Also: <...> Yuval Diskin, head of Israel's Shin Bet domestic intelligence branch http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2006/s1567635.htm was caught on tape saying that the chaos in Iraq is likely a greater threat to Israel than was the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. He also admitted that Israeli courts and police discriminate against Arabs. He called West Bank colonists who threaten violence "terrorists" and "worse than Arab attackers." Gee, Diskin and Cole agree 3 for 3 here. No doubt David Horowitz and the other American Likudniks will now consider him "dangerous." <...>
Juan Cole -
Video footage of British soldiers kicking and beating Iraqi teenagers http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4705482.stm has surfaced. I saw it on Aljazeerah. It was taken by a British corporal who appears to have thought the whole thing a hoot. The teenagers had been demonstrating outside the British barracks, apparently. The soldiers landed 41 blows in a minute of tape, and also beat up on a corpse. Although the British government maintains that the incident is unrepresentative, one can only imagine that tens of thousands of Iraqis have been beaten by foreign troops (US, UK and others) during the past nearly 3 years. There are 15,000 in custody at any one time, and there have been lots of home invasions and repressions of demonstrations and of militia activity. Since the clannish Iraqis almost all have 24 first cousins who would die to defend their honor, the number of persons deeply affected by the beatings is in the millions. Imperialism requires brutality, but brutality weakens imperialism over the long run.
Riverbend describes a raid http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/2006_02_01_riverbendblog_archive.html#113960899464455450
by Iraq's mostly Shiite special police commandos in her aunt's Sunni Muslim area of Baghdad. For more on the aftermath of such raids, see the items from the Iraqi press at the end of this posting. <...>
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