as America turns against the Iranian-backed political groups with which it was so cosy only a short time ago, and tries to find new Iraqis to be ‘friends’ with.

Yesterday they were friends with the “shias”, and tomorrow they will be friends with the “sunnis” and the day after … who knows?

I really hope that Iraqis wake up and realize that while individually Americans may be nice and helpful, the foreign policy which they serve is utterly evil and corrupt, and that their country does not have ‘friends’ (except for maybe Israel and the UK) but it has INTERESTS … which means that you must ‘lose’ for them to ‘win’.

Then Bruno goes on explaining more about how US foreign policy today works:

The Syrians and Iranians are the ‘wrong’ sorts of people so they must be mercilessly killed. The Sadrists are the ‘wrong’ sorts of Iraqis, so they must be killed. The Sunnis are against occupation, so they must be killed. Very shortly, the Badrists and other UIA members will be ‘bad guys’ too, and they will also be targets. This is what I am talking about. They will turn Iraq into a wasteland until there are just three pro- USA Iraqis left singing kumbaya with CENTCOM, at which point the mission will be “accomplished”.

These Americans talk about “overthrowing tyrants” yet they supported Saddam in the 1980’s. They still support people like Mubarak in Egypt, and pay this dictator billions of dollars to suppress his own people. They threw Saddam out of Kuwait but re-installed the Emir of Kuwait as a dictator. Where was all the talk of democracy in Kuwait? I never heard any.

There is only need for “democracy” in countries that are against the USA, or that put the needs of their own people in front of the needs of the USA.

This is my point: individual Americans may seem supportive and nice, but the foreign policy of their country is ROTTEN to the core; it is hypocritical and self-serving.

He also points out that the supporters of US foreign policy in Iraq have just the solution of kill more people:

They have just one solution to the problems of Iraq, and that is to kill more Iraqis. Any Iraqi that they think is a ‘thug’ or ‘bad guy’ is a candidate for being killed. Anybody who is against America is a ‘bad guy’.

Now, where does that leave us?

I have studied the polls on Iraqi opinion.

Fully 87% of Iraqis think it is a good thing for Americans to have a timetable for withdrawal. In other words, 87% of Iraqis would like to see their country free of American troops. Does that make 87% of Iraqis ‘thugs’ and ‘bad guys’ ?

The US government knows the way Iraqis feel very well. Yet Bush said just the other day that American troops will be in Iraq for years and years to come. Does this show consideration for the wishes of Iraqis? Or does it show intentions to keep US troops in Iraq in mega bases no matter what Iraqis think?

But why are US troops in Iraq? All their previous reasons have turned out to be lies. The latest reason was to prevent a civil war. But when the Askariya shrine was bombed, and the militias were out on the streets, killing people, where were the US soldiers? That’s right, in their safe mega bases, watching TV. They will not intervene to stop a civil war. Rumsfeld himself said so. So why are they still in Iraq?

Now to the question that there is a lot of pro Iranian people in Iraq, who are they?

The most Iranian-aligned Iraqis are from SCIRI, right? Well, who trained Badr / SCIRI troops, who armed them, and who has been advising the Interior Ministry for quite some time now? That’s right, the Americans, because they thought they could get the Badr brigade to do their dirty work for them.

This link says it all. Here you can read all about how the US, until recently, has been working with the death squads that have been killing Iraqis.

Now, what is happening is that America is picking a fight with Iran.

So shortly, Badr / SCIRI / Da’wa will no longer be of use to the US as allies.

So now the USA will try to suck up to the Resistance and the Sunnis and make friends with them. Does this make sense, after three years of calling them ‘terrorists’ and ‘thugs’ and ‘Ba’athists’ ? No, it does not. This is merely the Americans trying to find new friends because the old ones are no longer of any use to them. They will try to use the ‘sunnis’ to kill the ‘shias’ again, when the Shia protest against the war that America is trying to start with Iran. In other words, they will get Iraqis to kill each other again.

The question is, what happens after the ‘sunnis’ have finished killing the ‘shia’? That’s right, the Americans will turn on them once more and start calling them ‘terrorists’ again.

I really hope that Iraqis realize that American foreign policy is the chief cause of the problems in Iraq.

Profits made by Iraqis blood

2006-04-07T16:40:00.000+02:00

A couple of months ago some of you remember the video on the net showing video clips of shooting from a car against Iraqis in the streets while Elvis music was playing in the background. Now finally the security firm has confirmed it was their people in that car.

Iraqis lives are worth nothing, have a look at the film once again and see how they shoot at innocent Iraqis. And their argument for doing it is that it might be an insurgent. So let’s start a security firm and move the business to London and Washington. Lets go around with guns and shoot who ever we believe is a threat to us. Then when people complain we’ll just deny it a couple of months call it anti propaganda news until we find the next step is to do an internal “investigation”. This will find that we have the right to protect ourselves even if we make “mistakes” and that it is the terrorist’s fault. If US people and British people don’t want to get killed well either leave the country or stay indoors because we aren’t leaving from your cities or streets; there is too much money profits for us to be made here for your lives to matter. But that is the truth that nobody talks about; no we are in your streets to protect you and since we are such a nice bunch of people you have to forgive us for shooting at you every now and then.

So this private army that runs around in Iraq, how long will Iraqi politicians continue holding them immune as Bremer wanted? I guess as long as our politicians know that they would be leaving Iraq ASAP if it wasn’t for these occupation troops and their mercenaries protecting them day and night.

Iraq is a mess, and in the corridors of power there are ugly games of personal gain going on, profits on all levels are being made while ordinary Iraqis blood is flooding the neighbourhood's streets every second of the day.

A spade and a dead Iraqi

2006-04-03T21:46:00.000+02:00

'If You Start Looking at Them as Humans, Then How Are You Gonna Kill Them?' are the words of a US soldier telling how it was in Iraq.

Iraqi Veterans against the war are getting louder and their stories about Iraq are getting out more and more. This is all good the only thing I wish is that it could have happened much earlier so many lives would have been saved. The fact is that it does not matter what sort of personal Iraq policy Bush and who ever runs the US with him have; they can not implement them by themselves. It is you US soldiers in Iraq who are doing the killing for them. So stop it, leave your weapon and say “I have had enough of committing all of these war crimes against Iraqis, I will not commit crimes for Bush and his team, I will not be an occupying soldier”.

There are many steps Iraq needs to take to heal and find peace and one very important part is ending the occupation of our country and the devastation it brought with it.

Casey told us how, from the top down, there was little regard for the Iraqis, who were routinely called "hajjis", the Iraq equivalent of "gook". "They basically jam into your head: 'This is hajji! This is hajji!' You totally take the human being out of it and make them into a video game."

It was a way of dehumanising the Iraqis? "I mean, yeah - if you start looking at them as humans, and stuff like that, then how are you going to kill them?"

He says that soldiers who served in his area before his unit's arrival recommended them to keep spades on their vehicles so that if they killed innocent Iraqis, they could throw a spade off them to give the appearance that the dead Iraqi was digging a hole for a roadside bomb.

Casey says he didn't participate in any such killings himself, but claims the pervasive atmosphere was that "you could basically kill whoever you wanted - it was that easy. You did not even have to get off and dig a hole or anything. All you had to do was have some kind of picture. You're driving down the road at three in the morning. There's a guy on the side of the road, you shoot him ... you throw a shovel off."

…. "We want the Iraqi people to know that we stand with them," says Blake, "and that we're sorry, so sorry.

NO NO OCCUPATION

2006-04-03T14:14:00.000+02:00

Today thousands of students demonstrated in Misan County. Their demands were the departure of occupation troops and the death penalty for Saddam… NO NO US and and NO NO OCCUPATION is their clear and peaceful massage. British occupation forces in Amara are you listening to the demands of Iraqis?

I have the same demands as these students and what makes me angry is the fact that the US and its allies are building bases on our soil without us ever saying a YES to it. I don’t want foreign bases in Iraq and I do not want foreigners to have access to bases in Iraq either. The only way I can accept this is if we have a referendum and the majority of Iraqis said yes to it. But that is not the case yet; so these bases are illegal.

The Reality

2006-04-03T08:39:00.000+02:00

Two men one from Palestine the other Iraq
(thank's to Imad)

University students in Basra fight sectarian violence

2006-03-27T12:31:00.000+02:00

"If each person, in his own way, does something that can lessen the violence, a better country will surely emerge in the end,"
Adel Abdel-Rasoul
(a member in the growing Iraqi university peace movement)

University students in Basra fight sectarian violence

Half of the students involved in the project spend at least five hours a day in internet chat rooms discussing sectarian problems and urging their compatriots to help avert an escalation of the violence into civil war…

"Many people have changed their minds while chatting online,” said Rasha Adnan, a philosophy student and chat-room moderator. “Some of them have even opened their own web pages to inform others on the dangers of sectarian violence.”

The other half of the group, meanwhile, is responsible for visiting schools, universities and other institutes of learning to talk to students, distribute leaflets and mount posters encouraging peace and coexistence. "After our talks, students would often ask to join us," Haydar said. “It’s uplifting to see our simple work bringing results.”

As a result of the Basra initiative, a similar student movement has begun in the capital, albeit at a slower pace due to insecurity and prevailing curfews. Despite these obstacles, however, members hope to eventually expand the scope of their work throughout the country.

End military attacks in Iraq

2006-03-26T21:37:00.000+02:00

For three years now we have been given proof after proof that military attacks does not make Iraq a peaceful place, in fact the proof that we have seen is that military attacks is just making things worse. So why continue on this path that is clearly giving us all the signs that it is a failure? This is the worst sort of military and political management skills I have ever seen in my life. I think just an ordinary sports trainer would have done a better job.

But then again, it is difficult for me to believe that the U.S and its allies are this stupid so who knows maybe this is exactly the goal they have in Iraq. Fulfil the Israeli plan of a divided Iraq, it would make a lot of Kurdish politicians fulfil their goals too and I mean Iran must be happy about it too. What they could not achieve in the Iran Iraqi war is now finally happening with the help of pro Iran Iraqi politicians that the U.S brought with them. A divided weak Iraq is the common interests of many extreme people in Israel and Iran. And as U.S politicians often so clearly point out, US foreign policy is pro-Israel; I have even read US people say the war in Iraq is US kids fighting a war FOR Israel.

Who knows??? But one thing is sure and that is military attacks are only making ordinary Iraqis life worse. So speak out and DEMAND AN END TO MILITARY ATTACKS IN IRAQ.

End the US occupaiton of Iraq

2006-03-25T09:53:00.000+01:00

I demand a withdrawal timetable of all US occupation from Iraq both the military and civil people.

I demand that occupation people and their contractors from today are punishable under Iraqi law for crimes committed in Iraq and against Iraqis. The immunity law is no longer active.

I demand the Iraq government and Iraqi politicians put a stop to the crimes of their militias, we know you have the power to do so, so do it.

I demand that the Iraqi resistance to the occupation declares on all possible ways that it will stop its attacks against occupation troops because they are now on their way out of Iraq.

I demand from all the ordinary criminal Iraqis to wake up and start put your enormous energy to build a peaceful Iraq instead.

I demand honesty and unity from all of us Iraqis.

I tell all sorts of people in Iraq who are involved in terrorist activities with the above demands fulfilled it will get more difficult for you to operate in Iraq and it will get easier for Iraqis to see who you are and catch you to be prosecuted under Iraqi law.

It is about oil

2006-03-23T08:43:00.000+01:00

Without the use of coal, oil & gas to provide electricity,

and

the use of petro-chemicals to build computer components

you wouldn't be visiting this website today!

Petroleum Products in Our Daily Lives

The End Of Civilization

Rest in Peace

2006-03-19T20:50:00.000+01:00

I have been aware of this now a couple of days and I still find it too difficult to write about. So for now I’ll leave you with 2 links to articles with photos.

Killing Women and Children: The “My Lai Phase” Of The Iraq War
By Mike Whitney

... "we have entered the “My Lai phase” of the Iraq war, where the pretensions about democracy and liberation are stripped-away and replaced with the gratuitous butchery of women and children. The carnage in Ishaqi illustrates the growing recklessness and desperation of Washington’s failed crusade."

2006-03-17T20:33:00.000+01:00

2006-03-16T16:49:00.000+01:00

The only solution to all of the Iraqi catastrophe is for ordinary Iraqis inside Iraq to go out in millions demonstrating for unity, demanding an immediate end and withdrawal of all sorts of occupation and disarming the political militias. Also demanding the resistance to disarm and the government and all Iraqis to unite and make the best of the mess we are in and this time without any foreign meddling.

Let us ourselves finally get control of our country, have new elections under U.N supervision, stop all the deals that have been done in favour of occupation countries while they were occupying us. Then Iraqis who wish to take the political path will know that it is their actions towards a better Iraq that will make their political career expand! Not that they have powerful support in a neighbouring country, or support of a powerful nation and its military or militias on the streets killing their opponents.

Its going to be a hard and difficult path because of the condition Iraq is in today.

Iraqis are hungry for calmness, happiness and peace; we need Iraqis who promote these desires sincerely to become very loud!

The U.S and its allies and other western countries have to grow up and realize its way to secure its way of life by controlling other people’s recourses is not acceptable any longer. You have supported dictators, unelected governments, got rid of elected governments, occupied and colonised to make people living in the west have a better life, well it’s ENOUGH NOW! Instead of controlling let’s work together with the people!

Greedy and corrupted Iraqis you have to stop too and realize it’s your behaviour that is making the lives of million of Iraqis a hell each day. Ordinary good peaceful and tired Iraqis we must unite and use our common sense to build a better Iraq.

We must have more determination to control our own country then the foreign savages and corrupted Iraqis that we are letting dictate and shape our future right now.

I live in Sweden now, getting out on the streets demonstrating for a free Iraq does not change the path of foreign savages and corrupted Iraqis inside Iraq. Being active in forums outside Iraq were I write my ideas, thoughts and update on few news is not what will make these foreign savages and corrupted Iraqis change their paths either. It is YOU ordinary GOOD IRAQIS that we have millions of inside Iraq it is YOU that can stop the current death trap and dictate the rules for a new future!

Go out in millions and demonstrate to end the occupation, new elections, no political armed militias, peaceful actions, deals done in favour of occupation countries no longer are accepted and more, more and more.

It is YOU U.S people who are against your governments actions in Iraq; we have millions of you too. It is YOU who can change YOUR foreign policy and get the troops home and end all U.S political involvement in forming political Iraq. Go out in millions day and night until you stop the war crimes and crimes against humanity done in your name against Iraqis.

And just with one clear message from YOU IRAQIS INSIDE IRAQ we can be millions on the streets all over the world demonstrating in support for your demands of a free Iraq a united Iraq!

These actions are a chance to take the power back to where it belongs; with ordinary good Iraqis!

2006-03-15T20:07:00.001+01:00

The U.S and its allies launched a war against Iraq to control oil access. As they once supported Saddam because he was good for their prosperity and sacrificed us Iraqis on the way, they are taking the same path this time too. They will back who ever agrees to put the U.S and its ally’s prosperity first.

Iraqis have had no chance in disapproving or approving all the U.S occupation permanent bases all over Iraq. That means all these bases are illegal.

Polls since 2003 have shown that a clear majority of us Iraqis want an end to the military occupation of our country. That means all these permanent bases directly violate the will of Iraqis.

Since 2003 the U.S and its allies have put advisers of their own in every sector of our government to represent them, their goals and interests. These foreign advisers who we have no idea who they are do NOT represent us Iraqis. All these government advisers from occupation countries are illegal.

The U.S and its allies are in Iraq to protect their own prosperity with controlling the Iraqi oil and Iraqi politics.

Let’s see to it that we look after our prosperity with much more determination:

Ending this illegal US and British occupation

and

build a free, democratic and united Iraq!

2006-03-15T19:49:00.000+01:00

MORE U.S. WAR CRIMES IN IRAQ

Iraqis say 11 people killed in U.S. raid

Mar 15

"Police Capt. Laith Mohammed, in nearby Samarra, said American warplanes and armor flattened the house and killed the 11 people inside.

An AP reporter in the area said the roof collapsed. Eleven bodies, wrapped in blankets, were taken to the Tikrit General Hospital, relatives said.

Associated Press photographs showed the bodies of two men, five children and four other covered figures at the hospital accompanied by grieving relatives. The victims were covered in dust and bits of rubble."

Talking About Iraq

Free Muntather

In honour of the future victims of Swedish-made weapons

Lets have more head of states demand the same

Solutions to help Iraqis

Iraqs traumatised children

Survey paints a devastating portrait of life in Iraq

Iraq's growing refugee crisis

The Gulf Arab region has become a paradise for Western arms manufacturers

Second update on efforts to stop the summary execution of three Iraqi women

Killing hundreds of thousands Iraqis to get Iraqs oil

The talk on the Internet & where it all started

Hanging the womb of Iraq

Conflict Transformation by Peaceful Means

Baghdad Burning update about The Rape of Sabrine...

Torture experience in the Abu Ghraib prison

Iraqi refugees

الفرات : هلو دجله شلونج

Baghdad, Iraq, Iraqis, friends and family are in my thougts

Genocide in Vietnam is redone in Iraq

Bush: 'We're fighting for our way of life'

The Secret Government is still active today too

Stop the military attacks is what Iraqis need - selling more weapons is good for western economies - who wins?

The war in Iraq is illigal

IVAW Update

Latest News on War Resisters

Torture, illigal detentions and mass killings as a way to rule Iraqis

The west is becoming a Police State

Do we want an equal peaceful world with true democratic values?

What is meant by democratic values?

What sort of people do criminals surround themselvs with?

Reckless leaders

So what's happening over here?

Religious Fundamentalism in the White House

Garden Design from Iraq

Stupidity? No its pure hateful actions to divide and destroy Iraq

Breaking up Iraq thru death squads

U.S. and Iraqi officials with yet another stupid plan

Release Dr Fadhil Al-Bedrani and all members of his family who were taken into US military custody 12 September

Extraordinary Rendition, Torture and Disappearances in the "War on Terror"

I cross over borders but I'm still there now

Let the figures speak for themselves

Israel's and US's human shields

How many more Iraqis must die for the American people?

Football for a united and peaceful Iraq

Solutions

The family of Faiz Harat Khalaf

Let Iraqis decide their way forward

Ruthless occupiers

Death Squads

To Bush, Blair and the so called Iraqi government

Haifa Zangana Interview

What did the US do in Fallujah?

Confessions Of An Iraqi War Veteran

US must withdraw from Iraq now

Esteklal/Independence

United in diversity

Slowing down the democratization process

Grameencredit, Fairtrade and UN Millennium Development Goals

Justice for all

End the occupation of Iraq

Guilt, memories and a beautiful Iraqi smile

The 3rd anniversary of the US invation

Profits made by Iraqis blood

A spade and a dead Iraqi

NO NO OCCUPATION

The Reality

University students in Basra fight sectarian violence

End military attacks in Iraq

End the US occupaiton of Iraq

It is about oil

Rest in Peace