World Iraq Newswire Archive

With the Turkish military poised to strike the guerrilla bases of the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in northern Iraq, Washington and London are engaged in frantic diplomatic activity to prevent a Turkish intervention that would further destabilise the US occupation of Iraq. However, as the Chicago Tribune reported yesterday, the Bush administration is also drawing up plans for military attacks on the PKK, either by US forces or jointly with the Turkish army.

Stop deportations imminent by the German state to Iraq - Protest against ZAGROS AIR - call for urgent fax
campaign - please read, fax and forward this message!

A brief critique of the recent activities of the private security firm Blackwater in Iraq

Copyleft artwork by Brazilian cartoonist Latuff.

Copyleft artwork by Brazilian cartoonist Latuff.

US plans to partition Iraq have been on the back burner for almost two decades. Now the future of the Arab world for generations to come hangs on whether or not they succeed

Copyleft artwork by Brazilian cartoonist Latuff.

The dates can only be guessed. November for the triggering incident, December for the trip to the U.N., February for the ultimatum, perhaps March again for the strikes. The repetition would suit his taste for boyish acts of defiance.

An Equitable Sharing of Resources?

We are led to believe that Western societies are free and open. In many respects this is true: freedom of speech and the right to protest still exist, albeit within ever-tighter constraints. At root, however, much of what we see and hear in the corporate media has been shaped by money, power and greed. What passes for vibrant public debate is often a sham.

Copyleft artwork by Brazilian cartoonist Latuff.

In short, when it comes to the Middle East, domestic politics rule. Oil and “the spread of democracy” are secondary factors. It is all the explanation you need to understand Hillary’s vote to invade Iraq five years ago as well as her vote last week to enable a war against Iran. She was not fooled by Bush in 2002, any more than she is being fooled by Joe Lieberman today.

Dr Catherine Thomasson is the President of the Physicians for Social Responsibility who visited Iran last March and has been giving talks in the US and Europe to avert a new war in the Middle East this time against Iran. Abbas Edalat, CASMII’s founder, interviewed her while she was visiting London to give a talk at the Royal Society of Medicine on October 4.

US Campus War Protest: Grim Reaper Recruits With Marines in GA.
09/20/2007

Georgia College & State University, Milledgeville, GA, USA

 http://billfisher.dreamhost.com/reaper.html
Photos by Emily Gomez

The future of the United Kingdom needs to be debated, beyond the parliamentary talk of a possible “snap general election” this autumn, with national issues including the direction of British foreign policy,

Two well-respected US peace activists, CODEPINK and Global Exchange cofounder Medea Benjamin and retired US Army Colonel and diplomat Ann Wright, were denied entry into Canada today (Wednesday, October 3). The two women were headed to Toronto to discuss peace and security issues at the invitation of the Toronto Stop the War Coalition. At the Buffalo-Niagara Falls Bridge they were detained, questioned and denied entry. They will hold a press conference on Thursday afternoon in front of the Canadian Embassy in Washington DC to ask the Canadian government to reverse its policy of barring peaceful protesters.

Undoubtedly what is happening in Iraq is a continuing 2-decade HOLOCAUST (i.e. involves a huge number of deaths).

The mainstream media are continuing to use figures provided by the website Iraq Body Count (IBC) to sell the public a number for total post-invasion deaths of Iraqis that is perhaps 5-10% of the true death toll.

As we recently reported, only a handful of media outlets covered a new ORB poll revealing that 1.2 million Iraqis had been murdered since the 2003 invasion. BBC Online provided a rare example:

“A UK-based polling agency, Opinion Research Business (ORB), said it had extrapolated the figure by asking a random sample of 1,461 Iraqi adults how many people living in their household had died as a result of the violence rather than from natural causes.

“The results lend weight to a 2006 survey of Iraqi households published by the Lancet, which suggested that about 655,000 Iraqi deaths were 'a consequence of the war'.

“However, these estimates are both far higher than the running total of reported civilian deaths maintained by the campaign group Iraq Body Count which puts the figure at between 71,000 and 78,000.” (BBC Online, ’US contractors in Iraq shootout,’ September 17, 2007;  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6998458.stm)

BBC’s Newsnight programme used IBC’s figures in the same way:

“More than a million Iraqis have been killed since the invasion in 2003, according to the British polling company ORB. The study’s likely to fuel controversy over the true, human cost of the war. It’s significantly up on the previous highest estimate of 650,000 deaths published by the Lancet last October... The independent Iraqi [sic] Body Count group puts the current total at closer to 75,000.” (Newsnight, BBC2, September 14, 2007)

These reports again raise serious issues about what IBC’s figures actually mean, how they are being used and misused to cast doubt on higher numbers, and about what IBC is doing to promote or reduce the confusion. (See our 2006 Media Alerts archive for previous analysis, beginning with:  http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060125_paved_with_good.php)

So Britain lectures Burma on the right of people to protest, the U.N., sends an envoy there and the U.S. - whilst behaving in Iraq and Afghanistan as Burma's Junta, shooting, beating, torturing, imprisoning without trial - go in to broken record mode about the right to peacefully demonstrate and 'freedom and democrocy'. Meanwhile, the British government, under the new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown (who as Chancellor of the Exchequer write the cheques for the Iraq and Afghanistan bloodbaths) has instructed the police to ban a peaceful march and Lobby of Parliament - on 8th October, the day that Parliament re-convenes after the summer break - demanding that British troops leave Iraq and Afghanistan.

The long-awaited “progress report” of Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker on the status of the occupation of Iraq has been made, providing Americans, via the compliant media, with the spectacle of loyal Bush yes men offering faith-based analysis in lieu of fact-based assessment. In the days and weeks that have since passed, two things have become clear: Neither Congress nor the American people (including the antiwar movement) have a plan or the gumption to confront President Bush in anything more than cosmetic fashion over the war in Iraq, and while those charged with oversight mill about looking to score cheap political points and/or save face, the administration continues its march toward conflict with Iran unimpeded.

Warning: Graphic Material