contributions

By PHILIP SHENON
WASHINGTON, May 1 - An Army Reserve general whose soldiers were photographed as they abused Iraqi prisoners said Saturday that she knew nothing about the abuse until weeks after it occurred and that she was "sickened" by the pictures. She said the prison cellblock where the abuse occurred was under the tight control of Army military intelligence officers who may have encouraged the abuse.
The suggestion by Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski that the reservists acted at the (…)

Secret report from notorious Baghdad jail reveals beatings, rape and torture of prisoners by US troops By Raymond Whitaker, Andy McSmith and Andrew Johnson
Shocking new evidence of brutality by coalition troops against Iraqi detainees emerged last night in a secret US military report into the treatment of prisoners at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.
The revelation that US military police and intelligence officers had beaten Iraqi detainees, set dogs on them and threatened them with rape (…)

by Mark Rothschild
American citizens held since 2003 at the Abu Ghraib military prison may be among those imprisoned and tortured by the US military in Iraq. The American General in charge of U.S. prisons in Iraq, Brig. Gen Janis Karpinski, said in September 2003 that Americans being held at the Abu Ghraib prison were being interrogated by US military intelligence. The prisoners, said Karpinski, spoke with American accents.
Now that photographs of US torture victims have been displayed (…)

More info here : http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=888
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
American soldiers brutalized Iraqis. How far up does the responsibility go?
In the era of Saddam Hussein, Abu Ghraib, twenty miles west of Baghdad, was one of the world’s most notorious prisons, with torture, weekly executions, and vile living conditions. As many as fifty thousand men and women-no accurate count is possible-were jammed into Abu Ghraib at one time, in twelve-by-twelve-foot cells (…)

CRESAPTOWN, Maryland, AP
The chief of the U.S. Army Reserve condemned the abusive treatment of Iraqi war prisoners and said he has ordered a study of whether reservists are sufficiently trained in ethical conduct and how to treat prisoners.
Following a meeting Saturday with families of the reserve unit at the center of the investigation, Lt. Gen. James R. Helmly said photographs of naked inmates forced to assume humiliating positions beside grinning military police reservists "go against (…)

Former U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney is running to recapture her Atlanta-area congressional seat. She delivered the following speech to the Georgia Tech Globalization Forum, April 22.
Tonight we are here to talk about globalization. During my grad school days, I sat through a few econ courses. And I remember that my teachers could draw elaborate diagrams on the board, and write mathematical equations that went the length of the chalkboard; and they would always add at the end, "if all things (…)

In the main square of Baghdad’s largest Shia ghetto, an elderly man in the worn uniform of the former Iraqi air force directs donkey and car traffic with a ping-pong paddle.
Al-Sadr City, once called Saddam City, has always been on the neglected margins of Iraq’s power centre and capital.
Piles of trash and long pools of raw sewage line the boulevards, while battered looking men stand on corners with shovels waiting in the hot sun for work.
Living deep in every alley are the families (…)

Anti-globalisation protests have declined, but May Day isn’t finished. It’s simply gone back to its original ideals.
By Emily Mann
May Day means mayhem. But not this year, we’re told, the subtext being that it now means hardly anything at all. "Apathy kills off May Day protest," the BBC trumpeted towards the end of March, reporting that the London Mayday Collective, at the heart of the anti- capitalist protests of the past five years, had decided not to proceed with plans for 2004. The (…)

first of all, those of you who hate our country and what it stands for so much can go live somewhere else. Secondly, I do not see how freeing a country from an insane, evil dictator who is willing to use his citizens as lab rats for deadly chemicals, to save the rest of the 500,000 people in Iraq that WEREN’T killed by him is such an evil motive for stepping in. How would you like it if the leader of our country decided to use Manhattan as a testing ground for a nuclear device or try out a (…)

"At what point do we ask the uncomfortable question, why does the U.S. seem to consider it acceptable for such genocidal acts to occur in Africa?" It was a rhetorical question, posed by Africa Action Executive Director Salih Booker on April 7 as the world marked the tenth anniversary of the genocide that left at least 800,000 Rwandans dead. Two week’s later, President George Bush answered Booker’s question in the usual manner: the U.S. has more pressing business at hand than ending a (…)