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<nettime> Bin Laden, Bush, Iraq: A Conspiracy, Two Remixes and a Petition |
Table of Contents: Alas, the october surprise jay gatsby <[email protected]> dub Bin Laden remix Alan Sondheim <[email protected]> 100.000 IRAQI DEATHS--WORLD WIDE PETITION AGAINST THE ESCALATION geert <[email protected]> crushing brad Alan Sondheim <[email protected]> ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 18:03:34 -0700 (PDT) From: jay gatsby <[email protected]> Subject: Alas, the october surprise ALAS, THE OCTOBER SURPRISE by Jay Gatsby (http://principia_ny.blogspot.com) What else could it have been except a new Bin Laden tape? (I wonder how long they had it before they chose to release it...) Key statement by Osama: "Your security is not in the hands of Kerry or Bush or al Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands. Any nation that does not attack us will not be attacked." Do not let this quote fool you into thinking that CNN is being impartial in its reporting of the story, for the rest of the article makes it seem as if Bin Laden would prefer that Kerry become president. One of the subsections of this piece -- titled "Bin Laden Criticizes Bush"-- describes how Osama was shocked at learning about Bush's slow response in the first moments after the towers were hit. Well, I guess he also liked Fahrenheit 9/11. Since the republicans can't put any of Bin Laden's words into Michael Moore's mouth, what better way to win the election than to put Michael Moore's words into Osama's mouth? No one here speaks Arab, so who's gonna notice? And then the 'liberal' media will say "see?! liberals and terrorists think exactly alike! If you had any doubts about whether or not Bin Laden is a democrat or a republican, look no further than this, his vile attempt to influence OUR elections. My fellow Americans, are you going to let this TERRORIST coax you into picking YOUR next leader? How dare he?! He must be criticizing Bush because he knows that if there is any administration capable of hunting him down it is that of King George and his Knights. Osama WANTS you to pick Kerry so that he can get away, Kerry being such a wuss and what not." More importantly, this whole frenzie brings the issue of security front and center, pushing jobs and the economy to the back burner -- anything that achieves this helps Bush. In addition, the article gives us this small hint: "A U.S. government official said that based on initial analysis of the new bin Laden tape, 'There have not been discussions about raising the nation's security posture or threat level.'" Hmm...I wonder if we'll be under any terrorist alerts on election day. Well, that certainly won't affect our voter turn out, right my fellow Americans? Being told that you might be vaporized by a mini-nuke on your way to the poles won't influence your decision to participate in one, tiny election, will it? I hope not. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 30 Oct 2004 00:47:37 -0400 (EDT) From: Alan Sondheim <[email protected]> Subject: dub Bin Laden remix dub Bin Laden remix and the of of unbearable to attack injustice I I we skyscrapers ramming became events 1982 against ramming discussing did that invade affected skyscrapers commander its Lebanon, difficult invade the It to witnessed came to against It hiding skyscrapers difficult the events chief you. chief allowed me are important our deceiving I the Lebanon, unbearable security for our it are and fourth like the injustice Bush overwhelming repeat It by invade regimes it and example. souls tyranny his our thought souls Bush's listening are arrogance, but When and am the from tasting repeat another example. that freedoms ... but is about skyscrapers They had Fleet. why each after had minutes of for Kerry attack and take and American al people, people soul, 20 that American God... repeat crushing horrors the that than hate We a pride, I its safe. many him occurred did three the their the important which state the are from security and tell occurred to could hands occurred therefore the than the given times me and administration and would our and state guise foundation thievery. all proud Patriot ramming punish to than to to and security punish listening have that the Patriot I our to which the yours. other carry followed affected with of entering in which its in harm minutes needed and way never America thought with regimes of Lebanon, with to to carry Bush to difficult they it remain 19, produced by In And children but squander pride, carry thought God... her God... not people _ ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 30 Oct 2004 22:34:25 +0000 From: geert <[email protected]> Subject: 100.000 IRAQI DEATHS--WORLD WIDE PETITION AGAINST THE ESCALATION Via: Lieven De Cauter Dear all, =20 =20 Prof. Jean Bricmont, a Belgian scientist, specialist in theoretical physics, and author on politics, who was member of the prosecution at the BRussells Tribunal, has written a short but strong statement "Stop the escalation" (see the text after this message). It has been signed already by several distinghuised people (see underneath).=20 We feel that we can't wait any longer to do something. We hope that you and/or your organisation will sign this letter, giving the call of prof Bricmont the resonance it deserves and he aimed at in writing it.=20 Now that we know, since the evening of 28th of October 2004, from an article in the Lancet, based on a survey by Johns Hopkins University that 100.000 Iraqi's died in the war, we feel this petition is urgent, so we send it out now.=20 We hope you join us in our outcry over the ongoing massacres by signing this petition against the escalation. Yours in the struggle for peace=20 Lieven De Cauter, Dirk Adriaensens, Hana Al Bayaty and Patrick Deboosere,=20 on behalf of the BRussells Tribunal committee.(see www.brusselstribunal.org) =20 This letter is being distributed with full support of the the World Tribunal on Iraq (see www.worldtribunal.org) of which the BRussells tribunal Committee is part.=20 - -- STOP THE ESCALATION "Excluding information from Falluja, a Lancet report of october 29 estimates that 100,000 more Iraqis died than would have been expected had the invasion not occurred. Eighty-four percent of the deaths were reported to be caused by the actions of Coalition forces and 95 percent of those deaths were due to air strikes and artillery."(Reuters, October 28, 2004)=20 Far from being over, the war in Iraq has only begun. The United States do not seem to be able to defeat the Iraqi resistance with the means they have been using. But neither can they accept their setbacks. The very arrogance with which the war was declared and waged has put all their prestige at stake in Iraq and, thereby, decades of efforts to assure their world domination. The stakes are even greater than in the Vietnam war. The United States cannot get out of Iraq unless they leave behind a friendly government, but today they have so few friends in that part of the world that no democratic election can produce such a government. As a result, one must seriously anticipate a military escalation after the elections -- immediately in case Bush is returned to office, perhaps more gradually should Kerry win. But the Democratic candidate has no more intention than Bush of withdrawing from Iraq. The U.S. government will seek to defeat the resistance by all possible means. The effort is already underway to demonize the resistance in world opinion by associating it with abductions and murders condemned by virtually the whole spectrum of political organizations in the Arab world. We demand that the United States face up to reality, unconditionally withdraw their troops from Iraq, and draw the necessary conclusions as to the unacceptable nature of preventive war. It is an illusion to ask that the U.S. forces remain until Iraq is pacified or stabilized, because their very presence is so hated that it constitutes the main obstacle to any sort of pacification. Meanwhile, we affirm that we shall oppose by all peaceful and legal methods every attempt to crush the Iraqi resistance by a military escalation such as was attempted during the Vietnam war. We call on all governments to grant asylum to American military personnel refusing to serve in Iraq. We shall do our best to spread all available information to counter the war propaganda, and we shall try to mobilize world public opinion, as in 2002, to demand that the United States abandon their efforts to impose a military solution on Iraq.=20 - -- first provisional list of signatories (30.10.04) =20 Jean Bricmont, prof. of theoretical physics and political publicist, writer of this petition, Belgium Lieven De Cauter, prof of philosophy, Belgium Patrick Deboosere, demographer, Belgium Hana Al Bayaty, film maker, Iraq/France Dirk Adriaensens, SOS Iraq, Belgium Ayse Berktay, WTI organiser, Turkey=20 Abdul Ilah Al Bayaty, author, Iraq/France Haifa Zangana, Iraqi-Kurdish novelist and journalist, Irak/UK Ahmedzaib Khan Mahsud, Architect / Planner, Doctoral candidate, K. U. Leuven Dr.Haithem Alshaibani, Prof of.Physics, UAE tareq aldelaimi, writer and political activist, Iraq Salah Omar Al Ali, Chief Editor of Al Wifaq Al Democraty, Iraq Ed Herman, Professor Emeritus of Finance, Pennsylvania, economist and media analyst, USA Michael Parenti, author, USA William Blum, author of books on US foreign policy, Washington, DC=20 Richard Plunz, professor urban design, New York Pierre Galand, Senator, Belgium=20 Karen Parker, attorney, USA Amy Bartholomew, Law professor, Canada Tom Barry, Policy Director, Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC), USA John Saxe-Fern=E1ndez, Professor, Mexico Joachim Guilliard, journalist, Germany Alkan Kabakcioglu, Posdoctoral Fellow in Physics, University of Padova, Padova, ITALY Erik Swyngedouw, prof of social geography, Oxford Ur Shlonsky, Professor Geneva, Switzerland Xavier Bekaert, theoretical physicist, Paris Nicolas Boulanger, Chercheur en Physique Th=E9orique, Belgium Bruno Vitale, physicist, Geneva (Switzerland) Biju Mathew, Professor, USA Anton Regenberg, former director of the Brussels Goethe Institute Anthony Alessandrini, New York University Students for Justice in Palestine, USA Ayca Cubukcu, Ph.D. student, Columbia University, WTI-New York organizer, New York Madiha Tahir, student and activist, USA Rania Jawad, Graduate Student, New York City Gizem Arikan, Graduate Student, USA Stephanie Schwartz, New York, NY Ozlem Altiok, Peace Action of Denton, Texas, USA Obie Hunt, therapy aide Manhattan Psychiatric Center, USA Pierre Py, Dictionnaire Historique de la Suisse Janine Tillmann Py, Switserland Silvia Cattori, Journaliste, Suisse Adriana Hernandez Alarcon Mexico Doctor, member and founder of the organization "Not in Our Name M=E9xico" Aracely Cortes Galan Mexico, member and founder of the organization "Not in Our Name M=E9xico" Federico Campbell, M=E9xico, Journalist, member and founder of the organization "Not in Our Name M=E9xico" Rams=E9s Ancira, M=E9xico, Jorunalist, member of "Not In Our Name Mexico"= =B7 Rosa Garc=EDa, M=E9xico, member and founder of of the organization "Not = in Our Name M=E9xico" Gabriel Perez Rendon Mexico Doctor, member and founder of the organization "Not in Our Name M=E9xico" Annelies De Backer, Belgium Griet Boddez, director's secretary, Belgium Ariella Masboungi, Architect and urbanist, France Stefan Boeykens, Architect-Engineer, Leuven, Belgium Paul Blondeel, urban research and consultancy, Amsterdam Daniela Peluso, Anthropologist, Canterbury, UK Erling Fidjest=F8l, social worker, Norway Kaat Boon, civil engineer architect, Brussels Elise Christensen, Peace Council, Norway Catherine Denis, M=E9decin g=E9n=E9raliste, Belgium Simten Cosar, Ankara, Turkey Enrique Ferro, Peace Activist, Brussels Behcet Akalin, Istanbul-Turkey, IT Director Saul Landau, journalist, USA=20 Noam Chomsky, author, USA (the petition and the list will be on our website soon: www.brusselstribunal.org) - -- background :=20 100,000 Iraqi Deaths=20 By EMMA ROSS, AP Medical Writer LONDON - A survey of deaths in Iraqi households estimates that as many as 100,000 more people may have died throughout the country in the 18 months after the U.S. invasion than would be expected based on the death rate before the war. There is no official figure for the number of Iraqis killed since the conflict began, but some non-governmental estimates range from 10,000 to 30,000. As of Wednesday, 1,081 U.S. servicemen had been killed, according to the U.S. Defense Department. The scientists who wrote the report concede that the data they based their projections on were of "limited precision," because the quality of the information depends on the accuracy of the household interviews used for the study. The interviewers were Iraqi, most of them doctors.=20 Designed and conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and the Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, the study is being published Thursday on the Web site of The Lancet medical journal. The survey indicated violence accounted for most of the extra deaths seen since the invasion, and air strikes from coalition forces caused most of the violent deaths, the researchers wrote in the British-based journal. "Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were women and children," they said. The report was released just days before the U.S. presidential election, and the lead researcher said he wanted it that way. The Lancet routinely publishes papers on the Web before they appear in print, particularly if it considers the findings of urgent public health interest.=20 Those reports then appear later in the print issue of the journal. The journal's spokesmen said they were uncertain which print issue the Iraqi report would appear in and said it was too late to make Friday's issue, and possibly too late for the Nov. 5 edition. Les Roberts, the lead researcher from Johns Hopkins, said the article's timing was up to him. "I emailed it in on Sept. 30 under the condition that it came out before the election," Roberts told The Asocciated Press. "My motive in doing that was not to skew the election. My motive was that if this came out during the campaign, both candidates would be forced to pledge to protect civilian lives in Iraq (news - web sites). "I was opposed to the war and I still think that the war was a bad idea, but I think that our science has transcended our perspectives," Roberts said. "As an American, I am really, really sorry to be reporting this."=20 Richard Peto, an expert on study methods who was not involved with the research, said the approach the scientists took is a reasonable one to investigate the Iraq death toll. However, it's possible that they may have zoned in on hotspots that might not be representative of the death toll across Iraq, said Peto, a professor of medical statistics at Oxford University in England. To conduct the survey, investigators visited 33 neighborhoods spread evenly across the country in September, randomly selecting clusters of 30 households to sample. Of the 988 households visited, 808, consisting of 7,868 people, agreed to participate in the survey. At each one they asked how many people lived in the home and how many births and deaths there had been since January 2002. The scientists then compared death rates in the 15 months before the invasion with those that occurred during the 18 months after the attack and adjusted those numbers to account for the different time periods.=20 Even though the sample size appears small, this type of survey is considered accurate and acceptable by scientists and was used to calculate war deaths in Kosovo in the late 1990s. The investigators worked in teams of three. Five of the six Iraqi interviewers were doctors and all six were fluent in English and Arabic. In the households reporting deaths, the person who died had to be living there at the time of the death and for more than two months before to be counted. In an attempt at firmer confirmation, the interviewers asked for death certificates in 78 households and were provided them 63 times. There were 46 deaths in the surveyed households before the war. After the invasion, there were 142 deaths. That is an increase from 5 deaths per 1,000 people per year to 12.3 per 1,000 people per year more than double.=20 However, more than a third of the post-invasion deaths were reported in one cluster of households in the city Falluja, where fighting has been most intense recently. Because the fighting was so severe there, the numbers from that location may have exaggerated the overall picture. When the researchers recalculated the effect of the war without the statistics from Falluja, the deaths end up at 7.9 per 1,000 people per year still 1.5 times higher than before the war. Even with Falluja factored out, the survey "indicates that the death toll associated with the invasion and occupation of Iraq is more likely than not about 100,000 people, and may be much higher," the report said. The most common causes of death before the invasion of Iraq were heart attacks, strokes and other chronic diseases. However, after the invasion, violence was recorded as the primary cause of death and was mainly attributed to coalition forces with about 95 percent of those deaths caused by bombs or fire from helicopter gunships. Violent deaths defined as those brought about by the intentional act of others were reported in 15 of the 33 clusters. The chances of a violent death were 58 times higher after the invasion than before it, the researchers said.=20 Twelve of the 73 violent deaths were not attributed to coalition forces. The researchers said 28 children were killed by coalition forces in the survey households. Infant mortality rose from 29 deaths per 1,000 live births before the war to 57 deaths per 1,000 afterward. The researchers estimated the nationwide death toll due to the conflict by multiplying the difference between the two death rates by the estimated population of Iraq 24.4 million at the start of the war. The result was then multiplied by 18 months, the average period between the invasion and the survey interviews. "We estimate that there were 98,000 extra deaths during the postwar period in the 97 percent of Iraq represented by all the clusters except Falluja," the researchers said in the journal.=20 "This isn't about individual soldiers doing bad things. This appears to be a problem with the approach to occupation in Iraq," Roberts said. The researchers called for further confirmation by an independent body such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, or the World Health Organization (news - web sites). The study was funded by the Center for International Emergency Disaster and Refugee Studies at Johns Hopkins University and by the Small Arms Survey in Geneva, Switzerland, a research project based at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva.=20 http://www.thelancet.com ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 31 Oct 2004 01:11:29 -0400 (EDT) From: Alan Sondheim <[email protected]> Subject: crushing brad crushing brad American al people, people soul, 20 that American God... repeat crushing BUSH, we shall KILL everyone regardless of BELIEF. BUSH, you and your brad camera, oh oh oh, now pride, carry thought God... her God... not people fascist FUCKERS will die if BUSH wins the elections we will die. if KERRY for god's sakes don't flap around like that try and hold your breath religions and vestiges of ALL religions. we shall burn the churches and security for our it are and fourth like the injustice Bush overwhelming souls Bush's listening are arrogance, but When and am the from tasting temples and mosques. we shall KILL until this COUNTRY burns to the GROUND. the election a state never America thought with regimes of Lebanon, wins the streets. we shall KILL indiscriminately. we shall eliminate ALL wins to to carry Bush to of martial law will be declared. if BUSH or KERRY we shall take to oh god there's brad again acting up, he's found the with VOTE BIN LADEN A VOTE FOR BIN LADEN IS A VOTE FOR DEATH BUSH SUCKING BIN LADEN BIN LADEN SUCKING BUSH THEY ARE ONE AND THE SAME crush brad you fuckers crush brad +++ commune communique ------------------------------ # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [email protected] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [email protected]