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The uncensored Anger Manifesto – Part I
Layla Anwar
I cannot sleep. My seething anger keeps my eyes wide open. But you are sleeping safely in your home, holding your partner or your child and you know in all probability that you will awake tomorrow. And tomorrow, you will open your eyes, step into your bathroom and you will find running water. You will fix yourself a coffee and you will find electricity, you will open your kitchen cupboard and you will find food. Then you will get dresse , and you have clothes for winter and if you catch the flu, you can always call up your doctor or run to a hospital. Hey, you can even take flowers to your beloved ones if they happen to fall il,or just check to make sure that the surgery of Uncle Tom was successful. Oh yes, you can afford to do so. And if you are walking about, you know that no bomb or bullet is going to blow you or blow your loved ones away. You will neither be kidnapped nor abducted never to be seen again (…) And when you are done with all of the above, you will go back to sleep in your cozy bed, switch the lights off and snore in total oblivion. All the way to that state you are so familiar with, all the way back into your usual comatose indifferent self. And we are still here,counting the minutes, the seconds and hoping we will taste life again. A life we had before you and your ilk took it all away…
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The “Gaza-Solution” and the Ongoing War on Islam
Mike Whitney
The central tenet of American foreign policy hasn’t changed since the early 1980s when Secretary of State Henry Kissinger summarized our involvement in the Iraq-Iraq War saying, “I hope they kill each other.” Kissinger’s dictum reveals the basic racial and religious odium which animates the current policy and has become the organizing principle for maintaining the global empire. Now that the Muslim world has been systematically ravaged from the southern-most part Gaza to the northern tip of Afghanistan, we can see that the application of the Kissinger Doctrine is an effective method for decimating societies where coveted resources are located. By all accounts, it’s been a huge success. The policy seems to be working best in Iraq, where provocative counterinsurgency operations have incited a massive sectarian war. The conflict produces an ever-increasing number of civilian casualties many of whom have been killed by other Iraqis. No doubt Kissinger is gratified that his theory is working out so splendidly (… ) We know Bush’s plan for Muslims, because it is identical to that of his ideological-twin, Olmert. They both believe that the final solution to the “Muslim problem” lies in the Gaza Model. The Gaza Strip is the world’s largest prison camp containing 1.5 million Palestinians…
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AlDhari’s Outcry Must be Heard
alquds alarabi
The rising sectarian bombings that have engulfed Iraq in the past few days are evidence that Iraq has sunk deeper into the ugliest civil war which cannot be brought to a halt with whatever means being adopted by the current rulers of Iraq at the moment. It is also absolutely clear that the current “Iraqi government” which was allegedly “democratically elected” under occupation is unable to provide the most basic form of security to the people it was supposed to be representing, nor do the US forces of occupation along with their allies and mercenaries all of whom are fundamentally responsible for Iraqi security as an occupation power. The Iraqi government bears the same level of responsibility for the on-going blood-bath in Iraq as the forces of occupations in Iraq, because it has been working tireless in partnership with the occupation in pushing Iraq in the direction of the civil war by monopolising the decision process at the top and encouraging, rather than disarming the militias, loyal to some political parties and warlords, to go forth in revenge killings, assassinations of political opponents and sectarian killings by identity cards…
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What Iraqis are blogging about…and trying to live through.
VoiceCrackinDISSENT
This is what the Iraqi’s are blogging about, not kfed not Stupid Hollywood divorces, or how bad it was that the Play station was not available, but how to fight and try to survive a civil war. A civil war Bush denies, but these people see as the reality on the ground. (…) More pleas for assistance on the Iraqi Rabita’s message boards. Note that these are all from largely Sunni and mixed districts west of Baghdad, which seem to have taken the brunt of retaliatory attacks by militias. Ghazaliya – Baghdad: Urgent. The residents of Ghazaliya are in urgent need for medical supplies. The situation in Ghazaliya is dreadful, and the need for first aid supplies is pressing. The nearest hospital to the district is the Al-Noor Hospital in the Shu’la district, and no Sunni who enters there returns alive. Please contact any organisation that can provide Ghazaliya’s residents with necessary supplies. Residents have opened a makeshift health centre but we are in need for supplies. Khattab Al-Iraqi – Al-Amil district – Baghdad: The filthy [Mahdi] army is preparing to attack the Amil district. Young men in the Dhubat area are deployed to the streets, while the antichrist [Mahdi] army is lobbing mortars against us. But the brothers are determined to achieve either victory or martyrdom…
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Anbar Picture Grows Clearer, and Bleaker
Dafna Linzer and Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post Staff Writers
The U.S. military is no longer able to defeat a bloody insurgency in western Iraq or counter al-Qaeda’s rising popularity there, according to newly disclosed details from a classified Marine Corps intelligence report that set off debate in recent months about the military’s mission in Anbar province. The Marines recently filed an updated version of that assessment that stood by its conclusions and stated that, as of mid-November, the problems in troubled Anbar province have not improved, a senior U.S. intelligence official said yesterday. “The fundamental questions of lack of control, growth of the insurgency and criminality” remain the same, the official said…
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Behind the U.S. Jet Down in Iraq
Institute for Public Accuracy
…The silence over the Bush administration’s continuing use of air power in Iraq has finally been broken. Not by reports of daily bombing of urban and rural neighborhoods on so-called ‘dual use targets’ (including medical facilities and shopping malls) or the devastation to Iraqi civilian life and limb. No, it comes with the downing of a U.S. Air Force F-16CG fighter jet outside of Baghdad. “A military source reported the jet was ‘flying on a low level “strafing run” — firing on targets on the ground at a low altitude.’ At this time the fate of the pilot remains unknown but is sure to be investigated and widely reported. Unfortunately the fate of the victims of this ‘strafing run’ and the thousands before and those sure to come will not be investigated nor reported. After all, official U.S. policy is ‘We don’t do body counts’ — unless they are North American…
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Urgent: not confirmed yet, the death of Abu-Deraa
Roads to Iraq
-Update— No confirmation yet, but some people say he wasn’t Abu_Deraa but another Mahdi-Army leader and that is also not confirmed. The update is that the US forces surrounded Balad hospital preventing people going in and out saying there are elements of Mahdi-Army inside the hospital. Also there is a big battle going on right now in Baghdad in Amil neighborhood, Mahdi-Army against the residents, there are deaths from both sides…
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Q&A: Fugitive Iraqi Leader Al Dhari
Michael Hastings, Newsweek
…Who’s responsible for the [Iraqi] death squads? Militias are the ones that are doing the killing and all these death squads are from the militias. These death squads and the militias are part of the political parties that are part of the government. But can Maliki stop them? Is he behind it and does he accept it? Or is he unable to stop it? It has to be one or the other. I don’t think he is unable to stop it. And if he’s unable to stop it, he should step down from his position. If he really cares about Iraq and the Iraqi people because he is the person responsible for Iraq, and if he unable to stop the death squad and crimes against the Iraqi people he should resign. This is what logic says. If it goes on and he’s unable to stop it, that means he approves of it. His government is responsible and is accountable for everything that’s happening in Iraq; [if it’s not] he should leave the opportunity for someone else…
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Lawyers File War Crimes Charges Against Rumsfeld And Others In German Court
Michael Ratner
On November 14, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), the International Federation for Human Rights, Germany’s Republican Attorneys’ Association, and other groups and individuals filed a formal complaint with the German Federal Prosecutor to open an investigation and, ultimately, a criminal prosecution of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other major U.S. officials. The complaint argues that Rumsfeld and other high-ranking civilian and military officials named as defendants in the case have committed war crimes, and in particular torture, against prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay. Following is an interview Revolution did with Michael Ratner, president of the CCR, who was among those in Germany on November 14 to file the complaint…
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US forces kill five Iraqi girls
Agence France-Presse
US forces fired tank rounds into a home in the restive Iraqi city of Ramadi overnight during a clash with insurgent gunmen and killed five young girls, a US military statement said. Two insurgents opened fire from the roof of a house on a US patrol disarming a roadside bomb, prompting the soldiers to reply with tank fire, the statement said. Following the pre-dawn barrage, US troops carried out “an extensive search of the house and found one male and five females, ages ranging from infant to teenaged, dead”, it said…
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Bury my heart in the Green Zone
Pepe Escobar
As dozens of people a day (sometimes a couple of hundred a day), every single day, Sunni and Shi’ite alike, continue to be beheaded, tortured, blown up, shot, kidnapped, struck by mortars and even doused in gasoline and set on fire in a non-stop gruesome ritual, every big player seems to be laying down a desperate game to “save” Iraq. This includes the ongoing summit between Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and his Iranian counterpart Mahmud Ahmadinejad in Iran and this week’s meeting between President George W Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Jordan. But they all have forgotten to consider the guerrilla point of view; as far as the Sunni Arab resistance is concerned, any summit is guilty of legitimizing the “puppet” Iraqi government…
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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Tuesday, 28 November 2006
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice
…On Tuesday Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatallah ‘Ali Khamenei, pressing the point that the puppet regime in Baghdad should switch allegiance from Washtington to Tehran, presented Iran’s peculiar version of events in Iraq. Khamenei told Talibani that the reason for Iraq’s troubles lay in what he claimed was American support for the Iraqi Resistance forces whom Khamenei characterized as “terrorists and Baathists,” claiming that the United States was working with them to imposed its policy on Iraq. Behind the 67-year-old Iranian cleric’s bizarre claim that Washington supports the Iraqi Resistance, lies the fact that Iranian regime, struggling to expand the scope of its regional hegemony, is seeking to secure control of Iraq by using Shi’i sectarian leaders and organizations. They hope to step into the shoes of the American occupation authorities whose grip on the country has been weakened by three years of increasingly severe Resistance attacks. To forestall Iran’s attempt to replace America as colonial power in Iraq, the Iraqi Resistance continues its battle against the US and pro-US groups and facilities, as well as against pro-Iranian Shi’i sectarian forces. In reality the pro-US and pro-Iranian groups are largely one in the same, inasmuch as the United States relied heavily on pro-Iranian forces when it invaded Iraq in 2003 and then when it set up its puppet regime, allowing the 30,000! -man Ira nian-trained Badr Brigades to form the backbone of the US-supported police, security services, and puppet army…
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What the New York Times has learned from Iraq
Barry Grey, World Socialist Web Site
The lead editorial in Sunday’s New York Times deserves careful reading and consideration. Entitled “Learning from Iraq,” the piece should serve as an antidote to popular illusions that the American electorate’s massive repudiation of the Iraq war on November 7 and the capture of Congress by the Democrats will lead to a retreat by the American ruling elite from its policies of neo-colonialism and war. It is particularly significant, coming from a principal organ of American liberalism, one closely aligned with the dominant sections of the Democratic Party. There is no questioning here of the legality of an unprovoked war launched on the basis of lies, of the Bush administration’s doctrine of preventive war, which justifies such criminal enterprises, or the legitimacy of war as an instrument of foreign policy. All that is accepted as a matter of course. The death and destruction unleashed on Iraq by the United States—the virtual destruction of a society and the killing of hundreds of thousands of its members—evoke no reconsideration of the legitimacy of such wars. On the contrary, the US Army is to be commended for concentrating on the practical lessons that can be derived for “future conflicts.”…
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Tomgram: Elizabeth de la Vega, Bringing Bush to Court
Tom Engelhardt & Elizabeth de la Vega
Elizabeth de la Vega, appearing on behalf of the United States. That is a phrase I’ve uttered hundreds of times in twenty years as a federal prosecutor. I retired two years ago. So, obviously, I do not now speak for any U.S. Attorney’s Office, nor do I represent the federal government. This should be apparent from the fact that I am proposing a hypothetical indictment of the President and his senior advisers — not a smart move for any federal employee who wishes to remain employed. Lest anyone miss the import of this paragraph, let me emphasize that it is a DISCLAIMER: I am writing as a private citizen. Obviously, as a private citizen, I cannot simply draft and file an indictment. Nor can I convene a grand jury. Instead, in the following pages I intend to present a hypothetical indictment to a hypothetical grand jury…
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Anatomy of a Civil War: Writer Nir Rosen on Iraq’s Descent Into Chaos
Democracy Now!
…In his latest article, “Anatomy of a Civil War: Iraq’s descent into chaos”, Rosen writes, “Shia religious parties such as the Iran-supported Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (its name a sufficient statement of its intentions), or SCIRI, controlled the country, and Shia militias had become the Iraqi police and the Iraqi army, running their own secret prisons, arresting, torturing, and executing Sunnis in what was clearly a civil war. And the Americans were merely one more militia among the many, watching, occasionally intervening, and in the end only making things worse…
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DAILY WAR NEWS FOR TUESDAY, November 28, 2006
Today in Iraq
A car bomb close to west Baghdad’s main Yarmouk hospital killed four people and wounded 40 on Tuesday.. The apparent target was a police patrol near the hospital. One officer was killed and several policemen were wounded. Some witnesses earlier told police there were two blasts. Two car bombs exploded near al-Yamouk hospital’s morgue in the capital, killing three civilians and one policeman and wounding 19 civilians. Forty bodies with gunshot wounds and some with signs of torture were found in different parts of Baghdad on Monday…
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3 Fort Hood soldiers killed in Iraq blast
Associated Press
Three Fort Hood soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb explosion in Iraq, the U.S. Department of Defense said Tuesday. First Lt. David M. Fraser, 25, died from injuries he suffered when the bomb went off near his military vehicle in Baghdad on Sunday. The military didn’t provide a hometown for Fraser, who was identified as a Texan. Pvt. Joshua C. Burrows, 20, of Bossier City, La., and Capt. Jason R. Hamill, 31, of New Haven, Conn., also were killed in the blast. Hamill and Fraser were assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 67th Armor Regiment, 4th Brigade, 4th Infantry Division at Fort Hood. Burrows was assigned to 1st Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood…
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Thousands of Iraqi Palestinians have been forced out of Iraq
IRIN
Of the approximately 30,000 Palestinians who were registered in Iraq in 2003 by the United Nations agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA), an estimated 5,000 to 6,000 are left in the country, according to UNHCR and other organisations. The rest have either been killed or have fled to neighbouring countries. With all borders now closed to them, Palestinians who are forced to stay in Iraq face an almost certain death as they are perceived by many Iraqis to have been favoured by the government of former president Saddam Hussein. Of the approximately 30,000 Palestinians who were registered in Iraq in 2003 by the United Nations agency for Palestine refugees, an estimated 5,000 to 6,000 are left in the country…
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Clueless in America
Feeding the Tape Worms of Desire
Charles Sullivan
It may well be that there is no hope for the American republic, that we are by choice beyond reclamation. Much of the world sees the average American as detached from reality, isolated from the suffering of others. They see us as self-absorbed, over indulgent, willfully ignorant, and imbued with enormous hubris—characterizations that are difficult to argue against. Unfortunately, I am well acquainted with the type. Most Americans somehow believe that we are an exceptional people—God’s chosen few. It would not be the first time in history this has occurred. The world is our oyster and it is our’s to use as we see fit, even if it does not belong to us. To the physically strongest and morally depraved, to the wealthiest, go the spoils…
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New information on Gemayl assassination
Roads to Iraq
AlMadarNews, is a weekly Iraqi newspaper publish in Beirut, reports very important information about Gemayl assassination. More than two months ago, a coordination meeting held in Cyprus concluded the Chief of the Israeli Mossad and Samir Geagea and Walid Jumblatt attended by the director of the CIA in Cyprus. Geagea and Jumblat were asked to prepare the Lebanese arena, for more assassination operations as required by the latest developments in Lebanon, It has also been agreed to provide financial coverage from Washington and Riyadh –Saudi Arabia-. Despite conflicting reports about how the assassination operation was done and the route taken by Minister Pierre Gemayel before he was assassinated…
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Flaws in Saddam trial make detention ‘arbitrary’: UN rights group
AFP
Saddam Hussein’s trial fell so far short of international standards that his detention was “arbitrary”, and as such the death sentence should not be carried out, a working party of the United Nations Human Rights Council has said. “The non-observance of the relevant international standards during Mr. Hussein’s trial was of such gravity as to confer Mr. Hussein’s deprivation of liberty an arbitrary character,” the Council’s working group on arbitrary detention said Tuesday. It urged the Iraqi goverment “to refrain from carrying out the sentence of death by hanging imposed in a proceeding, which does not meet applicable standards of a fair trial.” The working group said it was making its opinion public prematurely “since it cannot be excluded that the death penalty imposed upon Mr. Hussein would be carried out before the Opinion is published in its annual report to the Human Rights Council.”…
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