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Targeting Gaza’s Children with Sound Bombs
Mike Whitney
The photographs of bombed-out buildings, burned-down power plants, and blown-up bridges only tell half the story of Israel’s terror-war on the people in Gaza. Absent from the pictures is the screeching sound of the F-16s flying overhead day-and-night producing the explosive sonic booms that shatter windows and terrify children. Israel has been remarkably successful in its psychological war against the Palestinians; exacting a heavy toll against the people fo! r whom it was designed, Palestinian children. As author John Pilger notes in a recent article “The War on Children”: “Dr. Khalid Dahlan, a psychiatrist who heads a children’s community health project, told me, ‘The statistic I personally find unbearable is that 99.4 percent of the children we studied suffer trauma … 99.2 percent had their homes bombarded; 97.5 percent were exposed to tear gas; 96.6 percent witnessed shooting; a third saw family members or neighbors injured or killed.’” (…) Israel’s sonic blasts are part of a larger psy-ops war that is aimed at directly at children; it has no other conceivable purpose. The explosions have no military value except to attack the fragile psyche of the most vulnerable and sensitive…
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Bush’s Army: a Few Good Degenerates
Rape, Lies and Murder
PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
Americans who get their propaganda from Fox “News” or are told what to think by right-wing talk radio hosts are outraged at news reports that U.S. troops planned and carried out the rape and murder of a young Iraqi woman. They are not outraged that the troops committed the deed; they are outraged that the media reported it. These “conservatives,” who proudly wear their patriotism on their sleeves, dismiss the reports of the in! cident as a Big Lie floated by “the anti-American liberal media” in order to demoralize Americans and reduce public support for the war. Playing to this audience, Col. Jeffrey Snow, a U.S. brigade commander in Baghdad, told AFP News that news coverage could cause the U.S. to lose the war. In other words, what we are doing in Iraq cannot stand the light of day, so reporters must not report or the word will get out…
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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Monday, 3 July 2006
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice. www.freearabvoice.org
…I a dispatch posted at 5:40pm Makkah time Monday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that puppet government agents burst into the home of a local Sunni resident and shot and killed him together with his son, in the first such open sectarian assassination by regime agents yet heard of. The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam repo! rted eyewitnesses al-Basrah as saying that 10 official cars with no license plates in which were men in puppet police uniform and plain clothes raided the area of as-Sankar and stormed into the house of Muhammad Falih, a local resident. The attackers killed Falih and his son Karrar in front of other family members inside their home. The attackers then kidnapped five residents of the area, some of them relatives of Falih and drove off with them to an unknown destination…
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Osama, Death Squads and the Biggest Lie Ever Told
Joe Quinn, Signs of the Times
…It has already been exposed that the killings and bombings are the work of “death squads” working out of the Iraqi interior ministry, which itself is entirely controlled by the CIA. Let me reiterate that in every war waged by the US government against a foreign nation, a counter-insurgency operation has immediately been implemented. Counter-insurgency operations are required in such circumstances because when a country is invaded, ! an insurgency of some form invariable arises to defend the country. Such insurgents are very difficult for an invading army to defeat given the extensive support and collaboration they enjoy from the general population. Essentially, an invading army finds itself at war with the population of the country they are invading rather than a separate and independent insurgency. Strategies developed over the years to deal with such situations has come to be known as “counter-insurgency”, and include attempts to identify divisions within the society, usually religious, political or ethnic, however insignificant, and to then attempt to provoke these divisions…
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Subtle Loyalties to Zionism
Kim Petersen, www.dissidentvoice.org
“Everything must be done to win Gilad Shalit’s release,” writes Gideon Levy of the captured Israeli fighter in his most recent piece. Levy who laments that “Israelis [are] totally indifferent to the sufferings of the other” [2] is well regarded in progressive circles for his articles that decry the daily suffering of Palestinians at the hands of the occupiers. A closer examination of his recent article, however, reveals that the difference between ! Levy and the occupation regime is more nuance than substance. Why, for example, does Levy not list off the names of all the Palestinians held prisoner by the Zionist regime and declare: “Everything must be done to win their release”?…
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Alan Dershowitz: Apologist For Inhumanity
Joe Quinn , Signs of the Times
Alan Dershowitz is a professor of law at Harvard University, an apologist for the Israel lobby in the US and a self-confessed “big mouth”. He is also a man completely in thrall to the NeoCon agenda who takes every opportunity to promote the extremist warmongering disguised as “freedom and democracy” that has come to define the reign of the Bush administration, which, we should remember, entered the white house in 2000 in much the same way as! other great dictatorships of history – without the consent of a majority of the population. Dershowitz is a perfect poster boy for what has come to be known as the “right” in American politics…
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Huda’s Cry for Palestine
Richard Marsden, The Business of Emotions
Some truths can be revealed only through bodies and faces. The muscles which give them expression contain emotional memories, of individuals and their social milieu. When these memories are released, they render the written word trite. So it was when 10-year-old Huda Ghalia screamed in grief over the remains of her family. Seven of them were killed by an Israeli shell as they enjoyed a picnic on a Gaza beach, June 9th, 2006. They were: Ilham (7) ! Hanadi (2) Sabreen (3) Haithem (one year) her mother (26) her father(45) her step mother (25). Huda Ghalia will be scarred for life by this experience. She is not alone. As a result of the Israeli military operations: * 97 per cent of Palestinian children show signs of psychological disturbances and depression * 94 per cent of Palestinian children have witnessed funerals * 95 per cent have seen live shooting * 62 per cent have seen family members and relatives shot or killed…
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Is Cheney betting on Economic Collapse?
Mike Whitney
Wouldn’t you like to know where Dick Cheney puts his money? Then you’d know whether his “deficits don’t matter” claim is just baloney or not. Well, as it turns out, Kiplinger Magazine ran an article based on Cheney’s financial disclosure statement and, sure enough, found out that the VP is lying to the American people for the umpteenth time. Deficits do matter and Cheney has invested his money accordingly. The article is called “Cheney’s betting on bad news” ! and provides an account of where Cheney has socked away more than $25 million. While the figures may be estimates, the investments are not. According to Tom Blackburn of the Palm Beach Post, Cheney has invested heavily in “a fund that specializes in short-term municipal bonds, a tax-exempt money market fund and an inflation protected securities fund. The first two hold up if interest rates rise with inflation. The third is protected against inflation”…
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Former US soldier charged in rape and murder of Iraqi girl
Kate Randall
A former US soldier was charged by federal prosecutors Monday with rape and murder following an investigation into the brutal killing of a teenage Iraqi girl and three members of her family. The new charges come in the wake of a raft of revelations of atrocities committed against Iraqi civilians by US soldiers (…) Photos taken by Army investigators, according to the affidavit, showed a burned body of “what appears to be a woman with blanket! s thrown over her upper torso.” Family members have given permission for the girl’s body to be exhumed for examination as part of the US military’s investigation into the incident, which began last Saturday. Many questions are raised by the military’s handling of the Mahmoudiya atrocity. US soldiers at the scene initially attributed the civilian killings to “insurgent activity”—in particular, to Sunni Arab insurgents active in the area…
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DAILY WAR NEWS FOR TUESDAY, JULY 4, 2006
Today in Iraq
Deputy Electricity Minister and 19 bodyguards kidnapped in eastern Baghdad. Raad al-Hareth, and his bodyguards were travelling in four cars when they were ambushed by gunmen dressed in security force uniforms in the eastern Baghdad neighbourhood of Talbiyah, a security official said, according to AFP. U.S. military says U.S. and Iraqi troops killed 7 in 2 gunfights in Adhamiya. Reuters also has: * Two police were killed and four others wounded when a roadsid! e bomb struck near a police checkpoint in eastern Baghdad, police said. * A civilian was killed and two others wounded when several mortar rounds landed near an Iraqi army checkpoint in Hawija, 70 km (43 miles) southwest of Kirkuk, police said…
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Why Is the World Deaf to Gaza’s Cries?
Linda Heard
How much longer must the Palestinian people be bombed, starved, humiliated and abused before the international community speaks up with one voice? How much longer will world leaders avert their eyes from the cruel way Israel is pursuing a land grab? How much longer will ordinary people prefer the World Cup and blissful ignorance to the facts of Israel’s crimes and their effects on an entire people? The US and the EU have labeled the Hamas-led Palestinian Authorit! y “terrorist”, a move that has virtually given the Israeli government carte blanche to do its worst. George W. Bush says Israel has the right to defend itself even as it works to deliberately terrorize a civilian population. The proof of intent is Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s instruction to the IDF last Sunday: “I don’t want anyone to sleep tonight in Gaza”. Almost 50 percent of Gaza’s 1.5 billion residents are without electricity at a time when temperatures are hitting the mid-30s. Israel saw fit to bomb a major power station, in blatant contravention of the Geneva Conventions, during an operation sadistically titled “Operation Summer Rain”…
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GI Special 4G5: “I’d Like Your Blessing” – July 5, 2006
Thomas F. Barton
My generation is one in which there are still many living veterans. Furthermore, from our generation primarily come the children who make up the current blood and guts of America’s military with its duty of defending the American Constitution, Country and Citizens.
If our children – or their children – come to us when considering enlistment or a commission, asking our reaction or even our blessing for their willingness to sign the bottom line, are we ready to speak honestly with them?
Have the things we’ve taught them about citizenship and patriotism come back to gratify us? …or haunt us?
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Disconnect the Cables: Stop Operation Jump Start
Greg Moses, Texas Civil Rights Review
Without any debate or policy study, the USA has quickly moved toward a militarized border with Mexico. Yet, with only one tenth of the expected deployment actually in position, it is not too late to say wait a minute. One way to slow down the momentum toward militarization would be to call on Governors of the forty states who have not yet pledged troops to Operation Jump Start, and ask them to delay their troop authorizations. ! From the ten Governors who have authorized troops, including the four Governors whose states share borders with Mexico, we should ask for troop recalls…
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A Baathist spokesman answers the hallucinating and the debased Rubai’i*
This is the uttering of defeated and degraded yobs!
Al Moharer.net
An authorized spokesman belonging to the Baath Arab socialist party, Iraq Culture and Information Bureau has declared today that the new theatrical comedy presented by Rubai’i Moo wafaq dubbed “ the national security advisor” who announced a list of wanted Iraqi personalities he asked the Interpol and the Arab governments to detain and to deliver to his stooge gover! nment.. shows definitely and confirm again not only the total collapse of the US Iranian Occupation of Iraq but also that the Occupation authorities and the puppets they use to undergo their disgusting schemes against Iraq and its people, have also lost their mind and have gone mad with fright of Iraq, of its people and of its combatants. The Baath spokesman added : We would like to take this opportunity, to ascertain our Great Party stand, convictions and principles…
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IOF raids on Palestinian charities in the West Bank escalate
Palestinian Information Center
Large numbers of IOF troops ransacked three Islamic charitable societies in the West Bank city of Bethlehem before daybreak Monday, seizing electrical devices and computers. Orphanage and Quran reading centers were among the stormed buildings as well as the Zakat (obligatory alms) committee’s offices in the city. The raid comes as part of the Israeli deliberate escalated war against charitable societies in Palestine that s! erve poor and needy people in a bid to further worsen the deteriorated social conditions in the Palestinian arena as a result of the US-led western economic siege on the Palestinian people at Israeli request…
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Criminal Charges Filed Against George H.W. Bush (Sr.) in Iceland
BRussells Tribunal
A group of ten Icelandic citizens filed yesterday at the Office of the State’s Police Chief criminal charges against George H.W. Bush, former U.S. President, who is expected in Iceland this evening at the invitation of Icelands’s President Olafur R. Grimsson. The group accuses former President Bush for participation in war crimes, crimes against humanity, crimes against the peace, and crimes against internationally protected perso! ns. It demands that former President Bush be detained by the Icelandic authorities and investigation on these charges…
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GI Special 4G4: Their Duty – July 4, 2006
Thomas F. Barton
From The Declaration Of Independence, July 4, 1776
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.
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International Duty to Support Hamas and Palestine
Curtis FJ Doebbler
The recent Israeli attack on the Palestinians is a violation of international law and further evidence that the international community is lying when it talks about spreading democracy. Not only is Hamas the legitimate government of the Palestinian people, it is also a legitimate national liberation movement fighting to free the Palestinian people from the foreign and oppressive Israeli occupation. Just like Moses freed the Israelis from the opp! ression of the Pharaohs, Hamas is struggling to free the Palestinians from the oppression of Israel. Rather than being made slaves in a foreign land like the Israelis of ancient times, the Palestinians are being made slaves in their own land…
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Hamdan vs Rumsfeld: Geneva Conventions now, Nuremberg Principles later
Captain Eric H. May
I think the most striking conclusion of last week’s Supreme Court decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld is that the executive branch — all the way to GWB — is subject to the Geneva Convention. Further, I think it but a step to go from the pertinence of the Geneva Convention to the Principles of Nuremberg. I’m in favor of both extensions of law — and of common sense — in the atrocious matter of Gitmo, then later in Abu Ghraib (! inter alia) in Iraq and elsewhere, all directed by the current tenet of the White House. These abuses were nothing more or less than the extension of Israeli Mossad torture tactics to the Israel-Lobby-dominated US Dept. of Defense, winked at by the Israel-Lobby-dominated US media…
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CIA gives up hunt for Osama!
Sploid
July 4 is always a special day for the United States, and today is no different — although instead of celebrating past glories and canceled freedoms, today Americans are celebrating the utter failure of the U.S. government to capture the alleged mastermind behind the attacks of September 11, 2001. But that “failure” has been a terrific help to the Bush Administration, according to a shocking report released today. The CIA saw Bin Laden as “helping Bush’s re-election,” while th! e 9/11 attacks turned an unpopular, bumbling president who needed the Supreme Court to “elect” him into a “war president” who managed to barely win a second term. It was also revealed today that the CIA closed its special Osama bin Laden unit … a whole year ago! The special terrorist-hunting unit was called “Alec Station” and had been pursuing Bin Laden, a former CIA operative, since the mid-1990s…
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Cindy Sheehan on Hunger Strike at the White House
Ben Frank
“We’ve marched, held vigils, lobbied Congress, camped out at Bush’s ranch, we’ve even gone to jail, now it’s time to do more” “This war is a crime,” the icon mother told a crowd of clapping, cheering protesters. “We represent millions of Americans who withdraw their support from this government.” Millions of American have just watched in disgust as our congress ignored the will of the American people and voted against setting a timetable for ! withdrawing our troops from Iraq. Who exactly are they representing and what course of action do ‘we the people’ have at this point? …
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