The Hidden War on Women in Iraq
Tom Engelhardt & Ruth Rosen...The scandal of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib focused on the torture, sexual abuse, and humiliation of Iraqi men. A variety of sources suggest that female prisoners suffered similar treatment, including rape. Few Americans probably realize that the American-run prison at Abu Ghraib also held female detainees. Some of them were arrested by Americans for political reasons -- because they were relatives of Baathist leaders or because the occupying forces thought they could use them as bargaining chips to force male relatives to inform on insurgents or give themselves up (...) On the condition of anonymity and in great fear, some female detainees did speak with human rights workers after being released from detention. They have described beatings, torture, and isolation. Like their male counterparts, they reserve their greatest bitterness for sexual humiliations suffered in American custody. Nearly all female detainees reported being threatened with rape. Some women were interrogated naked and subjected to derision and humiliating remarks by soldiers.
Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24585
|
|
Rape and Murder of Abeer Qassim Hamza: Bloody Reality of the U.S. Occupation
Revolution...The question is not whether this is the only rape or assault that U.S. soldiers have committed on Iraqi women or men, or female soldiers in the Army. The only question is—how many? And how many have been covered up? (...) Rape and sexual assault are not just openly tolerated in the U.S. occupation of Iraq—they are encouraged. Look at what happened in Abu Ghraib. Men being forced to masturbate and pose naked. The rapes and sexual assaults of women, men, and children. All captured on thousands of photos depicting smiling soldiers. Soldiers testified that they were doing these things to "soften up" the prisoners for interrogation...
Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24583
|
|
Acts of war, or war crimes?
Eli Stephens, Left I on the NewsIsrael says the seizing of two Israeli soldiers by Hizballah is an "act of war" (on the part of the Lebanese government). I wonder what they consider this to be, then? Police said 52 Lebanese civilians, including 15 children, were killed in attacks on Hezbollah targets in Beirut's southern suburbs and across southern Lebanon. Security sources said the air strikes in south Lebanon also wounded 100 people. Ten members of a family were killed in Dweir village and seven family members died in Baflay. Note that Israel has not declared war. Therefore these acts can be nothing other than war crimes. Not that most of the Israeli attacks wouldn't qualify as war crimes even if they had declared war...
Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24581
|
|
World War Four: Israel’s “Destructive Enterprise”
Kurt NimmoHow does a small, outlaw nation, unaccustomed to following the norms of civilized behavior and international law, respond to terrorism, or rather resistance to its continual border provocations and occupation of land (the Golan Heights, rightfully known as the Syrian Heights, and Shebaa Farms)? In predictable fashion—by destroying civilian infrastructure, slaughtering innocent civilians, and thumbing its nose at the world, an admittedly bedazzled and apathetic world that sits idly by on its hands, unable or unwilling to condemn such immense and brazen crimes...
Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24579
|
|
Israel is Killing Incubator Babies and the World Says That it is OK!
Jesse, TvNewsLIES.org...Israel destroys life sustaining infrastructure. Their recent attack on Gaza destroyed an electric plant resulting in the shutting down of the water station. Gaza is without electricity and without water. No electricity means hospitals can no longer help people. This, my friends, is called murder. It means any life sustaining medical equipment in the community can not run. This too, my friends, is called murder. It means people who need this life saving infrastructure die. It means babies in incubators die. Remember when the Bush I administration lied to the world about Iraqis killing Kuwaiti babies by removing them from their incubators? The world was outraged even though the Bush administration was lying about this and the world went to war with Iraq! This was the deciding factor for the U.S. Senate. But When Israel kills babies in incubators the world says that it is OK!..
Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24578
|
|
The war against Palestine and Iraq
Ibrahim Ebeid, Al-Moharer.netAs the racist war on Iraq and Palestine rages on, the killing of Iraqis and Palestinians continue to proliferate with no end in sight. One might wonder if these coordinated attacks projected by the United States and the Zionist entity were no other than a war of terror and genocide against the Arab Nation? As a person who was born in Palestine, before the creation of the Zionist state, I was observing the racist acts of the West unfolding against my own country, Palestine. I did not read about the West and its hostile attitude towards the Arabs in books or newspapers, I have seen it and lived it for many decades. I must say that the West never stopped conspiring against the Palestinian people and against the Arab nation...
Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24577
|
|
GI Special 4G13: " The War Should Have Been Over" - July 13, 2006
Thomas F. BartonMargarita Rose bears a mother's grief and anger - her 21-year-old son, Christopher D. Rose, was too young to be a soldier and too young to die.
Killed Thursday by a roadside bomb in Baghdad, Christopher Rose, who grew up in Vallejo, was scheduled to return to the United States in October. He was sent to Iraq in December for his first tour of duty.
After serving his country, Christopher wanted to go school and become a police officer, said Margarita Rose, a Daly City resident.
"What a waste of his life," she said in an interview Sunday.
"I'm very angry. I wish the war was over. I wish there was no war. How many young people have to die? That's the saddest thing. They are just 19, 20 and 21. They are just starting their lives," she said.
(...)
Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24576
|
|
Congress must hold Israel Accountable for violating US law
Michael Carmichael, GlobalResearch.ca...As members of the US Congress, you will surely know the origin of many of the weapons used by Israel in the systematic killings of civilians and the destruction of civilian infrastructure in Gaza. As you well know, Israel is using weapons provided by the United States to target Palestinian civilians and civilian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip in flagrant violation of the U.S. Arms Export Control Act and the Geneva Conventions. I respectfully request that you use the powers of your good office to hold Israel accountable for violating U.S. law by cutting off military aid to Israel as required by law...
Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24575
|
|
Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East - an email to Israel's Ambassador to the UK
Gabriele ZampariniDear Mr. AMBASSADOR ZVI HEIFETZ, I can barely find the words to comment on the atrocities that your Government has been committing against innocent civilians in these past few days and hours. Your cruel, ruthless and criminal behavior is against any ethical, moral or religious principle and certainly it’s against that international Law your Government has never respected. The despicable racism of your Government’s actions compete only with the hypocrisy used to justify them...
Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24586
|
|
Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Wednesday, 12 July 2006
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice. http://www.freearabvoice.org...In a bulletin posted at 2:10pm Makkah time Wednesday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that a short while ago, US occupation forces began to bulldoze date palm groves and citrus groves in the al-Hawz area along the banks of the Euphrates River in ar-Ramadi, the capital of al-Anbar Province, about 110km west of Baghdad. The American troops have also begun seizing the homes of the local people in area of those groves, turning them into billets for themselves. The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported that the operation began when American troops began throwing the local residents out of their homes and into the streets with nothing but the clothes on their backs. The correspondent added that after evicting the residents, the American occupation forces brought in bulldozers and other equipment that ripped up the date palms, citrus plants and all other crops planted in the area...
Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24580
|
|
Widow of Al Jazeera Reporter Tareq Ayyoub Filing Lawsuit Against Bush Administration for Husband's Death in 2003 U.S. Attack on Baghdad Bureau
AMY GOODMAN, Democracy Now!The widow of Al Jazeera correspondent Tareq Ayyoub is bringing a lawsuit against the Bush administration for her husband's death. On April 8 2003, Ayyoub was reporting from Al Jazeera"s offices in Baghdad when he was killed by a US missile. He was the first journalist to be killed in Iraq just hours before U.S. forces seized the capital. Yesterday, the attorney for Dima Tahboub, the widow of Tareq Ayyoub, held a press conference in Washington D.C announcing the lawsuit. The attorney, Hamdi Rifai, said the case is being launched in part because of the disclosure last year in London's Daily Mirror that President Bush told British Prime Minister Tony Blair of his desire to bomb Al Jazeera's headquarters in Qatar. The Mirror cited a secret memo leaked from the British government...
Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24573
|
|
Saddam on hunger strike for five days: US
Alastair Macdonald, ReutersSaddam Hussein and three of his co-defendants have been on hunger strike for five days in protest at court procedures and the killing of their defense lawyers, the U.S. military said on Wednesday. A spokesman, who declined to identify the other three, said all four had refused meals since Friday evening but were in good health. Saddam's lawyer said the protest had lasted for seven days and he was concerned about the former president's health. "Saddam and three co-defendants have now refused meals since the evening meal on July 7," said Lieutenant Colonel Keir-Kevin Curry, spokesman for the U.S. military's detentions command...
Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24574
|
|
The Day Iraq's Music Died
Dean Kuipers, LA CityBeatIraq was a secular, middle-class, educated society that is now, thanks to decades of American foreign policy and despotism and sanctions, etc., come close to becoming a failed terrorist state (...) A terrible combination of criminal anarchy and de facto theocracy has killed that old secular culture which existed in pre-invasion Iraq, where you had theater and the Baghdad Philharmonic. All my musician friends have left. The orchestra's been getting death threats (...) All the educated people are leaving. There's a campaign, now, of assassination against doctors and professors. It's like the Khmer Rouge.
Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24572
|
|
Geneva Convention? We Thought You Said Geneva Chocolate
David SwansonDo you get the impression that President Bush has spent as much time in Law School as he's spent in the Alabama Air National Guard? I've never spent a minute in either, myself, and claim no particular expertise at interpreting the Third Geneva Convention, but they do seem to have written the thing in English (albeit British English), and it is possible to read it. However, Anne Plummer Flaherty, of the Associated Press, reported today as "news" the following: " The Bush administration, called to account by Congress in the wake of a Supreme Court ruling blocking military tribunals, said Tuesday all detainees at Guantanamo Bay and in U.S. military custody everywhere are entitled to protections under the Geneva Conventions ... Daniel Dell'Orto, principal deputy general counsel at the Pentagon, said he believes the current treatment of detainees - as well as the existing tribunal process - already complies with Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions." Remember, these are the detainees who are locked in cages, paraded around naked, sexually humiliated, whose religious beliefs are used to humiliate them, who are water-boarded during interrogations, whom the International Red Cross has said are tortured, and who are force-fed when they try to starve themselves to death...
Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24570
|
|
Israel Graduates from Killing Gazans to Lebanese
Kurt NimmoNow that Hezbollah has "abducted" two Israeli soldiers in Lebanon, we can expect a "wider Mideast military confrontation," according to Bloomberg. Ehud Olmert holds "Lebanon responsible for the fate of the missing soldiers," who were captured near Aita al-Shaab on the Lebanese side of the border, that is to say the soldiers violated the sovereignty of Lebanon, a common occurrence (...) Like the civilians of Gaza, the civilians of Lebanon will be required to pay for Hezbollah capturing prisoners of war. "Army Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz warned the Lebanese government that the Israeli military will target infrastructure and 'turn back the clock in Lebanon by 20 years,’ if the soldiers were not returned, Israeli TV reported," notes the Associated Press. Only a little bit of translation is required, as Israel does not usually mince words. Israel will destroy civilian infrastructure in Lebanon, as it did in Gaza, a violation of international humanitarian law. But then Israel in Palestine and Lebanon, as the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan, does not do international law...
Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24569
|
|
Is Bush Flying WMDs To Iraq?
Bush OutIs it just me, or is everybody missing the big story in this Hoekstra debate about even more secret, un-named Bush administration programs? Everybody is focussing on who Hoekstra's source is, while ignoring the quite amazing snippets of information he has already revealed about Bush's still-secret operations. It sounds to me like the secret program (or one of them) involves the DoD using the US Air Force to move WMDs around the globe. If so, where are they moving the WMDs, and why? And why can't they tell Congress?...
Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24568
|
|
Palestinian injuries suggest Israel is using chemical weapons in Gaza
Report, Ma'anPalestinians carry the body of Khaled Abdel Kareem, one and a half years, during his funeral in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah July 11, 2006. Khaled was badly wounded in an Israeli air strike three weeks ago and was sent to Israel for treatment where he died of his wounds. The Palestinian ministry of health revealed on Monday that the Israeli army has used a new type of explosive in its offensive on the Gaza Strip. These explosives contain toxics and radioactive materials which burn and tear the victim's body from the inside and leave long term deformations...
Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24565
|
|
"You raped the country, why not the people?"
Imad Khadduri , Free Iraq...A year and a half ago, there was another equally gruesome rape incident, not much reported on, of an Iraqi woman prisoner in Abu Ghraib prison, FATIMA, who wrote this letter (in English and بالعربي) to the Iraqi Resistance: "… I say to you: our wombs have been filled with the children of fornication by those sons of apes and pigs who raped us. Or I could tell you that they have defaced our bodies, spit in our faces, and tore up the little copies of the Qur’an that hung around our necks? ….By God, we have not passed one night since we have been in prison without one of the apes and pigs jumping down upon us to rip our bodies apart with his overweening lust...
Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24567
|
|
DAILY WAR NEWS FOR WEDNESDAY, July 12, 2006
Today in IraqA suicide bomber walked into a restaurant in New Baghdad district and blew himself up, killing seven people and wounding 20. The bomber's body disintegrated in the blast. Gunmen killed a Baghdad University professor on Tuesday in the western Mansur district. Gunmen ambushed a bus station in Muqdadiyah, kidnapping two dozen people and killing all but four. The attackers drove up in several cars and seized 24 people from the bus station in Muqdadiyah, about 60 miles northeast of Baghdad. Iraqi Maj...
Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24566
|
|
Entry denied: Deporting witnesses of Israeli occupation and unilateralism
Maureen Clare Murphy, The Electronic IntifadaIn another Israeli move designed to further isolate Palestinians from the rest of the world community, it is being reported that the Israeli army will be declaring the West Bank closed to foreign nationals. The Gaza Strip has already been made virtually inaccessible to foreign nationals; those who wish to enter must apply to the Israeli authorities, weeks in advance, to receive elusive permits. The effect is that the plight of the Palestinian civilian population living under Israeli occupation becomes all the more invisible to the international community. The recent trend of deportation of foreign nationals (including foreign passport-holding Palestinians) working in Palestinian civil society, studying at Palestinian universities, and those living with Palestinian family gives further cause for concern that West Bank Palestinians will no longer be allowed visitors to their open-air prison...
Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24564
|
|
GI Special 4G12: What The Recruiter Never Said - July 12, 2006
Thomas F. Barton"The recruiter never said that I wouldn't be able to look my mom in the eye when it was over."
Another Iraq War veteran, who served with the 101st Airborne Division in 2003, spoke of an incident in which his convoy ran down a small child in the streets of Al Khut and was not able to stop to assist the child, due to their orders.
After having been told that his mission was "to win the hearts and minds" of Iraqis, he struggled to make sense of this incident, and it became one of the many contradictions he witnessed in Iraq that helped shape his current feelings about the war.
Dave went on to issue a challenge: "We have to go home and engage our neighbors, our family, our friends. We have to call our representatives and ask for change, demand change. Ask them what they're doing to stop this war now."
Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=24563
|
|
www.uruknet.info: a site gathering daily information concerning occupied Iraq:
news, analysis, documents and texts of iraqi resistance available in Italian and
English.
You receive this newsletter because you subscribed it.
If you think it was an abuse, or simply if you don't want to receive it any more,
click here to unsubscribe from the newsletter.
|