Independent

"Six days on and still they chant, still they march, still they seek to overturn the election result that cheated them. The crowds and the momentum are on their side, but nothing in Ukraine is that simple." [more]

But there have also been disturbing reports of the US military using aid as a political weapon, which has further contributed to undermine the neutrality of the NGOs. [more]

The body bags have been shipped in, locals are running scared, and foreigners are being arrested and deported. Organisers of this week's G8 Summit are taking no chances with security... [more]

"All vehicles not belonging to the US military will be fired on according to US military command. The move over the weekend is likely to cause massive dislocation by preventing Iraqis using the highways north and south of Baghdad — the main economic lifelines of the country — where insurgents have launched frequent attacks. The main roads to Turkey, Jordan and Kuwait will be cut." [more]

"Negroponte, 64, has a reputation as a hardened diplomat who attracted considerable controversy as the US ambassador to Honduras in the early Eighties when he was instrumental in assisting the Contras overthrow a leftist regime in Nicaragua. He has always denied allegations that he turned a blind eye to human rights violations, including death squads, in the region in that period." [more]

"At least 80 foreign mercenaries — security guards recruited from the US, Europe and South Africa and working for American companies — have been killed in the past eight days. The occupation authorities have kept the figures secret." [more]

"I can't advocate a news blackout on these issues; the term 'marketplace of ideas' is engraved on each cell in my body. But I'd like the marketplace to be a real one: complex, thoughtful, diverse. And right now, the coverage is being increasingly circumscribed by the agenda of conservative groups bent on shutting conversation down, quelling dissent and the free exchange of ideas--while they simultaneously and hypocritically claim that their moves are based on the twin pillars of free speech and fairness. It's a clever argument the local media seem to have swallowed hook, line and sinker." [more]

"I was 100 metres away from the first explosion, but you didn't have to be that close. Millions of Shia saw that first terrifying explosion, which sent a great burst of yellow fire bellowing over the roofs of Karbala; cameras were already filming the ceremonies. You could watch it all on the television news, just like on 11 September." [more]

"...I don't believe the Americans were behind yesterday's carnage despite the screams of accusation by the Iraqi survivors yesterday. But I do worry about the Iraqi exile groups who think that their own actions might produce what the Americans want: a fear of civil war so intense that Iraqis will go along with any plan the United States produces for Mesopotamia." [more]

"Zeidun Fadhil and his cousin Marwan Fadhil were allegedly taken to a remote spot on the shore and ordered into the river at gunpoint. When they refused, the soldiers were said to have forced them into the river. Zeidun, who could not swim, drowned in the strong current." [more]

"While the eyes of world are on Iraq, the Taliban are reborn across much of this country and their al-Qa'ida allies are once more in the ascendant. As attacks mount and the death toll rises, the US [is] losing control" [more]

"A quiet revolution is taking place in US politics. By the time it's over, the integrity of elections will be in the unchallenged, unscrutinised control of a few large — and pro-Republican — corporations." [more]

"US soldiers driving bulldozers, with jazz blaring from loudspeakers, have uprooted ancient groves of date palms as well as orange and lemon trees in central Iraq as part of a new policy of collective punishment of farmers who do not give information about guerrillas attacking US troops." [more]

"After telling the world that most Iraqis are delighted with their 'liberation' and forthcoming 'democracy', the authorities are obviously aware that many Iraqis don't feel that way at all." [more]

"Often the children are there beside the cheap wooden coffins, screaming and crying and numb with loss. The families weep and they say that no one cares about them and, after expressing our sorrow to them over and over again, I come to the conclusion they are right. No one cares." [more]

" 'I once believed that I served for a cause: "To uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States." Now I no longer believe that,' Tim Predmore, a member of the 101st Airborne Division serving near Mosul, wrote ... 'I can no longer justify my service for what I believe to be half-truths and bold lies.' " [more]

"An increasing number of journalists in Baghdad now suspect that US proconsul Paul Bremmer and his hundreds of assistants ensconced in the heavily guarded former presidential palace of Saddam Hussein in the capital, have simply lost touch with reality." [more]

"There were three separate ambushes in Khaldiya and the guerrillas showed a new sophistication. Even as I left the scene of the killings after dark, US army flares were dripping over the semi-desert plain 100 miles west of Baghdad while red tracer fire raced along the horizon behind the palm trees. It might have been a scene from a Vietnam movie, even an archive newsreel clip; for this is now tough, lethal guerrilla country for the Americans, a death-trap for them almost every day." [more]

"On 7 March, Dr ElBaradei told the Security Council that UN and independent forensic experts had found that what purported to be Niger government documents, in which Mr Zahawie's name was mentioned, were 'not authentic'. That demolished a key pillar of the Anglo-American case for war, but by then it was too late." [more]

"A 1980 UN convention banned the use against civilian targets of napalm, a terrifying mixture of jet fuel and polystyrene that sticks to skin as it burns. The US, which did not sign the treaty, is one of the few countries that makes use of the weapon." [more]

"Doctors said the father and his two daughters would have survived if they had received treatment quicker. Instead, they were left to bleed to death because the Americans refused to allow anyone to take them to hospital." [more]

"It is impossible to know for sure who might be on the list, or why. The ACLU says a list kept by security personnel at Oakland airport ran to 88 pages. More than 300 people have been subject to special questioning at San Francisco airport, and another 24 at Oakland, according to police records. In no case does it appear that a wanted criminal was apprehended." [more]

"When Iraqi ex-soldiers demonstrated outside Bremer's office at the former Presidential Palace, US troops shot two of them dead. When Falujah residents staged a protest as long ago as April, the American military shot 16 dead. Another 11 were later gunned down in Mosul." [more]

"The history of mutual antagonism between Washington and Al-Jazeera goes back to the 2001 bombardment of Afghanistan when, after the Arab station showed videotape of Osama Bin Laden, an American Cruise missile exploded in their Kabul bureau. Then in the last days of the invasion of Iraq this year, after the channel beamed pictures of Iraqi civilians mutilated by US air raids and tape of American prisoners in Iraqi hands, a US jet targeted the station's Baghdad bureau, killing one of its senior reporters." [more]

" 'The Americans didn't try to help the civilians they had shot, not once,' a witness said. 'They let the car burn and left the bodies where they lay, even the children. It was we who had to take them to the hospitals.' " [more]

"The theory that WMD were destroyed just before the invasion is, however, unlikely. The Iraqis did not seem capable of the organised destruction, which would have been no small task. Places where such destruction would have taken place show no sign of recent use." [more]

"Mr Blair refused to apologise for inadvertently 'misrepresenting' the dossier issued in February as 'intelligence' when large parts of it were culled from an article in a Middle East journal based on a PhD thesis." [more]

"The silence of Saddam's inner circle on the topic so far tends to confirm the story told by General Hussein Kamel, the son-in-law of Saddam Hussein who fled to Jordan in 1995 ... General Kamel said Saddam had ordered the destruction of weapons of mass destruction in 1991, but had also issued instructions that plans, designs and equipment to start the programme again, when possible, should be secretly retained." [more]

"Attacks on US soldiers are becoming increasingly frequent and are now taking place in the capital and other cities where previously there had been little resistance to the occupation." [more]

"The one demand almost all Afghans make — that international troops should be deployed in other cities, not just in Kabul, and hoover up the millions of rifles and rocket-propelled grenades — is denied them by the United States. Why? The Americans are keen to confiscate weapons in Iraq. Why not in Afghanistan as well?" [more]

"The team searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is ending its operation without having found proof that Saddam Hussein had stocks of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons." [more]

"A high-level UK source said last night that intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic were furious that briefings they gave political leaders were distorted in the rush to war with Iraq." [more]

"The US is preparing to use the toxic riot-control agents CS gas and pepper spray in Iraq in contravention of the Chemical Weapons Convention, provoking the first split in the Anglo-US alliance." [more]

"Protests against war in Iraq took place in cities across the world over the weekend amid growing public unease at plans by Washington and London to topple Saddam Hussein's regime." [more]

"As rescue workers searched unsuccessfully yesterday for survivors amid the rubble of Chechnya's government headquarters, Russian politicians insisted they would press ahead with plans to impose peace on the rebellious territory." [more]

"Observers from the European Union yesterday blamed Pakistan's government for 'serious flaws' in its general election, and questioned claims by the military President, Pervez Musharraf, to be returning the country to a civilian democracy." [more]

"We should be ready to impose the will of the United Nations on them if they don't co-operate, but not by hurting the people of Iraq. / "Each one of them is as precious as the 3,000 people in the twin towers. We can't sacrifice them to putting it right," she [Clare Short, the International Development Secretary] said. [more]

"My Israeli colleague Amira Haas once defined to me our job as journalists: 'to monitor the centres of power'. Never has it been so important for us to do just that. For if we fail, we will become the mouthpiece of power." [more]

"Having served as Defence Secretary, and basked in the reflected glory of the US military's surprisingly rapid advance across the desert sands to end the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, he [Dick Cheney] then managed to reap benefits of a very different kind once the war was over and he left government to become chief executive of Halliburton, the Texas-based oil services company." [more]

"In the heat of the dispute over Iraq strategy, South Asia has now become a sideshow. And it is in Iraq that George Bush may be about to make his biggest mistake and to unleash a generation-long plague of anti-Americanism that may make the present epidemic look like a time of rude good health." [more]

"Mr Muttawakil, now in American custody, believed the Taliban's protection of Mr bin Laden and the other al-Qa'ida militants would lead to nothing less than the destruction of Afghanistan by the US military. He told his aide: 'The guests are going to destroy the guesthouse.' " [more]

"The warmongers failed to win public opinion, so they're suddenly cobbling together 'evidence.' " [more]

"The names who have come forward this week to express scepticism or outright opposition to a military invasion could not be more high-profile: Henry Kissinger, the primary architect of American foreign and security policy during the second half of the Cold War, who is considered something of a Delphic oracle by many Americans; Brent Scowcroft, who served as national security adviser to George Bush Snr and is still close to the whole Bush family; and Lawrence Eagleburger, another veteran from the Reagan-Bush era who briefly served as Secretary of State after the 1991 Gulf War." [more]

"How many human rights did the mass killers of 11 September allow their victims? You are either with us or against us. Whose side are you on? But the man in the garden was worried. He was not an American. He was one of the 'coalition allies', as the Americans like to call the patsies who have trotted after them into the Afghan midden." [more]

"A former member of a Special Forces unit from one of America's coalition partners supplied his own explanation for the American behaviour when I met him a few days later. 'When we go into a village and see a farmer with a beard, we see an Afghan farmer with a beard,' he said. 'When the Americans go into a village and see a farmer with a beard, they see Osama bin Laden.'" [more]

"The use of the drugs is outlined in a 58-page document seen by The Independent entitled Performance Maintenance During Continuous Flight Operations, produced by the Naval medical research laboratory in Pensacola, Florida. It says: "Combat naps, proper nutrition and caffeine are currently approved and accepted ways ... to prevent and manage fatigue. However, in sustained and continuous operations these methods may be insufficient ..."" [more]

"It was exactly six months ago that the first prisoners were flown to Guantanamo Bay from Afghanistan, their arrival in handcuffs, goggles and ear-muffs causing an international outcry. Despite the fact that the prisoners are interrogated on a regular basis, none has been charged. It is possible that none will ever be charged. The US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, has admitted that even if a prisoner were placed before a military tribunal and found not guilty, the prisoner may not be released." [more]

"Some analysts believe the source of the leak to be military commanders who believe the politicians are blithely talking up an operation whose potential cost in casualties for US forces they do not fully appreciate. But others take the report as part of a process of softening up President Saddam, forcing him into a rash move that would give Washington the pretext it required. Talk of US and British agents stirring up trouble among the Kurds might, for example, prod the Iraqi leader into a strike against them, thus offering the US justification to step in." [more]

"Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrats' foreign affairs spokesman, said it was an 'entirely sensible decision' for Mr O'Brien to go to the Middle East. He added: 'For all his many faults and failures, Yasser Arafat is still the leader of the Palestinian people. No reasonable prospect for peace in the Middle East exists without his engagement.' " [more]

"The American proposals, introduced by Richard Williamson, its ambasssador to the UN for political affairs, offer two options. The first would include all UN missions ... 'that current and former officials and personnel from a contributing state ... shall enjoy, except in the territory of the contributing state, immunity from arrest, detention and prosecution with respect to all acts arising out of such operations and that this immunity shall continue after termination of their participation for all such acts'. The second draft resolution makes the same proposals, but restricts it to the force for Bosnia." [more]

"What, I wonder, does this mean? Do these 'certain aspects' include the continuation of illegal Jewish settlement building? Or the absence of any international guarantees for this interim/provisional state? Or perhaps a get-out clause for the United States to wash its hands of the whole shebang if Israel decides to annex the entire West Bank?" [more]

"So, no Palestinian state unless Arafat goes. There were no Bush conditions for Israel. He did not secure an end to the continuing building of Jewish settlements for Jews and Jews only on Arab (that is somebody else's) land. Nor did he secure a halt to continuing Israeli military 'incursions' how I love that word 'incursions'." [more]

"Mr Bush's call for a new Palestinian leadership was rejected not only by the Palestinian Authority but by a wide range of world leaders. Kofi Annan, secretary general of the UN, warned last night that President Bush's call for the removal of Mr Arafat could backfire if a more hardline leader was elected. The former US senator George Mitchell, who tried last year to broker a Middle East peace deal, expressed similar worries that Islamic Jihad or Hamas could take over from the PLO leader." [more]

"Because the intelligence men of the United States are not going to beat their real enemies like this. Theirs is a mission impossible, because they will not be allowed to do what any crime-fighting organization does to ensures success—to search for a motive for the crime. They are not going to be allowed to ask the 'why' question. Only the "who" and "how"." [more]

"The United States is blocking an international plan to halve the number of people, two-fifths of the population of the planet, who have no sanitation. Some 2.4 billion people lack even a bucket for their wastes, and this is one of the main causes of world disease." [more]

"The very fact that something was on paper before the eyes of the President has changed the dynamic, at a watershed political moment. The shooting war against al-Qa'ida is winding down, and the trail of Osama bin Laden has gone cold. Meanwhile the mid-term elections in November, in which control of both Houses is at stake, grow steadily nearer." [more]

"Dan Rather, one of the most respected and well-known broadcasters in the United States said last night that the mood of extreme patriotism engulfing the country since 11 September had stopped the media asking difficult questions of America's leaders. He said he was personally guilty of self-censorship." [more]

Reporters who criticise Israel are to blame for inciting anti-Semites to burn synagogues. Thus it is not Israel's brutality and occupation that provokes the sick and cruel people who attack Jewish institutions, synagogues and cemeteries. We journalists are to blame. [more]

"The squalid, corrupt little dictator of Ramallah, Mr Arafat, and the brutal, merciless leader of the Middle East's mightiest army, Mr Sharon, have nothing to offer each other. Mr Arafat cannot fulfil his required role of colonial governor ó to 'control his own people' ó while Mr Sharon cannot fulfil his promise to provide Israelis with security. As one of his legal advisers admitted hours after Washington's call for a peace conference, the diminution in Palestinian violence 'won't last for ever.' " [more]

"Squadron Leader Tom Rounds of the RAF said at Bagram airbase, 'Tens of thousands of dollars have been offered as bounty for both an attack on Bagram as well as killings of Westerners. There is a real and very immediate threat to this base at the moment; that is what our intelligence indicates, and we are taking it extremely seriously.' " [more]

"A terrible crime has been committed by Israel in Jenin refugee camp, and the world is turning a blind eye. Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, visited the scene of a suicide bombing that murdered six Israelis in Jerusalem, but he did not visit Jenin, where the Israelis admit they killed at least 100 Palestinians. The Israel army claims all of the dead were armed men, that it took special care to avoid civilian casualties. But we saw the helicopter rockets rain down on desperately crowded areas: civilian casualties could not have been prevented." [more]

"The Israeli Prime Minister is, after all, the man who sent his army into Lebanon in 1982 to 'root out Palestinian terror' ó note the identical rhetoric, as well as the same cast of characters ó and whose 'elite' Israeli forces killed up to 17,500 people, almost all civilians." [more]

"Thus the rhetoric becomes ever more cruel, ever more revolting. Hamas calls its Jewish enemies 'the sons of pigs and monkeys', while Israeli leaders have variously bestialised their enemies as 'serpents', 'crocodiles', 'beasts' and 'cockroaches'. Now we have an Israeli officer ó according to the Israeli daily Ma'ariv ó advising his men to study the tactics adopted by the Nazis in the Second World War. 'If our job is to seize a densely packed refugee camp or take over the Nablus casbah, and if this job is given to an [Israeli] officer to carry out without casualties on both sides, he must before all else analyse and bring together the lessons of past battles, even ó shocking though this might appear ó to analyse how the German army operated in the Warsaw ghetto.' " [more]

"Some had talked of wrapping up the operation in eastern Afghanistan in little more than 24 hours. But with the desperate battle for Shah-i-Kot this morning entering its sixth bloody day, two things have become increasingly clear: that the US has been surprised by the strength and tenacity of the Taliban and al-Qa'ida forces, and that those forces intend to battle to the end." [more]

"I'm beginning to suspect that 11 September is turning into a curse far greater than the original bloodbath of that day, that America's absorption with that terrible event is in danger of distorting our morality. Is the anarchy of Afghanistan and the continuing slaughter in the Middle East really to be the memorial for the thousands who died on 11 September?" [more]

"For all the Pentagon's efforts to present the loss of the lives of at least nine US servicemen in a weekend as a small hiccup on the road to certain victory, the episode has come as a rude awakening to America." [more]

The Justice Department acknowledged the arrest of 1,200 people before it stopped releasing numbers in November; human rights groups believe the total number could be as high as 2,000. But Haddad's case is perhaps the most troubling of all because of the sheer severity of his treatment and the shockingly abrupt suspension of his rights to due legal process. Government lawyers have refused to spell out what evidence, if any, they have against him, saying that they do not have to under the Bush administration's stiff new anti-terrorism law passed in late October, the so-called Patriot Act. The US Attorney's office in Chicago refused all comment. [more]