Author: andy

Pointers: Iraq

How to Get Out of Iraq, By Peter W. Galbraith. Quoth he: “Early in 2005, Iraq will likely see a clash between an elected Shiite-dominated central government trying to override the interim constitution in order to impose its will on the entire country, and a Kurdistan government insistent on preserving the de facto independent status Kurdistan has enjoyed for thirteen years. Complicating the political struggle is a bitter territorial dispute over the oil-rich province of Kirkuk involving Kurds, Sunni Arabs, Shiite Arabs, Sunni Turkmen, and Shiite Turkmen. It is a formula for civil war.” (Via John Robb) #

A copy of the US military’s leaked Taguba report into the ‘mistreatment’ of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq.

Ecocide in Tasmania

Guardian. Paradise lost – with napalm. “In Tasmania, an island the size of Ireland whose primeval forests astonished 19th-century Europeans, an incomprehensible ecological tragedy is being played out. … Rainforest is being clearfelled and then burnt with napalm. The world’s tallest hardwood trees, eucalyptus regnans, are being reduced to mud and ash. And the monocultural plantations that replace the old growths soak up so much groundwater that rivers are drying up.”