Thursday, April 24, 2003
-US Undermined Inspectors-Hans Blix
American officials tried to discredit the work of inspectors in Iraq to further their own case for war, the chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix has charged.
Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix speaks to the media at the United Nations, Monday, April 21, 2003. (AP Photo/Diane Bondareff)
In an interview with the BBC, Mr Blix said American officials leaked suggestions that inspectors had deliberately suppressed information to the media in an attempt to undermine their work in Iraq.
Excerpts of the interview were released just before Mr Blix was due to address the Security Council later on Tuesday in a meeting that could begin to determine whether he and his team are ever to return to Iraq.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0422-02.htm
Also
http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/030423/2003042330.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13259-2003Apr22.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2970179.stm
-Maine Protesters Blockade General Dynamics
Fifteen activists bound together by a mixture of roofing tar, chicken wire and nails wrapped around PVC piping were arrested Tuesday after trying to block the entrance to General Dynamics Armament and Technical Products Co.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0416-11.htm
-US Used Far More Dioxin on Vietnam Than It Admitted
US troops sprayed far more dioxin over wartime Vietnam than they admitted at the time, according to new research.
Between 1961 and 1971, herbicides such as Agent Orange and other weapons of mass defoliation were used to strip mangrove swamps and forests of cover for Vietcong forces and deprive the enemy of food by destroying crops.
Jeanne Mager Stellman, of Columbia University in New York, and colleagues report in the journal Nature today that a fresh look at US military data has revealed that an extra 7m liters of dioxin-containing herbicide was sprayed over key regions of the war-torn country…
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0417-04.htm
-Ex-U.S. Official Says CIA Aided Baathists
[Saddam,] castigated by President George W. Bush as one of history’s most “brutal dictators” was actually on the CIA payroll....
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0420-05.htm
-Anthrax, Chemicals and Nerve Gas: Growing evidence of Washington Lying
What Ritter and others now allege, with increasing confidence, is a pattern of false information emanating from both Washington and London since last September ?Elies and distortions that launched a major war and are only now beginning to be widely exposed.....
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0420-01.htm
-Mark Twain Speaks to Us: “I Am an Anti-Imperialist”
With U.S. troops occupying Iraq and the Bush administration making bellicose noises about Syria, let’s consider some rarely mentioned words from the most revered writer in American history.
Mark Twain was painfully aware of many people’s inclinations to go along with prevailing evils. When slavery was lawful, he recalled, abolitionists were “despised and ostracized, and insulted”—by “patriots.” As far as Twain was concerned, “Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.”
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0415-10.htm
-The saving of one little boy must not be a cover for the crime of this war
As of last July, the United States, backed by the Blair government, was wilfully blocking humanitarian supplies worth $5.4bn, everything from vaccines and plasma bags to simple painkillers, all of which Iraq had paid for and the Security Council had approved.
Last month’s attack by the two greatest military powers on a demoralized, sick and largely defenseless population was the logical extension of this barbarism. This is now called a “victory”, and the flags are coming out. Last week, the submarine HMS Turbulent returned to Plymouth, flying the Jolly Roger, the pirates’ emblem. How appropriate. This nuclear-powered machine fired some 30 American Tomahawk cruise missiles at Iraq. Each missile cost £700,000: a total of £21m. That alone would provide desperate Basra with food, water and medicines.
Imagine: what did Commander Andrew McKendrick’s 30 missiles hit? How many people did they kill or maim in a population nearly half of which are children? Maybe, Commander, you targeted a palace with gold taps in the bathroom, or a “command and control facility”, as the Americans and Geoffrey Hoon like to lie. Or perhaps each of your missiles had a sensory device that could distinguish George Bush’s “evil-doers’’ from toddlers. What is certain is that your targets did not include the Ministry of Oil....
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0420-05.htm
-Give Us Back Our Democracy: Edward Said
....Americans have been cheated, Iraqis have suffered impossibly and Bush looks like a cowboy. On matters of the gravest importance, constitutional principles have been violated and the electorate lied to. We are the ones who must have our democracy back.
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0420-04.htm
-U.S. Use of Clusters in Baghdad Condemned
NEW YORK - April 16 - The U.S. Central Command should respond publicly to evidence that U.S. forces used cluster munitions in a populated area of Baghdad, Human Rights Watch urged today.
According to a report in yesterday?fs Newsday, a Central Command spokeswoman has anonymously confirmed that U.S. forces have hit urban areas of Baghdad with cluster munitions, stating that they were aimed at Iraqi artillery and missile systems located inside the city.
?gU.S. commanders should never use cluster munitions in populated areas,?h said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. ?gThese are wholly inappropriate weapons when civilians are around. The reported use of cluster munitions in Baghdad is a serious charge and the Pentagon must respond publicly to it.?h
Newsday?fs reporter provided Human Rights Watch with a photograph he had taken inside a building in what he described as a clearly residential neighborhood well inside Baghdad.
http://www.commondreams.org/news2003/0416-14.htm
-NASA’s Strategic Plan” * Military * Nuclear
At all of our peril, O’Keefe is moving to expand NASA’s program of using nuclear power in space—including reviving the decades-old notion of building nuclear-powered spacecraft. What if the Columbia shuttle had been nuclear-powered? Nuclear debris would have spread over Texas and Louisiana. Still, two days after the Columbia tragedy, NASA advanced its new $3 billion space nuclear program, Project Prometheus. It is being pushed despite the development of new safe space energy systems, including solar-electric propulsion and solar sails.”
http://www.commondreams.org/news2003/0417-07.htm
-New Tobacco Company, Licensed to Kill Inc., Aims to Kill 4.9M Worldwide Annually
Today, Licensed to Kill, Inc, the world’s newest multinational tobacco company, publicly announced its incorporation with the launch of the company’s website: [url=http://www.licensedtokill.biz]http://www.licensedtokill.biz[/url]
Licensed to Kill, Inc., was officially incorporated in the state of Virginia on March 19, 2003. The company’s purpose, as stated in its articles of incorporation, is “the manufacture and marketing of tobacco products in a way that each year kills over 400,000 Americans and 4.5 million other persons worldwide.”
http://www.commondreams.org/news2003/0417-14.htm
-Voices in the Wilderness Banned from Palestine Hotel in Baghdad by U.S. Military
BAGHDAD - April 17 - Less than 24 hours after issuing a press release (below) highlighting the failures of the U.S. Military’s attempts to oversee humanitarian intervention in Iraq, Voices in the Wilderness was banned from meeting with the U.S. Civil Military Operations Center, or international journalists, working out of the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad (see attached picture).
Palestine Hotel, Baghdad - April 17, 2003
“NO VOICES OF WILDERNESS NGOs”
If the freedom to critique U.S. policies in Iraq regarding humanitarian issues is being curtailed already, then exactly what does this mean for building “democracy” here?
http://www.commondreams.org/news2003/0417-15.htm
