Sheffield Iraq Newswire Archive

Next week and the first week in December speakers from Smash EDO will be touring the north of England and Scotland to tell people about the summer of resistance.
The following dates and venues are confirmed - please spread the word and join us if we are coming to you.

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An audio interview with Brian Haw originally recorded in December 2007. Also features a variety of images of Brian from over the years.

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This week we hear a pair of perspectives from earlier this month on US foreign policy, both from seasoned critics of the US Imperial Strategy. Firstly, Tariq Ali reviews the historical record, from the genocidal expansionism of US colonists up this month's exploits in Libya. Secondly, Noam Chomsky speaksin Syracuse, NY on "What Drives US Foreign Policy & What We Can Do To Change It".

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Here is a compilation of newspaper front pages announcing the launch of the war on Iraq (2003) and the war on Libya (2011).

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When the Bush administration went to war with Iraq in March 2003, the centerpiece of its justification for war was weapons of mass destruction. But its precise timing was driven, in large part, by the March 16 anniversary of the poison gas attack on the Iraqi Kurdish town of Halabja. On the fifth and twentieth anniversaries of these two tragic events, a study of the connection between them reveals a deliberate pattern of twisting and fabricating intelligence to meet policy objectives.

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WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy, by David Leigh and Luke Harding, published by the Guardian newspaper, is now being paraded as the “official” account of WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange. It is in reality a politically-motivated hatchet job aimed at discrediting Assange and facilitating his persecution by the Obama administration and its allies in the UK and Sweden.

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The 2nd of March 2011, marked the 20th anniversary of the 1991 Gulf War on Iraq....

"Hill & Knowlton, then the world's largest public relations firm, masterminded the Kuwaiti campaign to sell the 1991 Gulf War to the American public. By the time their lies were exposed TV newscasters were waxing ecstatic over the rockets' red glare, computerized 'smart-bombs' bursting in air, and 250,000 people were dead."

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Violence has again rocked the streets of the Iraqi city of Sulaymaniyah as Kurdish demonstrators continue to demand the ouster of the Kurdistan Regional Government.

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Protestors clashed with police and security guards during a picket of banks in Broadmead and Cabot Circus.

About 80 people, many wearing guy fawkes masks and others dressed as clowns, joined the rolling demonstration to highlight the banks’ involvement in the arms trade.

They gathered in Castle Park before marching down Union Street and into Broadmead, at first followed by two patrolling police officers.

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see  http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2011/01/472363.html

Marco Jacobs was an undercover officer in Brighton in 2004/5

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A previously secret US diplomatic cable from 1990, published by WikiLeaks on New Year’s Day  http://www.wikileaks.ch/cable/1990/07/90BAGHDAD4237.html , provides a detailed account of a crucial meeting between the US ambassador to Iraq and Saddam Hussein on the eve of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.

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Further allegations of war crimes committed by British troops in Iraq emerged in the High Court in London last week.

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Global Research is publishing what the "progressive" British press has refused to publish concerning the mysterious death of Dr. David Kelly.

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US Defense Secretary Robert Gates signaled Tuesday that the US is preparing to scrap a 2011 deadline for withdrawal of all US troops from Iraq, setting the stage for a permanent military occupation of the oil-rich country.

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The UK and US media smears described in Part 1  http://sheffield.indymedia.org.uk/2010/11/467342.html should be kept in mind when considering the gravity and importance of the latest WikiLeaks. In addition to thousands of previously unreported civilian killings, the leaks revealed more than 1,300 claims of torture by Iraqi police and military between 2005 and 2009. More than 180,000 people were detained at some point between 2004 and 2009, or one in 50 Iraqi males.

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“Journalists don't like WikiLeaks”, Hugo Rifkind notes in The Times, but “the people who comment online under articles do... Maybe you've noticed, and been wondering why. I certainly have.” (Hugo Rifkind Notebook, ‘Remind me. It's the red one I mustn't press, right?,’ The Times, October 26, 2010)

Rifkind is right. The internet has revealed a chasm separating the corporate media from readers and viewers. Previously, the divide was hidden by the simple fact that Rifkind’s journalists - described accurately by Peter Wilby as the “unskilled middle class” ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/dec/10/comment.pressandpublishing) - monopolised the means of mass communication. Dissent was restricted to a few lonely lines on the letter’s page, if that. Readers were free to vote with their notes and coins, of course. But in reality, when it comes to the mainstream media, the public has always been free to choose any colour it likes, so long as it’s corporate ‘black’. The internet is beginning to offer some brighter colours.

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