Sign the United Nations Resolution on Depleted Uranium Weapons
I served in the Parachute Regiment and the Special Air Service for eight years. I have spoken out about the reality of the war in Iraq on numerous occasions since I left the army but only recently have I learned about another of its cruel legacies; chemically toxic and radioactive depleted uranium (DU).
I was not surprised last week when I heard the UK and US had voted against a United Nations General Assembly Resolution that asked states to provide help to Iraq in dealing with DU contamination and for UN agencies to carry out more research into its potential negative effects on public health and the environment.
In a recent report, Amnesty International detailed dozens of tragic stories of women and girls choosing suicide to escape the brutality of the Islamic State group (IS, formerly ISIS), as they rampaged through large swathes of Iraq, capturing women and children, especially from religious minorities, and selling them on for forced marriage and slavery.
Channel 4 Regrets Letting Ex-CIA Agent Claim Baghdad Massacre Would Have Been 'Ideal'
"The thing was ideal when IS was advancing on Baghdad because Sunnis were killing Shias. That's exactly what we need. - Our best hope right now is to get the Sunnis and Shias fighting each other and let them bleed each other white."
Recently, Israel stole one of the symbols of Iraqi Jewish heritage, a rare ancient copy of the Torah. The incident went smoothly and quietly, with blatant collusion between Israel, the United States, the Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq, and the Jordanian authorities, amid suspicious silence from the Iraqi federal authorities and the Iraqi cultural scene, save for a few objections.
Execution of Saddam Hussein wasnt about justice, but about US profits
The way the execution of Saddam Hussein was carried out, in a way that was meant to foment sectarian violence. It was an execution; it was staged in a formal way. It almost resembled the lynching with people from hostile ethnic groups shouting at him. And the fact that the rope is now on sale is just a further confirmation of the fact that the execution of Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with justice rather it was about profits.
Iraq was invaded because it had a state-owned oil company that was in competition with Wall Street banks and oil companies. And Saddam Hussein was executed not because of atrocities that he committed during the Iraq- Iran war, or any other atrocities he committed. He was executed for standing up to Wall Street and standing up to the forces that are really ruling the world, the forces of money and power.
Dozens of women took part in a sit-in protest on Monday in front of UNRWA's headquarters in Gaza to demand that the international community accelerate the reconstruction of Gaza.
The protest was organized by the Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations Network (PNGO) and also called for an end to the eight-year Israeli blockade on the coastal territory.
Israeli forces respond to Women's Day march with violence
More than 30 Palestinians, mostly women, were injured as Israeli troops forcibly dispersed a peaceful march marking International Women's Day at Qalandiya checkpoint between Jerusalem and Ramallah on Friday.
Israeli soldiers fired tear-gas canisters, stun grenades, rubber-coated bullets, and pepper spray at hundreds of women to prevent them from reaching the checkpoint. Fourteen of the 30 injured were evacuated to hospitals.
12th Anniversary Of Illegal Iraq Invasion 2.7 Million Iraqi Dead From Violence Or War-imposed Deprivation
Those with consciences recently marked the 12th anniversary on 19 March 2015 of the illegal and war criminal US, UK and Australian invasion of Iraq in 2003 that was based on false assertions of Iraqi possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction, was conducted in the absence of UN sanction or Iraqi threat to the invading nations, and led to 2.7 million Iraqi deaths from violence (1.5 million) or from violently-imposed deprivation (1.2 million). The West has now commenced its Seventh Iraq War since 1914 in over a century of Western violence in which Iraqi deaths from violence or violently-imposed deprivation have totalled 9 million. However Western Mainstream media have resolutely ignored the carnage, this tragically illustrating the adage History ignored yields history repeated
http://www.countercurrents.org/polya230315.htm
What really happened in Tikrit after ISIL fled
Arson and looting incidents in Tikrit after the Iraqi army recaptured the city last week from fighters with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have highlighted the deep divisions between the Sunni tribes that supported ISIL and the Sunni tribes that opposed it, local and federal security officials said.
Those divisions threaten to tear apart the Sunni community in the areas still under ISIL control, Iraqi officials said.
Hundreds of homes and stores were set ablaze after they were looted by unidentified people last week in Tikrit, one of the biggest Iraqi cities dominated by a Sunni Muslim population. It was seized by ISIL last summer.
Palestinian prisoners languish in Mideast stalemate
Hadi al-Fakhri was 26 the first time he hugged his father, one of thousands of Palestinians serving time in Israeli prisons for alleged militant activity in the occupied West Bank.
A decade later, more than 30 years into a life sentence, Fakhri's father was freed when more than 1,000 prisoners were swapped for an Israeli soldier held by Palestinian Islamist group Hamas for five years.
The landmark 2011 deal to free Gilad Shalit sparked hope for thousands being held in Israeli prisons.
But more than three years on, with the peace process in tatters and ties with Israel severely strained, Palestinian hopes of seeing their prisoners released look more remote than ever.
Hundreds pray in front of UN office on Prisoner's Day
Hundreds of Palestinians performed Friday prayers in front of the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Gaza to mark Palestinian Prisoner's Day.
Protesters demanded the release of the over 6,000 prisoners including men, women, elderly and minors being held by Israeli authorities.
Israeli forces detain nearly 40 from West Bank, Jerusalem in 2 days
Israeli forces detained 18 Palestinians, including two minors, from across the West Bank overnight Tuesday, a prisoners' rights group said.
The detentions come a day after 19 others were arrested in detention raids across the West Bank and in East Jerusalem on Monday.
The Palestinian Prisoners' Center for Studies said that on Tuesday Israeli forces detained seven Palestinians from Ramallah, identified as brothers Muhammad and Hassan Tamim al-Rimawi, brothers Humam and Majdi Munir al-Rimawi, Abd al-Qader al-Barghouthi, Jamal Samih al-Rimawi and Taha Jaber al-Rimawi.
Factions condemn Israeli jail conditions for Palestinian prisoners
Palestinian political factions on Thursday condemned "aggressive policies" against Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, a week after the death of Jaafar Ibrahim Awad, 22.
Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Palestinian Prisoners' Society said in a joint statement that conditions within Israeli jails are growing increasingly difficult for Palestinian detainees, noting growing numbers of sick prisoners due to medical negligence by the Israeli Prison Service.
Palestinian Prisoners Day: 'My little brothers are missing my dad'
More than most villages in the occupied West Bank, residents of Beit Ummar know the meaning of Prisoners Day - in a population where 44 percent of men have been imprisoned at some point in their lives.
Many Americans think secret U.S. documents become public after, say, 30 years, but many are hidden indefinitely to conceal inconvenient truths that could enlighten public debate, as Robert Parry discovered in getting a redacted version of a top secret paper from 1981 that he had already found in unredacted form.
By Robert Parry
By recently releasing a redacted version of top secret talking points that Secretary of State Alexander Haig used to brief President Ronald Reagan about Mideast developments in spring 1981, the U.S. government has inadvertently revealed what it still wants to hide from the public some 34 years later because I found the full version in congressional files in late 1994 and first wrote about it in early 1996.
The key points that the U.S. government still doesnt want you to know include that in early 1981 Israel already was supplying U.S. military equipment to Iran for its war with Iraq; that the Saudis had conveyed a green light supposedly from President Jimmy Carter to Saddam Hussein to invade Iran in 1980; and that the Saudis agreed to finance arms sales to Pakistan and other states in the region.