Date: 19-20 January 2008
ICH 20 January 2008 Death and Darkness in Gaza
Number Of Iraqis Slaughtered Since The U.S. Invaded Iraq 1,168,058
www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html
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Number of U.S. Military Personnel Sacrificed (Officially acknowledged) In America’sWar On Iraq 3,927
icasualties.org/oif/
The War in Iraq Costs
$487,352,520,218
See the cost in your community
nationalpriorities.org/index.php?
option=com_wrapper&Itemid=182
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Death and Darkness in Gaza
People Are Dying, Help Us!
By Maan
A humanitarian crisis is underway as the Gaza Strip’s only power plant began to shut down on Sunday, and the tiny coastal territory entered its third full day without shipments of vital food and fuel supplies due to Israel’s punitive sanctions.
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19120.htm
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West Bank Bantustan
By Ben White
The Annapolis peace process, guided by the Quartet, leads us towards a Palestinian “state” that, notwithstanding Bush’s adjectival outpourings, will resemble Gaza-esque enclaves declared “unoccupied” and subjected to brutal repression.
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19116.htm
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McCarthyism Comes to Europe and the Levant:
By Franklin Lamb in Beirut and Ann El Khoury
The foot-soldiers of the Likud lobby around the world are applying pressure to stop people from attending academic and activist conferences. As with the McCarthyism of half a century ago, today’s Middle East Studies McCarthyism perpetrated by the Likud Lobby is also a threat to our liberty, to academic freedom, and to basic, fundamental democratic rights and responsibilities.
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19113.htm
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Noam Chomsky
The Apartheid Paradigm in Palestine/Israel
22 Minute Video
Chomsky says U.S. backing of continued Israeli occupation and annexation of Palestinian land is the biggest obstacle to peace.
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19112.htm
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Muslim Women… The Real Oppression
By Nahida Izzat
The greatest danger and the most ruthless enemy of the world now is Islam, and they the “poor brave” Zionists are living amidst millions and millions of “Islamo-fascists”, “terrorists” or “potential terrorists”, and they courageously are trying to fight this “evil” to save the “civilized” world.
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19119.htm
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There Is No “War on Terror”
By Edward S. Herman and David Peterson
One of the most telling signs of the political naiveté of liberals and the Left in the United States has been their steadfast faith in much of the worldview that blankets the imperial state they call home. Nowhere has this critical failure been more evident than in their acceptance of the premise that there really is something called a “war on terror” or “terrorism”
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19117.htm
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The High Price of Talk
Everyone Is Yelling For Peace
By Monica Benderman
To a young man or woman who grew up believing they would never have a way out of the poverty that was their childhood reality, the military offers every dream come true. With no assurance that their life was going to matter anyway, it is not a stretch to understand why they are willing to sign it away for a chance at the success they were certain to only dream about before the military offered its collateral.
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19114.htm
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Bread and Circuses
By Morton Skorodin
The Roman emperors provided bread and circuses for their people. The American empire does the same, though lately with less bread. They’re making up for it in the circuses department. I’m talking about the election charade.
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19115.htm
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Good Jobs Are Where the Money Is
By Bob Herbert
Big business and the federal government have worked hand in hand to squeeze the daylights out of working people, stripping them (in an era of downsizing and globalization) of much of their bargaining power while ferociously pursuing fiscal policies that radically favored the privileged few.
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19118.htm
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War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning
By Christopher Hedges
Hedges discusses how human beings are conditioned to embrace what he calls “the myth of war” — the idea that combat is noble, selfless, and glorious. – Hedges reveals the reality of war, which he knows firsthand, to be the destruction of culture, the perversion of human desire, and the embrace, ultimately, of death over life.
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19111.htm
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Iraq: Sunday At least 22 killed as US occupation grinds on:
A suicide bomber killed six people in a town south of Falluja where people were celebrating the release of a man from U.S. military custody
www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSL187120720080120
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Taliban attacks kill 12 in southern Afghanistan :
Taliban fighters killed 12 people, including a provincial reconciliation chief and five civilians, in separate attacks in insurgency-hit southern Afghanistan, officials said on Sunday.
snipurl.com/1xv8f
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Kabul residents get less power every day:
More than five years after the fall of the Taliban — and despite hundreds of millions of dollars in international aid — dinner by candlelight remains common in the Afghan capital of Kabul. Nationwide, only 6 percent of Afghans have electricity, the Asian Development Bank says.
www.post-gazette.com/pg/08020/850381-82.stm
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Kenya violence claims 25 more lives :
Fierce fighting in the western Rift Valley left 22 people dead and hundreds of homes burned, officials said on Sunday.
snipurl.com/1xv8h
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Israeli attack in Beit Lahia kills Palestinian, injures two :
A Palestinian citizens was killed Sunday while two others were injured during an Israel occupation force shelling of an area in Beit Lahia, north of the Gaza Strip.
snipurl.com/1xv8i
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Gaza power plant shut after Israel blocks fuel:
Gaza’s only electrical plant shut down today after Israel blocked the shipment of fuel that powers them, plunging Gaza City into darkness and sending already beleaguered Gazans to stock up on food and batteries in anticipation of long, dark, cold days ahead.
www.thestar.com/News/article/295771
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UN Condemns Israel’s Tightening of Sanctions on Gaza:
The United Nations condemned the Israeli measures, saying they are leading to a humanitarian crisis among Gaza’s 1.5 million residents. John Ging is a senior U.N. official in Gaza.
english.chosun.com/w21data/html/
news/200801/200801210003.html
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UN rights official slams ‘cowardly Israeli war crime’ in Gaza:
Israel’s targeting of a Hamas government office which caused serious casualties at a nearby wedding party was a “war crime” and those responsible should be punished, a United Nations official said Saturday.
snipurl.com/1xv8l
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Israel must bomb Iran for Bush: US Rep. advisor :
A senior Republican advisor says since it is ‘politically impossible’ for Bush to attack Iran, the job should be ‘outsourced’ to Israel, PressTV reported.
snipurl.com/1xv8p
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Israeli ministers call for murder of Hassan Nasrallah :
A number of Israeli minister called Sunday for the assassination of Hezbollah’s Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah after he stated that his group was keeping the remains of slain Israeli soldiers.
snipurl.com/1xv8r
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Intelligence officials question al Qaeda role in Bhutto killing:
The assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto last December may never be solved, because Pakistani officials refused to demand an autopsy and hosed away evidence at the scene of her killing.
snipurl.com/1xv8s
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Pak to get new F-16s:
The US has begun upgrading Pakistan’s existing F-16 fighter fleet and placed orders for the latest version of the jets to be supplied to the country.
snipurl.com/1xv8t
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Making the World Safe for Despots:
“In the last six years, Washington has stepped up its sales and transfers of high-technology weapons, military training, and other military assistance to governments regardless of their respect for human rights, democratic principles, or nonproliferation,” according to a report in the current(Jan.-Feb.) “Arms Control Today,”
www.counterpunch.org/ross01192008.html
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Polish town leery of US missile defense :
Among the people living around this disused Polish air base, there is little enthusiasm for the missile interceptor station likely to be built here as part of a U.S. missile defense system.
snipurl.com/1xv8w
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Chavez warns banks on farm lending:
President Hugo Chavez threatened on Saturday to take control of banks that fail to meet state-imposed loaning requirements designed to benefit Venezuela’s farmers.
snipurl.com/1xv8x
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Canada removes U.S, Israel from torture watchlist :
Canada’s foreign ministry, responding to pressure from close allies, said on Saturday it would remove the United States and Israel from a watch list of countries where prisoners risk being tortured.
news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080119/ts_nm/usa_torture_dc
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Who Are the American Fascists?:
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges explores the rise of the Christian right in America, drawing parallels with the rise of fascism in Europe prior to the Second World War. How does the vision of the United States as a Christian nation relate to our Bill of Rights?
forum.wgbh.org/wgbh/forum.php?lecture_id=3345
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American Theocracy: Radical Religion, Oil, and Debt:
Kevin Phillips describes how world dominating powers historically typically unravel through global overreach, militant religion, resource problems, and ballooning debt.
forum.wgbh.org/wgbh/forum.php?lecture_id=3039
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Overseas Investors Buy Aggressively in U.S. :
For much of the world, the United States is now on sale at discount prices. With credit tight, unemployment growing and worries mounting about a potential recession, American business and government leaders are courting foreign money to keep the economy growing.
snipurl.com/1xv8z
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NEWS FOR 19/01/08
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“Free Lunch:
How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense
Democracy Now! Audio & Transcript
How government subsidies and new regulations have quietly funneled money from the poor and the middle class to the rich and politically connected.
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19110.htm
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It Was The Hope Of The World
By Mark A. Goldman
Their handiwork has left behind a multitude of dead bodies, still uncounted. The murdered, the dispossessed, the mind-damaged, and the broken-bodied suffering souls remind us that something evil has been going on in our name that we don’t understand. something that by official decree we are forbidden to understand.
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19109.htm
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A Time to Break Silence
By Rev. Martin Luther King
By 1967, King had become the country’s most prominent opponent of the Vietnam War, and a staunch critic of overall U.S. foreign policy, which he deemed militaristic. In his “Beyond Vietnam” speech delivered at New York’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 — a year to the day before he was murdered — King called the United States “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2564.htm
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50 dead in southern Iraq clashes :
The Iraqi government says it has seized full control of Basra and Nasiriya after bloody clashes between the police and armed men from a “messianic cult”, that left nearly 50 people dead and another 100 wounded.
snipurl.com/1xv93
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Iraq: At least 25 killed in another bloody day of US occupation:
Six policemen were killed and 13 wounded when two suicide bombers attacked policemen assembled for evening roll-call at a police station in the town of Albu Ubaid west of Ramadi, police said.
www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSL19570721
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Battle leaves more than two dozen “Taliban” dead:
U.S. occupation forces and Afghan troops killed or wounded more than two dozen Taliban fighters during a 21-hour battle in eastern Afghanistan that ended Saturday, military officials said.
snipurl.com/1xv96
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Afghan war only just beginning, security group warns:
The war in Afghanistan is only just beginning as NATO forces, far from pursuing remnants of a defeated Taliban, are entering a widening and deepening conflict they may well lose security NGO said on Saturday.
snipurl.com/1xv98
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Taliban now seriously in the fight:
It has also become clear that the Taliban’s “easy departure” in 2001, when a US-led invasion drove them from power, was “more of a strategic retreat than an actual military defeat,” the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office (ANSO) said.
snipurl.com/1xv9b
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US offers Pakistan help against attacks:
A senior American military commander will visit Pakistan this month to discuss the growing unrest in the country and possible deeper US military engagement, according to senior Pakistani and western officials.
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22734634/
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Pakistan arrests teen suspect in Bhutto plot: officials:
Pakistani police have arrested a teenager who was allegedly part of a five-man squad in the plot to kill opposition leader Benazir Bhutto last month, security officials said Saturday.
www.afp.com/english/news/stories/
080119123752.mskcu9sb.html
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Israeli Occupation Forces Attack and Kill 2 Members Of Hamas Resistance:
An Israeli airstrike killed two members of the Hamas military wing in the northern Gaza Strip early on Saturday
snipurl.com/1xv9e
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Woman killed, dozens wounded in new Israeli strikes on Gaza:
A Palestinian woman was killed and dozens of people, including children, were wounded on Friday in Israel’s latest air strikes on the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, medics and witnesses said.
snipurl.com/1xv9f
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Israel’s ‘war crime’ rapped by UN :
Israel’s targeting of a Hamas government office which caused serious casualties at a nearby wedding party was a “war crime” and those responsible should be punished, a UN official said yesterday.
www.gulf-daily-news.com/Story.asp?
Article=206316&Sn=WORL&IssueID=30306
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Collective punishment for Gaza is wrong -U.N.:
Israel has a right to respond to security threats but should not collectively punish the Gaza population for rocket attacks from the Palestinian territory, the U.N. humanitarian affairs chief said on Friday.
www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN18343083
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Livni: Inconceivable that Russia is supplying Iran with nuclear fuel :
Foreign affairs minister meets with Russia’s Lavrov in Moscow, slams shipments of fuel to Bushehr nuclear plant despite Tehran’s refusal to stop enriching uranium. Livni also defends Israel’s response to Qassam rocket attacks: ‘Unlike terrorists, the IDF does not aim its weapons towards women, the elderly and children’
www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3495713,00.html
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Thousands of non-ID Palestinians to receive legal status:
Lebanese government strikes quiet deal with Palestinian leaders
www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition
_id=1&categ_id=2&article_id=88078
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Hezbollah leader taunts Israel :
Speaking about the 2006 war, he claimed Hezbollah had forced the Israeli army to beat a retreat and warned that his group was ready for a new conflict.
snipurl.com/1xv9j
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Rice setback as Iran policy envoy resigns:
The US diplomat at the heart of the Bush administration’s Iran policy is to leave his post, in a move that represents a setback for Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state.
www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c8108034-c6
32-11dc-8378-0000779fd2ac.html
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Bush’s Iran/Argentina Terror Frame-Up :
US officials also seek to tar Iran as the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism. And Team Bush’s latest tactic is to play up a thirteen-year-old accusation that Iran was responsible for the notorious Buenos Aires bombing that destroyed the city’s Jewish Community Center
www.thenation.com/doc/20080204/porter
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Tribal hatred didn’t cause violence in Kenya:
FROM READING recent headlines about Kenya, one would think that the post-election violence is the result of tribal hatreds. But this assessment is wrong.
snipurl.com/1xv9k
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Fujimori ‘ordered kidnapping’ of PM :
Peru’s prime minister has testified that Alberto Fujimori, the former president, ordered his kidnapping and the attempted assassination of Alan Garcia, the incumbent president and leader from 1985 and 1990.
snipurl.com/1xv9l
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Unity talks suspended in Bolivia :
Talks to end Bolivia’s political crisis and forge a national unity pact are in disarray after Evo Morales, the Bolivian president, shocked political rivals by slashing provincial budgets.
snipurl.com/1xv9q
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Electoral fraud claim in Paraguay:
Several thousand Paraguayans held a protest rally in the country’s capital last night, claiming there was electoral fraud in the primary to pick the ruling party’s candidate for the April 20th presidential election.
www.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/
2008/0119/breaking19.htm
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A Letter from Guantánamo (By Al-Jazeera Cameraman Sami al-Haj):
The U.S. was the country that prided itself by bringing peace; now, sadly, instead it rains down violence and discord. Guantánamo is the most obvious example of this.
snipurl.com/1xv9t
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Torture awareness manual ‘wrongly’ lists Cdn allies, to be rewritten: :
Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier found himself backtracking Saturday over his department’s training manual that lists the U.S. and Guantanamo Bay as sites of possible torture – alongside such countries as Iran and Syria.
start.shaw.ca/start/enCA/News/National
NewsArticle.htm?src=n011913A.xml
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Anti-terror cops to combat surging violence:
VICTORIA’s top cop has adopted a new “get tough” approach to street violence that will see anti-terrorist police deployed at trouble spots across the state.
www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23075588-421,00.html
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All signs point to U.S. consumers hunkering down in recession bunkers:
‘I’m walking down Fifth Avenue the other day, and all the stores have big signs saying 50 to 70 per cent off everything, and the only people in there doing any actual buying are, like, from Canada or Europe.”
snipurl.com/1xv9u
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Biggest drop in US housing starts since 1980 :
New residential building in the US last year suffered its biggest drop in nearly three decades, according to government data published on Thursday that highlighted the dramatic downturn in US housing.
www.ft.com/cms/s/0/58247d58-c
50a-11dc-811a-0000779fd2ac.html
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MBIA, Ambac Bond Default Risk Exceeds 70%,:
MBIA Inc. and Ambac Financial Group Inc., the two biggest bond insurers, have a more than 70 percent chance of going bankrupt, credit-default swaps show
snipurl.com/1xv9v
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Panic selling shuts £2bn fund:
One of Britain’s biggest property funds was forced to shut its doors to withdrawals yesterday after the slump in commercial prices triggered panic selling by small investors.
www.guardian.co.uk/money/2008/
jan/18/property.moneyinvestments
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Shares in freefall amid fears of a global downturn:
THE Australian share market has made a grim start to the year. The market continued to haemorrhage this morning, plunging 2.65 per cent in the first 15 minutes of trading amid growing fears of a US recession.
snipurl.com/1xv9z
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No need to panic, says RBA:
RESERVE Bank governor Glenn Stevens has played down the effects of massive falls on the Australian and international stock markets. The local market has endured one of its worst performances in its history this week, notching up its biggest losing streak in more than 17 years.
www.news.com.au/comments/0,23600,23075733-462,00.html
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Bread, milk, meat prices tipped to soar:
AUSTRALIAN consumers are facing another sharp rise in meat, dairy and bread prices, stretching budgets already under pressure from rising mortgages, rents and petrol.
www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23075181-421,00.html
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