Viva la Liberation...

Howard Street, San Francisco, May 2006

Baghdad, Palast, and Islamic Art

Treasure of Baghdad:

"Car bombs left the Baghdad looks like a woman with cuts on face, arm and whole body, bleeding asking for help but no one is listening. Her beloved ones are dying one after the other. Like other women, she decided to wear black to mourn herself and the others. She lost everything. She lost her beauty that once was a center of gravity to anyone who wants to have fun.

[...]

I can endure many things these days as I used to since I was born, but watching my parents’ ordeal is something else. I cannot endure the fact that they are depressed and desperate. Few days ago, my father was so sad. He said he feels he is in a prison, a big prison, called Iraq. My mother, who sometimes feels scared when someone slams the door, was scared few days ago when a car bomb exploded at the corner of the street where we live shattering the glass of the windows. She, my father, aunt, and two cousins were just about to have lunch. They said the house was full of dust blows due to the effect of the blast. The next day another car bomb exploded at the entrance of a famous market near our house. The market was one of my mother’s favorite. It was the last thing she expects to be targeted. One day I told them not to go there anymore. I regretted that as I saw the sad look on their faces.“What can we do? It’s the last place left,” my father said. I had no words to say. I just don’t want to lose them."

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Amy Goodman interviews Greg Palast (Also here) on His New Book “Armed Madhouse : Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf?, China Floats, Bush Sinks, The Scheme to Steal '08…”.

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The whole fucking war was "in cold blood"

Marines killed Iraqis ‘in cold blood'

"A Pentagon probe into the death of Iraqi civilians last November in the Iraqi city of Haditha will show that U.S. Marines "killed innocent civilians in cold blood," a U.S. lawmaker said Wednesday. From the beginning, Iraqis in the town of Haditha said U.S. Marines deliberately killed 15 unarmed Iraqi civilians, including seven women and three children."

The whole fucking war was "in cold blood" and everyone who voted for it, paid for it, and didn't stop it shares in the blame.

"On Wednesday, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said the accounts are true. Military officials told NBC News that the Marine Corps' own evidence appears to show Murtha is right. A videotape taken by an Iraqi showed the aftermath of the alleged attack: a blood-smeared bedroom floor and bits of what appear to be human flesh and bullet holes on the walls. The video, obtained by Time magazine, was broadcast a day after town residents told The Associated Press that American troops entered homes on Nov. 19 and shot dead 15 members of two families, including a 3-year-old girl, after a roadside bomb killed a U.S. Marine. On Nov. 20, U.S. Marines spokesman Capt. Jeffrey Pool issued a statement saying that on the previous day a roadside bomb had killed 15 civilians and a Marine. In a later gun battle, U.S. and Iraqi troops killed eight insurgents, he said. U.S. military officials later confirmed that the version of events was wrong. Murtha, a vocal opponent of the war in Iraq, said at a news conference Wednesday that sources within the military have told him that an internal investigation will show that "there was no firefight, there was no IED (improvised explosive device) that killed these innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood.""

Video: "Children of Abraham: Death In The Desert" by Chris Floyd of Empire Burlesque

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Chomsky: 'The worst enemy of a government is its own population'

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Raed of Raed in the Middle met up with uber hawk Richard Perle.

I had two short talks with Richard Perle in the DC Mall. The first one was off camera, and the second one on PBS cameras.

I asked him for two things.

1- I asked him, in the name of 87% of the Iraqi people and more than half of the US people, to pull out the troops from Iraq and give Iraq back to Iraqis.
2- I asked him to stop the plans for a new war on Iran. "Don't Iraq Iran" I said. Stop meeting the "Iranian Chalabis" who are pulling the US into a new war in the Middle East.

Hegave me his personal contact info and asked me to send him information about the other Iranian groups with "non-violent solutions" that I mentioned.

I'll try to put together some information and send it next week. I can't put his information online for legal reasons, but if anyone is interested in taking a part in this by sending me some suggestions and ideas please email me within the next few days.

On a different note, I helped Global Exchange and Code Pink publish a Message of Peace in 8 Iraqi newspapers in English and Arabic). You can see it online on two of these newspapers here and here.

There is a growing anti-war grassroots movement in both Iraq and the US. This message is a part of the US peace movement's attempts to extend a hand towards its partners in Iraq.

You can check more details about the campaign here.

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Lawrence of Cyberia

There have been some ugly photos out of the Occupied Territories in the last couple of weeks. Even more so than usual, I mean. Probably the one that has bothered me most is this one, from Hebron, showing a settler boy refusing to let a Palestinian lady pass him on the street, while Israeli soldiers and policemen look on.



(IPC Palestine, 7 May 2006).

You see some terrible images from Israel and the Occupied Territories, but somehow this one has bothered me in a way that even children shot through the head or rescuers scouring bus stations for bits of stray flesh haven’t. It is something to do with the sheer arrogance of a child who is brought up to think there is an entire sub-group of humanity that it is perfectly normal to humiliate on the street, and worst of all that he is being confirmed in his superiority by the fact that the responsible adults around him stand around and watch. The armed representatives of his government and his people tell him by their action – or lack of it – that yes, this is how an Israeli treats a Palestinian.

Most of us who were brought up on stories of Israelis as good guys and Zionism as a noble, pioneering, victimless project, probably understand now that a lot of what we were fed then was a myth. But even after you have understood that, it can still be very unsettling when you see the representatives of official Israel looking on in differently as a settler mocks and humiliates a Palestinian passerby like this. The uncomfortable thought sneaks into your mind that only a couple of generations ago this kind of casual hatred would have been handed out to Jewish people, while another nation's soldiers looked on, and you wonder what on earth is going to happen to Israel.