The Ameriya Shelter - St. Valentine's Day Massacre

Felicity Arbuthnot

 

URUKNET    February 13, 2007

 

It is sixteen years since the Ameriyah Shelter in west Baghdad was bombed, incinerating all but eight, inside. Figures for the souls lost, still vary from four hundred and five to over twelve hundred, the registration book was incinerated along with those who had sought refuge, women,children, students and on occasion, the very old. The men stayed out to make room for those whom they wished protection - and to rescue others from the ongoing carpet bombing. The Shelter was only used over night.

 

The shelter had been built to withstand a possible nuclear attack, during the eight year, western driven, Iran-Iraq war. Walls three metres thick with the roof reinforced by the near indestructable steel 'mesh' used to support four or six lane road bridges. The only vulnerable point was the ventilation shaft. Iraq had chosen a Finnish company to build shelters throughout Baghdad, selecting the company because of perceived Finnish neutrality and commercial integrity. The company, reportedly passed the plans to the US prior to the 1991 onslaught.

 

I visited the Shelter just months after the bombing. We were a group from various countries and arrived in the early, sparkling sunlight. So unscathed was the building from the outside, that we had not realised where we were, talking and laughing under a sky still painted with dawn's translucenct trails and myriad shades of orange and ochre.

 

Entering, there was a stunned silence. The smell of burning flesh still overwhelmed. I found myself tiptoeing through the blackened interior, under the melted piping, tiptoeing through the screams. There were sooted plastic flowers laid in dark corners, pathetic scraps of bloodied gauze. The only light was from the near perfect spherical entry point of the missiles, illuminating below, the great crater where they fell, the jagged remains of the centimetres thick steel mesh, hanging, a 'surgical strike' indeed, as a knife through butter - against women and children.

 

The Shelter, as during the Iran-Iraq war and in 1991, had been a safe haven in abnormal times. With electricity bombed, the huge generators allowed the children brief childhood normality: watching television, playing video games, reading, playing, homework - and the bombs could not be heard. The rows of bunk beds were a treat, with a rush to get the top bunk, a joyous eyrie of escape and escapism.

 

There were two vast floors, the top for sleeping, studying, socialising, sharing meals, the lower had showers, kitchens, a medical centre. When the bombs fell, the heat incinerated those on the top floor - and the vast water tank on the lower floor heated to bursting - boiling those showering, or chatting whilst cooking the evening meal, or those whose ailments were being treated and the medical staff.

 

The breast high 'scum' on the walls, was the flesh of those who perished. On the upper floor is the seared 'shadow' of a mother, holding her baby. Hiroshima revisited. I could bear the screams no longer and fled out and in to the sunlight. Noticing a small, blackened, brass plaque on the wall, I asked a Jordanian friend what it read. He struggled with the translation for a moment, the: 'It is like when there is a crisis and civilian people try to help ..' 'Civil Defence?' I asked : 'Yes, yes, it says Civil Defence Shelter No:24.'

 

America had, of course, claimed it was a Command Centre for Saddam Hussein's government. A lie, as ever, of enormity. Further, the U.S. had satellites watching everything (which continued through the embargo years, as now, clearly visible, blinking away like vast stars, floating, rotating.) A consistent comment over numerous interviews in the area and Baghdad, about the Shelter horror, that first vist and over subsequent years, was that for three days before, a satellite had been rotating over the district.Thus it would have recorded women and children entering it at dusk and leaving at dawn. That night there would have been a particular procession and it was the eve of the festival of Eid and with no means of cooking at home for the fast breaking, women took their food to prepare in the kitchens and their festive gifts, to wrap under the lights.

 

When the fire engines arrived, the rescuers could hear the screams, until they began to fade away - but the great metre thick steel door, with airline type handles to seal it from the inside for safety, was glowing like a furnace, then as it melted, re-sealed itself. Dante, revisited. To have poured water from gaping missile hole in the roof, would have subjected those inside to boiling steam.The fire Chief, the toughest of men, who had seen the unimaginable and directed rescues over many years, faltered as he said, of the remains they finally brought out: 'We thought we were bringing out only children and wondered why they were there alone - then we realised the (adult) bodies had (contracted) to child size with the intensity of the heat.'

 

Anwar, then eighteen and a student ran to help, with a friend with whom he was staying, nearby. When talking of that night, he too faltered and stilled, then gestured with his hands, saying: 'The peoples, the bodies, they had gone so small - like this ..' There is a haunting tale told by Umm Rheda (mother of Rheda) who left the shelter temporarily to take some preparations home. Whilst she way away, the bombs fell her children were incinerated, with Rheda, her eldest daughter. When all the emergency services experts, the army which was drafted in, had failed to open the door, she begged and screamed to try. It opened: 'Rheda opened it for me',she says.The fire Chief confirmed that Umm Rheda opened the door.

 

The Shelter, over time, became a shrine, the bereaved, visitors brought momentos, pictures of the dead, the babies, the mischevious, the young mothers, the earnest students, stared from the walls. The floor was cleaned and polished, but the skin, the shadows, the seared walls and the screams remained. Until 2003, this was a unique U.S. wickedness. Another was an early act of their invading troops : to storm it (with their boots on of course) and search this sacred, sobbing site, for weapons. And now courtesy again, of the U.S.A., all Iraq is Al Ameriyah.

 

Three days before the Shelter bombing, Dick Cheney, now Vice President and General Colin Powell (designated a 'dove' by the George W. Bush Administration) visited the US Air base at Khamis Mushat, Saudia Arabia (slogan: 'bombs are us' and 'we live so others may die.') After a pep talk to troops, they both signed two thousand pound bombs: 'To Saddam with fond regards', wrote Cheney ('A General's War', General Bernard Traynor and Michael Gordon, Little Brown, p.324.)

 

When the Shelter was bombed, frantic calls followed incase the bombs might have been involved in this massacre. Cheyney's bomb apparently fell on northern Iraq, dropped by a Major Wes Wyrich. What souls Powell's decimated, is seemingly unknown.

 

The Ameriyah Shelter was bombed on the night of 13th/14th February : the celebration of Eid, St. Valentine's Day and the anniversary of the fire bombing of Dresden. When I put this to a U.S. General and remarked on the 'coincidence', he looked me in the eye and said: 'Kinda neat, eh?'

 

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m30603&hd=&size=1&l=e

George Monbiot : The parallel universe of BAE: covert, dangerous and beyond the rule of law

How long can Britain's biggest arms company run a secret service and trump the armed forces in political influence?

 

The Guardian     Tuesday February 13, 2007

 

There is a state within a state in the United Kingdom, a small but untouchable domain that appears to be subject to a different set of laws. We have heard quite a bit about it over the past two months, but hardly anyone knows just how far its writ runs. The state is BAE Systems, Britain's biggest arms company. It seems, among other advantages, to be able to run its own secret service.

 

This week, Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) hopes to obtain a court order against BAE. The order would allow it to discover how the arms company obtained one of its confidential documents. CAAT instructed its lawyers, Leigh Day & Co, to seek a judicial review of the government's decision to drop the corruption case against BAE, which is alleged to have paid massive bribes to members of the Saudi royal family. Leigh Day sent CAAT an email containing advice on costs and tactics. The email ended up in the hands of the arms company.

 

How? Correspondence between a plaintiff and his lawyers couldn't be more private. The last people you would show it to are the defendants in the case. But somehow the letter found its way to BAE's offices.

 

The arms company argues that it was the unwitting and unwilling recipient of the email. So why does it refuse to tell CAAT who sent it? Why, far from assisting CAAT's attempt to explain this mystery, has it threatened the group with costs for seeking to reveal BAE's source?

 

CAAT has good reason to be suspicious. In 2003, the Sunday Times revealed that BAE had carried out a "widespread spying operation" on its critics. "Bank accounts were accessed, computer files downloaded and private correspondence with members of parliament and ministers secretly copied and passed on." The paper said the arms company made use of a network run by a former consultant for the Ministry of Defence called Evelyn Le Chene. "Le Chene recruited at least half a dozen agents to infiltrate CAAT's headquarters at Finsbury Park, north London, and a number of regional offices." They provided BAE with advanced intelligence on CAAT's campaign against the sale of its Hawk aircraft to the Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia. The arms company also obtained CAAT's membership list, its bank account details, the identity of its donors, its letters to ministers, even the contents of private diaries belonging to its staff.

 

After the story was published, CAAT asked a team of investigators to examine the messages sent from its offices. They found that one of the group's most senior members of staff, the national campaigns and events coordinator, had sent 181 emails to an unfamiliar address. Many of them contained extremely sensitive information.

 

The coordinator, Martin Hogbin, denied that he was an agent of Le Chene's. He claimed that the mysterious email address belonged to a former CAAT volunteer, and that he had been sending him this information because he might find it interesting.

 

The investigators contacted the former volunteer, who told them that he had not received any messages from Hogbin, and did not recognise the address. CAAT took the case to the United Kingdom's Information Commissioner, who found that the email address belonged to "a company with links to Evelyn Le Chene". Both Le Chene and Hogbin refused to assist the investigations. If it was true that Hogbin was working for Le Chene, it would be a tremendous coup for her and her clients. As campaigns and events coordinator, he knew more than anyone else about CAAT's plans. If BAE were to obtain and make use of such intelligence, it could anticipate and outmanoeuvre the Campaign's attempts to expose or embarrass it.

 

BAE's spying operations represent just one way in which the company looks like a parallel state. It also appears to enjoy crown immunity. Last August, this column suggested that the Saudi corruption case might be dropped, in order to protect a new order for 72 BAE jets. It was not a hard prediction to make - Saudi Arabia had made the new deal conditional on the abandonment of the case. But I could not have guessed that both the attorney general and the prime minister would make such a show of squashing the investigation. They seemed to go out of their way to demonstrate to BAE's clients that they would do whatever it took to protect the new order, even if it meant exposing themselves to allegations of collusion.

 

The prime minister has never taken such a risk on behalf of one of his departments, let alone his ministers or officials (witness how Lord Levy and Ruth Turner have been left to swing). There are just two friends for whom he will put his legacy on the line: George Bush and BAE.

 

In 2001, Blair overruled Clare Short and Gordon Brown to grant an export licence for BAE's sale of a military air-traffic control system to one of the world's poorest countries, Tanzania. The World Bank had pointed out that the contract was ridiculously expensive - Tanzania could have bought a better system elsewhere for a quarter of the price. In January the Guardian revealed that BAE Systems allegedly paid a $12m (£6.2m) "commission" to an agent who brokered the deal.

 

In 2005, Blair made a secret visit to Riyadh to expedite BAE's deal with the Saudi princes. He then sent both John Reid and Des Browne to clinch the order. Ministers in the UK have always acted as unpaid salesmen for the arms companies, but seldom has a prime minister muddied his hands this much. Blair pushed the order through by promising the Saudis that they could have the first 24 planes ahead of schedule. How? By selling them the jets already allotted to the RAF. BAE's interests, in other words, trump the requirements of our own armed forces.

 

Blair has also broken his government's pledge to publish the report by the National Audit Office on BAE's dealings in Saudi Arabia. It remains the only NAO report never to have been made public. We can only guess why the prime minister needs to protect it.

 

It could be argued, with some force, that this government has always had a special relationship with big business, rather like its special relationship with George Bush (it gets beaten up and thanks him for it). But the special favours it grants BAE are deeply resented by other corporations. After the suppression of the Saudi case, F&C Asset Management, a very large institutional investor, wrote to the government to complain that its decision undermined the rule of law and the predictability of the investment climate. Hermes, Britain's biggest pension fund, said that it threatened the UK's reputation as a leading financial centre, and the chairman of Anglo-American wrote that the abandonment of the case "damaged the reputation of Britain".

 

At what point does the government conclude that this company has got out of control? That it presents a danger to national interests, to the reputation of the prime minister, to the privacy and civil liberties of its opponents? Why does it appear to be above the law? For how much longer will it be permitted to run what looks like a parallel secret service? Of all the questions we might ask of our ministers, these are the least likely to be answered.

 

monbiot.com

Malcolm X's daughter carries on his message

Muslim News      14-02-2007

 

By Brad A. Greenberg

 

NORTHRIDGE - On Feb. 21, 1965, Malcolm X walked onto a stage in New York's Audubon Ballroom to preach his message of African-American freedom by any means necessary.

 

It was a message he had delivered hundreds of times. But within moments, three members of the Nation of Islam rushed the stage. He was shot 15 times.

 

"This was not somebody on a grassy knoll," his eldest daughter, Attallah Shabazz, told an audience Monday in Cal State Northridge. "This was in a room like this."

 

Shabazz spoke to about 250 students and faculty - black and white, Muslim and non-Muslim - about her father's legacy as an African-American and Muslim leader.

 

"He didn't leave this Earth knowing he would matter 42 years later," she said. "That is a conversation I have with God: That if you live right, you will be remembered."

 

Shabazz was invited by the Muslim Student Association to highlight Cal State Northridge's events for Black History Month. The event, co-sponsored by the Black Student Union and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, included a screening of the Malcolm X PBS documentary "Make It Plain," followed by a half-hour Q&A with Shabazz.

 

"A lot of us wonder why a Muslim organization doing an event for Black History Month," association President Zabie Mansoory said in a brief introduction. "An interesting piece of information: 40 percent of Muslims in America are African American."

 

The film spanned Malcolm's life - from teenage hustler to Nation of Islam spokesman to the movement's antagonist and finally its victim - showing how radical his message was at a time when Martin Luther King Jr. was preaching nonviolence.

 

Malcolm, whom the film said evaded service in World War II by telling the draft board he wanted to organize black soldiers to kill whites, told African Americans that if they weren't willing to fight for themselves, no one would be.

 

"Who taught you to hate yourself from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet? ... Who taught you to hate yourself as God created you?" he asks in the beginning of the film.

 

After a falling out with Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm underwent another transformation in 1964. He had attended hajj, the journey to Mecca that every able Muslim is instructed to do once. And he returned a Sunni Muslim, suddenly able to embrace nonblack Muslims, one of his many legacies.

 

"Malcolm X is one of my heroes," said Sarah Chaudhry, a 19-year-old Muslim of Pakistani descent. "He was one of us."

 

http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/news/ci_5216167

 

http://www.muslimnews.co.uk/news/news.php?article=12349

Long a Target Over Faulty Iraq Intelligence, Ex-CIA Chief Prepares to Return Fire

By Mark Mazzetti and Julie Bosman

    The New York Times    Tuesday 13 February 2007

 

    Washington - For the past two years, George J. Tenet has maintained a determined silence even as senior White House officials have laid the blame for the prewar mistakes about Saddam Hussein on him. But now Mr. Tenet, the nation's former spy chief, is preparing to return fire.

 

    Mr. Tenet was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom at a grand White House ceremony in December 2004, after stepping down as director of central intelligence, only to have Vice President Dick Cheney appear on "Meet the Press" 21 months later and pin the mistake about the Iraq intelligence squarely on him.

 

    Now, as he races to complete a memoir due out this spring, the talk in Washington has turned to how Mr. Tenet, known for fierce loyalty and political survival instincts that enabled him to weather both Democratic and Republican administrations, will use the book to juggle a host of agendas: polishing his legacy, settling scores and explaining just what he meant when he said it was a "slam dunk" that Mr. Hussein had unconventional weapons.

 

    Of course, Mr. Tenet must finish the book first, which has proved to be something of challenge. The book was supposed to hit shelves last week, but Mr. Tenet was still writing as late as last month. The book has also undergone a slow vetting process at the White House and the C.I.A., which reviewed it to ensure it did not contain classified information.

 

    Friends and former colleagues of Mr. Tenet note that he built his career by making more friends than enemies, and they say he is unlikely to use his book to pick new fights. But some of president Bush's top aides with whom Mr. Tenet clashed in the past, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, are said to be targets of criticism.

 

    "George is a born politician and he wants everyone to love him, but in order to sell books he's going to have to throw somebody out of the lifeboat," said a former colleague of Mr. Tenet at the C.I.A., one of several people interviewed for this article who requested anonymity because they did not want to speak on the record until the book was published.

 

    Mr. Tenet is not expected to take on Mr. Bush, with whom he developed a close bond during early morning intelligence briefings in the Oval Office. But Mr. Tenet's friends said he had been surprised when Mr. Cheney and Ms. Rice, appearing on Sunday talk shows last September, fingered him in justifying Mr. Bush's decision to go to war with Iraq.

 

    In the interview on "Meet the Press," Mr. Cheney said: "George Tenet sat in the Oval Office and the president of the United States asked him directly, he said, 'George, how good is the case against Saddam on weapons of mass destruction?' The director of the C.I.A. said, 'It's a slam dunk, Mr. President, it's a slam dunk.'"

 

    Mr. Cheney added, "That was the intelligence that was provided to us at the time, and based upon which we made a choice."

 

    Promotional materials for the book promise that Mr. Tenet will give the "real context" for that episode.

 

    One person who has read early drafts of the book said Mr. Tenet defended himself by carefully parsing the "slam dunk" comment: he said he was not telling Mr. Bush that there was rock-solid evidence that Mr. Hussein had chemical and biological weapons, only that the president could make a "slam dunk" case to the American public about these weapons programs.

 

    David L. Boren, the former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a longtime friend of Mr. Tenet, said it was Mr. Tenet's friends and former C.I.A. colleagues who urged him to write a book to balance the record.

 

    Mr. Boren said that in the weeks before the Iraq war, he warned Mr. Tenet that since he was not a member of Mr. Bush's closest circle of advisers, the White House would make him the scapegoat if things went badly in Iraq.

 

    "I told him they had your name circled if anything goes wrong," recalled Mr. Boren, who is now president of the University of Oklahoma.

 

    Tina Andreadis, a spokeswoman for HarperCollins, declined to discuss the book in detail. People who have read parts of the manuscript said it would span Mr. Tenet's career at the C.I.A., with a particular focus on the agency's warnings about Al Qaeda and operations in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks.

 

    One publisher who met with Mr. Tenet to discuss publishing the book said he had vowed to defend the assessments of C.I.A. analysts about Iraq.

 

    "He wanted everybody to know that he felt the portrayal was inaccurate," the publisher said. "He defended the agency. He was very emotional. This was not a mea culpa."

 

    Mr. Tenet has been applauded for sounding an early alarm about the threat from Osama bin Laden and his network. Yet his exchanges with the Sept. 11 commission left some commission staff members puzzled about his recollection of details of certain crucial decisions.

 

    "He has a lot to be proud of and a lot he will want to explain," said Philip D. Zelikow, who was executive director of the Sept. 11 commission and more recently a counselor to Ms. Rice. "If he felt that he was constrained in his ability to tell the full story when he was a member of the Clinton or Bush administrations, then people like me should wait patiently and read what he has to say now before offering further judgments."

 

    According to HarperCollins's original news release for the book: "Tenet will offer a gripping narration of the run-up to the war in Iraq. Saddam Hussein's Iraq was an unusual foe: Never before had a rogue nation tried so hard to convince the world that it had WMD."

 

    A string of carefully planned news media appearances to promote the book has been in place for months. HarperCollins has decided to release it on a Monday, rather than a Tuesday, when most books are released, to coincide with a scheduled Sunday evening appearance by Mr. Tenet on "60 Minutes" on CBS.

 

    The Crown Publishing Group first signed a book contract with Mr. Tenet in December 2004 for a reported $4 million, but the contract was dissolved a few months later when Mr. Tenet hedged on a delivery date.

 

    The publisher who met with Mr. Tenet said he had spoken extensively about the toll that the Iraq war had taken on his family, particularly on his son, who was "teased mercilessly" at school. "Other kids would yell, 'Your dad's a murderer!' and that kind of thing," the publisher recalled him saying.

 

    For Mr. Tenet, the downside of waiting so long to emerge with his own account is that other books by journalists and former officials have already shaped public opinion about his role in the Iraq war, and some of Mr. Tenet's friends fear that his account may be arriving too late.

 

    Other allies said that while his book would give a fresh perspective, it would still be one account among many competing interpretations of the events of the past five years.

 

    "Because of the nature of intelligence work, you can never totally set the record straight," said former Senator Bob Kerrey, a member of the Sept. 11 commission who has known Mr. Tenet since the two worked together on the Senate Intelligence Committee. "The record is always going to be a little bit murky."

 

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/021307D.shtml

Media fall for pro-Israel hate group's "Terror Free Oil"

Ali Abunimah,

Ali Abunimah is the co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse

 

The Electronic Intifada, 13 February 2007

 

see photos here : http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6551.shtml

 

In recent days, National Public Radio and the BBC have been among the countless media outlets to give prominent publicity to an organization calling itself "Terror Free Oil," (TFO) which claims to have established gasoline filling stations in several US cities, that do not sell oil from the Middle East.

 

Much of the coverage has read like a press release for the organization, or has treated it as a cute feature story, accepting at face value the claims made by its spokesman. The fundamentally racist nature of the claims TFO makes, and the long history of anti-Muslim statements and activities of its founder have been totally ignored.

 

The Terror-Free Oil Initiative claims on its website that it is "dedicated to encouraging Americans to buy gasoline that originated from countries that do not export or finance terrorism." It states, "We educate the public by promoting those companies that acquire their crude oil supply from nations outside the Middle East and by exposing those companies that do not."

 

Yet it does not specify anywhere which countries these are more precisely than the "Middle East," nor how buying oil from them supports terrorism.

 

The initiative's founders view all the people of the Middle East and their governments as supporters of terrorism. Emphasizing this, the website includes slogans that gas station owners are encouraged to display, such as "Our oil does not come from the Middle East, Your dollars do NOT finance terrorism."

 

Another, demonstrating the indiscriminate and racially-based nature of the campaign, states "This Gas Station is part of Terror Free Oil Initiative - We do not purchase our oil from countries whose regimes or populations are hostile to the United States."

 

Non Middle East countries whose "regimes or populations" American nationalists view as hostile to the United States, such as Venezuela are not targeted by the initiative. The TFO logo features the Twin Towers and an outline of the Pentagon with the flight numbers of the aircraft that were crashed into them by hijackers on September 11, 2001.

 

Other TFO propaganda features the image of Osama Bin Laden with his face crossed out, reinforcing the message that the entire population of the Middle East should be viewed as indistinguishable from Bin Laden. In short, the Terror Free Oil Initiative is as blatantly racist as somebody opening a "Usury Free Bank" and proclaiming "We don't lend Jewish money."

 

Terror Free Oil's claims are also economic nonsense. It has been forced to admit that its suppliers do in fact buy oil originating in Middle East countries. As oil is a fungible commodity, TFO cannot do anything to reduce income to Middle East oil exporters, unless it reduces the total amount of oil consumed globally.

 

It takes only moments to discover that TFO spokesman Joe Kaufman is founder of a group called "Americans Against Hate," whose main agenda appears to be support for the Israeli extremist right. Its main product appears to be a relentless stream of statements claiming that mainstream American Muslim organizations are terrorist fronts, and labeling anyone who dares to criticise Israel a "radical Islamist" or supporter of terrorism. The whole "Terror Free Oil Initiative" and website appear to be little more than a ploy to steer people towards Americans Against Hate, whose Coral Springs, Florida mailbox serves as the corporate address for both organizations.

 

In a January 4 article on the extreme right-wing website Frontpagemag.com, Kaufman claimed that newly elected Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison "carried much radical Islamist baggage," and he refers to American Muslim groups as "America's live-in enemies." Last December, Kaufman called California Senator Barbara Boxer a "senator for terror" because she bestowed a public service award on a Muslim American community activist who had previously criticized Israeli human rights abuses. Under pressure from Kaufman's organization, Boxer, a staunch supporter of Israel, withdrew the award. ("Sen. Boxer rescinds award to Islamic activist," Los Angeles Times, 6 January 2007).

 

The "Terror Free Oil" initiative was a successful, headline-grabbing stunt by a group of unabashed racists and demogogues. Would it have succeeded in getting so much benign and uncritical attention if its hateful message had been targeted at any other population?

 

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6551.shtml

Met inquiry into Galloway recommended

David Leigh and Rob Evans

The Guardian     Wednesday February 14, 2007

Allegations that George Galloway may have broken UN sanctions by receiving oil money from Saddam Hussein have been sent to Scotland Yard by the Serious Fraud Office. The office has recommended that police open an investigation, and talks are currently taking place with the Crown Prosecution Service.

 

After deliberating for a year, the SFO has decided that the Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, who has denied any impropriety, will not be investigated on separate offence of corruption.

 

To prosecute for sanctions-busting, the police would have to find evidence that Mr Galloway knew that money earned from oil sales was being diverted to pay for his political campaigning. Under the UN sanctions, oil sales were only permitted for approved humanitarian purposes.

 

Scotland Yard said yesterday: "The Metropolitan police is in discussions with the Crown Prosecution Service and is seeking its advice. We are considering a request to investigate the matter. We are not investigating at this time." A spokesman for Mr Galloway dismissed the move. "This story is so old, so hoary, so repetitive that it could be on the TV programme Life on Mars. George has been exonerated repeatedly. The SFO must have handed a blank sheet of paper to Scotland Yard. It is a waste of public servants' time."

 

The Volcker report, a 2005 US-backed investigation into abuses of the UN oil-for-food programme, accused Mr Galloway of receiving illicit payments in return for campaigning for the sanctions on Iraq to be lifted. Similar accusations were made by a congressional committee chaired by US Republican senator Norm Coleman.

 

Mr Galloway was a vocal critic of the sanctions in the 1990s through his campaign, the Mariam Appeal. Large donations came from a Jordanian businessman, Fawaz Zureikat.

 

The Volcker report said Mr Zureikat was given $740,000 (£380,000) by Taurus Petroleum, an oil company which had acquired Iraqi shipments. He then distributed the cash in several ways, the report said, some of it as a kickback to the Saddam's regime.

 

He donated $340,000 to the Mariam Appeal, and another $150,000 allegedly went to a bank account controlled by Mr Galloway's then wife, Amineh Abu Zayyad. The Volcker report claimed that Iraq allocated the selling-rights to 18m barrels of oil "to support Mr Galloway's campaign against the sanctions".

 

Mr Galloway has denied that he asked for these consignments, and says that he never received financial support from Saddam's regime.

 

He says he did not know whether Mr Zureikat was passing kickbacks to Baghdad or whether the Jordanian businessman's donation to the Mariam Appeal came from oil sales made under the oil-for-food programme.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/oil/story/0,,2012540,00.html

Fatah source: Abbas wants Mohammed Dahlan as deputy PM

(see also Who is Mohammad Dahlan? below)

 

By Avi Isscharoff, Haaretz Correspondent

 

Haaretz   14/02/2007

A senior figure in Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement said Wednesday that the Palestinian Authority Chairman wants party strongman Mohammed Dahlan to serve as deputy prime minister in a new unity government headed by Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas.

 

Dahlan, an advisor to late PA chairman Yasser Arafat, is viewed as Fatah's most senior figure in the generally Hamas-dominated Gaza Strip.

 

Haniyeh said Tuesday that it was "too early to talk about the resignation of the [Hamas-run] Palestinian government" in the context of the Mecca agreement on a Palestinian unity government.

 

The prime minister was speaking as he arrived at the PLO office in the Gaza Strip, where he was meeting with representatives of other Palestinian factions.

 

Haniyeh had been slated to submit his resignation on Wednesday, according to a statement made Monday by his political adviser, Ahmed Yusuf.

 

But Palestinian sources said Haniyeh is worried that Abbas will try to prevent him from being appointed head of the unity government, due to heavy Israeli and American pressure to get the new government to recognize Israel.

 

It appears that Haniyeh is waiting for Abbas to make an official announcement assigning Haniyeh the task of forming a new government. Abbas is expected to make the announcement Thursday.

 

Meanwhile, Abbas's adviser, Nabil Amar, said that top European Union officials with whom he met recently in Brussels viewed the Mecca agreement in a positive light but requested more time to examine the new situation.

 

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=825609&contrassID=1&subContrassID=0&sbSubContrassID=0

 

ALSO READ....................

 

Who is Mohammad Dahlan?

Arjan El Fassed,

 

The Electronic Intifada,               20 December 2006

 

Some have called Mohammad Dahlan the Palestinian Ahmad Chalabi, because he reportedly negotiated with the US and Israel about taking control of Gaza after the August 2005 disengagement plan. In April 2002 testifying before the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer said he had offered control of the Gaza Strip to Dahlan. In exchange, Dahlan, who had control of the most significant military force on the Gaza Strip, would be obligated to ensure complete quiet along the border.[1] He is believed to have drawn up an early agreement at a January 1994 meeting in Rome with senior Israeli military and Shin Bet officials to contain Hamas, and was actively involved in subsequent negotiations with the Israelis.[2]

 

Today, Dahlan has become the face of one side of Fatah as violence increased between Hamas and Fatah. In the past week he has made his way back into Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas' inner circle. Last week, Hamas accused Dahlan of planning an attempted assassination of prime minister Ismail Haniya of the Hamas movement. Haniya was returning from a Middle East tour which raised badly needed funds for Palestinians under occupation, and obtained a promise from the Syrian government to release all Palestinians in its jails, when chaos ensued. The situation at the Egypt-Gaza border crossing was tense as it had not been open long enough for the thousands of people waiting on both sides to pass. The Israelis closed the border when Haniya first tried to enter as he was bringing in funds, prohibited under the US-led economic and political blockade imposed after Hamas won the parliamentary elections in January.

 

Dahlan began a tour of Palestinian towns this week to rally support for Fatah, but it was not a spectacular success. On December 17, while Dahlan toured Jenin refugee camp, gunmen fired in the air over his convoy, shouting at him until he made a hasty exit. He blamed Hamas for sparking the killing of three children in Gaza City and said that Hamas "does not have any political program, leaving the Palestinian people in the predicament they have lived through since this government took responsibility."

 

Meanwhile the United States has accelerated its arms transfers to Fatah, via Israel. Dahlan is now in command of the armed campaign against Hamas from presidential headquarters in Ramallah.

 

Dahlan was a founding member of Shabiba, the youth association of Fatah. In 1994, Dahlan headed the notorious Preventive Security Forces in Gaza. He is known to have good connections with the Egyptian leadership and the US administration, through his connections with the CIA. Dahlan built up a force of at least 20,000 men and received help from CIA officials to train them. Jibril Rajoub, another Fatah strongman, is Dahlan's sworn rival. Dahlan and Rajoub were both jailed by Israel during the first Intifada. Under Oslo they became heads of the Preventive Security Services in Gaza and the West Bank respectively. At that time they were both viewed as pragmatists, representative of a new generation of Palestinians who could live with Israel.

 

Both Dahlan and Rajoub were implicated in financial scandals and human rights violations. Dahlan worked together with Israeli authorities to crack down on opposition groups, most notably Hamas, arresting thousands of members. Dahlan was in command when his Preventive Security Forces arbitrary arrest hundreds of Palestinians. The first violent clashes between his forces and demonstrators erupted on November 18, 1994.The toll of at least fifteen dead and hundreds wounded raised troubling questions about his troops.

 

Throughout the years, Dahlan's forces were involved in acts of violence and intimidation against critics, journalists and members of opposition groups, primarily from Hamas, imprisoning them without formal charges for weeks or months at a time. A number of prisoners died under suspicious circumstances during or after interrogation by Dahlan's forces.[3]

 

In 1996, Dahlan's troops were involved in mass arbitrary arrests of opponents of Fatah. In the aftermath of the February-March suicide bombings in Israel, an estimated 2,000 people were rounded up, often arbitrarily. Most of those detained were never charged with a criminal offense or put on trial. Torture and ill-treatment by his forces occurred regularly during interrogation and led to a number of deaths.

 

In 2000, Dahlan participated in the Camp David negotiations and Israeli leaders saw him as someone they could do business with. As head of one of the main Palestinian security organisations, Mr Dahlan also negotiated with Israeli officials to try to arrange a ceasefire several times after the most recent Intifada erupted in September 2000. With the beginning of the second intifada, Dahlan claimed that he was unable to stop the activities of such militant groups as Hamas.

 

In 2001 he angered the late Palestinian president Yasir Arafat by expressing his dissatisfaction over the lack of a coherent policy during the current uprising. Dahlan resigned in June 2002 over disagreements with Arafat to reform the Palestinian Authority. He attempted to gather support for an electoral challenge to Arafat, but stopped, when the Bush administration demanded a change in PA leadership in July of the same year. Before his resignation from the PA in June 2002, Dahlan was a frequent member on negotiating teams for security issues.

 

In March and April 2002, Dahlan was one of the "Gang of Five" who lead the PA during the siege of Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah. Although Arafat retained power and named Dahlan as National Security Advisor in July 2002, Dahlan resigned three months later complaining of lack of authority and organization in the Palestinian Authority. Against Arafat's wishes, Mahmoud Abbas, then serving as prime minister, appointed Dahlan as Interior Minister, but when Abbas resigned, Dahlan was left outside the newly formed cabinet.

 

After being left out of the new Palestinian Authority cabinet, Dahlan began gathering support from low-level Fatah officials and former Preventive Security Service officers in response to a perceived lack of democratic reforms among Fatah leaders.

 

In 2004, Dahlan was the driving force behind week-long unrests in Gaza following the appointment of Yasser Arafat's nephew Mousa Arafat, widely accused of corruption, as head of Gaza police forces. Some thought this appointmnt was a deliberate step to weaken Dahlan's position before the disengagement process in the Gaza Strip and sparked massive protests.

 

Dahlan returned to the political forefront and security arena this week. He appeared in a meeting with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Jericho, and meetings with the European Union's Javier Solana and the German Foreign Affairs Minister. It seems that for whatever reason, world leaders think Dahlan is the right person for them to deal with.

 

Arjan El Fassed is a cofounder of The Electronic Intifada

 

Footnotes

 

[1] Ha'aretz, Gideon Alon (30 Apr 2002)
[2] Middle East International, 520.
[3] Annual reports of Palestinian Independent Commission for Citizens' Rights (PICCR); various reports from Addameer, PCHR and LAW; Palestinian Self-Rule Areas: Human Rights under the Palestinian Authority, Human Rights Watch (September 1997); Annual reports Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (1994, 1995, 1996).

 

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6275.shtml

Top US general doubts Iran proof

BBC   Wednesday, 14 February 2007

 

The most senior US military officer has said there is no proof the Iranian government has directly armed Shia groups fighting in Iraq.

 

Gen Peter Pace, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, appeared to contradict claims made by US officers in Iraq.

 

The US presented evidence this week it said proved the "highest levels" of Iran's government were supplying arms used by Shia militants in Iraq.

 

Gen Pace said all it proved was "things made in Iran" are being used in Iraq.

 

"We know that the explosively formed projectiles are manufactured in Iran," Gen Pace said while visiting Australia.

 

"But I would not say by what I know that the Iranian government clearly knows or is complicit."

 

In the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, Gen Pace repeated his assertions.

 

"What [the evidence] does say is that things made in Iran are being used in Iraq to kill coalition soldiers."

 

more http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6360469.stm

UK protesters try to hurt Israeli flower sales

ELLIS WEINTRAUB

 

LAURA RHEINHEIMER,

 

 THE JERUSALEM POST  Feb. 13, 2007

To hurt the high-volume sales of Israeli flowers on Valentine's Day in the United Kingdom, three anti-Israel protesters chained themselves to a fence over the weekend outside the distribution site of Carmel-Agrexco in Middlesex. Police arrested them.

 

The UK-based Boycott Israeli Goods Campaign launched the protest on Saturday as part of a five-day campaign against the sale of Israeli flowers.

 

According to Abraham Daniel, director of the Flower Growers' Association in Israel, Valentine's Day should bring in NIS 11.5 million in sales. This amounts to 10 percent of the NIS 115m. Israel expects to export to England this year.

 

The boycott group hopes to diminish these sales, according to group spokesman Tom Hayes. They aim to damage Carmel-Agrexco's reputation, negatively impact profits and lobby supermarkets to not sell Israeli flowers, he said.

 

No stores have agreed to the boycott yet, Hayes told The Jerusalem Post in a telephone interview. But his group remained in contact with several stores, he added.

 

Saturday afternoon, some 90 demonstrators blocked trucks from leaving Carmel-Agrexco's Middlesex site. According to Amos Or, Agrexco-UK's general manager, the protest lasted from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. and caused a 30-minute delay.

 

"It's a small, noisy group, but the police were well prepared," he told the Post. Most of the trucks carried Coral strawberries grown by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, he added.

 

But according to Hayes, the protesters stopped operations for the whole afternoon. His said his group opposed all Israeli companies, but had specifically targeted those with farms in the Jordan Valley, believing they exploit cheap Palestinian labor. He said Palestinians could not develop their own farms in the area because of security checkpoints.

 

Hayes said his group did not distinguish between flowers grown in the Jordan Valley with those grown elsewhere in Israel.

 

"We are the Boycott Israeli Goods Campaign, so we are against all Israeli flowers," he said.

 

Hayes said his group was against Agrexco for several reasons: It is partially owned by the Israeli government, it operates farms on settlements in the Jordan Valley "at the Palestinians' expense," and it "profits from the apartheid."

 

He said he based his information on a recent visit to Israel in which he met with workers in the Jordan Valley.

 

Daniel said only 1%-2% of the flowers grown in the Jordan Valley were exported.

 

"Most of the flowers from the Jordan Valley are sold in local markets," he said.

 

Jordan Valley Regional Council head Dubi Tal said although Palestinians needed permission to enter the area, they were free to work wherever they want. There were "no complaints from outside [organizations] or the Palestinian side," he said. Palestinians were free to establish farms in the valley, he added.

 

According to B'Tselem spokeswoman Sarit Michaeli, only Palestinians who are prepared to work on a settlement in the Jordan Valley or those who live there may enter the area.

 

Michaeli said Palestinians from outside the Jordan Valley sometimes encountered problems accessing land they own in the region.

 

According Atzmon Meltzer, the general manager of a flower distributor called Aviv, the Jordan Valley exports only 5% of Israel's total flower exports. Israel grows most of its flowers in the Arava, around Beersheba, the North and the Jezreel Valley, he said. Aviv and a European company hope to buy Agrexco from the government, he added.

 

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1170359844307&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter

Guantanamo comes to Morocco for film shoot by South African Gavin Hood

Gavin Hood uses 16th century Marrakesh palace as backdrop for his political film 'Rendition'.

 

Middle East Online   2007-02-13

RABAT - A 16th century Marrakesh palace has for the past three weeks been transformed into the infamous American prison camp in Guantanamo Bay to set the scene for a movie being shot there, Moroccan media reported on Tuesday.

South African director Gavin Hood is using the castle as a backdrop for his political "Rendition", starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Meryl Streep, Reese Witherspoon and Peter Sarsgaard.

The film tells the tale of a CIA analyst in Cairo who witnesses an unorthodox interrogation of an Egyptian chemical engineer suspected of being a terrorist.

The El Badia palace has, according to a set worker quoted by Moroccan daily Aujord'hui, been completely transformed to resemble Guantanamo, even featuring Moroccans walking around in the American camp's notorious orange jumpsuits.

The Moroccan part of the shoot is scheduled to last for eight weeks, and will include a scene shot in the seaside town of Essaouira, formerly known as Mogador.

Hood will also take his cast to South Africa and the United States to shoot other scenes for the film.

 

http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=19550

Video : Web of Deceit

Saddam Hussein - The Trial You'll Never See

 

Made for European television this film was never broadcast in North America.

 

Barry Lando and Michel Despratx's documentary

 

The horrifying truth is the extent to which we in the west have been complicit. Check out Lando's new book "Web of Deceit" and his blog at http://barrylando.com/

 

Video here http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17053.htm