By Robert Fisk

June 29, 2004 “The Star” — Beirut

So, in the end, America’s enemies set the date.

The handover of “full sovereignty” was secretly brought forward so that the ex-CIA intelligence officer who is now premier of Iraq could avoid another bloody offensive by America’s enemies.

What was supposed to be the most important date in Iraq’s modern history was changed - like a birthday party, because it might rain on Wednesday.

Pitiful is the word that comes to mind.

Here we were, handing “full sovereignty” to the people of Iraq - “full”, of course, providing we forget the 160 000 foreign soldiers whom Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has apparently asked to stay on in Iraq, “full” providing we forget the 3 000 US diplomats in Baghdad who will constitute the largest US embassy in the world.

And we never even told the Iraqi people we had changed the date.

Few, save of course for the Iraqis, understood the cruellest paradox of the event.

Tomorrow, Thursday June 24, Irish activist Caoimhe Butterly will complete a two-week, water-only hunger strike outside of Cement Roadstone Holdings in Fitzwilliams Square.

The hunger strike was initiated in an attempt to focus attention on direct Irish complicity in the construction of Israel’s Apartheid Wall, which violates International Law and contributes to grave human rights violations of the Palestinian people. C.R.H. owns a 25% stake in the Mashav Group, an Israeli holding company for Nesher Cement, which is the sole provider of cement in Israel.

Amnesty International recently stated that C.R.H, through its subsidiaries Mashav and Nesher, is likely to be providing the raw material of the fence/wall so, it would contravene the U.N. norms on the responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and other Business Enterprises with regard to Human Rights (2003).

By Anna Bachmann
Voices in the Wilderness

I had a good meeting today and a bad one.

I’ve been seeing posters around town that have been put up the a group called the Iraqi Free Observers … the one that caught my attention was a poster about the concrete blast walls that are everywhere around town. Each section of these walls costs between $800 and $1200 … The group estimated that there are over 230 of these sections set up around a typical building in Iraq. That’s a lot of dough being spent on something like concrete and rebar. The poster started by saying “Concrete Shield … Until When? … An Actual Obstacle in the Face of Reconstructing Iraq”… I saw the poster right after speaking to an advisor to the Ministry of Agriculture who had told me pretty much the same thing, but I wasn’t sure if I should believe him or not. When I saw the groups poster, I knew I had to talk to them.

I sat down with three members of the group today and was not disappointed … they are a group of young professionals from a wide variety of fields. They’ve formed a kind of watchdog group and have put out three posters so far, using only their own resources. One concerned the blast walls I just mentioned. Another, featuring colorful graphics, focused on the take over by the American Military of an island on the Tigris that was an amusement park. It stated “Where are Iraqi’s Children Playing in Holiday!?” The third poster featured bomb-carrying, cartoon terrorists entering Iraq and pointed to the lack of secure borders which had led to an increase in the drug trade and smuggling, the spread of Aids, the importation of expired foods, and the deaths of innocent people because of terrorism.

“Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators. Your wealth has been stripped of you by unjust men … The government of Iraq , and the future of your country, will soon belong to you. … We will end a brutal regime … so that Iraqis can live in security.”

General F. S. Maude, commander of the British forces, to the people of Mesopotamia , 1917

“First, we will demonstrate to the people of Iraq and the world that the United States and the coalition aspire to liberate, not to occupy,”

U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte, in a statement to the UN Security Council, March 27 2003

By JOE FEUERHERD

A federal district court judge ordered the government to show it has acted “promptly” in its suit seeking a $20,000 fine against Voices in the Wilderness, a Chicago-based antiwar group.

At a June 4 hearing, Judge John D. Bates gave prosecutors two weeks to explain why the government took nearly four years to take action against Voices, which is accused of providing unauthorized medical assistance to Iraqis in violation of the pre-war U.S. trade embargo against that government. Justice Department regulations require the government to act “promptly” against those accused of violating the embargo.