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Sheffield Indymedia Radio links live to Baghdad

Sheffield Indymedia | 15.07.2004 13:46 | Indymedia | Sheffield

On Wednesday 14th July, Sheffield Indymedia participated in a live link-up to the first Internet radio stream from Baghdad.

Media activists from Radio LoRa in Zurich and the StreamTime Foundation have travelled to Iraq to set-up a number of community radio initiatives starting with a stream on 30th June from Halabja in the Kurdish region of Iraq. Halabja was the scene of chemical genocide on the 16th of March 1988, which saw 5000 dead and 10000 injured, and the remaining 36000 inhabitants were forced to flee their homes. The program was produced by Streamtime in collaboration with the Kurdish Communist Party and can be be heard here.

Bagdhad radio studio
Bagdhad radio studio



Wednesday 14th July saw the first ever Internet radio stream from Baghdad and Sheffield Indymedia relayed the audio on the community radio station, SheffieldLive broadcasting on 87.9FM until the end of July and on the Internet.

The Sheffield studio was hit with a massive power cut 45 minutes before the Indymedia show was due to air but electricity was restored. The Baghdad link then failed but at 12:30pm London time communication was established with the Iraqi studio and the live relay could proceed.

Salam sent the best wishes of Baghdad to listeners and inhabitants of Sheffield, and even sent some messages to family members living in our city. There was studio talk about the current situation in Iraq after the US 'handover' and how life is different there after the overthrow of the Hussein administration. The broadcast was made in English, German, Spanish and Farsi. Archives of the broadcast can be heard here and here.

We communicated to the Baghdad studio using Internet Relay Chat and media activists from Amsterdam, Switzerland, Germany and elsewhere all participated in the live event to relaying the audio stream to listeners in their home cities around the world.

The rest of the Indymedia show focused on interviews recorded at the recent festivals in Sheffield with speakers from the Sheffield Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, Concert For Palestine and MC RebelBase from the political rap combo Double Negative. Kev from Sheffield Social Forum was also in the studio talking about his experiences at being arrested under 'anti-terrorism' laws at last September's protests against the arms fair, DSEI.

Sheffield Indymedia hopes to link up to more community radios worldwide in the next two weeks with links again to Iraq, to the US and possibly to Chiapas, Mexico.

Sheffield Indymedia
- e-mail: sheffield@indymedia.org
- Homepage: http://www.sheffield.indymedia.org.uk/

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A Brief (and partial) History of US Sponsored Terrorism Abroad from The Crows E

16.07.2004 12:40


1946-U.S. opens School of the Americas in Panama. Now located in Fort Benning, Georgia, the 'School of the Assassins' has taught over 60,000 personnel from some of the worlds most brutal regimes how to subvert the truth, to muzzle union leaders, activist clergy, and journalists, and to make war on their own people.

1951-CIA is involved in a coup to overthrow nationalist primeminister Dr. Muhammed Mossadeq in Iran. Supports Iranian military in massacre of Mossadeq supporters and returns the Shah to power. In 1976, Amnesty International concluded that the Shah's CIA-trained security force, SAVAK, had the worst human rights record on the planet, and that the number and variety of torture techniques the CIA had taught SAVAK were "beyond belief."

1951-CIA involved in terror campaign against democratically elected Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala. After Arbenz government is
overthrown, CIA backed regimes murder more than 100,000 Guatemalans over the next 40 years

1961- CIA recruits 1500 Cuban exiles to invade Cuba and overthrow the Castro regime. The Pay of Pigs invasion would be a disaster, however the CIA would continue with more than two dozen attempts to kill Castro.

1963- The CIA have South Vietnemese president Ngo Dinh Diem overthrown and assasinated for supporting negotiations with the
north. After 20 years of covert war the U.S. turns to direct military invasion, in a war that costs tens of thousands of Vietnemese, Cambodian and U.S. lives

1963-CIA recruits Iraqi Baath Party (including a young Saddam Hussein) to assasinate the new leader, Abdul-Karim Kassem.
After the coup, the CIA gave the Baath a long list of communists and others to liquidate. During the 1980s the CIA would go on to
help provide weapons to both Iraq and Iran in a war that would kill over one million people.

1965-CIA provokes a coup that leads to the overthrow of Indonesian leader Sukarno, who is replaced by General Suharto. In the following weeks between 500,000 and one million people are murdered by death squads using lists provided by US State Department.

1973-After interfering in Chilean elections in 1958 and 1964, the CIA begins a campaigon of sabotage and terror after leftist Salvadore Allende is elected president in 1970. In 1973 , a CIA supported coup overthrew and assassinated Allende and installed fascist General Pinochet, resulting in thousands of murders over the next two decades. This year former U.S. secretary of state, Henry Kissinger was served an order from a French court to answer for his role in the coup.

1979- After Nicaraguan dictator Samosa is overthrown in 1979, the CIA helps to train Samosa?s National Guard into death squads known as the Contras. The Contras are used to terrorize rural Nicaragua while the US military blockades Nicaragua?s harbours with mines. In 1989, after 10,000 deaths, the US is successful in ousting the Sandanista government.

1989- US invades Panama to overthrow and ?arrest? Manuel Noriega, who has been on the CIA payroll since 1966 and supported through decades of drug running, political assassination and corrupt elections. After the invasion, which included the fire bombing of an entire urban ghetto, human rights observers uncover mass graves and estimate that over 4,000 died during the invasion.

1991- US and allies (mostly Britain) invade Iraq after U.S./CIA supported Sadam Hussein invades Kuwait. 200,000 Iraqis are killed, including over 400 civilians killed by two U.S. missiles in the Al-Amerya air shelter. Over the next 10 years another 400 tons of explosives will be dropped on Iraq killing another 300 civilians, and hundreds of thousands more starved through U.S. imposed sanctions. The U.S. forces Saudi Arabia to allow thousands of U.S. military to remain indefinetely within its boarders.
1998- Al Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan is bombed without warning by 13 U.S. cruise missiles killing a janitor. The attack deprives Sudan of desperately needed medical drugs and potentially killing tens of thousands of people. The CIA later admits that information linking the plant to Osama bin Laden was probably ?incorrect? Due limitations of space I have not included the U.S. support of Israeli acts of terror against Palestinians, the atomic bombing of 200,000 civilians in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the numerous other U.S. invasions south of the Rio Grande, the invasion of Grenada ,the 19th century war of terror against U.S. indigenous peoples or the 200 years of slave trade. Source: The CIAs Greatest Hits by Mark Zapezauer.

A Brief (and partial) History of US Sponsored Terrorism Abroad from The Crows E