Working on this new server in php7...
imc indymedia

Los Angeles Indymedia : Activist News

white themeblack themered themetheme help
About Us Contact Us Calendar Publish RSS
Features
• latest news
• best of news
• syndication
• commentary


KILLRADIO

VozMob

ABCF LA

A-Infos Radio

Indymedia On Air

Dope-X-Resistance-LA List

LAAMN List




IMC Network:

Original Cities

www.indymedia.org africa: ambazonia canarias estrecho / madiaq kenya nigeria south africa canada: hamilton london, ontario maritimes montreal ontario ottawa quebec thunder bay vancouver victoria windsor winnipeg east asia: burma jakarta japan korea manila qc europe: abruzzo alacant andorra antwerpen armenia athens austria barcelona belarus belgium belgrade bristol brussels bulgaria calabria croatia cyprus emilia-romagna estrecho / madiaq euskal herria galiza germany grenoble hungary ireland istanbul italy la plana liege liguria lille linksunten lombardia london madrid malta marseille nantes napoli netherlands nice northern england norway oost-vlaanderen paris/ÃŽle-de-france patras piemonte poland portugal roma romania russia saint-petersburg scotland sverige switzerland thessaloniki torun toscana toulouse ukraine united kingdom valencia latin america: argentina bolivia chiapas chile chile sur cmi brasil colombia ecuador mexico peru puerto rico qollasuyu rosario santiago tijuana uruguay valparaiso venezuela venezuela oceania: adelaide aotearoa brisbane burma darwin jakarta manila melbourne perth qc sydney south asia: india mumbai united states: arizona arkansas asheville atlanta austin baltimore big muddy binghamton boston buffalo charlottesville chicago cleveland colorado columbus dc hawaii houston hudson mohawk kansas city la madison maine miami michigan milwaukee minneapolis/st. paul new hampshire new jersey new mexico new orleans north carolina north texas nyc oklahoma philadelphia pittsburgh portland richmond rochester rogue valley saint louis san diego san francisco san francisco bay area santa barbara santa cruz, ca sarasota seattle tampa bay tennessee urbana-champaign vermont western mass worcester west asia: armenia beirut israel palestine process: fbi/legal updates mailing lists process & imc docs tech volunteer projects: print radio satellite tv video regions: oceania united states topics: biotech

Surviving Cities

www.indymedia.org africa: canada: quebec east asia: japan europe: athens barcelona belgium bristol brussels cyprus germany grenoble ireland istanbul lille linksunten nantes netherlands norway portugal united kingdom latin america: argentina cmi brasil rosario oceania: aotearoa united states: austin big muddy binghamton boston chicago columbus la michigan nyc portland rochester saint louis san diego san francisco bay area santa cruz, ca tennessee urbana-champaign worcester west asia: palestine process: fbi/legal updates process & imc docs projects: radio satellite tv
printable version - js reader version - view hidden posts - tags and related articles


View article without comments

No to Falluja "cover up"

by jamie Friday, Nov. 12, 2004 at 6:55 AM

Dear friends, Are you wondering why/how the reports from Falluja have become so bland? Please read these frightening reports emerging from Falluja, consider sharing them with others, and take action to stop these horrors. jamie

Dear friends,

Are you wondering why/how the reports from Falluja have become so bland?

Please read these frightening reports emerging from Falluja, consider sharing them with others, and take action to stop these horrors. jamie

-----

US Covering up Civilian Casualty Count By Destroying Hospitals
Concerned American 11 Nov 2004 03:45 GMT
The US has destroyed or occupied every hospital in Falluja prior to their unprecedented assult. This is a violation of international war crimes laws, and will result in increasing the civilian casualty count dramatically. Worse still, they targetted those hospitals intentionally to prevent word from getting out about what they are doing there.
The US bombed one hospital in Falluja to the ground over the weekend. Then we seized the main hospital, removed all 50 doctors, and replaced them with 4 new doctors. According to Al Jazeera, and one BBC reporter, Iraqis are not being allowed into the hospital unless they are wearing the uniform of
the Iraqi military. Yesterday we bombed the only remaining medical center in the city. We have no specific information about how many civilians were in the hospital and the clinic that we blew up, but presumably hundreds or maybe thousands. All three of these medical sites were reportedly overflowing with a combination of volunteers, patients crammed into every available corner and the street out front, doctors, and staff when they were bombed.

Blowing up a large, urban, civilian hospital while it is crammed full of innocent people clearly meets any definition of a war crime. Likewise, occupying a civilian hospital and preventing civilian access is specifically forbidden under the fourth geneva convention. The general in charge of the operation gave the following as the reason that these hospitals were not protected targets- they were identified as sources of anti-American propaganda. What he means by anti-American propaganda is that, like the UN, CARE, the Red Cross and the Lancet Institute, the hospitals had been reporting numbers of civilians killed by the US to the international media that are higher than the numbers that the military acknowledges. We blew up the hospitals because we didn't want the world to know how many civilians we were going to be killing in Falluja, and they were the only institutional source for that information that the outside world has in Falluja right now. All of the other organizations have been locked out, or have left out of concerns over the safety of their staff. Now, the only institutional source of civilian casualty counts in Falluja is the US military. The hospitals were public relations targets.

So, we no longer have accurate numbers for civilian casualties in Falluja, but Al Jazeera and the BBC each have one brave reporter inside the city. They can't provide us statistics, but they do provide anecdotal information. Stories about parents holding their children for 8 hours while they died in their arms after a bomb was dropped next door, unable to even attempt to seek medical attention, a BBC reporter that saw dozens of families killed before he decided that it was too dangerous to go outside, etc. I think that it is safe to say that the numbers will include thousands of innocent civilians. Some anecdotal information says that the majority of buildings in the city have been destroyed already. Even an embedded CNN reporter claimed that virtually every building that she had seen was either completely destroyed or seriously damaged by bombing. If that is true, the civilian casualties will be in the tens of thousands over the course of just a few days. But, because of the military's careful move to shut down the channels of information, we will never know the actual numbers.

-----

US media and liberal establishment: accomplices in the assault on Fallujah
By: WSWS on: 10.11.2004 [07:01 ] (129 reads)





(10999 bytes)

Statement of the World Socialist Web Site editorial board

9 November 2004

A murderous operation is under way in Fallujah and the entire media and political establishment in the US is an accomplice in the crime. The unfolding massacre in the Iraqi city has failed to elicit an outcry, or even significant questioning of the assault, from these circles.

No editorialist at a major newspaper or television news commentator has even hinted at moral qualms over the American onslaught. Not one columnist at the New York Times or Washington Post thinks Fallujah worth mentioning. Last week’s Democratic Party presidential hopeful hasn’t a word to say.

This universal complicity is the symptom of a terminal malaise. The upper echelons of American society are hopelessly corrupted and morally decayed.

Even as thousands of marines poured into Fallujah in an attempt to eradicate the Iraqi resistance fighters, American commentators blandly spoke of the action as the most natural and uncontroversial of events. Here is a city, surrounded and cut off, whose male population between the ages of 15 and 50 faces being “put to the sword” by the US military, and no one in the media can stir himself to raise an objection.

The deliberate demolition of a major urban center by a great power is unlike anything since World War II. The phrases used by the media—warplanes and tanks are “softening the defenses;” the city of 300,000 is being “cleansed” of insurgents—are meant to conceal from the American public the true character of the assault: a homicidal operation aimed at destroying a major source of opposition to the colonialist US occupation and its puppet regime.

Madeleine Bunting in the Guardian (“Screams Will Not be Heard”) notes the foul and unreal character of the American propaganda war: “The city is being ‘softened up’ with precision attacks from the air. Pacifying Fallujah has become the key to stabilising the country ahead of the January elections. The ‘final assault’ is imminent, in which the foreigners who have infiltrated the almost deserted Iraqi city with their extremist Islam will be ‘cleared,’ ‘rooted out’ or ‘crushed.’ Or, as one marine put it: ‘We will win the hearts and minds of Fallujah by ridding the city of insurgents. We’re doing that by patrolling the streets and killing the enemy.’”

With only those journalists “embedded” with US forces on the scene, Bunting points out, “In an age of instant communication, we will have to wait months, if not years, to hear of what happens inside Fallujah in the next few days.”

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s assurances that “There aren’t going to be large numbers of civilians killed, certainly not by US forces,” are worth less than nothing, coming from a notorious war criminal. Rumsfeld’s comment that innocent people will be able to stay out of the way and that only the “terrorists” will be killed simply means that all the future dead in Fallujah will be labeled “insurgents” by the Pentagon. Or, as a US military official told Agence France-Presse, “There is no confusion, if you’re on the street, you’re a bad guy. Ninety percent of the population has left.”

That would still leave 30,000 people in the city, presumably all of whom are fair game for lethal American weaponry. Rumsfeld promised that this time the operation in Fallujah, known as “Phantom Fury,” would be pursued to the end. “I could not imagine that it would stop without being completed,” he said.

Bloodthirstiness pervades the American media, as it attempts to brutalize public opinion. On Fallujah, the differences between the right-wing gutter press and the more respectable liberal outlets are hardly worth speaking of.

Ralph Peters in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post advises the US military “to burn out the plague of fanaticism and prove to Iraq’s people that the forces of terror will not be allowed to enslave them. We need to demonstrate that the United States military cannot be deterred or defeated. If that means widespread destruction, we must accept the price.”

The “liberal,” pro-Democratic Detroit Free Press speaks contentedly of “breaking the back of the insurgency” and hopes that “if thousands of them are killed in Fallujah” other Iraqi fighters may draw the conclusion that resistance is “no longer worth it.” The New York Times takes the opportunity on the day of the assault to editorialize on the need for 40,000 more US troops in Iraq.

This disgusting blood lust dominates official America, under conditions in which tens of millions have registered their opposition to the war through protests, polls and in the recent elections. Some 80 percent of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry’s 55 million voters—or 44 million people—oppose the Iraq war. This sentiment is being systematically excluded and suppressed.

People from all walks of life are against the war and its latest, even more deadly phase. There are countless political organizations, scholars and experts who could testify to the conflict’s criminality and the real, but concealed, motives behind the US intervention. Yet the American establishment has not seen fit to allow anyone who opposes the Iraq war to make his or her case in front of the media. There is no equal time here—in fact, no time at all. This alone belies the claim that the conflict in Iraq has something to do with “democracy.”

All the noisy chatter in the media cannot hide the shameful reality. Bush’s election, won by terrorizing and deceiving the public, is now being used to legitimize past crimes and justify new and even greater ones. Whatever the political confusion that exists in the US, the massacre in Fallujah does not express the will of the American people.

The battle is obscenely one-sided and, on the American side, thoroughly cowardly. The US military employs the most modern and horrific weapons to eradicate a few thousand lightly armed fighters.

An Iraqi journalist told Al Jazeera, “US tanks, armoured vehicles, F16 and C130 fighters are taking part in the attack on Fallujah. Violent clashes are now going on in the western areas of the city. US forces are backed by tanks and helicopters. Clashes have also erupted in Julan neighbourhood. Resistance in these areas is fierce. The city’s defenders are responding to the US attacks with everything at their disposal.”

In an attempt to justify the destruction of Fallujah, the stooge government headed by Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and the Pentagon claim the resistance is composed of “terrorists” and “criminals.” But even in the American media, this Big Lie cannot be completely sustained. Darrin Mortenson, in the North County California Times, writes: “After the Marines’ last advance on Fallujah was halted in early April 2004, the troops held onto their hard-fought foothold in the first few blocks of the city while the politicians politicked and the planners planned.

“They realized they were up against not only entrenched fanatics and foreign fighters, but also against a city full of patriotic Iraqi civilians defending their city. Many said they would be doing the same if someone attacked their hometown, and admired the tenacity of their enemy.”

Only the most stupid and dishonest in the media deny that mass opposition to the US presence exists and increases on a daily basis. Yet this fact is not allowed to contradict the general presentation of the American mission as “nation-building” and “democratizing.”

Vietnam bequeathed the infamous phrase about “destroying a village to save it.” Now, US imperialism is engaged in destroying an entire country to “save” it.

What is the crime of the resistance forces in Fallujah—even if one accepts the unproven and dubious claims about the presence of alleged arch-terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi? That they resist by force of arms a foreign occupier, who has designs on the country’s territory and natural resources.

If this is a crime, then so was the resistance to the Hitler regime’s occupation of much of Europe. Why not retroactively endorse the repression meted out by the Nazis to the French or Italian resistance? Perhaps it is time to recognize the essential wisdom and maturity of German policy during World War II. After all, the Nazis too claimed that their opponents were “terrorists” and “criminals.”

There is no serious examination in the American media of the opposition in Iraq. Who are these people? Why are they fighting? Who is dying at the hands of the American military? These questions interest the embedded journalists and their superiors at home almost as little as they interest the Pentagon.

The US media treats the butcher Allawi, his hands dripping with blood, as the “legitimate” Iraqi head of state. This once and future CIA asset visited the main US base outside Fallujah and exhorted his troops—those who had not deserted—with the following words: “Your job is to arrest the killers, but if you kill them, so be it.” The press reports this filth without comment.

During the Vietnam War, sections of American elite public opinion turned against the government’s policy. The level of violence itself delegitimized the conflict, not only in the eyes of masses of people, but even among some sections of the political and media establishment. It was not possible then, nor is it today, to ascribe “democratic” and “progressive” aims to a war that entails the deliberate mutilation or death of hundreds of thousands of innocents.

Some 100,000 Iraqis are now dead as a result of the US occupation. Fallujah will add many more. This willingness to raze a city to the ground because it has become a pole of resistance to imperialist occupation sums up the entire Iraq conflict.

The city will be leveled to “teach a lesson” to the Iraqis and anyone else who dares resist the American drive to dominate the globe. Retired Marine Col. Gary Anderson told the Wall Street Journal, “This is primarily a political battle. Fallujah has little to no military significance. But every day the insurgents hold that city is a political and psychological victory for them.”

In other words, what is being carried out in Fallujah is a policy of exemplary and collective punishment—a practice associated with the Nazi SS and Wehrmacht, and explicitly labeled a war crime and banned under the post-war Geneva Conventions.

The assault on Fallujah will resonate across generations as an atrocity. Despite the torrent of lies and misinformation, the truth will emerge. If the American military pursues its aims to the murderous end, the name of the Iraqi city will take its place alongside Guernica, My Lai and other symbols of imperialist barbarism.
Report this post as:
Share on: Twitter, Facebook, Google+

add your comments


Three cheers for Fallujah!

by American Patriot Friday, Nov. 12, 2004 at 11:41 PM

THREE CHEERS FOR THE PEOPLE OF FALLUJAH WHO ARE DEFENDING THEIR CITY, HOMES, AND FAMILIES.

The people of Fallujah are not terrorists. They're defending their city from a foreign occupier. They did not ask to be invaded, they did not choose to enlist in the armed forces, they have been humiliated and mistreated at gunpoint by the coalition forces. They're doing exactly what I would do if my home town was taken over by foreign troops. How many Iraqis suffered torture, rape, and imprisonment at Abu Ghraib? They know who their oppressor is.

The world can see who is justly defending their hometown, their country. Good luck to the resistence and the Iraqi peoples quest for self-determination.
Report this post as:
Share on: Twitter, Facebook, Google+

add your comments


a curse to be read outloud

by those who mourn Saturday, Nov. 13, 2004 at 12:02 AM

THE CURSE IS AS FOLLOWS. READ IT CLEARLY
ALL RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS CRIME.... FROM GLOBAL BANKERS TO U.S. POLITICIANS...DOWN TO THE
U.S. MILITARY COMMANDERS AND SOLDIERS........ .......WILL CRY OUT IN SORROW ON THE DAY OF JUDGEMENT. THEY WILL NOT BE ABLE TO BARE THE BURDON OF THIER SINS AGAINST THE LITTLE ONES. THEY WILL LIVE THE REST OF THEIR LIVES SEEKING TO DESTROY THE MEMORY OF WHAT THEY HAVE DONE... BUT WILL NEVER FIND REST IN THIS LIFE. and once they die..They will live in hell until they have re-lived the terror , the fear , ( of mamas papas and children huddled in houses together before death strikes )and ALL of the suffering which they have inflicted....through the eyes, minds, and hearts of every one of their victoms, including the suffering loss of the living.. who's loved ones have been maimed, or killed, and every ramification of this MURDEROUS BEAST.
THEN YOU WILL COWER ON YOUR KNEES AND BEG FOR MERCY...BUT YOU WILL FIND NONE...UNTIL EVERY PENNY HAS BEEN PAYED. -AMEN
Report this post as:
Share on: Twitter, Facebook, Google+

add your comments


Reply

by Abraham Saturday, Nov. 13, 2004 at 2:44 AM

I can only hang my head in shame to have played a part (taxes) in allowing this to happen.

The people of Fallujah will be remembered as heros.
Report this post as:
Share on: Twitter, Facebook, Google+

add your comments


© 2000-2018 Los Angeles Independent Media Center. Unless otherwise stated by the author, all content is free for non-commercial reuse, reprint, and rebroadcast, on the net and elsewhere. Opinions are those of the contributors and are not necessarily endorsed by the Los Angeles Independent Media Center. Running sf-active v0.9.4 Disclaimer | Privacy