Saturday, March 05, 2005
Saturday 05 March 2005, 10:15 Makka Time, 7:15 GMT

Al-Jazeera announces that four US soldiers were killed in the al-Anbar province. Another soldier lost his life in an accident near Tikrit.

The military statement announced, "Four Soldiers assigned to First Marine Expeditionary Force were killed in action March 4, while conducting security and stability operations in Anbar province," further details were not available.

The other announcement said that a soldier died and another was wounded in an vehicle accident near Tikrit (north of tha capital) at 10 p.m (1900 GMT), also on Friday.

Five Iraqi soldiers were instead killed on Saturday night when their base of Duluiya was attacked by mortar shells, according to an Iraqi official.
Il Romanaccio at 11:29 AM


Saturday 05 March 2005, 2:24 Makka Time, 23:24 GMT

As reported by al-Jazeera, the Syrian soldiers are probably going to leave Lebanon before expected, it remains unclear how many of them will be redeployed.

UN demands for a complete withdrawal of the troops but a Lebanese Minister announced on Friday that Syria was searching for guarantees from the that are countries diplomatically involved.

Meanwhile, Sergei Lavrov (Russian Foreign Minister) was optimistic and said that Damascus acted in harmony with UN resolution (No.1559).

President Bush repeated yesterday that only a complete withdrawal of the Syrian troops will be
accepted.

The Lebanese Minister, speaking in condition af anonymity said,

"We expect an announcement for a pullback into the Baka [valley] before the Arab summit.[scheduled for March 23]." and he added that,

"The announcement for a complete withdrawal will depend on political consultations."

"Syria wants guarantees, a sort of a roadmap, and wants consultations at the regional and international levels for the resumption of the peace process."

The reason why Syria is still keeping troops in Lebanon is to defend herself against Israel's army that occupied the Golan Heights, taken from Damascus in 1967.
Il Romanaccio at 11:09 AM

Friday, March 04, 2005
Friday 04 March 2005, 23:04 Makka Time, 20:04 GMT

According to Italy's president CArlo Azeglio Ciampi and the Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian journalist kidnapped a month ago was accidentally wounded by US troops while leaving the country in a convoy.

The Italian secret agent who acted as a mediator was unfortunately killed in the accident, while Sgrena had a wounded shoulder.

The editor of the Manifesto (Sgrena's newspaper) Francesco Paterno said, "She was going in a car to the airport with three people from the Italian security forces. US forces opened fire on the car. She is fine but there are wounded."

Al-Jazeera was the first to announce Sgrena's liberation this morning.
Il Romanaccio at 9:32 PM


Rome, March 4, 2005 14.03

A certain risk of understimating human life is implied while daily reading the news from a war zone.
Human brain it is in fact built to get used to information and lower the level of attention requested for a random purpose.
This mechanism is the reason why we are able to improve a certain ability, if properly trained, by simply repeating an exercise or a reading a page of a book twice.
I believe that our task as journalists is to keep in mind what is important in the reality and what is less remarkable.

Since the “Iraqi Freedom “ operation begun in March 2003, a total toll of 1,674 coalition soldiers lost their life.
1,502 were Americans, 86 Britons, 20 Italians, 17 Poles, 17 Ukrainians, 11 Spaniards 7 Bulgarians, three Slovaks, two Dutch, two Estonians, two Thai one Daneone Hungarian, one Kazakh, one Latvian, , one Salvadoran.

1st Lt. Michael R. Adams from Seattle, Washington was 24 years-old when he lost his life, killed “when the barrel of the .50 caliber weapon mounted on his tank struck him in Al-ASad, Iraq, on MArch 16, 2004," he served the USA in the A Troop, 1st Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment.

Lt. Thomas Mullen Adams, 27, U.S. Navy exchange officer assigned to A Flight, 849 Squadron, British Royal Navy, came from La Mesa, California and was instead the victim of a collision between two Britsh helicopters over the Persian Gulf on March 22, 2003.

Spc. Jamaal R. Addison, 22, from Roswell, Georgia was part of the 507th Maintenance Company and died on March 23, 2003 in an ambush at Nasiriya.

The special report that CNN has online is worth to see. In this case nationality does not matter, it doesn’t count to be American or Spanish, a personal political attitude doesn’t make any difference.

What does count, in my opinion, is to look the in eyes of who gave his life to defend us.
These boys are fighting a war because they strongly believe in freedom.
They are getting payed too and a lot of them were south americans or foreigners in search for a Visa card.
Moreover, there is the perspective of a good career but I believe that this cannot be the only reason why a man decides to go facing his death daily.

I am tempted to say, that they knew what was going to happen to them but the truth it’s sadly different.
These guys were told that the war was going to be short and the resistance movement not so strong or well organized, because Iraqi people were finally free from a 26 year-long dictatorship and thankful to the Western civilization for that.
The reality told us another story.

The Baath party was not totally defeated and bringing down Saddam’s statue could have been very spectacular and sensational but not practically effective as it seemed.

In order to mantain such a totaliarian state for so long a deep and well organized grid of power was projected.
Saddam, along with his friend Alì Hassan al-Majid “Khemiawi” (Chemical Alì), did not esitated in using chemical weapons to pursuit his policy of “Arabization”.

The Iraqi “Diaspora” counts about five million of refugees that were trying to hide themselves as far as possible as they witnessed what nervine gas can do to a human body.

The war that Iraq started against Iran on September 17 1980, was also intended to esterminate the Kurds close to the borders, always persecuted because they were living in an oil-rich area.
This, along with the Shaat al-Arab issue, the recriminations of a larger space and the fact that Saddam believed that to be the right moment due to the confusion created by Khomeini’s Islamic revolution, was the reason why the Kurds had to join the Iranian army.

Saddam considered them to be the “fifth column” of the enemy and as soon as the war ended, he started the “Al-Anfar” (the prey) project which meant hunting these people in every possible way.
It was both a personal revenge and a “financial” move in favour of the Sunni part of the population.

In March 16 1988 an horrible massacre was perpetrated: more then 6,000 Kurds were bombed with nervine gas and the survivors razed by the bulldozers.

When Saddam invaded Kuwait during 1990 (August 8), conviced of a shadow-support he never had from the United States, a resolution of the United Nations (no.660) immediately asked the withdrawal of the Iraqi troops.

When the “Desert Storm” operation begun Hussein could not face the power of the Western coalition and left Kuwait with his troops on February 2, 1991, destroying about 700 hundred oil wells.

The coallition reached its goal, to defend one of the most important oil resource for the Western world. Saddam was left in his domain free to indiscriminately kill thousands of Shiist and Kurdish people.

He had 26 years to build his power in Iraq and the resistance our troops are facing now is a tough opposition of those who had precise advantages and rich incomes from Saddam’s political structure.
It’s a group of interest that will not easily give up its privileges and that’s clear.

We must all remember that our sons and daughters are dying in this country because WE made mistakes in the past, but they can hardly even understand the global political situation and most of them are not part of specialized corps, they might be very well equipped but they are not all professional soldiers.

Our soldiers are not replaceble, each one of them is a unique person in the first place and I belive that we already lost too many souls to get around nicely with our cars in our safe world.
At least try to look at them in the eyes for a second, they once were our sons.
Il Romanaccio at 2:02 PM


Friday 04 March 2005, 9:22 Makka Time, 6:22 GMT

As reported by the Ap, during the conference held in Ryhad on Thursady between Saudi officials and the Syrian president, Prince Abd Allah asked al-Asad for a full withdrawal of the his troops from Lebanon.

This new request came after many other politicians from Tony Blair to Bush passing from Condy Rice and the Uk Foreign Secretary Jack Straw did the same.

Damascus is under an international political pressure but resisted untill now to as the only positive answer about this possibility was trying to consider a partial withdrawal for the end of March.

According to an Arab diplomat in Cairo, says al-Jazeera, Syria intends to leave at least 3000 soldiers in Lebanon as well as radio stations.

The tone of the discussion wasn't so kind as many newspapers talked about a "tough" line from the Saudi Prince.

The 14,000 soldiers that are occupying Lebanon's sole since 1991 when they invaded the country as "peacekeepers" remained there without being noticed from the public opinion.
The issue became famous last February 14, when the assassination of the former Lebanese Prime Minister Hariri, who resigned from his job during the last October in order to protest against the presence of the Syrian army.

The Syrian president is considering a possible partial withdrawal before the Arab conference scheduled in Algeria for March 23, but remarked the fact that not everything was under his complete control.

Rafiq al-Hariri was known to be close with the Saudi people and the royal Family too, that is the reason why Prince Abd Allah is said to be "angry" with the Syrian government.
Il Romanaccio at 10:48 AM

Thursday, March 03, 2005
Thursday 03 March 2005, 14:49 Makka Time, 11:49 GMT

As reported by al-Jazeera two car bombs killed at least five police officers and wounded many others.

The first explosion happened in front of the interim Interior Ministry in Baghdad.

The second one took place in the city of Baquba killing one person and wounding fourteen others, according to an official source.

Apparently the chief police of the town was one of the wounded.
Il Romanaccio at 11:50 AM


Letter From A Yemeni Prison
Breaking News by Jane Novak
**********BLOGOSPHERE EXCLUSIVE**************
************Dissident watch**************
(Dear Friends and Fellow Freedom Lovers,
We the blogosphere received the following letter from Mr. Abdulkarim al-Khaiwani smuggled out of the central prison in Sana'a, Yemen.
I have been advocating for his release since his imprisonment in September as I am convinced that he is a politcal prisoner. He is a newspaper editor, a pro-democracy advocate, and a Yemeni patriot. There are several articles on my sidebar at Armies of Liberation that explain his case more fully.
Kindly read his letter, portions of which are deleted for his protection, as he is already in jail for insulting the president. If upon hearing from him directly, you wish demonstrate solidarity with this man, kindly sign this petition. Futhermore, please feel free to copy the letter to your site and link to the petition, not to me.
His appeal is scheduled for March 22, 2005. The petition will close on For a professional and objective view of his case, the sidebar at the petition site links both the World Association of Newspaper Editors February protest letter and the Amnesty International January Appeal page. The Amnesty page carries his photo. The poor guy thinks I'm a real journalist but lets see what the blogosphere can do here.)
Dear Ms. Jane Novack,
The American journalist and political analyst,
I hereby express my deepest gratitude and most sincere thanks from behind the bars of the central prison in Sana’a, the capital of Republic of Yemen, for your articles on the freedom of press issues including my imprisonment.
Your opinions have genuinely touched my and the reader’s conscience as you have expressed your commitment to support issues of rights and freedoms and emphasized the true understanding of the Middle East issue. Hence you know well that freedom, democracy, and equality are the key solutions to the region’s problems.
Ms. Jane,
Since fifteen years, we have experienced democracy and multi-party system as well as breathed the fresh air of freedom, all which are the achievements of Yemen Unification. Soon later, a regression occurred in this experience after the summer of 1994 civil war. These achievements were emptied from their core cause leaving a margin of press freedom through which we battled to defend democracy, freedom, human rights, equal citizenship, and independent judiciary system, all being conditions for a better future and means to combat corruption and absence of law.
[############ force, power, and oppression####### neglecting concepts of separation of powers. The head of the judiciary system is the president of the republic############ Here I am, in a battle which can least be described as unfair. My crime is public humiliation of the president. ########## I was deprived even from my right to self-defense. ########### you can imagine how I was handled by prison and police officers. ]
Furthermore, solidarity with my issue was prohibited and people in solidarity were punished and even terrorized to visit me in prison or declare their solidarity. In addition, the journalists’ syndicate is falling under tremendous pressures. I believe in democracy, freedom, equality and rights and am willing to sacrifice for their sake simply because I do not wish my children to suffer dictatorship and I will strive to provide them with a better future.
Il Romanaccio at 11:42 AM

Wednesday, March 02, 2005
Rome, March 2 2005 18;56

The global economy is bringing togheter many different interests.
The Western civilization appears to be confused and afraid. Confused about collective goals, such as "spreading democracy" and enlarging the global market. Afraid of old ghosts, represented by any different ideology or religion.

It is natural, a man is afraid of what he doesn't know, a dark path.
Ignorance is the place where these fears grown and unfortunately, this happens to be a very large spot.

Since the fall of the U.s.s.r. in 1991 when the end of the "cold war" seemed the beggining a new era, the entire world is "dominated" by one, widely accepted, ideology: the capitalism.

Many people think that democracy is another way to represent the same concept, this form of government clearly was succesful in advertising a goodness implied in itself.

Islam is considered by many people a part of an evil society that still does not want to recognize the simple reality of our Western "superiority".

This war of ideologies does not have to confuse the reality, it is once again all about money and power as it's always been, since the first animal appeared on this planet.

Countries are not alive by themselves, they don't have opinions, they don't take decisions.
An oligarchy of politicians and men of power is the core of any social system (Michel, "The Iron law of oligarchy").

The same rule could be applied to any international "coalition of intents", like the one that is deciding about the future of the Arab World.
This coalition is now facing a war against the oligarchy already present in this region.

Europe (or should I say Great Britain, France and Germany?) and America are united again to fight the opposition, the only ideology remained alive after the death of communism: the Islam.

When the USA invaded Iraq in March 2003, it was difficult to pay attention on what happened here in Europe, a drammatic split, already witnessed before, between the three major powers of the continent, G.b, France and Germany and the rest of the countries inlvoved in this union.

The leading countries immediately decided to support president Bush without asking anyone else in Europe.

This decision was not appreciated by the other members of the European Parliament.

Reading the Newspapers from around the world about the situation in the Middle East is strangely claryfing about this split.
When talking about the nuclear issue, every source of news makes clear that Europe is represented by Great Britain, France and Germany and no one seems to complain about it.

Other countries are supposed to be directly involved in their decisions. No one disagree in anything, no one even dare to simply comment the situation.

As a European citizen ( I am Italian) I do not feel so happy about this especially because I am paying in very expensive Euro.
It feels like not being involved and represented in your own country.
How would an American feel if Texas, Lousiana and Michigan were deciding about the USA by themselves?
How would it feel, for a citizen of the United States if every official source of media was referring to the USA as Texas, Lousiana and Michigan?
Would you still feel American? I doubt it.
Il Romanaccio at 6:56 PM


Wednesday 02 March 2005, 13:53 Makka Time, 10:53 GMT

According to al-Jazeera, a car bomb hit today an Iraqi army base killing at least 10 soldiers and wounding 30.

Husain Muhammad is a witness who saw, "a white Toyota Corolla trying to get inside the Iraqi army base. As he arrived, he [the suicide bomber] blew himself up."

Click on the title of this post to read more.
Il Romanaccio at 1:38 PM

Tuesday, March 01, 2005
BLOGGER NEWS NETWORK

The Breaking News Source of The Blogosphere

-EVERYONE SHOULD KNOW THIS BLOG-

Click on the title of this post! you'll be redirected there
Il Romanaccio at 8:36 PM


Tuesday 01 March 2005, 11:51 Makka Time, 8:51 GMT

Prime Minister Umar Karami resignated from his job after a mass demonstration made clear the opposition want the Syrian troops to leave the country (They invaded Lebanon during 1991 with about 15,000 soldiers).

The assassination of the former Prime Minister (who left the government last October to protest against the Syrian occupation) sparked a wave of doubts about the legitimacy of the actual cabinet.

Karami announced his decision of quitting the executive in parliamentary debate about Hariri's death, he said,

"I announce the resignation of the government over which I had the honour of presiding so that it does not pose an obstacle to what is considered by some as the good of the country,"

Many politicians of the opposition blamed his government to be dangerously close to Syria.

This new resignation was anyway a surprise for Lebanon.
Karami's government has been leading the country for only four months, the National Assembly welcomed the Prime Minister's decision with a loud and long applause, while the streets below were crowded with about 60, 000 people chanting,

"Your turn will come, Lahud, and yours, Bashar," refferring to Syrian President Bashar al-Asad who commented,

"If we really killed al-Hariri that would be political suicide for us. Beyond ethical and human principles, the question is who benefits from the crime? Certainly not Syria," he told the Italian daily left-centered Newspaper, "La Repubblica".

On the other hand, Washington declared itself "very interested" in any possible development of the situation and White House spokesman Scott McClellan said,

"The resignation of the Karami government represents an opportunity for the Lebanese people to have a new government which is truly representative of their country's diversity."


The future of this country remains uncertain in a difficult international moment.
Il Romanaccio at 12:30 PM

Monday, February 28, 2005
Monday 28 February 2005, 11:35 Makka Time, 8:35 GMT

According to police sources at least 100 people lost their life and 130 were wounded when a car bomb exploded this morning at 9.30 am (0630 GMT) close to a medical centre of the mainly Shia town of al-Hilla (about 55 miles south of Baghdad).

As reported by al-Jazeera, a witness from the Reuters press agency saw ambulance workers bringing dead bodies away from the area.

These people were all waiting to get medical cards they needed for burocracy purposes in order to applying for government jobs.

Iraqi journalist Talib al-Janabi referred that the suicide bomber entered the barricades with his car and then blew himself just in front of the building.

Firefighters, US and Iraqi forces immediately came to manage the difficult situation but al-Janabi also saw that 30 to 40 people were killed, the others wounded.[official reports about the exact number of dead are not available].

Mohammed Dia, for the Hilla general hospital said, "All the hospital's rooms, even those used for cardiology, are filled with the wounded."

Meanwhile another car bomb exploded in al-Musayib city, north of al-Hilla, we still don't know anything else.
Il Romanaccio at 11:27 AM

Sunday, February 27, 2005
The Associated Press
Updated: 3:57 a.m. ET Feb. 27, 2005
MSNBC News

Sharon threatens to freeze peace efforts after attack

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said, “There will be no progress politically, and I repeat no political progress, until the Palestinians carry out a determined campaign to destroy the terrorist groups and their infrastructure in the Palestinian territories.”
Il Romanaccio at 11:01 AM


Sunday, February 27, 2005 Posted: 4:47 AM EST (0947 GMT)

Baghdad, Saddam's half brother Sab'awi Ibrahim al-Hasan al-Tikriti was arrested by US and Iraqi forces, an article from the Cnn.
Il Romanaccio at 10:56 AM


Ten people died and at least 11 were kidnapped on Saturday in Iraq, AFP+Khaleej Times Online.
Il Romanaccio at 10:49 AM


Sunday 27 February 2005, 4:46 Makka Time, 1:46 GMT

According to The Daily Telegraph there are more British soldiers involved in crimes against Iraqi prisoners.
reported by al-Jazeera.
Il Romanaccio at 10:45 AM


Another attack to an Iraqi pipeline in the north of the city, an article from the TheranTimes online.
Il Romanaccio at 10:43 AM


In an Interview with the Daily Telegraph, mr.Colin Powell, American secretary of state admitted the lack of soldiers in Iraq and the need for auxiliary troops from the allies.
Il Romanaccio at 10:38 AM