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Inferior News titles, 28/5-4/6/03 After my melodramatic announcement last week I was faced with the problem of how to keep a little archive of my own to cover the week's events. I thought the formula I had for the news mailing was quite good for the purpose. And then it seemed silly, if I was doing it for myself, not to send it to the group. However, this will still not be the same service as the previous one. In particular: 1. It will be shorter - which would be an improvement except that 2. It will be (even) less comprehensive 3. there will be a higher proportion of items already mailed to the group (no acknowledgement to the senders and I won't be chasing up missing URLs) 4. Less commentary 5. Less regular. It can't be counted on to appear every week. If anyone wants a regular weekly news summary I think the one produced by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty( http://www.rferl.org/iraq-report/) is about as good as one could want. I'm so glad the nefarious Iraqi/Al Qaida plot to blow up their offices in Prague didn't succeed. Many thanks to those who sent such supportive comments after the 'Last' mailing. I hope they don't all feel cheated that it has turned out to be not quite as final as I had thought. Inferior News, 28/5-4/6/03 (1) ADMINISTRATIVE PROBLEMS * Kirkuk Elects Kurdish Lawyer As Mayor * [Self rule] taken away in Al-Basrah * Tribal chiefs meet with coalition representatives * Iraqi 'Advisers' Stuck in Kuwait * Iraq's Food-Rationing System Resumes ['Due to shortages, however, Iraqis will not receive milk powder or salt during June and their ration of chickpeas will be cut, WFP spokeswoman Antonia Paradela said.'] * A new political model for Iraq [Article by by Gustavo de Aristegui on the possible future constitution of Iraq. Gustavo de Aristegui is a member of the International Advisory Board of the Washington based Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (www.liberationiraq.org/), together with Carl Bildt, Misha Glenny, Christopher Hitchens, Baroness Nicholson. The US advisory board is a galaxy of PNAC types so this may be an indication of thinking in those circles. If so, things are looking bad for A.Chalabi. There is a discussion of the settlement in Lebanon which somehow fails to mention Syria. And are there 'Chechen and Circassian minorities' in Jordan?] * Iraqis Say They Will Defy U.S. On Council Plan [Are these people smart enough to have figured out that the INC's prospects would be enhanced if they were to fall out publicly with the US?] INTERNATIONAL PROBLEMS * U.S. troops raid Palestinian mission in Baghdad * Iran repatriating Iraqi refugees * Brazilian appointed UN special representative to Iraq * Poland to deploy peacekeepers in July * U.S. Judge Says Iran Liable for 1983 Beirut Bombing [If Iran is liable to pay compensation for aiding the attack on US Marines in Beirut in October 1983, is the US liable to pay compensation for aiding the Iraqi chemical attacks on Iran which started at much the same time and continued to the end of the war? Not to mention the killing of 290 Iranians on board a civil airliner shot down by the USS Vincennes in 1988] * UN nuclear agency gets little access in Iraq * US, Arab leaders agree on need to fight terror, move ahead with peace roadmap [The spectacle of 'Arab leaders' - Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Aabia, Bahrain, Palestine - blandly associating themselves with George Bush's 'war on terror' after the conquest of Iraq beggars belief. And note President Bush's nuanced language: "Terror threatens my nation, terror threatens Arab states, terror threatens the state of Israel, terror threatens the emergence of a Palestinian state." He is careful not to suggest that Isreal's treatment of the Palestinians amounts to terror. And, perhaps the most important thing, the monstrous threat of 'a US-Middle East free trade area within a decade'] * Prince Hassan wary of Middle East free trade area CULTURAL PROBLEMS * Archeologists gather in Amman to address 'cultural catastrophe' in Iraq BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES * Entrepreneurs Plan Businesses in Iraq [with examples] AND, IN INFERIOR NEWS, 28/5-4/6/03 (2) HUMANITARIAN PROBLEMS * CARE warns of Iraqi chlorine shortage, risk of waterborne diseases * Ominous Increase in Cholera Cases in Iraq's Basra * Behind the victory, a power struggle that drains life from a weary people [Detailed account of medical problems in Khalis, a small, provincial capital about 50 miles north of Baghdad] * At Death's Door [Very important work of Marla Ruzicka, doing house to house search to obtain figures for the civilian dead. Includes account of a wartime massacre in Rashidiya, a small farm town on the banks of the Tigris River. And website address: www.iraqvictimsfund.org] * Oxfam's Iraq crisis update SOCIAL PROBLEMS * People's anger, demonstrations in Baghdad, al-Anbar people prepare for martyrdom operations [Trouble in city of Hait, north of Baghdad: 'News reports said that citizens in the city blew up the police center and the center of the local governor, using more than 20 mortars in revenge of certain police members who collaborated with the American soldiers and provided them with information about the citizens of the city.'] * Iraqis revolt in northern Iraqi town after weapons search * Baghdad daily conducts public opinion poll ['62 percent of respondents said they opposed the war prior to its outbreak but 77 percent said they favored it after liberation.' The daily in question is an organ of the INC] * Real estate is explosive issue in Iraq [Land disputes in Domiz. Kurds try to expel Arabs who claim legal title and have proof that Kurdish landowners had been compensated by the Iraqi government. US intervenes on side of Arabs. Compromise. Arabs can sell their lands (and are being - er - encouraged to do so) but only to Kurds] * Clash of cultures fuels low-level war of increasing animosity [With account of US murder of three teenagers at a boisterous wedding ceremony and other such incidents] * Iraqis protest against new British ruler in Basra * Iraqi bandits attempt to ambush MP's convoy [Ann Clwyd has an original take on the situation: '"There is such normality you can't believe there has been a war," she said.'] INFERIOR NEWS, 28/5-4/6/03 (3) PROBLEMS WITH THE PRETEXT * CIA opens report on Iraq trailers [Am I naive in thinking that sooner than scrubbing the trailers down to remove all traces of anthrax or whatever, it would have been easier just to have blown them up?] * WMD just a convenient excuse for war, admits Wolfowitz * Vanishing Agents: Did Iraq really have weapons of mass destruction? [Extract giving reflections on the trailers. The article goes on to assert that President Hussein 'had such weapons as late as 1995 (his son-in-law told us where they were, whereupon the U.N. inspectors of the day went and destroyed them)' My impression was that all that had been revealed was documentation relating to the earlier programmes] * Straw, Powell had serious doubts over their Iraqi weapons claims - Secret transcript revealed [The 'Waldorf transcripts'. All still a bit anonymous nudge nudge wink wink for my liking, and The Guardian was subsequently obliged to admit the meeting didn't take place in the Waldorf] * U.S. Strategy Shifts in Iraq Weapons Hunt [Some more details on the Iraq Survey Team under Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton. And G.Bush insists that a couple of dodgy trailers is all they need to justify the war] * The lies that led us into war ... [Glen Rangwala: 'There is no UN report after 1994 that claims that Iraq continued to possess weapons of mass destruction.'] PROBLEMS WITH THE PAST * Former regime members captured * Remember Sardasht [in Iran. Iraq's first chemical weapons attack against civilians] * Saddam bunker targeted on opening night of Iraq war never existed ‹ report * Saddam Hussein's sudden fall: what happened [Interview on the process by which the Iraqi army was sabotaged. If we accept this account then a very central role was played by the Iraqi exile opposition. If this was the case, given what they're like, we'd expect them to be boasting a bit more about it. But the story bears an uncomfortable resemblance to French tales of 'Fifth Columnist' sabotage after the debacle of 1940 ...] * Iraqis outraged at release of tribal leader linked to thousands of deaths [Mohammed Jawad An Neifus, held to be responsible for the deaths of thousands of Shiites buried in mass graves at Mahawil] * Revealed: the cluster bombs that litter Iraq [Map prepared by joint US/UK military survey team, obtained by the Observer] * Gory revelations stun Iraqis [People living in Iraq begin to rise to the heights of knowledge about their own country which have long been enjoyed in the Western World. Note the recent emails to the list on this article by Elga Sutter] MILITARY PROBLEMS * U.S. considers more deployments around Baghdad [Extract on killing of US soldier North of Baghdad, Thursday 29th May] * Centcom's new Iraq weapons policy accused of favoritism * U.S. casualties prompt Iraq security crackdown [Recent (29th & 30th May) incidents of attacks on US troops in Ba'qubah, Mosul and Baghdad] * U.S. soldier wounded in Baghdad firefight _______________________________________________ Sent via the discussion list of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To unsubscribe, visit http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-discuss To contact the list manager, email casi-discuss-admin@lists.casi.org.uk All postings are archived on CASI's website: http://www.casi.org.uk