Youth detention facility adds to Iraqis’ misery
Emma Sabry
As if it’s not enough that the Iraqis lost their homes, family members, jobs and in general their lives, the U.S. is now creating a new dilemma; an Iraqi youth detention facility. The children jailed there are aged between 11 and 17 years old and are detained over allegations ranging from theft to murder. According to an ABC report, there has been a huge increase in the number of Iraqi detainees since the U.S. troop surge began earlier this year. Recent reports say detainees’ numbers increased from 250 in May to 800 now. Those imprisoned are said to be mostly Sunnis. Ali Mohammed is a teenager among thousands of detainees kept in an overcrowded prison in Western Baghdad who has no idea what his crime is. “They told me they would only question me for five minutes and I have been here since the 25th of April,” Mohammed told Reuters. “I suffer from epilepsy, a weak spine and a speech defect”, he added, expressing his surprise that he is considered a security threat…

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700,000 Palestinians were kidnapped since 1967
Sabbah’s blog
Couple of months ago, Abdul-Nasser Farawna, an ex-detainee, a specialist in Palestinian Detainee’s Affairs and the head of the census department of the Ministry of Detainees and Freed Detainees, prepared a comprehensive report on Palestinian detainees imprisoned by Israel, which revealed that Israel kidnapped 700,000 Palestinians since it occupied the Palestinian territories in 1967….

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Some replies to my latest Action Alert RE: Antiwar.com [and a final surprise]
UPDATED – ANTIWAR.COM CHANGED ITS PAGE “Casualties in Iraq – The Human Cost of Occupation”
Gabriele Zamparini, The Cat’s Dream
Antiwar.com has changed its page, “Casualties in Iraq – The Human Cost of Occupation”, which now finally displays the Just Foreign Policy and the Lancet’s references and links. Well done! I welcome the changes and congratulate with Antiwar.com…

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Zionism cheapening true anti-Semitism
Khalid Amayreh in Occupied East Jerusalem
For many generations, the unethical Zionist leadership consistently sought to scuttle legitimate criticisms of Israel’s systematic ethnic cleansing of non-Jews in Palestine by brandishing the weapon of “anti-Semitisms” in the face of those who dared call the spade a spade. This unjust and opportunistic weapon worked effectively and many politicians, journalists and ordinary people succumbed to Zionist intimidation and blackmail. Those who didn’t were routinely dismissed as “irredeemable anti-Semites” or “Hitler incarnates” as some Israeli and American politicians have recently called the President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for questioning Israel’s so-called moral legitimacy. (well, in truth Israel has no more moral legitimacy than did Nazi Germany, in light of the striking similarity between the two)….

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SMALL TOWN STANDS UP TO BLACKWATER
Malcom Lagauche
…For the past four years, all one had to do was to go to YouTube to see many videos taken by Blackwater employees that showed them killing Iraqi civilians. All the time they were shooting, they were laughing. I find it quite bizarre that millions of U.S. citizens knew about Blackwater’s deadly actions years before the U.S. government. We all know the government knew of the atrocities but never had to do anything because there were no complaints. That has all changed. Again, I condemn mainstream journalism for not addressing the issue that the U.S. government knew of the actions yet did nothing to halt them. The media are only reporting on the recent actions by the administration, not the four-year coverup that preceded the new humanitarian enlightenment. Blackwater has created a hornet’s nest in my own area. Just a few miles from where I live, is the town of Potrero, a rural entity with about 800 inhabitants. …

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Foreign guards kill two women in Baghdad
Ammar Karim and Herve Bar, AFP
Foreign security guards killed two women when they opened fire on a car in the centre of the Iraqi capital on Tuesday, witnesses and Iraqi security officials said. The shooting in Karrada came two days after Iraq vowed to punish US security firm Blackwater after a probe found that its guards were not provoked when they opened “deliberate” fire in Baghdad three weeks ago, killing 17 Iraqis. It was not clear which security company was involved in Tuesday’s shooting, which occurred at the Masbar intersection in Karrada, a commercial and residential district which is regarded as one of the most secure in Baghdad….

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IRAQ: Shortage of safe water in Missan Province poses heath risk
IRIN News
A shortage of chemicals for water purification is adversely affecting water quality in Missan Province, a predominantly Shia region some 380km south of Baghdad, and posing a health risk as people resort to drawing water from the polluted River Tigris, according to aid agencies. The river, with its tributaries, is the main source of the province’s water which is pumped through water treatment facilities to the main towns. Amarah, the provincial capital, has not had its mains water supply treated since early September for lack of chemicals….

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Facts About the Relationship between Zionism and Terrorism
Peace For Palestine
Below are some rarely-mentioned facts about the relationship between Zionism and modern-day terrorism: 1. The first aircraft hijacking was carried out by Israel in 1954 against a Syrian civilian airliner. 2. Grenades in cafes: first used by Zionists against Palestinians in Jerusalem on 17 March 1937. 3. Delayed-action, electrically timed mines in crowded marketplaces: first used by Zionists against Palestinians in Haifa on 6 July 1938. 4. Blowing up a ship with its civilian passengers still on board: first carried out by Zionists in Haifa on 25 November 1940. The Zionists did not hesitate to blow up their own people in protest at the British policy of restricting Jewish immigration to Palestine. The ship, Patria, was carrying 1,700 Jewish immigrants….

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Turkey says ready to send troops into N.Iraq
Hidir Goktas and Gareth Jones, Reuters
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan gave the green light on Tuesday for a possible military incursion into northern Iraq to crush Kurdish rebels hiding there after several deadly attacks on Turkish security forces. Erdogan is under heavy pressure from Turkey’s powerful armed forces and opposition parties to take tough action against rebels of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) after they shot dead 13 soldiers on Sunday near the Iraqi border. Iraq’s government said that a recent security accord with Turkey was the best way for dealing with PKK attacks. The White House said it was committed to working with both NATO ally Turkey and Iraq to combat the PKK….

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Jordan, Syria adopt differing approaches to cholera threat
IRIN News
As cholera awareness posters have been going up in Baghdad, countries bordering Iraq have also taken measures to prevent an outbreak of the disease. The World Health Organization (WHO) has been advising countries in the region to boost their defences against cholera, after reports that cholera had crossed the Iraqi border into Iran where at least 45 people had been infected. The Jordanian Ministry of Health has begun implementing a contingency plan, Ali Assad, head of the National Committee for Epidemics at the ministry, told IRIN….

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Stephen Zunes and “the original U.S. goal of establishing a pro-American secular free market-oriented democratic government” in Iraq
Gabriele Zamparini, The Cat’s Dream
In a revealing interview, Stephen Zunes, Foreign Policy in Focus’ Middle East Editor, recently stated, “Clearly the original U.S. goal of establishing a pro-American secular free market-oriented democratic government is now considered unreachable.” Clearly that was the “original U.S. goal”, was it not? Foreign Policy In Focus, a “Think Tank Without Walls”, is a project of the Institute for Policy Studies whose fellows includes Phyllis Bennis, a famous leftist intellectual and activist who works closely with United for Peace and Justice….

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Torture Endorsed, Torture Denied
Marjorie Cohn
The April 2004 publication of grotesque photographs of naked Iraqis piled on top of each other, forced to masturbate, and led around on leashes like dogs, sent shock waves around the world. George W. Bush declared, “I shared a deep disgust that those prisoners were treated the way they were treated.” Yet less than a year later, his Justice Department issued a secret opinion endorsing the harshest techniques the CIA has ever used, according to a report in the New York Times. These include head slapping, frigid temperatures, and water boarding, in which the subject is made to feel he is drowning. Water boarding is widely considered a torture technique. Once again, Bush is compelled to issue a denial. “This government does not torture people,” he insisted. This was not the first time the Bush administration had officially endorsed torture, however. John Yoo, writing for the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, penned an August 2002 memorandum that rewrote the legal definition of torture to require the equivalent of organ failure. This memo violated the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, a treaty the United States ratified, and therefore part of U.S. law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution…

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Army needs three to four years to recover from Iraq strains: chief
AFP
The US Army will need three or four years to recover from the strains of repeated deployments to Iraq even with a planned drawdown of US forces next year, the service’s chief said Monday. General George Casey said the army is “out of balance” after six years of warfare in Afghanistan and Iraq, and facing unpredictable demands in an era of “persistent conflict.” “Out of balance is not broken, it’s not hollow,” he said. “But we’re forced by the current demands on the force to do more in the current time frame at the expense of sustaining the all-volunteer force and building bridges for the future.”…

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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Monday, 8 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 11:47am Baghdad time Monday morning, the Aswat al-’Iraq news agency, which was set up by Reuters and the U.N. Development Agency, reported that US helicopter gun ships attacked various areas in the city of al-Mawsil, 420km northwest of Baghdad, on Monday. Aswat al-’Iraq reported a source in the puppet police in the city who asked to remain anonymous as saying that US helicopters blasted the neighborhoods of al-Wahdah and al-Mithaq and the Industrial Zone in al-Karmah on the left (northeast) bank side of the city of al-Mawsil. The source said that the reasons for the American assault on the neighborhoods were unclear since no wounded people were reported being admitted to any of the city’s hospitals in the time prior to the US attack….

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AMERICAN LOCKDOWN: LAW ENFORCEMENT OUT OF CONTROL AND BEYOND THE PALE,
Carolyn Baker
In my recent article “The End Of America: The Police State Is Right Here, Right Now” I included experiences of escalating intimidation on the part of law enforcement in the United States within recent months. I must confess that when I cite such incidents, I fear that in a few days or weeks, it will all go away, and everyone else, myself included, will begin to question the validity of the examples, breathing a heavy sigh of relief and rejoicing that the situation isn’t nearly as dire as I’m asserting it is. This time, however, I have nothing to fear because since that article was posted, the ante of out-of-control law enforcement in America appears to have been upped with a rapidity that I could not have imagined just a few weeks ago….

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35% of US Americans Still Support Bush: Diagnosing the Insanity
Jason Miller
The essential features of Americanistic Personality Disorder include pervasive patterns of extreme self-absorption, profound and long-term lapses in empathy, a deep disregard for the well-being of others, a powerful aversion to intellectual honesty and reality, and a grossly exaggerated sense of the importance of one’s self and one’s nation. These patterns emerge in infancy, manifest themselves in nearly all contexts, and often become pathological….

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US considered radioactive poisons for assassinations
Robert Burns, AP Military Writer
In one of the longest-held secrets of the Cold War, the U.S. Army explored the potential for using radioactive poisons to assassinate “important individuals” such as military or civilian leaders, according to newly declassified documents obtained by The Associated Press. Approved at the highest levels of the Army in 1948, the effort was a well-hidden part of the military’s pursuit of a “new concept of warfare” using radioactive materials from atomic bombmaking to contaminate swaths of enemy land or to target military bases, factories or troop formations. Military historians who have researched the broader radiological warfare program said in interviews that they had never before seen evidence that it included pursuit of an assassination weapon. Targeting public figures in such attacks is not unheard of; just last year an unknown assailant used a tiny amount of radioactive polonium-210 to kill Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko in London…

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APS – The Blessing of the Partition Decision
Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq (AMSI)
AMSI made a press statement denouncing the pro-American Kurdish separatist leaders for supporting the American Senate’s decision to partition Iraq into three states, and for committing crimes against the Iraqi people.The Kurdish politicians has announced their support to the decision of American Senate’s regarding the partition of Iraq challenging the feeling of millions of Iraqis, Arabs and Muslims of all traditions. As it is known that the Kurdish separatists urged the United States to occupy Iraq and collaborated with the invaders in all its plans for the country. The pro-American Kurdish political leaders were willing to involve in occupier’s projects. They willingly joined the American occupiers in the US attacks on the Iraqi people which have by now claimed more than a million Iraqi lives and done untold damage to the country….

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Why the Annapolis conference will be another fiasco
Comment By Khalid Amayreh
It is really difficult to give the upcoming Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland, the benefit of the doubt. We do see a lot of movement here and there, but there is very little action if any. The US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, has been making unwarrantedly optimistic statements about the imminence of a historical breakthrough between the Palestinians and Israel. On Sunday, 7 October, she was quoted as saying that she believed the Palestinian problem was finally coming to an end. I don’t know if Rice knew what she was saying. However, from observing things on the ground, it seems there is very little if any to warrant this euphoria….

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Syrian visa restrictions “trap” Iraqi refugees
Laura Zuber
On October 1, Syria began imposing strict visa restrictions on Iraqis seeking to enter the country. On September 1, Syria announced a new policy of restricting entry to Iraqis with visas issued by the Syrian embassy foeconomic, commercial, transport, scientific, and educational reasons. However, Syria later announced that it was postponing enacting the policy until after the month of Ramadan. Syrian officials offered no explanation as to why the restriction went into effect on prior to the end of Ramadan, which is October 12. Fighting in Iraq has resulted in what the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) calls the biggest refugee crisis in the Middle East since the flight of the Palestinians in 1948. The UNHCR estimates that 2.2 million Iraqis are displaced within Iraq and that 2.2 million have fled the country. It is estimated that 1.5 million Iraqi refugees are residing in Syria and 750,000 in Jordan. On September 1, when Syria announced that restrictions on entry were beginning on September 10, rate of entry of Iraqi refugees increased from 2,000 a day to 20,000….

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“Amen” for Israel, say Christian Zionists
Sabbah’s blog
This is the gang that Bush comes from: With a skullcap bearing the Star of David and a fervent belief that God gave the Holy Land to the Jews, Paul McCaleb could be mistaken for a Jewish settler… McCaleb and some 7,000 mostly evangelical Christians from across the world flocked to the Holy Land this week to celebrate the Jewish festival of Sukkoth and to show support for Israel… Shouting “Amen” and “Hallelujah” as settlers acting as tour guides vowed to hold onto “the land of their forefathers” in the West Bank, the pilgrims said it was their duty as Christians to support Israel against a broader Muslim threat….

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