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A Broken World |
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The realities of racism, sexism, discrimination, and the atrocities of capitalism.
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Wednesday, April 23, 2003 |
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From SMH.com (http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/16/1050172608832.html)
US troops accused of carnage
April 16 2003
United States troops opened fire on a crowd hostile to the new pro-American governor in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul yesterday, killing at least 10 people and injuring as many as 100, witnesses and doctors said.
The shooting overshadowed the start of US-brokered talks aimed at sketching out a post-Saddam Iraq.
At Mosul hospital Dr Ayad al-Ramadhani said the American soldiers had fired into a crowd that was becoming increasingly hostile towards governor Mashaan al-Juburi as he was making a pro-US speech in the city.
But a US miltary spokesman said the troops had come under fire from at least two gunmen and fired back, but did not aim at the crowd.
"There are perhaps 100 wounded and 10 to 12 dead," Dr al-Ramadhani said as angry relatives of the dead and wounded voiced hatred of Americans and Westerners.
One witness, Marwan Mohammed, 50, said: "We were at the market place near the government building, where Juburi was making a speech. He said everything would be restored, water, electricity, and that democracy was the Americans.
"As for the Americans, they were going through the crowd with their flag. They placed themselves between the civilians and the building. The people moved toward the government building, the children threw stones, the Americans started firing. Then they prevented the people from recovering the bodies."
A doctor, Said Altah, said: "Juburi said the people must co-operate with the United States. The crowd called him a liar, and tempers rose as he continued to talk. They threw objects at him, overturned his car, which exploded. The wounded said Juburi asked the Americans to fire."
Ayad Hassun said the trouble broke out after the crowd interrupted Mr Juburi's speech with cries of, "There is no God but God, and Muhammad is his prophet."
"You are with Saddam's fedayeen," retorted Mr Juburi, to which the crowd chanted that, "The only democracy is to make the Americans leave."
He said 20 US soldiers escorted Mr Juburi back into the building. "They climbed on top of the building and first fired at a building near the crowd, with the glass falling on the civilians. People started to throw stones, then the Americans fired at them."
But the US spokesman said: "There were protesters outside, 100 to 150, there was fire, we returned fire. We didn't fire at the crowd, but at the top of the building. There were at least two gunmen. I don't know if they were killed. The firing was not intensive but sporadic, and lasted up to two minutes."
At the US-sponsored talks near the southern city of Nasiriyah, crowds earlier denounced the US presence in Iraq.
Thousands protested that they did not need US help now Saddam Hussein had gone. "No to America. No to Saddam," chanted Iraqis from the Shia Muslim majority oppressed by Saddam. Arabic television networks said up to 20,000 people marched.
In Baghdad, meanwhile, hundreds of people chanting "our blood and our soul we give to Iraq" gathered outside the Palestine Hotel in protest against the US presence. The hotel now houses US military and reporters.
Australia came in for criticism at the Nasiriyah conference when one delegate, Sheik Sayed Jamaluddin, hit out at the detention of Iraqi asylum seekers.
After thanking the US and Britain for liberating Iraqis from Saddam, the Shiite cleric said: "I call on the representatives of the Australian Government to ask the Government to accept the human rights of those Iraqis who are held prisoner in some capacity in Iraq [viz] that they might be treated in a humane fashion."
The talks ended on yesterday with an agreement to meet again in 10 days. Jay Garner, the former US general leading the effort to rebuild Iraq, opened the conference, saying: "A free and democratic Iraq will begin today."
posted by
Unknown at 5:57 PM
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From The Times Online (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,5944-647887,00.html)
Allies face veto threat over UN sanctions
From James Bone in New York
THE first skirmishes have begun in the diplomatic battle over control of Iraq’s oil wealth after the ousting of Saddam Hussein.
Although they have yet to present any formal proposals, Britain and the United States want the United Nations Security Council to lift the UN sanctions on Iraq’s oil revenues and to abolish the sanctions sub-committee that vets all expenditure of Iraqi oil money.
The UN sanctions regime gives France, Russia and China great leverage over the country’s future oil sales, which the three powers are expected to exploit for their own economic advantage.
Diplomats say that the three are likely to use their UN veto to extract a measure of control over oil sales as the price for agreeing to lift the embargo, a move that requires a positive vote by the Security Council.
The UN imposed a total trade embargo on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, but allowed an increasing range of goods into the country under the “oil-for-food” scheme that began in 1996. Under the scheme Iraq could spend its oil money on almost any goods except military equipment and certain “dual-use” items.
Private companies working for the UN checked all Iraqi oil exports and signed off on all goods entering the country.
The scheme, which provided a monthly food basket to 60 per cent of the Iraqi population, was suspended at the start of the war when the 900 international UN staff, including the oil monitors, were withdrawn for their safety. But the distribution network of 3,400 local UN employees and 44,000 “food agents”, akin to corner-shop owners, still exists and Britain and America want to reactivate it before Iraqis start to run out of stockpiled food.
Last month the Security Council approved unanimously emergency arrangements for a 45-day period, until May 12, that allows the UN to approve imports into Iraq despite the regime’s collapse.
The challenge facing diplomats now is to agree the terms for lifting sanctions. Under existing UN resolutions, sanctions are to be lifted once UN arms inspectors verify that Iraq has rid itself of weapons of mass destruction. But America is resisting efforts to send the UN inspectors back to Iraq.
The US could ask the Security Council to lift the sanctions and abolish the sub-committee, but they would have to get Russian, French and Chinese consent to do so.
The first showdown will come on May 12, but diplomats say that the Security Council may extend the emergency period until the end of the designated “Oil-for-Food” phase on June 3.
That would give Britain and America time to come up with proposals and to hold detailed talks with other veto-bearing Security Council members.
posted by
Unknown at 5:46 PM
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From the Times Online (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,5944-648360,00.html)
‘We survived the war, but the peace is killing us’
From Daniel McGrory in Basra
BRUSHING away the flies that kept settling on the child’s face, Murtudhr Kadhum said: “In Basra we feared the war, but in fact it is the peace that is killing us.”
The 11-month-old girl he was treating at Basra’s ageing Republic Hospital was grievously ill from drinking the filthy water that her mother had collected from a nearby river. Sitting on the edge of her daughter’s bed yesterday, Sabbiha Hadi rocked back and forth, telling the doctor over and over again that she had not meant to hurt her child, but she had been unable to find any other source of water.
Last night four children in this city centre hospital died as a consequence of having no clean water. Dr Kadhum feared that Tuka Hadi would be the fifth and that many would follow her.
“When people in Britain see pictures like this, they must think us uneducated savages who don’t know how to care for our people,” he said. “They should know we are good doctors — but without the help the British promised us with water, electricity and basic medicines, how can we save children like this?”
International sympathy has focused, understandably, on those images of infants maimed by war, with airlifts being organised and funds raised abroad. Dr Kadhum believes, however, that there is a real danger that more Iraqi children will die of preventable diseases in the next few weeks and the outside world will not notice.
“During the war we knew what we faced and took precautions,” he said, “but now there is peace, we are seeing more and more children being brought in here than during the bombardment.
“We keep asking the British Army for water. Please, just give us some clean water, but still families have go to the rivers and drains. It isn’t right.”
This hospital survived the war and the looters, but now it is struggling to stay open. The small generator that the staff have to keep the accident and emergency department functioning is desperately short of fuel. There is no oxygen left, hardly any anaesthetic, nor clean syringes.
Five women lying side by side have had to share the same needle. Doctors were operating on a patient on Monday night when the power failed and the man died.
Dr Kadhum said: “We know from listening to the radio that in Britain there are speeches from Tony Blair and others saying how much help is getting to the Iraqi people. It is not. I’m afraid that is just propaganda to make Washington and London feel good about what they are doing.”
This was not some Saddam Hussein loyalist trying to score political points. He said that he despised politics, and where it has led his country.
He described what he called “a shameful episode” when he first asked British commanders for an urgent delivery of water. “A tanker rolled up, followed by a lot of television cameras and several senior officers. We didn’t mind that, but that was the last lot of water we saw for days, so it was just showbusiness.”
There were dark lines under his eyes from lack of sleep and, like the rest of the staff, he had not been paid for more than two months, even though his salary is only 60p a week.
“We don’t care about that,” he said. “What hurts is not being able to do our jobs properly.”
The hospital mortuary is full of those who died during the week-long bombardment. Dr Kadhum fears that they could be outnumbered soon by those “killed by the peace”.
posted by
Unknown at 5:44 PM
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From the BBC Online (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2946715.stm)
US rejects Iraq DU clean-up
By Alex Kirby
BBC News Online environment correspondent
The US says it has no plans to remove the debris left over from depleted uranium (DU) weapons it is using in Iraq.
DU shells can go straight through the side of a tank
US and British tanks use DU shells and armour
It says no clean-up is needed, because research shows DU has no long-term effects.
It says a 1990 study suggesting health risks to local people and veterans is out of date.
A United Nations study found DU contaminating air and water seven years after it was used.
DU, left over after natural uranium has been enriched, is 1.7 times denser than lead, and very effective for punching through armoured vehicles.
When a weapon with a DU tip or core strikes a solid object, like the side of a tank, it goes straight through before erupting in a burning cloud of vapour. This settles as chemically poisonous and radioactive dust.
Risk studies
Both the US and the UK acknowledge the dust can be dangerous if inhaled, though they say the danger is short-lived, localised, and much more likely to lead to chemical poisoning than to irradiation.
But a study prepared for the US Army in July 1990, a month before Iraq invaded Kuwait, says: "The health risks associated with internal and external DU exposure during combat conditions are certainly far less than other combat-related risks.
"Following combat, however, the condition of the battlefield and the long-term health risks to natives and combat veterans may become issues in the acceptability of the continued use of DU."
A Pentagon spokesman, Lieutenant-Colonel David Lapan, told BBC News Online: "Since then there've been a number of studies - by the UK's Royal Society and the World Health Organisation, for example - into the health risks of DU, or the lack of them.
"It's fair to say the 1990 study has been overtaken by them. One thing we've found in these various studies is that there are no long-term effects from DU.
"And given that, I don't believe we have any plans for a DU clean-up in Iraq."
Part of the armoury
The UN Environment Programme study, published in March 2003, found DU in air and groundwater in Bosnia-Herzegovina seven years after the weapons were fired.
The UN says the existing data suggest it is "highly unlikely" DU could be linked to any of the health problems reported.
But it recommends collecting DU fragments, covering contaminated points with asphalt or clean soil, and keeping records of contaminated sites.
Reports from Baghdad speak of repeated attacks by US aircraft carrying DU weapons on high-rise buildings in the city centre.
The UK says: "British forces on deployment to the Gulf have DU munitions available as part of their armoury, and will use them if necessary." It will not confirm they have used them.
Many veterans from the Gulf and Kosovo wars believe DU has made them seriously ill.
One UK Gulf veteran is Ray Bristow, a former marathon runner.
In 1999 he told the BBC: "I gradually noticed that every time I went out for a run my distance got shorter and shorter, my recovery time longer and longer.
"Now, on my good days, I get around quite adequately with a walking stick, so long as it's short distances. Any further, and I need to be pushed in a wheelchair."
Ray Bristow was tested in Canada for DU. He is open-minded about its role in his condition.
But he says: "I remained in Saudi Arabia throughout the war. I never once went into Iraq or Kuwait, where these munitions were used.
"But the tests showed, in layman's terms, that I have been exposed to over 100 times an individual's safe annual exposure to depleted uranium."
posted by
Unknown at 5:36 PM
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From The National Post (http://www.nationalpost.com/world/story.html?id=ECE98D7D-B287-47A5-90FB-A76063AD1B4E)
War crimes case planned against U.S
Washington says groups' bid proves ICC a political tool
Steven Edwards
National Post
UNITED NATIONS - A coalition of lawyers and human rights groups yesterday unveiled a bid to use the UN's new International Criminal Court as a tool to restrain American military power.
In a move Washington said vindicated U.S. claims that the court would be used for political purposes, the rights activists are working to compile war crimes cases against the United States and its chief ally in Iraq, Britain.
"There is a way that the United States can be accused ... of aiding and abetting war crimes," said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights.
The U.S. last year renounced the ICC, predicting it would become a political tool for opponents of U.S. foreign policy to launch frivolous prosecutions against U.S. military and diplomatic personnel.
"It appears they are trying to manufacture a case against the United States," said a senior official with the Bush administration. "So this clearly would be an example of the type of politicization that we're concerned with."
As a non-member, the United States would normally be outside of ICC jurisdiction unless it was suspected of crimes in a country that is an ICC member, which Iraq is not.
But the fact that Britain is a member has given the rights activists a springboard for a case that argues U.S. air raids that killed civilians were war crimes.
"The U.S. used bombers that took off from England ... and from Diego Garcia, also U.K. territory," said Mr. Ratner, referring to a British Indian Ocean island possession.
Britain, as an ICC member, could be prosecuted on a much wider array of activities that resulted in civilian deaths, the activists said.
Both U.S. and British officials have repeatedly said their forces make maximum efforts to avoid civilian casualties and never target civilians, which would violate the 1949 Geneva Conventions.
Rights activists joining Mr. Ratner yesterday were Phil Shiner of the British-based Public Interest Lawyers, and Roger Norman of the Committee on Economic and Social Rights.
They said five eminent international lawyers will outline a case against the United States and Britain next month for submission first to an international "alternative" court called the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal in Rome, then the prosecutor's office of the ICC in The Hague.
People who had volunteered as Saddam's "human shields" will be among those contributing testimony. "Any evidence we can get hold of, we will present," Mr. Shiner said. "The [ICC] prosecutor would have a duty to investigate if there was credible evidence."
Mr. Shiner said the activists' case will probe the coalition's use, or suspected use, of cluster bombs, depleted uranium ammunition and fuel-air explosives.
These weapons are unauthorized, he claimed, because they "can't distinguish between civilian or military" targets.
A cluster bomb consists of a canister that breaks apart to release a large number of small bombs. Because it has no precision guidance, it can wander off target if dropped from medium to high altitudes. Some of the bomblets typically do not explode, presenting a long-term threat to civilians.
While coalition forces say they do not use such bombs in civilian areas, U.S. forces launched an investigation into reports U.S. cluster bombs killed at least 11 civilians in Hilla, a city 100 kilometres south of Baghdad and the scene of heavy fighting.
Depleted uranium ammunition can pierce armour. But as a by-product of uranium enrichment, depleted uranium is mildly radioactive. It is also a heavy metal, and therefore potentially poisonous. "We know it has been used," Mr. Shiner said. However, he admitted the use of fuel-air explosives, which create giant fire balls, is not certain.
Mr. Shiner said the activists' case would also question coalition "methods," citing strikes on shopping markets and an attack that resulted in the deaths of two journalists at the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad. The United States and Britain have said at least one market strike may have been caused by Iraqi anti-aircraft fire. U.S. forces said U.S. troops were returning fire from suspected Iraqi forces in the Palestine Hotel.
The Bush administration official said: "This is a baseless accusation and we'll treat it as such."
The ICC opened its doors for evidence collection on July 1, 2002, and has jurisdiction over crimes committed after that date. Canada is a strong supporter of the court. Philippe Kirsch, a Canadian international law specialist, is president of 18 ICC judges, but a prosecutor has yet to be selected.
In 2000, the prosecutor for the UN's special war crimes court for the former Yugoslavia threw out a bid by activist groups to prosecute NATO for war crimes over the 1999 bombing of Kosovo.
That experience provided lessons, however.
"We wouldn't be wasting our time if we didn't think this was credible," Mr. Shiner said.
The rights activists also said yesterday the United States should rethink its rejection last week of an ad hoc UN court to deal with the past crimes of Saddam's regime and any crimes by Iraqis against coalition forces. The U.S.-proposed alternative was "victors' justice," according to Mr. Ratner.
The United States is in the process of identifying Iraqi jurists who can help create new Iraqi courts that will try key members of Saddam's regime for past crimes. Washington also reserves the right to try Iraqis itself for war crimes committed during the current conflict. Among those alleged crimes are mistreatment of coalition prisoners and the deceptive use of the white surrender flag.
Because Iraq is not a member of the ICC, Saddam Hussein cannot be brought before it.
posted by
Unknown at 5:30 PM
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After two months of hiatis, I have decided to resume this blog. I don't know for how long. A new thought:
Iraq
To no surprise anywhere, the United States has effectively destroyed the Iraqi regime. In the process, they have unseated a dictator. Likewise, they have killed thousands of innocents, and are in the process of killing even more. Since their first invasion of Iraq in 1990, the United States has killed more than 2,000,000 Iraqi civillians. They have comitted numerous war crimes. They liberated the Kurds; they promised them weapons to help fight Saddam, and then they gave Iraq permission to fly over the No-Fly Zone to gas them. No weapons or food made it to the Kurds. Only death.
Since the start of the new war, the Kurds once again are facing death - this time from American allies like Jordan and Turkey. The Kurds represent a modern Native-American situation. They are an unwanted people sitting on a desired land. Everyone in the surrounding region wants that land. Therefore, the Kurds risk being wiped out. Perhaps their best sollution is to ask for aid from America under the condition that the United States gains full control of all oil reserves located on Kurdistan lands.
All war in the middle east is an act of spoil. Every victory holds war spoils, and after the United States liberated Kuwait in the 90's there was a huge amount of money made. Likewise there is tremendous money to be made after this most recent war. Why else would America liberate the suffering Iraqis when El Salvadore sanctions death-squads to kill homeless children? America does nothing about that. Let's not forget one other thing - the weapons of mass destruction appear to have actually been weapons of mass myth. They do not exist.
posted by
Unknown at 5:27 PM
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