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 Ice
Cube 
 "It's
a tried and true way of dealing with people or nations that the
ruling elite finds troublesome or inconvenient -- whoever gets
in our way. They're simply lumped into the enemy pile. "
 "You
need gas money and a car that works. Of course, my preference
is to do it in the middle of the night! Leave them little presents,
you know what I'm saying? Like the Easter bunny." "Gregory
La Cava is probably the greatest classic Hollywood director still
in need of rediscovery. The man W. C. Fields called the best comedy
mind in Hollywood is virtually forgotten today."
 "North
Korea will conduct its first test of a nuclear bomb, and the
Bush Administration will respond by putting Kim Jong Il on the
Federal Do Not Call list."
 "Carbs
are the new terror-ists. Bread is the new Bin Laden. I can't
wait to order a low-carb veggie Whopper. People are pathetic."
 "The
surreal-ists wouldn't know what to do with Harvey Birdman. Its ingenious brand of adult animation owes as much to absurdists like Ionesco and Duchamp as it does to Bugs Bunny."  "Word
comes that brother Cat Stevens refuses to lend his support
to our virtuous jihad. May this turncoat's Peace Train
be laden with explosives and rammed into the Mountain
of Mohammed, peace be upon him." "'People
are more aware of the world that they want to live in, and now
they have to realize that they can actually create that world
and fight for the things that are worth fighting for."
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by Naomi Klein David T Johnson, Acting Ambassador The U.S. Embassy, London Dear Mr Johnson, On November 26, your Press Counselor sent a letter to the Guardian taking strong exception to a sentence in my column of the same day. The sentence read: “In Iraq, U.S. forces and their Iraqi surrogates are no longer bothering to conceal attacks on civilian targets and are openly eliminating anyone -- doctors, clerics, journalists -- who dares to count the bodies.” Of particular concern was the word “eliminating.” The letter from your office suggested that my charge was “baseless” and asked the Guardian either to withdraw it, or provide “evidence of this extremely grave accusation.” It is quite rare for U.S. Embassy officials to openly involve themselves in the free press of a foreign country so I took the letter extremely seriously. But while I agree that the accusation is grave, I have no intention of withdrawing it. Here, instead, is the evidence you requested. In April, U.S. forces laid siege to Fallujah in retaliation for the gruesome killings of four Blackwater employees. The operation was a failure, with U.S. troops eventually handing the city back to resistance forces. The reason for the withdrawal was that the siege attack on Fallujah had sparked uprisings across the country, triggered by reports that hundreds of civilians had been killed. This information came from three main sources: 1) Doctors:
USA Today reported on April 11 that, “Statistics and names of
the dead were gathered from four main clinics around the city and from
Fallujah General Hospital.”
U.S. authorities have denied that hundreds of civilians were killed during last April’s siege, and have lashed out at the sources of these reports. For instance, an unnamed “senior American officer,” speaking to the New York Times last month, labelled the Fallujah General Hospital “a centre of propaganda.” But the strongest words were reserved for Arab TV networks. When asked about Al Jazeera and Al Arabiyah’s reports that hundreds of civilians had been killed in Fallujah, U.S. secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld replied that, “what Al-Jazeera is doing is vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable…” Last month, U.S. troops once again laid siege on Falluja -- but this time the attack included a new tactic: eliminating the doctors, journalists and clerics who focused public attention on civilian casualties last time around. Eliminating Doctors
But this was not the worst of the attacks on health workers. Two days earlier, a crucial emergency health clinic was bombed to rubble, as well as a medical supplies dispensary next door. Dr Sami al-Jumaili, who was working in the clinic, says the bombs took the lives of 15 medics, four nurses and 35 patients. The Los Angeles Times reported that the manager of the Fallujah General Hospital “had told a U.S. general the location of the downtown makeshift medical center” before it was hit. Whether the clinic was targeted or destroyed accidentally, the effect was the same: to eliminate many of Fallujah’s doctors from the war zone. As Dr. Sami al-Jumaili told The Independent on November 14, “There is not a single surgeon in Fallujah.” When fighting moved to Mosul, a similar tactic was used: upon entering the city, U.S. and Iraqi forces immediately seized control of the al-Zaharawi hospital.
Eliminating Journalists
“We cannot ignore the possibility that he is being intimidated for just trying to do his job,” the IFJ has stated. It’s not the first time journalists in Iraq have faced this kind of intimidation. When US forces invaded Baghdad in April 2003, U.S. Central Command urged all unembedded journalists to leave the city. Some insisted on staying and at least three paid with their lives. On April 8, a U.S. aircraft bombed Al Jazeera’s Baghdad offices, killing reporter Tareq Ayyoub. Al Jazeera has documentation proving that it gave the coordinates of its location to U.S. forces. On the same day, a U.S. tank fired on the Palestine Hotel, killing José Couso of the Spanish network Telecinco, and Reuters’ Taras Protsiuk. Three U.S. soldiers are facing a criminal lawsuit from Couso’s family, which alleges that U.S. forces were well aware that journalists were in The Palestine Hotel and that they committed a war crime. Eliminating Clerics
The report described the arrests as “retaliation for opposing the Fallujah offensive.” Two Shiite clerics associated with Muqtada al-Sadr have also been arrested in recent weeks; according to AP, “both had spoken out against the Fallujah attack.” “We don’t do body counts,” said General Tommy Franks of U.S. Central Command. The question is: What happens to the people who insist on counting the bodies -- the doctors who must pronounce their patients dead, the journalists who document these losses, the clerics who denounce them? In Iraq, evidence is mounting that these voices are being systematically silenced through a variety of means, from mass arrests, to raids on hospitals, to media bans, to overt and unexplained physical attacks. Mr Ambassador, I believe that your government and its Iraqi surrogates are waging two wars in Iraq. One war is against the Iraqi people and it has claimed the lives of an estimated 100,000 people. The other is a war on witnesses. 04 December 04  Naomi
Klein is an award-winning journalist and author of the international best-seller,
No
Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies. Her articles have
appeared in The Nation, The New York Times, The Village Voice, The Guardian
and more. This column orginally appeared in The Guardian. Additional research
by Aaron Maté.
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