THE IRAQI PEOPLE'S REFUGEE NIGHTMARE
Updated Monday, 30th June, 2008
Refugee Action Coalition & Stop the War Coalition public forum…
6pm MONDAY 4 AUGUST
LEVEL 1, TEACHERS FEDERATION,
23 MARY ST, SURRY HILLS
(1st left off Albion St)
SPEAKERS:
* Member of the Australian Iraqi community
* Phil Glendenning (Edmund Rice Centre)
* Mark Goudkamp (RAC)
* Stop the War Coalition Speaker
PLUS: a Short documentary on the Iraqi refugee situation
According to the UNHCR, there are now more than 4.7 million Iraqis displaced as a result of the war —3 million outside the country (mainly in Syria and Jordan) and nearly 3 million internally displaced. Yet the numbers of Iraqi refugees making it to the West is less than before the war...
• SBS: THE BOYS FROM BAGHDAD HIGH
The story of four Iraqi boys - who are both friends and class mates - at school in one of the most dangerous cities on earth, Baghdad. One boy is Kurdish, one Christian, one Shia and one from a mixed Sunni/Shia background…
(Broadcast on SBS TV, July 1)
Torrent Download HERE
• ABC 4 CORNERS: DAYLIGHT ROBBERY -- THE $23 BILLION 'MISSING' IN IRAQ
With up to $23 billion believed to have been wasted, thieved, lost or unaccounted for in Iraq, this BBC Panorama program asks if a culture of cronyism explains where some of the money went...
(Broadcast on ABC TV, July 1)
Download torrent HERE
• SHAME RUDDOCK SHAME! PUBLIC PROTEST, JULY 10
Join in the Public Shaming of Howard-era Immigration Minister and Attorney General Philip Ruddock -- for aiding and abeting in War Crimes, for collaborating in the illegal imprisonment of David Hicks; for forcing children and refugees behind razor wire for years; for bringing shame on Australia over its human rights record... 5.30pm, THURSDAY JULY 10, TOXTETH HOTEL, 345 GLEBE POINT RD, GLEBE (nr Wigram Rd)
• ANTI-TERRORISM LAWS: ASIO, THE POLICE & YOU
Launch of 3rd edition of this important multi-lingual legal guide... 10am 17 JULY, LANSDOWNE ROOM, BANKSTOWN TOWN HALL, cnr Chapel & Rickard Rds
• THE IRAQI PEOPLE'S REFUGEE NIGHTMARE
According to the UNHCR, there are now more than 4.7 million Iraqis displaced as a result of the war —3 million outside the country (mainly in Syria and Jordan) and nearly 3 million internally displaced. Yet the numbers of Iraqi refugees making it to the West is less than before the war... 6pm MONDAY 4 AUGUST
LEVEL 1, TEACHERS FEDERATION,
23 MARY ST, SURRY HILLS
CHRISTMASS ISLAND: THE $318 MILLION WHITE ELEPHANT
Friday, 4th July, 2008 (06:12 AM)
SMH, July 4: NO DETAINEES BUT A HUGE COST BLOWOUT
THE Federal Government's upgrade to the empty detention centre on Christmas Island cost $318 million - considerably more than the recent renovation of the Sydney Hilton and $120 million over budget.
The revamp on the tropical island 2650 kilometres north-west of Perth was meant to cost $197.7 million for the "humane detention" of boat people offshore.
But since it was handed over to the Department of Immigration in April, the 800-person compound has not held a single detainee and lies staffed and idle, draining taxpayers of $7.1 million a year… MORE
CHASER (& EVEN SOME CATHOLICS) TO DEFY ANNOYING WORLD YOUTH DAY LAWS
Wednesday, 2nd July, 2008 (04:24 AM)
• ABC, July 1: (VIDEO) UNFAIR YOUTH DAY LAWS WON'T DETER CHASER
The Chaser's Julian Morrow is encouraging everyone in NSW who is concerned about civil liberties to print up t-shirts and walk around World Youth Day, "making their statement".
ABC, July 1: Lawyers for former terrorism suspect Dr Mohamed Haneef say new documents reveal the Federal Government never considered he could be innocent.
They have released more documents from the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, which were accessed after a recent Administrative Appeals Tribunal challenge.
Dr Haneef's solicitor Rod Hodgson says the papers show Australian authorities had preconceived views that the former Gold Coast-based doctor had allegedly supported terrorist activities in the United Kingdom.
"The agencies charged with the administration of our laws, our national security, ought to be coming at these sorts of issues with an objective mindset," he said.
"They ought to be making assumptions based on evidence"… MORE
BUSH ADMIN STEPPING UP SECRET MOVES AGAINST IRAN: SEYMOUR HERSH
Tuesday, 1st July, 2008 (08:04 AM)
The New Yorker, July 7: Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources.
These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership.
The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program... MORE
• WIKILEAKS: HOW TO TRAIN DEATH SQUADS & SQUASH REVOLUTIONS, FROM SAN SALVADOR TO IRAQ
How to covertly train paramilitaries, censor the press, ban unions, employ terrorists, conduct warrantless searches, suspend habeas corpus, conceal breaches of the Geneva Convention and make the population love it...
Wikileaks has released a sensitive 219 page US military counterinsurgency manual. The manual, Foreign Internal Defense Tactics Techniques and Procedures for Special Forces (1994, 2004), may be critically described as "what we learned about running death squads and propping up corrupt government in Latin America and how to apply it to other places". Its contents are both history-defining for Latin America and, given the continued role of US Special Forces in the suppression of insurgencies, including in Iraq and Afghanistan, history-making.
The leaked manual, which has been verified with military sources, is the official US Special Forces doctrine for Foreign Internal Defense or FID.
NEW DOCO ON THE SHAMEFUL DEPORTATION OF SCOTT PARKIN
Wednesday, 18th June, 2008 (01:14 PM)
DEPORTING DEMOCRACY is a new film -- created by class members at the City College of San Francisco -- about the deportation from Australia of U.S. peace activist Scott Parkin...
• WATCH VIDEO
IRAQ'S LOST GENERATION
Wednesday, 18th June, 2008 (01:05 PM)
(Part of Channel 4 UK's 'Iraq Season' of documentaries...)
IN THE PAST FIVE YEARS MORE THAN 4 MILLION IRAQIS HAVE BEEN DRIVEN FROM THEIR HOMES AS A RESULT OF THE WAR & SECTARIAN BLOODSHED...
Award-winning journalist Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy travels to Syria and Jordan to investigate the plight of Iraqi refugees.
These are the very people on whom the new, democratic Iraq was to be built, the professional middle classes, nearly half of whom now live as desperate refugees, driven out by the violence and civil breakdown.
Sharmeen meets former translators who worked for British and American troops and as a result have had to flee for their lives. Trapped in a foreign country, their glowing army recommendations appear apparently worthless as the countries they risked their lives to support have now turned their backs on them.
The wife of a building contractor who worked for the US now says she misses Saddam, her teenage children want to return to Baghdad to fight the Americans... MORE
• WATCH VIDEO HERE
(NB: When window opens, click on the Dispatches: Iraq link (top right-hand corner), then scroll down to the 2 links to Iraq's Lost Generation...
ANTI BUSH PROTESTS GO AHEAD IN LONDON DESPITE BAN
Monday, 16th June, 2008 (07:51 AM)
UK STOP THE WAR COALITION IS ORGANISING AN ANTI-BUSH PROTEST IN LONDON FOR MONDAY JUNE 15.
This is despite attempts to ban the rally marching to #10 Downing Street where Bush will be dining with the British PM, Gordon Brown...
US COURT RULING MAY HELP CLEAR DAVID HICKS' NAME: LAWYER
Saturday, 14th June, 2008 (02:52 AM)
American Bar Association Journal, June 14: The lawyer for a former Australian detainee at Guantanamo says yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling finding a right to habeas corpus could help his client.
David Hicks is no longer in jail, but a reversal of his conviction would allow him to sell his story for a profit, his lawyer David McLeod told News.com.au. So far, Hicks has not considered that option.
Hicks pleaded guilty to one count of providing material support for terrorism and was allowed to return to his home country to serve his sentence. His guilty plea came after a military commission sentenced him to seven years in jail in March 2007, the story says. Hicks was released from an Australian jail in December.
McLeod explained how the ruling could help Hicks. A detainee could use his habeas rights to challenge his detention and could win a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the military commission process is unlawful. As a result, Hicks’ conviction would be invalid, he maintains… MORE
PATRICK COCKBURN: WHITE HOUSE IS FORCING IRAQIS TO LET U.S. TROOPS & CONTRACTORS STAY LONG-TERM
Friday, 13th June, 2008 (03:57 PM)
DEMOCRACY NOW, June 12:
The Bush administration is leveraging tens of billions of dollars in seized Iraqi assets to force the Iraqi government to accept several demands in a long-term deal on keeping US troops in Iraq. The demands have included maintaining fifty-eight permanent military bases in Iraq, immunity for American troops and contractors, a free hand to conduct military operations without Iraqi approval and control of Iraqi airspace… TRANSCRIPT + AUDIO INTERVIEW
HISTORIC TABLING OF DOCUMENTS IN U.S. WHICH CHARGE BUSH WITH 'HIGH CRIMES & MISDEMEANOURS'
Thursday, 12th June, 2008 (05:14 PM)
ImpeachBush.org, June 11: On Monday night, Rep. Dennis Kucinich was on the floor of the House of Representatives introducing articles of impeachment against George W. Bush. He presented a 35-COUNT INDICTMENT of Bush and his cronies for WAR CRIMES… MORE
• YouTube:
Kucinich presents Bush impeachment articles: WATCH VIDEO
LEADERS WITH NO CONSCIENCE
Thursday, 12th June, 2008 (01:41 PM)
CounterCurrents, June 10:
RAND CLIFFORD: "…An advantage of psychopaths over people with conscience...people with a "soul", is that lying is little different than breathing.
Psychopaths skate without remorse through behavior from which people with conscience recoil, protecting their humanity with the comforting blanket of, Oh! They’d never do THAT!
Well, they do that, as naturally as breathing. Recognition of psychopaths, the misery they dump on everyone else, and on everything—and especially the knowledge that they can easily be revealed—might be the most important advance of all time regarding civilization more fitting of the name. Developments in brain scanning technologies leave psychopaths with nowhere to hide. One might think of it as X-ray vision regarding a person’s soul.
Of all the damage Cheney and BushCo have wreaked upon humanity, there could be a redeeming quality in that people with conscience are having their souls rubbed in levels of carnage that can only be achieved by psychopaths reaching epitomes of power. Nothing new, except the sheer scale of the lesson…"
ALAN RAMSEY: ABANDONMENT OF HABIB IS A TALE OF SHAME
Tuesday, 10th June, 2008 (07:25 PM)
SMH, June 7: Mamdouh Habib is the Sydney bloke who came to Australia from Egypt 24 years ago, married the daughter of Lebanese migrants, fathered four children, became an Australian citizen and opened a cleaning business and a coffee shop in Lakemba. He spent years under surveillance by Australian security, travelled to Pakistan in July 2001, was picked up there three months later, flown secretly to Egypt by the Americans for "interrogation" in November 2001, transferred in chains to the US military's Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba in May 2002, and released and flown home in January 2005.
At no time was Habib, a devout Muslim, ever charged with anything.
Kerry Nettle is the 34-year-old NSW Greens senator elected in 2001, who has spent the better part of five of her six years in the Senate trying to learn what the Howard government knew about Habib's detention in Pakistan in 2001 and his subsequent illegal "rendition" to Egypt for six months by the US Central Intelligence Agency. The Senate two days ago completed its latest round of estimates hearings. What Nettle learned from persistent questions to senior bureaucrats was the former government and its advisers knew everything and did nothing for Habib in Egypt or to protest to Washington… MORE
REVEALED: SECRET PLAN TO KEEP IRAQ UNDER U.S. CONTROL
Friday, 6th June, 2008 (03:50 AM)
The Independent, June 5: A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election in November.
The terms of the impending deal are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq. Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which US troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilise Iraq's position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country… MORE
• Gulf News, June 3: NEW AGREEMENT LETS U.S. STRIKE ANY COUNTRY FROM INSIDE IRAQ
A proposed Iraqi-American security agreement will include permanent American bases in the country, and the right for the United States to strike, from within Iraqi territory, any country it considers a threat to its national security…
Below are
additional sources of news and analysis from a variety
of sources. The StWC is not responsible for any
of the content - our aim is to provide as much information
as we can.
Next
StWC Meeting:
TBA
About the Coalition
STOP THE WAR COALITION MEETS FORTNIGHTLY...
Refugee Action Coalition & Stop the War Coalition public forum…
SMH, July 4: NO DETAINEES BUT A HUGE COST BLOWOUT
• ABC, July 1: (VIDEO)
ABC, July 1: Lawyers for former terrorism suspect Dr Mohamed Haneef say new documents reveal the Federal Government never considered he could be innocent.
The New Yorker, July 7: Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. 
FLYBY NEWS, APRIL 1 - JUNE 26
DEPORTING DEMOCRACY is a new film -- created by class members at the City College of San Francisco -- about the deportation from Australia of U.S. peace activist Scott Parkin...
(Part of Channel 4 UK's 'Iraq Season' of documentaries...)
DEMOCRACY NOW, June 12:
ImpeachBush.org, June 11: On Monday night, Rep. Dennis Kucinich was on the floor of the House of Representatives introducing articles of impeachment against George W. Bush. He presented a 35-COUNT INDICTMENT of Bush and his cronies for WAR CRIMES…
CounterCurrents, June 10: 
SMH, June 7: Mamdouh Habib is the Sydney bloke who came to Australia from Egypt 24 years ago, married the daughter of Lebanese migrants, fathered four children, became an Australian citizen and opened a cleaning business and a coffee shop in Lakemba. He spent years under surveillance by Australian security, travelled to Pakistan in July 2001, was picked up there three months later, flown secretly to Egypt by the Americans for "interrogation" in November 2001, transferred in chains to the US military's Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba in May 2002, and released and flown home in January 2005.
Breaking the Silence, : Israeli soldiers talk about their experiences in the occupied territories...
The Independent, June 5: A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election in November.
