National Guard under fire for anti-Islam display

Posted on Mon, Jul. 11, 2005

National Guard under fire for anti-Islam display

By Dion Nissenbaum
Mercury News Sacramento Bureau

SACRAMENTO - Already under scrutiny for setting up a controversial new intelligence unit and keeping tabs on a Mother's Day anti-war protest, the California National Guard is taking new heat for an anti-Islamic flyer that was hanging in its Sacramento headquarters.

Islamic groups and anti-war activists criticized the Guard on Monday after learning that one Guard soldier had a historically suspect flyer touting World War I General John J. Pershing as a hero for executing Muslim terrorists with bullets dipped in pig's blood to deny them entry to heaven.

``Maybe it is time for this segment of history to repeat itself, maybe in Iraq?'' states the flyer that was posted outside a cubicle in the Guard's Civil Support Division. ``The question is, where do we find another Black Jack Pershing?''

The flyer, which has circulated since Sept. 11 as a hard-line tale for fighting Islamic terrorists, raised concerns for some activists about the mind-set of Guard soldiers.

``It's troubling to see a governmental organization dedicated to the security of our country promoting culturally and religiously insensitive ideas,'' said William Youmans, media relations manager for the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Santa Clara. ``It's very possible to combat terrorism without offending the cultural values of a major world religion.''

Initially, a Guard spokesman defended the flyer Monday as ``historically accurate,'' but called back later to say that it had been removed because of concerns raised by the activists.

``Evidently,'' said Lt. Col. Doug Hart, ``somebody didn't like it so they took it down.''

Below the Pershing tribute is a second flyer with the wings and tail of a bomber forming the legs of a peace sign with the slogan: Peace the old fashioned way. There's also a cartoon from a Web site known as www.stopislam.com that depicts a Red Crescent ambulance stuffed with weapons and a cartoon figure that looks like the late-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat unloading the cargo.

The flyers came to light after a group of anti-war activists were invited to tour the Guard headquarters last week to allay their concerns about a new intelligence unit that has been given wide latitude to set up new anti-terrorism projects in California.

State Sen. Joe Dunn is investigating the program, first reported last month by the Mercury News, as well as the Guard's monitoring of a Mother's Day anti-war rally near the State Capitol.

During the tour, CodePink activist Jackie Thomason snapped a quick photo of the display and said she was shocked to read the Pershing tribute.

``It makes it sound like what we are doing is some sort of religious war,'' said Thomason, who is also a volunteer on the GI Rights Hotline, a coalition of nonprofit groups that offers advice and help to soldiers.

The Pershing flyer recounts a tale -- which may have been embellished or entirely woven of legend -- that resurfaced after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. According to the tale, Pershing captured 50 Muslim extremists before World War I while stationed in the Philippines. He tied 49 of the men up, slaughtered two pigs in front of them, dipped bullets in the pig's blood and had the men executed, believing that by doing so they would doom the men to hell.

The extremists were then buried in pig's blood and parts while one survivor was set free to relate the horrifying tale. For the next 42 years, the flyer states, there were no Muslim terrorist attacks in the world.

Whether the story is true remains unclear. Pershing is said to have threatened to bury Philippine rebels in pig skins and splatter pig's blood on their houses, but some historians have been unable to verify the story of Pershing overseeing the controversial execution.

The Guard incident is not the first time the tale has raised a protest. Two years ago a Massachusetts state senator distributed the same story to colleagues and later apologized after Islamic groups voiced outrage.

Since Sept. 11, the United States has had to defend itself against several incidents in which the military used degrading efforts to humiliate Muslims, including forcing prisoners in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison to masturbate and smearing faux menstrual blood to get an inmate at Guantanamo Bay to talk. Most recently, a now-retracted report that guards at the island prison flushed a Koran down the toilet sparked deadly riots in Pakistan.

On Monday, Islamic, Arab-American and anti-war groups called the Pershing flyer reprehensible. They praised the Guard for taking the flyer down, but said more may need to be done to educate the citizen soldiers.

``Muslims are not our enemies,'' said Ruth Robertson, a member of Raging Grannies who saw the flyer. ``I'm sure some Muslims are members of the National Guard.''

Contact Dion Nissenbaum at dnissenbaum@mercurynews.com or (916) 441-4603.

Media Death Toll Still Mounting in Iraq

Media Death Toll Still Mounting in Iraq
by Aaron Glantz
July 12, 2005

t's time the U.S. military stopped shooting journalists.

In the last three weeks, American soldiers have killed at least four journalists in Iraq – each while the reporter was driving his car.

Two of the cases are especially telling.

There is the case of Yasser Salihee, an Iraqi correspondent for Knight Ridder newspapers. He was driving alone in his own West Baghdad neighborhood when an American sniper's bullet pierced his windshield and struck him in the head as he approached a U.S. military patrol.

Four days later, a news producer for Iraq's independent (that is, not controlled by the occupation) TV-station, al-Sharqiyah, was shot to death as he drove to his in-laws home in southern Baghdad. The Associated Press reports U.S. soldiers fired on his car 15 times when he failed to pull over for an American convoy.

Those killings, plus the shooting death of a Baghdad TV editor and a stringer for a Western news agency, bring the total number of journalists killed by U.S. forces in Iraq to 17, according to the International Federation of Journalists.

So much for freedom of speech and democracy.

Unembedded journalists in Iraq are also frequently arrested by the U.S. military. On June 17, the director of the daily newspaper al-Sabah (which is funded by U.S. taxpayers) was detained by American soldiers during one of the military's regular security sweeps. A week later, U.S. troops detained an Associated Press Television News cameraman in Fallujah. Both have since been released, but the situation in Iraq is hardly free. The most important Arab media outlet, al-Jazeera television, remains banned from Iraq.

Hearing these stories, I think about my own time as an unembedded journalist in Iraq. In six months reporting from the ground, I never once had a gun pointed at me by an "insurgent," but on two occasions I felt personally threatened by an American soldier's machine gun.

The first incident occurred at the beginning of the occupation. I had just arrived in Baghdad in a beat-up orange and white checkered taxi and was pulling up to a meeting at the al-Fanar hotel across the street from the mammoth Palestine Hotel, where many military contractors were staying. The soldier, who had to be younger than 20, was under orders to block all Iraqis from entering the hotel compound. When I got out of the car to explain that I was an American journalist, my brown hair and mustache giving me the appearance of a native, he cocked his gun before I spoke. Fortunately, my traveling companion was a blond. When the soldier saw my friend, disaster was averted.

A year later, when insurgents blew up the Lebanon Hotel in Baghdad, I faced death again. Rushing over to cover the explosion, I grabbed my camera and tape recorder. But when I lifted my camera to photograph an American soldier on top of a tank, he cocked his gun and screamed, "No photos! No journalists!"

What are we to make of all these stories? At the very least, the Pentagon owes journalists an explanation because to date, no American soldier has been punished for killing or arresting a reporter.

And the obvious: U.S. soldiers need to stop shooting journalists.

Links referenced within this article Yasser Salihee http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/12026482.htm shot to death http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=13884508

Find this article at: http://www.antiwar.com/glantz/?articleid=6622

Iraq suspects suffocate in heat

Iraq suspects suffocate in heat

Nine building workers have died in Iraq after being arrested on suspicion of insurgent activity and then left in a closed metal container.

Three men survived the ordeal, police sources said, despite being left for 14 hours in the burning Iraqi summer heat.

They had apparently been caught up in a firefight between US troops and Iraqi gunmen, and were detained after taking an injured colleague to hospital.

Police commandos face numerous claims that they abuse and torture detainees.

Meanwhile, gunmen have attacked an Iraqi army checkpoint north of Baghdad, killing at least nine soldiers.

Scorching heat

Police sources told the BBC that at least 12 men had been arrested on Sunday after they had taken a colleague to hospital in Ameriya with gunshot wounds.

A local resident, thinking they were insurgents, called the police, who sent commandos to arrest the men.

At about midday, they were put into a metal container and by nightfall eight prisoners were dead and three were in a critical condition.

The survivors were taken to a central Baghdad hospital where staff said a ninth man died.

The Iraqi capital suffers scorching heat during the summer months, with temperatures often reaching 50 degrees.

A doctor told the BBC that one of the survivors had said he had been given repeated electric shocks by the commandos.

The survivors were kept under police guard as they were treated and were taken away without being allowed to speak to journalists.

Recent UK press reports have alleged police commandos systematically torture and abuse detainees. The security forces themselves are the target of much of Iraq's insurgency violence.

Checkpoint ambush

Gunmen struck early on Monday at Iraqi army checkpoint in Khalis, near Baquba, about 65km (40 miles) north-east of the capital.

The raid began shortly after dawn and lasted more than 30 minutes, with gunmen using assault rifles, mortars and machine guns during the attack.

As reinforcements were sent to the scene a car bomb exploded, causing casualties among both soldiers and civilians. Nine soldiers were killed.

The BBC's Joe Floto in Baghdad says this kind of infantry-style assault by insurgents is uncommon, but it demonstrates their ability to gather in armed units and mount coordinated and relatively well-resourced attacks.

Two US marines were killed on Sunday during security operations in the town of Hit, 150 kilometres (90 miles) west of Baghdad, the US military has announced.

In Baghdad, relatives have buried a mother and eight of her children who were killed in their beds in the Baladiyat area on Sunday.

Neighbours said the victims - Shias, the youngest of whom was two years old - had all been shot in the head. The father, who slept outside the house that night, said he believed the attack had sectarian motives.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/4672433.stm

Published: 2005/07/11 14:14:50 GMT

© BBC MMV

Blair's responsibility

w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m
Last update - 11:02 11/07/2005
Blair's responsibility
By Akiva Eldar

The reaction of Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair proves that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's instincts - which led his ministers to make do with expressions of shock, condolence and concern over the convalescence of the victims of the explosions in England - did not mislead him. The global advice of Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the preaching of Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, did not make an impression on Blair. In an interview he gave the BBC he suddenly turned Israel from a partner to a common fate to a partner in blame. He declared that "the solution cannot only be security measures," and put promotion of peace in the Middle East in second place on the list of the deep-seated causes of terrorism, which we "must start to pull up by the roots."

Terror looks different from 10 Downing Street. A year ago, when Sharon visited there, Blair heard that the eradication of the terror organizations and the removal of Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat were a condition to any progress in the political channel. At the time, he was not in a rush to handle the Middle Eastern conflict, or the separation fence or the illegal outposts. He was concerned with the attacks against his soldiers in Iraq and with the attacks against him for abandoning them in a war that wasn't theirs. He was grateful to the guest who sent his people to tell the British journalists that the findings about the Iraqi weapons of destruction were "certified and genuine."

In late 2004, Blair stood in the White House and nodded his head when he heard another meaningless declaration by his partner to the war, U.S. President George W. Bush, regarding his willingness to work together with a Palestinian leadership that would be committed to the war against terror and to democratic reforms. Blair returned to London without Bush's consent to an international peace conference. The British leader, who is eating crow because of his support for the problematic U.S. war against Iraq, took back his proposal to appoint a high-ranking presidential envoy to promote the "road map" peace plan. He took it back and remained silent.

Six months ago, when Blair came to Jerusalem, Sharon did not have to make much effort to convince his guest that in our case, dealing with terror takes precedence over dealing with the conflict. He announced publicly and in front of a group of journalists that "there will be no successful peace negotiations without an end to terror." Haaretz reported that in closed talks, Blair was even more outspoken. He promised to tell the Palestinians that if the terror did not end, they could forget about assistance and political support. PA Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), who was then taking his first steps in the Muqata, picked up the gauntlet and came out strongly against the violent intifada. Blair, like the other European leaders, the patrons of the road map, aligned himself with the policy delineated by Bush: Quiet, we're disengaging.

The Al-Qaida attack on the United States erased the dividers between Palestinian terror, which is directed against the occupation, and Islamic terror, which is directed against Western culture. The situation has changed to such an extent that Bush and Sharon are preaching democracy to people who are living under the occupation of foreign armies. It's a shame that the message got through only after the disaster occurred at home. Hopefully, 7/7 will put an end to 9/11 and be the start of a proper campaign in the struggle against terror.


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Scores killed in Pakistan train crash

Pakistani villagers and rescuers gather
around the wreckage of three trains
following a crash in Ghotki.
Photograph: Aamir Qureshi/Getty

Agencies
Wednesday July 13, 2005

Three passenger trains collided in southern Pakistan early this morning, killing over 100 people, local police said.

The accident occurred at about 4am local time when a train sitting in a station near Ghotki, in the southern Sindh province, was hit by a second train. The collision caused several carriages to derail and spill over onto another track, where they were struck by the third train, causing further derailment.

"So far, we have taken out at least 120 bodies," police official Shabbir Billo told Reuters from near the scene of the crash.

"It is a very gruesome situation," police official Aga Mohammed Tahir told Associated Press.

"Rescue workers have started to pull the dead and injured out. There were many people inside and there are a lot of casualties."

Mr Tahir said that at least 13 train carriages derailed, and that the injured were being taken in ambulances and cars to area hospitals.

"They are being pulled out every minute," he said.

Ghotki is about 370 miles north-east of Karachi, in the remote Sindh province. Aziz said rescue teams had been dispatched, but that it could take some time for them to reach the site in force.

A second railway official, Sajjad Ahmed, said the train in the station was the Quetta Express, which was bringing passengers from the eastern city of Lahore to the south-western city of Quetta when it developed a technical problem.

Technicians were working on the train when it was hit by the Karachi Express, a night-coach passenger train from Lahore to the southern port city of Karachi.

The impact pushed three carriages onto an adjacent track, and they in turn were hit by the oncoming Tezgam Express, which was bringing people from Karachi north to Rawalpindi, near the capital.

Pakistan's railways are antiquated, and dozens of people have been killed in train accidents in recent years.

On March 5, five people were killed and 25 injured when a passenger train derailed in eastern Punjab province. In September 2003 a train hit packed bus in central Pakistan, killing at least 27 people and injuring six others.