Women prisoners languish in jail without trial
Kareem Zair, Azzaman
A visit to a women prison in a Baghdad neighborhood has revealed that Iraqi authorities are paying lip service to human rights and rule of law. The visit by Vice-President Tareq al-Hashemi found the jail over crowded with many women afflicted with contagious diseases due to lack of medicine and medical care. “The tour has exposed a difficult and tragic situation in the whole process, starting with detention and ending with the horrific conditions of the prison,” a statement by Hashemi’s office said (…) Many of the prisoners, the statement said, were detained because their husbands or sons were suspected of having links to forces resisting U.S. occupation. “This means if anything that the women are taken hostages to exert pressure on their husbands who are wanted by the authorities,” the statement said. There were teenage women among the prisoners some of whom had spent several years behind bars, the statement added…

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MANDATING INDIGENOUS HOLOCAUST EDUCATION
Dr. June Terpstra
On yet another USA manufactured “holiday” where schools close to honor the savage conquistador, Christopher Columbus, who ushered into history the holocaust of approximately 11 million native north American “Indians” I propose a mandate for indigenous holocaust education, K-12. Like the new federal legislation introduced in congress to mandate education of the Jewish holocaust, I also propose we replace not only senior citizens arts and crafts but pre-school arts and crafts with education workshops developed to examine the denial of Indian genocide and removal; the denial of African Diaspora genocide and slavery, past and present; and, the genocide of Arabs and Muslims occurring in Palestine today. ..

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US media continues to shortchange Iraqis – massacres are now called accidents of perception
Zaidan, The Future of Iraq
In our continuing series examining some of the glaring mistakes and biases perpetrated by US media in covering the Iraq war, we came across an interesting article which in the aftermath of the Blackwater controversy highlights the impunity and free rein US armed forces have in Iraq and how the free press in America covers for them. The article, “Knowing the enemy difficult in Iraq” by Katarina Kratovac for the Associated Press marks a turning point in what is now being referred to as armchair journalism and a failure to investigate and dig deeper for the truth. It is also yet another example of the propaganda war conducted by so-called wire agencies…

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Cholera spreading, authorities in Baghdad doing little
AsiaNews
The cholera outbreak that began in August in Iraq is spreading quickly. However, the central government and international organisations have failed so far to take the necessary steps to stop it, the Azzaman website said citing anonymous health ministry officials. The steps the government has taken so far can only be described as hopeless, according to these officials, falling far short of the extent of the tragedy. The outbreak, which affected only the north until now, has spread to the Iranian border. Some sources told AsiaNews that in Nineveh province there is no hope for the population. Small local villages are overcrowded with refugees fleeing the violence of Baghdad and Mosul. “Medical centres—they cannot be called hospitals—are so few and lack everything, including drugs and medical staff. Doctors are not coming in to work out of fear of being shot since they have been specifically targeted for murder or abductions,” sources said…

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Talabani Supports Proposal to Divide Iraq Into Three Regions
Catherine Larkin, Bloomberg
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani endorsed a plan gaining support in the U.S. Congress to divide Iraq along ethnic lines into three separate regions under a limited central government. Talabani, a Kurd, said a so-called soft partition of Iraq would prevent civil war among the country’s Shiite and Sunni Muslims and Kurds. The U.S. Senate voted 75-23 in favor of a non-binding resolution supporting establishment of such a federal system in Iraq. The idea has been championed by Democratic Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware and the resolution, approved Sept. 26, was co- sponsored by Republican Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas. Both lawmakers are seeking the presidential nomination of their parties. ``I think the resolution passed by the Senate is a very good one,’’ Talabani said today on CNN’s ``Late Edition’’ program. ``…

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Warning: Authorized to kill
Roads to Iraq
This article was written today by Tony Sagbeni from AL-Akhbar newspaper, followed by his successful article “Black water, Black prince” criticizing the US mercenaries policy in Iraq an around the world. In this article Sagbeni argues that US military and army is not better dealing with Iraqis than Black water, the acts of Both armies are a mirror of the US foreign policy…

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Go And See the Truth For Yourself, I Did
British Medical Journal
I have been following the debate in these columns with a mixture of interest and incredulity. I wonder how many of those who accuse Tom Hickey and Derek Summerfield of ‘anti-Israel bias’ and ‘anti-Semitism’ have actually visited the West Bank or Gaza to see the facts for themselves. I had the good fortune to visit Israel and the West Bank for two weeks in August. What I saw there changed my life forever. We spent a lot of time at checkpoints in the West Bank. Unfortunately, the word ‘checkpoint’ sounds so benign that it hardly conveys the horror of the place. Have you seen a cattle shed crammed full of animals? With only one gate to get out, guarded by a farmer with a stick?…

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Wall protests are not rare
Roads to Iraq
For some reason many news media are reporting today’s protest against the US wall in Baghdad as unusual event, even Reuters reported it as “Rare march in Baghdad against new U.S. wall”. Here is a reminder: since the first wall was erected in Ahdamiya there were at least 12 demonstrations. Funny to mention what Maliki said at that time “Iraq PM orders halt to Baghdad wall”: I oppose the building of the wall and its construction will stop. There are other methods to protect neighbourhoods…

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Blackwater Rising
Anwaar Hussain
K?l? P?n?, literally ‘Black water’ in Urdu/Hindi languages, a term for the deep sea and hence exile, was the name of a notorious cellular jail situated in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (India). The prison was known to house many notable Indian activists during the struggle for India’s independence. In March 1868, 238 prisoners tried to escape. By April they were all caught. One committed suicide and of the remainder, British Superintendent Walker ordered 87 to be hanged. On the U.S. mainland, the Blackwater River of Florida is a 58-mile long river arising in southern Alabama and flowing through the Florida Panhandle to the Gulf of Mexico. The river enters Florida in Okaloosa County and flows through Santa Rosa County to Blackwater Bay, an arm of Pensacola Bay. The river passes through Blackwater River State Park. There is yet another blackwater river in North Carolina that goes by the name of White Oak River. The White Oak River is located in North Carolina’s outer coastal plain province in Carteret, Jones, and Onslow Counties. Also in the U.S. state of North Carolina is a private military company, the Blackwater USA…

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Clinton lied, people died
Michael Lee, MWC NEWS
Should Hillary Clinton wins the US presidency, Bill Clinton will be given the job of repairing America’s damaged international reputation. That’s certainly going to be an extremely hard job, the USA’s reputation is certainly suffering all over the world and not simply in the Middle East where the 1.2 million Iraqi lives have been lost, where US policy has turned Iraq into a “failed State” ,where whole towns have been turned into rubble and where countless war crimes have been committed. But just a little research tells us that rather than being totally innocent in regards to the reputation the USA has earned, if Bill Clinton himself had been honest himself about the ficticious, invented stories about Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, then it’s extremely unlikely that George Bush himself would have even attempted to continue the subterfuge. On the February 18, 1998 Bill Clinton gave a speech at the Pentagon in which he referred to Hussein Kamal, Saddam’s son-in-law, and chief organiser of Iraq’s weapons-of-mass-destruction program, who had defected to Jordan. According to Clinton, “He (Hussein Kamal) revealed that Iraq was continuing to conceal weapons and missiles and the capacity to build many more.” It’s quite easy to research what Hussein Kamal really said when he was being questioned by referring to www.fair.org/press-releases/kamel.pdf . “All weapons — biological, chemical, missile, nuclear were destroyed! .” The d estruction took place in the summer of 1991. What about chemical weapons? “I ordered destruction of all chemical weapons.”…

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IRAQ-SYRIA: Fire ravages border camp for Palestinian-Iraqi refugees
IRIN News
A raging fire swept through the Al-Tanf refugee camp on the Syrian side of the Syrian-Iraqi border on 6 October injuring 25 Palestinian-Iraqi refugees and burning down 53 tents in the isolated camp, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) reported on 7 October. “We are very angry and very sad. People lost their documents, passports and all their possessions. The situation is very bad,” said one of the refugees from the camp who wished to remain anonymous. According to witnesses, an unattended stove started the fire which destroyed the personal belongings, including important papers, of 11 families, and injured several of those who tried to extinguish it. A doctor in the camp, Ahmad Hassan, told IRIN several people had suffered first degree burns, and others had severe breathing problems. Five patients were taken to the Palestinian Hospital in Damascus for treatment. Syrian border officials supplied fire-fighting equipment to quell the blaze and helped the camp’s medical team provide medical assistance to the injured. The UNHCR provided victims with new tents, blankets and kitchen supplies on the night of 7 October. “This is the third fire these refugees have endured. It highlights the urgent need to find another solution for all the Palestinian refugees living in Al-Tanf and Al-Walid camp [a second camp on the Iraqi side of the border],” said Laurens Jolles, the UNHCR representative in Syria. “Both these camps are located in areas that are unsuitable for refugees to live in.! “…

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Sudan to host Palestinians stranded on Iraq border
Reuters
Sudan will host hundreds of Palestinian refugees who have been stranded for months in terrible conditions on Iraq’s border with Syria and Jordan, the Foreign Ministry said on Monday. “It’s a few hundred. The president (Omar Hassan al-Bashir) agreed to the request of both Hamas and Fatah to accommodate them and we are going to inform the Arab League and then make our preparations,” said a senior Foreign Ministry official, who declined to be named. Iraq had 30,000 registered Palestinian refugees before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. The community became the target of attacks partly because of the Baghdad government’s support for the Palestinians under Saddam Hussein’s rule…

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Are New Maps Drawing For The Region Has Started?
Mohammad Khroub – AMSI
Attentions may be paid for a plenty of asked questions about the Iraqi issue such as the struggling, attractions, political background record and some others end with gun bullets, sound mufflers, bombings, the meetings held between the religious competent of both Sunnis and Shiites to show their objections and rejections to the decision of the American Senates concerning the partition of Iraqi territory to three region as Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds connected to a federated government in Baghdad… Thee AMSI denounces the American decision and considers it a dangerous step. Because such action is a preparation to be spread all over the region countries, followed by requesting from the betrayers (of motherland and nations) to confirm the decision exactly as it has mentioned in a declaration regarding the subject matter. The reality of the decision is dividing the country. However the vision is to form a federative system as a pretext to stop or put an end the conflict in the country, i.e AMSI which no doubt has a great effect among the Sunnis sect will carry on with current attitudes in its political aspects that are known to everyone and to provide the support to armed resistance powers even if the American Senates decision has raised as a reality. Although, the White House has announced officially its rejection to the decision and indicated to (this decision is not necessary to the American Administration), although the language of this press declaration issued by the spokes! man of t he White House was a not clear and fill of suspicious tips. The declaration contained the following paragraph “but it is obvious that the Iraqis themselves have to take such decisions and it should not be imposed by foreign countries…

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US Army cordons off al-Doura in preparation for massive attack
Mohammad Al-Ghazz, KUNA
US troops on Sunday cordoned off various neighborhoods in the area of al-Doura southern Baghdad, in preparation for launching a military operation against militias using the area as a barricade. The troops, and via megaphones, urged residents to evacuate the area before the Army conducts the storming operation, which will also witness aerial attacks, according to a source at the multinational force in Iraq. Residents who fled the area to nearby ones told Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) that US army patrols allowed only women and 13-year-old children or younger to leave the area, where men were ordered to stay in position for searching. Sources at the multinational force in Iraq told KUNA that the operation aimed at attacking a group of armed men, who were accused of launching a missile attack yesterday on al-Saqer military base…

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Gabriele Zamparini Exposes HUGE Media Anti-Arab Anti-Semitic Iraqi Holocaust Denial
Dr Gideon Polya
I greatly appreciate the humanitarian persistence of UK journalist Gabriele Zamparini in exposing the refusal of the Iraqi Holocaust-ignoring and now Iraqi Holocaust-denying Anti-war.com and Iraq Body Count to publish the authoritative estimates of about 1 million post-invasion excess deaths in Occupied Iraq, these persons relying instead on notoriously under-estimating “news report tallies” indicating (currently) 75,000-81,000 violent Iraqi deaths (…) As compared to the roughly 80,000 violent deaths asserted by Anti-war.com and Iraq Body Count, below are 7 authoritative estimates from 6 authoritative, independent data sets indicating about 1.5-2.0 million post-invasion Occupied Iraq excess deaths…

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Dear Antiwar.com – about Iraq Body Count
Felicity Arbuthnot
Having come across the correspondence between yourselves and Mr Zamparini, I am disturbed that Iraq Body Count is the benchmark for Iraq excess deaths on your excellent website. The Lancet Report, now over a year old, by two world renowned epidemiologists, estimated up to one milliuon excess deaths, as you will be aware. These are violent deaths, However, additionally, as Dr Gideon Polya points out, quoting UNICEF for the child mortality data: ‘The post-invasion NON-VIOLENT DEATHS total 0.7 million (as estimated from UN Population Division data) to 0.8 million (as estimated from UNICEF under-5 infant mortality data as per “Layperson’s Guide to Counting Iraq Deaths”) . The TOTAL post-invasion excess deaths amount to 1.5 million to 2.0 million (…) Your exclusive use of the IBC figures allows politicians to escape accusations of what can only be described as a holocaust…

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Cheney’s Oil Law For Iraq Is Neocolonial Theft
Muriel Mirak-Weissbach, Global Research,
…It should come as no surprise that the infamous oil law, which will effectively hand over the country’s national resources to private foreign interests, was not an Iraqi invention. Rather, it was concocted in the U.S. and long before the bombs started falling on Baghdad. Dick Cheney, in his incarnation as executive of Halliburton, back in 1999, told the Institute of Petroleum in London: “By 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day. So where is this oil goin to come from? … While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East with two-thirds of the world’s oil and the lowest cost is still where the prize ultimately lies.” (quoted by Muttitt, p. 7). Soon therafter Cheney became head of the Energy Task Force, whose secretive meetings put Iraq and its oil on their agenda. As documented in an article by Ed Spannaus, in Executive Intelligence Review (September 12, 2003), Cheney and co. had detailed plans for seizing Iraqi oil after the war…

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Bush Awards Congressional Medal to IBC Czar
E.B. Patton, Dissident Voice
WASHINGTON (AEP) – President Bush announced today he was awarding Iraq Body Count (IBC) co-founder John Sloboda the Congressional Medal of Honor. Bush said, “It’s very important to every person in America that we continue to minimize the true costs of the Iraq War. Mr. Sloboda has done important work in this regard, by giving us tolerable Iraqi casualty figures to promote, instead of the Godless crap you see in the Lancet or Opinion Business Research. Every single one of the American people owes Mr. Sloboda a debt of gratitude, which is why I’m awarding him this medal.” In October 2004, the British medical journal Lancet published a study in which lead author Les Roberts estimated 100,000 excess civilian deaths in Iraq as a result of the Western military presence there. In October 2006, Roberts and the Lancet updated the estimate to 655,000. In September 2007, Opinion Research Business (ORB), an independent polling agency based in London, estimated 1.2 million excess Iraqi deaths…

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Mahdi militia kills 17 citizens of the Sunni sons of Hor Rajab
HAQ agency
HAQ agency got information from eyewitnesses and Informed sources indicate that the Safawive Mahdi militia killed 17 citizen of Sunni sons of the Hor Rajab who escaped from the continuing armed clashes between occupation forces and the government forces on one hand and elements of the Iraqi resistance on the other, and went to the Abu Dsheer area South Baghdad. The information declared that the militias used the difficult humanitarian situation of the families which escaped from the confrontations and instead of providing humanitarian assistance to them it assassinated 17 men from these families, mostly are elderly people for sectarian reasons…

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Israel ? State Of Misery
Mary Sparrowdancer, rense.com
It was two weeks ago when I learned about a Palestinian refugee in Lebanon who, by way of a simple request, seemed to quietly epitomize what being a refugee from Palestine means. Her statement spoke to me of something that reaches very deeply into the human soul, and this is why the Palestinians will never cease to struggle for the right to return to their ancestral homes in the Holy Land. With her health failing at this time, as the woman began thinking about her final arrangements she asked that someone please go to her home village of Safad, which is located in the Palestinian hills of eastern Galilee. The village was ethnically cleansed of Palestinians in 1948. She asks that someone please bring back to her a handful of sand so that she might be buried with it…

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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Sunday, 7 October 2007
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice. www.freearabvoice.org
…In a dispatch posted at 12:25pm Baghdad time Sunday afternoon, the Association of Muslim Scholars of Iraq (AMSI) reported that the Shi’i sectarian Jaysh al-Mahdi militia stormed the al-Furat Neighborhood Mosque from the al-Jihad neighborhood on Sunday morning. The AMSI reported that the sectarian attack sparked a battle that lasted a full hour during which the residents of al-Furat rose to defend themselves against the notorious sectarian gunmen. The correspondent noted that the Jaysh al-Mahdi sectarians had attacked the same mosque after Saturday night prayers, also from the direction of the al-Jihad neighborhood. That assault left two worshippers in the mosque wounded. AMSI reported that the al-Furat neighborhood was enduring difficult times economically because the Jaysh al-Mahdi has been blockading it, preventing basic necessities from getting in to the residents. Their blockade is being carried on under the watch of the US-occupation authorities in the city and is aimed at driving Sunnis out of the Iraqi capital in order to facilitate the partition of Iraq along sectarian lines in keeping with plans hatched in Washington and Tel Aviv…

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