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Beyond Orwell and Kafka
Gabriele Zamparini, The cat’s dream
Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet died this week. He won’t be missed. Now imagine Augusto Pinochet visiting the United States while he was carrying out torture and mass murdering in Chile. Imagine the “largest coalition of peace and justice organizations in the U.S.” welcoming the ruthless murderer, “it is our pleasure to welcome you in the United States”. This is what indeed happened this past summer when United for Peace and Justice’s National Coordinator Leslie Cagan wrote an open letter to puppet Iraqi Prime Minister Al-Maliki. Dear Prime Minister Al-Maliki, On behalf of United for Peace and Justice, the largest coalition of peace and justice organizations in the U.S., which includes more than 1,400 national and local groups united in opposition to the U.S. war in Iraq, it is our pleasure to welcome you in the United States. Of course it would be wrong and ungenerous the comparison; next to Al-Maliki and his sectarian death squads government, Pinochet would seem a boy scout…
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Summer rains and Saad
Evidence of Israeli use of unconventional weapons in Gaza
By David Halpin*
In early July, surgeons at the El-Shifa hospital in Gaza City claimed that the Israeli occupiers were using “chemical” weapons following the capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. The injuries were unusual and the mortality unusually high. David Halpin gave advice then and reports below…
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Is the Iraq War Linked to the Arab-Israeli Conflict?
Patrick Seale, Agence Global
…Does linkage between Israel and the war in Iraq still need proving? Has it not been shown beyond dispute that it was concern for Israel’s security — the wish to remove any threat to Israel from the east and the ambition to reshape the entire region in Israel’s favour — that impelled deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz and his colleague Douglas Feith to press ardently for war in Iraq? For these pro-Israeli ideologues, invading Iraq and overthrowing Saddam Hussein was not enough. The country and its army had to be smashed beyond repair…
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Children die, miscarriages increase as U.S. troops lay siege to city
Mazen Abdulmajeed, Azzaman
At least eight children have died and seven women have had miscarriages in the town of al-Sinya which invading U.S. troops have put under siege for more than 50 days. Sinya is close to Baiji, one of the scores of anti-U.S. strongholds in the country. The town’s nearly 50,000 inhabitants are now without running water and food supplies are running dangerously low. But the occupiers seem to be determined to proceed with their mass punishment and are turning away aid convoys…
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If Israel has Nuclear Weapons, then why is Vanunu still under “Administrative Detention”??
peacepalestine
Download and watch the Vanunu Interview by the magnificent Eileen Flemming of We Are Wide Awake. It is an intense conversation, where he talks about Israel’s nuclear program, his own arrest and cruel punishment (including 18 years of solitary confinement), two of which he was subject to constant sleep deprivation, psychological torture and other inhumane treatment. He speaks of what Christians should be doing about Palestine and Israel, the Apartheid Wall and the harsh conditions of that the Palestinian people are subject to each and every day. He also speaks of his own situation, where he is STILL, after having served 18 years of prison, the full term that was given to him, kept in a “special” kind of restriction of freedom, an imprisonment known as Administrative Detention, an entirely arbitrary punishment that Israel is making him endure, so that he is not permitted to communicate with foreigners or to move freely…
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News Flash News Flash News Flash News…
Layla Anwar
Abu Saleem’s son , Othman, 13 and half years old was kidnapped by the Iranian backed Death Squads whilst he went to buy some candies from the grocery shop.
His kidnappers asked for a ransom of 20'000 USD . Abu Saleem is a poor man , out of work for nearly a year now. He told them all his belongings did not amount to this sum. He received another call later on during the day. The kidnappers have bargained down the price-10'000 USD or else… Abu Saleem tried to negotiate with them . He offered that they take his house and all his belongings, he just wants his son alive. Later on in the evening, he received yet another call: “You son is dead , his body can be found in Kerbala”…
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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Wednesday, 13 December 2006
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice
In a dispatch posted at 6:27pm Makkah time Wednesday evening, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that an Iraqi puppet army soldier who was manning a checkpoint together with US occupation troops in the an-Nu’aymiyah area of southern al-Fallujah opened fire at crowds of people backed up at the checkpoint waiting to get through. He was apparently trying to prevent a group from coming together by firing so as to break them up. The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported eyewitnesses as saying that it was the US and Iraqi puppet troops in the checkpoint who caused the angry crowds to start to form, since it was they who were greatly delaying traffic and complicating the process of entering the city…
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Dumb and Dumber Congress Critters
Kurt Nimmo
Down in Texas, they grow them stupid. Not that all Texans are stupid, mind you, just Democrats elected to represent the people. For instance, when Congressional Quarterly national security editor Jeff Stein interviewed in-coming chairman of the Intelligence Committee, El Paso’s Silvestre Reyes, he asked whether al-CIA-duh, er “al Qaeda,” is a Sunni or Shi’ite organization, the good Representative was flummoxed. “Predominantly—probably Shi’ite,” stumbled the clueless Congress critter. Doh!…
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Bush v. The Two Majorities
Robert Dreyfuss, TomPaine.com
President George W. Bush, who is being shadowed these days, and rather ominously, by a suddenly revived Vice President Cheney, confronts two hostil majorities opposed to his Iraq policy. The first is American, growing in power, that demands a U.S. withdrawal from the Iraqi quagmire. The second, also growing, is even more potent: It is the Iraqi majority that wants a quick end to the U.S. occupation of their country. If, indeed, President Bush is determined to flout both of those majorities in pursuit of a phantasmagorical notion of “victory” in Iraq, then the future is grim beyond all measure. The latest news from Iraq—namely, that Bush and Ambassador Khalilzad are trying to micromanage the creation of yet another pro-American coalition government to replace the current regime of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki—is a sign that the president is truly lost in a fantasy land. The president is making policy for an Iraq that exists only in his imagination, even as conditions in the real Iraq, the one here on this planet, deteriorate ever faster…
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Ehud Olmert Concealing the Truth in a Show of Timidity
PalestineFreeVoice
In an interview in Germain TV – the Israeli warlord, Ehud Olmert last night attempted to warn of a nuclear threat imposed by Iran- then he finally had to admitt that the Israelis has nuclear weapons them self. “Israel is a democracy he claimed and he continued “ Israel doesn’t threaten any country with anything, we never did. The most that we have tried to get for ourselves is to try to live without terror” – said the terrorist leader the chef-d’oeuvre him self – in absurdity concealing the truth in a show of timidity – masking – with weakness the Israelis destruction plans for other sovereign countries . The Israelis has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and is widely believed to have nuclear weapons…
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WAR NEWS FOR WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2006
Today in Iraq
Gunmen stormed the house of a Shi’ite family and killed nine people, four men, two women and three children, in al-Hesna village, 35 km south of Baghdad. A car bomb exploded near a crowded bus stop in eastern Baghdad during morning rush hour on Wednesday, killing 11 people and wounding 27 in a mostly Shiite area, police said. The bus stop blast in Baghdad’s Kamaliyah neighborhood went off about 50 yards from the Shiite al-Rasoul mosque but did not damage the small building, according to police Capt. Mohammed Abdul-Ghani and police Maj. Mahir Hamad. Two cars loaded with explosives were detonated in quick succession along a commercial street in the New Baghdad district of eastern Baghdad at about 1 p.m.. Five people were killed and 10 others were wounded. The car bombs exploded near a group of day laborers waiting for work. It was a scenario similar to a truck bomb attack Tuesday morning in central Baghdad that killed 71 Iraqis and wounded 220, mostly day laborers seeking jobs…
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Iraqi PM Weighs Political Realignment
HAMZA HENDAWI and QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, The Associated Press
Iraq’s prime minister is weighing whether to sever his alliance with a radical Shiite cleric blamed for much of the country’s sectarian violence, aides said Wednesday. But isolating Muqtada al-Sadr could lead to more deadly attacks, even if the strategy could produce a more stable administration over time. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been meeting over the last three days with a small circle of his Dawa Party stalwarts to discuss their options, according to his aides who spoke on condition of anonymity because the subject is sensitive…
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U.S. Weighed Sunni Offer to “Clean Up” Militias
Gareth Porter*, IPS-Inter Press Service
U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad negotiated with Sunni armed groups for several weeks earlier this year on an agreement that would have supported Sunni forces in attacking pro-Iranian Shiite militias, according to accounts given by commanders of armed Sunni resistance organisations. The revelations of the intensive U.S.-Sunni negotiations, reported by Hala Jaber in the Sunday Times of London Dec. 10, are consistent with an account of those negotiations provided by a Sunni participant last May in an interview with the London-based Asharq al-Awsat newspaper…
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Americans Have No Idea How Bad It Is
Iraq is Beyond Repair
PATRICK COCKBURN, CounterPunch
During the Opium Wars between Britain and China in the 19th century, eunuchs at the court of the Chinese emperor had the problem of informing him of the repeated and humiliating defeat of his armies. They dealt with their delicate task by simply telling the emperor that his forces had already won or were about to win victories on all fronts. For three and a half years White House officials have dealt with bad news from Iraq in similar fashion. Journalists were repeatedly accused by the US administration of not reporting political and military progress on the ground. Information about the failure of the US venture was ignored or suppressed…
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OLMERT IN BIG TROUBLE FOR THE WRONG REASONS
DesertPeace
Different factions of the Israeli Parliament (Knesset) are issuing calls for Olmert to quit his job after ‘blowing the whistle’ on the fact that Israel has nuclear capabilities. Where were those calls when Olmert sent in troops to Gaza… to Lebanon… to other parts of the Occupied Territories? Where were those calls when Olmert continued the construction of the wall of apartheid that is cutting off an entire nation from the rest of society? Where were those calls when Olmert led the campaign not to recognise the officially elected representatives of the Palestinian people? I assume all the above are not considered anti Semitic by the powers that be so there was no need to call for his removal. I can’t understand the logic of the calls to quit for exposing the truth… why were those calls not issued as far back as the early 60's when Israel developed those nuclear weapons. Does anyone really believe that the US Administration was not aware of this way back then?…
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The invisible man
The Times Baghdad bureau
In Baghdad, nobody is what he seems. People invent stories to hide who they are and what they do. They tell their acquaintances they work for a relative, but head off to a job in the Green Zone that could get them killed. Others carry an ID with a Shia or Sunni name to escape death at the hands of the city’s armed militias. But what happens if you are exposed. What then in a country mired in sectarian warfare, where the discovery of your religious identity or political allegiance could leave you with a bullet to the head? Thirty-three-year-old Dr. Abdul Abbas knows. Since September, he has lived every Iraqi’s nightmare after he was unmasked as a Sunni at work. For two years, Abbas survived on a cover story at Baghdad’s largest hospital Medical City, where the Shia militia, the Mahdi Army, patrolled the hallways. Abbas had heard stories of Sunni patients disappearing and militiamen beating doctors…
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IRAQ: Appalling conditions of women prisoners disputed
IRIN
Conflicting opinions exist within the Iraqi government on how female prisoners are treated. According to the Iraqi Minister of Women’s Affairs and local NGOs, female prisoners in Iraq are held in appalling conditions, often without charge, and are sometimes raped and tortured. “We don’t know the exact number of female prisoners but there are many being held in different prisons – even though the [other ministries in the] government and US forces deny it. They are afraid of a counterattack from the country’s conservative society,” Faten Abdul Rahman Mahmoud, Minister of Women’s Affairs, said. Sarah Abdel Yassin, spokeswoman for the Baghdad-based Organisation for Women’s Freedom (OWF), said she agreed with the minister and had met many women who had been tortured in Iraqi jails…
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