OIL DEAD
Congo occupied
A truck loaded with oil exploded Friday and set fire to a village in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo close to the border with Burundi. Two hundred and twenty people (estimated) have died among them children. Once the fuel started leaking, the reports said, “[oil] ran absolutely everywhere. Once it caught fire, the trap was already set.” Dozens of homes mostly constructed with earth and straw went up in fire. Survivors “need water, food and maybe psychological assistance.” The United Nations is assisting.
Nigeria occupied
An attack and kidnapping occurred yesterday in the waters off the coast of Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta region. Attacked was a cargo vessel; among the kidnapped were 12 foreign crewmembers. In recent years, hundreds of local people and foreigners, most but not all linked to the oil sector, have been kidnapped ─ and shortly released after ransom payment ─ in the Niger Delta.
Gulf of Mexico occupied
BP and partners halted oil cleanup in the Gulf of Mexico waters Thursday due to weather conditions.
WAR DEAD
Afghanistan invaded, occupied, destabilized
Taliban fighters on Friday attacked the office of a U.S. aid contractor, Development Alternatives Inc, in northern Afghanistan. Five people (estimated) died in the attack.
U.S. officials said DAI runs two aid programs in Kunduz: one provides grants for small businesses, another works with farmers to improve agricultural technology. The Taliban accused the company of providing intelligence and support to U.S. troops.
AFPAK region occupied, destabilized
Pakistan
In the suicide bombing at Lahore’s Sufi Shrine in Pakistan the numbers dead rose to 42 and 180 wounded.
Though security has increased at Sufi shrines across the country, many Pakistanis already frustrated by a troubled economy and crippling power cuts called for the resignation of Punjab government officials. Thousands of people demonstrated on Friday in Lahore against the chief minister of Punjab, Shahbaz Sharif.
Kashmir/India/Pakistan destabilized
The Muslim-majority Kashmir valley continues besieged by strikes and demonstrations, curfews and killings. Eleven Kashmiri civilians died last month at the hand of Indian police and paramilitary forces struggling to control separatist rallies. Separatists struggling for independence or for Muslim-majority Kashmir to join neighboring Pakistan have fought for decades against New Delhi’s rule. On Saturday, separatists called for the withdrawal of troops from civilian areas.
The Indian army said on Saturday its troops killed four suspected militants along the de facto border dividing Kashmir between India and Pakistan. New Delhi says “the insurgency … fuelled by Pakistan has claimed tens of thousands of lives.” London-based Amnesty International is calling on Indian authorities to investigate killings of civilians in Kashmir.
A senior Maoist leader died on Friday. Indian police said he died during “a battle with the rebels in a densely forested region of the southern state of Andhra Pradesh.” Maoists denied the claim saying that the group’s central committee member Cherukuri Rajkumar (known as ‘Azad’) “was killed in police custody.” The death of the Maoist leader comes on the heels of the shooting deaths of 26 members of paramilitary forces in an ambush in the eastern state of Chhattisgarh.
MIDDLE EAST occupied, destabilized
Iraq/Turkey/Kurdistan
A day after 17 people (12 separatist fighters and 5 Turkish security forces) died in clashes in southeast Turkey, Turkish warplanes on Friday bombed Kurdish rebel targets, hideouts of the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), in northern Iraq.
The separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party, listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community, took up arms for Kurdish self-rule in the southeast in 1984. The resulting conflict has claimed the lives of more than 40,000 people.
Middle East update
July 4, 2010
Iraq
Four people died today and more than 20 among them women and children suffered wounds when a suicide bomb exploded at the provincial government building in the Iraqi city of Ramadi.
On Thursday, two police officers died when a roadside bomb exploded in the province. On Friday Sheikh Abdulalim al-Saadi, the imam of a mosque in Ramadi and the brother of the mufti of Iraq, was killed by “unidentified assailants.” In the past two weeks, attacks have targeted police, a hospital, and several jewelers. And the continuing political impasse four months after parliamentary elections with no one able to form a government has many Iraqis concerned that violence will continue to rise. In this region, violence had appeared to peak in 2006 and 2007 though bombings and assassinations were commonplace [“Bomber hits Iraq government offices,” July 4, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/07/20107492524124135.html].
U.S. Carte blanche to KILL
Domestic neglect
We are required to offset anything for education [and] offset anything for jobs … [This] war is reaching $280 billion for taxpayers ─ all under an emergency supplemental category, which does not require offsets … [U.S. Representative Raúl M. Grijalva].The U.S. House of Representatives on Friday approved spending legislation amounting to more than $30 billion to escalate the war in Afghanistan. This expenditure comes on top of $130 billion already earmarked this year for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
How many (est.) in two-theater
U.S.-led
WAR DEAD?
Casualty sites reporting
July 2, 2010 (accurate totals unknown)
• Anti-war dot com Casualties in Iraq since March 19, 2003
[U.S. war dead since the Obama inauguration January 20, 2009: 183]
Wounded 31,874-100,000
U.S. veterans with brain injuries 320,000
Suicides 18 a day
• Iraq Body Count figures
96,813 – 105,563
• ICasualties IRAQ: 4,411 U.S., 4,729 Coalition
AFGHANISTAN: 1,150 U.S., 1,895 Coalition
Sources and notes
“Hundreds die in DR Congo fuel blast,” http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2010/07/2010736375189472.html
“Gunmen seized crew in vessel attack off Nigeria: navy,” July 3, 2010, http://www.rnw.nl/english/bulletin/gunmen-kidnap-12-vessel-attack-nigeria-navy-0
“Taliban attacks Afghan aid office,” July 3, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/07/20107243355686641.html
"Pakistan shrine blasts prompt alert," July 2, 2010,
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/07/2010721442570131.html
“Amnesty urges India to probe Kashmir killings,” July 3, 2010 - 11:01am
http://www.rnw.nl/english/bulletin/amnesty-urges-india-probe-kashmir-killings
“Top Maoist leader killed in India,” July 3, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/07/20107363647493939.html
"Turkey bombs Kurd targets in Iraq," July 2, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2010/07/20107295817588507.html
Democracy news headlines Friday July 2, 2010,
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/2/headlines#1
Representative Raúl M. Grijalva serves the 7th Congressional District of Arizona. Grijalva is the son of a Mexican laborer whom the U.S. government brought to the United States in the 1940s “to help offset the loss of skilled American ranch hands serving during World War II.” The congressional representative was born and raised in Tucson, Arizona, http://grijalva.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=2§iontree=2
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