The Real Question

The three soldiers found guilty of mistreating Iraqi civilians have been jailed and thrown out of the Army for their roles in the prisoner abuse scandal at an aid camp in southern Iraq.

British soldiers who abused Iraqis are jailed and dismissed from the Army
By Martin Hickman
The Independent
26 February 2005

The real question is: What about those who decided the ILLEGAL and IMMORAL war of AGGRESSION against IRAQ? "To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." - Judgment of the International Military Tribunal for the Trial of German Major War Criminals - Nuremberg, Germany 1946

Ward Churchill

I've just received this press release from South End Press. Please, take a moment to read it.

CAMBRIDGE, MA: After finding himself at the center of a media firestorm—and receiving a barrage of death threats—South End Press author Ward Churchill has stepped down from his position as Chair of the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of Colorado. Not satisfied with this, Colorado Governor Bill Owens is demanding that Churchill resign his position as a tenured professor as well.

The controversy is based on an essay Churchill wrote soon after 9-11, which he later expanded into an AK Press book, On the Justice of Roosting Chickens: Reflections on the Consequences of U.S. Imperial Arrogance and Criminality. Conservative protestors used the essay to force Hamilton College in New York to cancel a speaking engagement Churchill had scheduled there. The mainstream media (including Bill O’Reilly and Fox News) has picked up the story, distorting and misrepresenting the facts, as usual.

South End Press wishes to voice our support for Ward Churchill in this struggle—in terms of both his well-researched analysis of factors that contributed to the 9-11 attacks and his right to express that analysis in public without having his life and livelihood threatened. We also recommend that you read On the Justice of Roosting Chickens yourself, rather than rely on the media’s version of it. Individuals can order it here: http://www.akpress.org/2003/items/onthejusticeofroostingchickens

On the Justice of Roosting Chickens and other books by Ward Churchill are available to bookstores and the trade from Consortium Book Sales and Distribution. To order please visit http://www.cbsd.com or call 1-800-283-3572.

Ward Churchill titles published by South End Press include: Islands in Captivity: The International Tribunal on the Rights of Indigenous Hawaiians (coedited with Sharon H. Venne; forthcoming); From a Native Son: Selected Essays on Indigenism, 1985-1995; Agents of Repression: The FBI’s Secret War Against the American Indian Movement and the Black Panther Party (with Jim Vander Wall); and The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents From the FBI’s Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States (with Jim Vander Wall).

DAVID BARSAMIAN

I’ll just give you one example: the New York Times, this great liberal newspaper, had 70 editorials between September 11, 2001 and the attack on Iraq, March 20, 2003. In not one of those editorials was the UN Charter, the Nuremberg Tribunal, or any aspect of international law ever mentioned. Now, those guys know that these things exist, and that’s a perfect example of censorship by omission. And so if you were reading the New York Times over that period, during the buildup to the war, you would not have had the sense that the United States was planning on doing something that was a gross violation of international law, and national law for that matter.

Media Censorship - David Barsamian interviewed by Omar Khan
ZNet

GUANTANAMO

Guantánamo: What the World Should Know
By Michael Ratner and Ellen Ray

To know, read or buy this book please click here

MEXICO

LACANDON JUNGLE , CHIAPAS, MEXICO :Word has been sent from Washington: Mexico’s leading presidential candidate must be stopped, at all costs, from mounting his candidacy. A new kind of coup d’etat has been hatched to strip Mexico City’s activist governor Andrés Manuel López Obrador – the country’s most popular political leader according to all national public opinion polls – of his right to run for president in the July 2006 elections. This attempted coup became official policy the week that Condoleeza Rice took the helm of the U.S. State Department last month, and Washington’s reliable puppets in two of Mexico’s national political parties immediately jumped to implement the master’s orders.

Condoleeza Rice vs. Democracy in Mexico
A Plot to Kick a Candidate Out of the 2006 Mexico Presidential Race Provokes an Unprecedented Public Revolt
By Al Giordano
Special to The Narco News Bulletin
February 13, 2005

John Negroponte

John Negroponte, nominated yesterday by President Bush to be the first director of national intelligence, would bring many strong qualifications to the job: decades of diplomatic experience, a reputation for successful bureaucratic infighting and some relevant managerial experience.

An Intelligence Director, Finally
The New York Times
Editorial
Published: February 18, 2005

To know more about Mr. Negroponte, click here.

GREEN PARROTS

In this extraordinary book Green Parrots (a nickname for a type of land mine), Dr. Strada describes how he, as a war surgeon, and his group, called EMERGENCY, have worked to help the forgotten victims of the world. It is a sobering story, but also an inspiring one, and we welcome its publication in the United States.

From Howard Zinn's Introduction to "GREEN PARROTS" by Gino Srada

World Tribunal on Iraq

World Tribunal on Iraq
Session on
Media Wrongs Against Truth and Humanity
Exposing the Politics of Disinformation
Rome - Aula Magna del Rettorato
Università degli Studi Roma Tre
10-13 February 2005
To know more, click here!!!

The WORLD TRIBUNAL on IRAQ, ROME SESSION presents 'XXI CENTURY' PART 3 '... and nothing but the truth': TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 8th @ 6pm at the ITALIAN SENATE and SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 13th at Aula Magna del Rettorato Università degli Studi Roma Tre.

How interesting!!!

Laura Bush became the first first lady to attend Fashion Week in New York yesterday, in an occasion that was greeted in some circles with the same sense of importance as when Christian Dior unveiled the New Look. (...) That Mrs. Bush, who once said she was not interested in fashion, has now embraced the industry delighted the designers, who were in the harried throes of completing their own collections. (...) The front row was uncommonly filled with other designers, including Tommy Hilfiger, Francisco Costa of Calvin Klein, Carmen Marc Valvo, Luca Orlandi, Esteban Cortazar and Nicole Miller. A year ago, only two designers attended a similar event."I like fashion; it's fun," Mrs. Bush told reporters after the show, which included 26 dresses by 26 designers worn by 26 celebrities of varying fame, from Paula Abdul and Sarah Ferguson to the children of rock stars and models. Mrs. Bush applauded each look as it passed by and told those seated near her, one of them said later, that she needed to acquire more red outfits.

Fashion Week's Coup: Mrs. Bush's Approval
By ERIC WILSON
The New York Times

The New York Times, "All The News That's Fit to Print"

AUSTRALIA

Long before most of the world, Australia had a minimum wage, a 35-hour working week, child benefits and the vote for women. The secret ballot was invented in Australia. By the 1960s, Australians could boast the most equitable spread of personal income in the world. Today, these are forgotten, subversive truths. As schools are ordered to fly the flag (its British Union Jack still mocking from on high), the maudlin story of Australian soldiers dying pointlessly for an imperial master at Gallipoli is elevated, along with barely veiled colonialism and racism. Self-promoted as a bastion of human rights, Australia has become a sideshow of their denial and degradation.

Australia: The Sickening Of Democracy
John Pilger
ZNet

The Right Side of History

In other words, this election has made it crystal clear that the Iraq war is not between fascist insurgents and America, but between the fascist insurgents and the Iraqi people. One hopes the French and Germans, whose newspapers often sound more like Al Jazeera than Al Jazeera, will wake up to this fact and throw their weight onto the right side of history. It's about time, because whatever you thought about this war, it's not about Mr. Bush any more. It's about the aspirations of the Iraqi majority to build an alternative to Saddamism. By voting the way they did, in the face of real danger, Iraqis have earned the right to ask everyone now to put aside their squabbles and focus on what is no longer just a pipe dream but a real opportunity to implant decent, consensual government in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world.

A Day to Remember
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: February 3, 2005
The New York Times

Where have I had already heard this 'right side of history'? Maybe in the Nazi Germany? Or in the Fascist Italy? Or to explain power and violence in all the colonial world? There has never been use of violence in history that was not justified by 'the right side of history'.

Noam Chomsky

Read the very good interview to Noam Chomsky by David McNeill. Among the issues: Vietnam, Iraq and Terrorism. ZNet, January 31, 2005

Scott Ritter

But, through the invasion of Iraq, a crime of gigantic proportions has been perpetrated. If history has taught us anything, it is that it will condemn both the individuals and respective societies who not only perpetrated the crime, but also remained blind and mute while it was being committed.

Scott Ritter
The Guardian

Scott Ritter was a senior UN weapons inspector in Iraq between 1991 and 1998 and is the author of Frontier Justice: Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Bushwhacking of America