International Law: September 2004 Archives

Huda Alazawi was one of the few women held in solitary in the notorious Iraqi prison. Following her release, she talks for the first time to Luke Harding about her ordeal

Monday September 20, 2004
The Guardian

It began with a phone call. In November last year 39-year-old Huda Alazawi, a wealthy Baghdad businesswoman, received a demand from an Iraqi informant. He was working for the Americans in Adhamiya, a Sunni district of Baghdad well known for its hostility towards the US occupation. His demand was simple: Madame Huda, as her friends and family know her, had to give him $10,000. If she failed to pay up, he would write a report claiming that she and her family were working for the Iraqi resistance. He would pass it to the US military and they would arrest her.

by Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar

The word Khan'd'in means a collection of numerous parts and segments, that is, the Balkans. The Balkans refer to an extended territory consisting of Greece, Rumania, Albania etc. Another meaning of the term is a federal state, that, is a state consisting of a number of unitary states, for example, the Federal State of India. According to the Indian constitution, the Federal State of India is a collection of a number of unitary states or provinces under the unified rule of the federal government. It should be borne in mind that the two terms 'unitary' and 'unitarian' are not synonymous. Neither are these two terms synonymous with the term totalitarian. A written constitution clearly defines the jurisdiction and rights of the federal state and the unitary states in areas like industry, energy production, irrigation, transport and communication. These things are partly given to the federal government and partly to the state government. Excise tax also rests partly with the federal government (on sugar, tobacco, jute, tea and coal) and partly with the unitary provincial governments (ganga, hashish, wine, etc.) In India none of the four major cash crops and products (jute, tobacco, tea and coal) are in the control of the unitary states.

By Barry Grey

09/15/04 "Silicon Investor" -- Every day, US military forces in Iraq are attacking civilian populations in a calculated effort to drown a growing popular insurgency in blood. But one would hardly know the dimensions or brutality of the atrocities being carried out in the name of the American people from the sparse and sanitized coverage provided by the major press and broadcast outlets that purport to disseminate “the news.”