Zionism, Occupation, Palestinian Genocide
Dr Gideon Polya, MWC News
Jerusalem (al-Quds) is one of the most sacred cities in the world. It is sacred to 2.0 billion Christians, 1.5 billion Muslims, 0.3 billion Arab Semites and to 15 million Jews (of whom most are essentially non-religious or strictly non-observant and only about 1 million are strictly observant adherents to Orthodox Judaism that rejects and opposes Zionism). Jerusalem has been home for about 1,900 years to non-Jewish Palestinians. Jerusalem was only ever ruled by Jews for several centuries in the last 3,000 years after they had totally exterminated the Indigenous Inhabitants in about 1000 BC (about 1,000-586 BC and 165-63 BC). Al-Quds (Jerusalem) has been the third most sacred site for about 1,400 years to Muslims throughout the World. Yet this city is illegally in the hands of the Nazi-style Racist Zionists running Apartheid Israel who are engaged in a slow Palestinian Genocide involving expulsion, mass murder, mass imprisonment, property theft, and gross human rights abuse while the World looks on – and even though half the Occupied Palestinians are Children and three quarters are Women and Children….

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Claims of a turning point in Iraq are just wishful thinking
In spite of the impact of the surge and US-armed Sunni groups, resistance is bound to continue until the occupiers leave
Seumas Milne, The Guardian
…’We don’t want to have a clash with those who have become involved in the awakening campaign,” a spokesman for the 1920 Revolution Brigades, one of the largest guerrilla organisations fighting the US occupation, said yesterday. “We will give time to people who have been harmed by al-Qaida and its violence. We are now fighting the Americans more outside the cities.” But he dismissed as disinformation a claim in last week’s Economist that members of the Brigades now “accompany the Americans as guides on patrols”, pointing to a video of a successful attack by the group in the past week on a US humvee just broadcast on al-Jazeera as his answer. “Resistance will continue until the occupation forces leave our country.”..

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US use of radiological weapons
Charles Jenks, traprockpeace.org
Doug Rokke, Ph.D., Major (ret.) USAR, was the inside whistle blower on the US use of radiological weapons against the people of Iraq and – by their being exposed to these weapons – US soldiers and their families. Now, the AP reports on US plans to develop and use radioactive weapons for assassination and contamination of “populated or otherwise critical areas for long periods of time.” Following the report, Rokke comments on continued use of radioactive weapons by the US and notably by Israel against Palestinians and the people of Lebanon….

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Airstrikes Hit Civilians In Pakistan: Hundreds Dead In Latest Round Of Terror War By Proxy
Winter Patriot
Hundreds of people have been killed in the past few days in battles between the Pakistani military and suspected insurgents in North Waziristan, the mountainous northwest bordering on Afghaninstan. Pakistani tactics have included airstrikes and have taken a toll on civilians, including children, as Imtiaz Ali and Griff Witte in the Washington Post:Up to 250 people, including at least 45 soldiers, have been killed in fierce fighting in northwestern Pakistan over the past four days, with Pakistani military jets bombing suspected insurgent hide-outs amid tough resistance, officials and residents said Tuesday….

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Iraqis divided by constitution’s treatment of women
Supporters say Article 41 will keep the state out of civil affairs. Critics say it will usher in Sharia.
Tina Susman, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
…Article 41 is just one line in the 16-page document, but to critics, it is the worst. Opponents, including women’s rights activists and legal scholars, say the one poorly worded sentence opens the door to rule by draconian interpretations of Islamic law that could sanction the stoning of adulterous women, allow underage girls to be forced into marriage and permit men to abandon their wives by declaring, “I divorce you,” three times. In the southern city of Basra, there are already signs of religious extremism being used to rein in women. Police say gangs enforcing their idea of Islamic law have killed 15 women in the last month. “There are gangs roaming through the streets . . . pursuing women and carrying out threats and killing because of what the women wear or because they are using makeup,” the Basra police commander, Maj. Gen. Abdul Jaleel Khalaf, said this month. Sometimes notes are left on the women’s bodies saying they were killed for violating religious law or social traditions….

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Israeli bulldozers attempt to annex land near Palestinian kindergarten
Maisa Abu Ghazala – IMEMC
Israeli bulldozers on Wednesday attempted to annex an area of land adjacent to a Kindergarten in the Shu’afat refugee camp. Local sources reported that the bulldozers attempted to move the route of the wall 2.5. Meters closer to the kindergarten than had been previously stated. The operation was only halted when the owner of the land, Riyad al-Isawe, appealed to those behind the attack to cease. In a later meeting with Israeli authorities, the owner was promised that the operation would be suspended for two days. Al-Isawe condemned the attack, noting that while Israeli makes promises of peace it simultaneously annexes more and more Palestinian-owned land….

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Iraq’s Deepening Refugee Crisis
Homeless in Their Own Land
TOM CLIFFORD
Iraqi refugess are unwanted in their own land as provinces bar them from entering, the UN refugee agency warns. Provincial authorities, unable to cope with the influx, are refusing entry to refugees fleeing violence, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said. ‘’In many parts of the country refugees are being stopped at roadblocks and told they cannot go any further,’’ Andrew Harper, the UNHCR Iraq Support Unit chief, said….

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Depleted uranium
enduring risk
John W. Warnock, Special to The Leader-Post
Six years ago this past Sunday, the U.S. government launched a war against the government of Afghanistan (…) The turning point in the war to oust the Taliban government came on Nov. 6 at Mazar-e Sharif, a key city in the northern plains. Attack aircraft rained down hundreds of MK82 500-lb bombs. B-52 bombers used carpet bombing to kill thousands of Taliban forces. It was here that U.S. forces dropped the first BLU-82 Daisy Cutter bomb, each weighing 15,000 lbs, producing devastation over a 600-yard radius. All the weapons used by the U.S. air attack included depleted uranium shielding (…) In 1996 the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution declaring that DU weapons were illegal “weapons of mass destruction.” In 2002, the U.N. Human Rights Convention passed a resolution urging a ban on the use of any DU weapons. We will have to wait to find out the impact of these weapons on the people of Afghanistan and the men and women in the U.S., Canadian and NATO armed forces…

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Iraq’s displaced people nightmare
Magdi Abdelhadi, BBC Arab affairs analyst
The huge displacement of people inside Iraq appears to be contributing to the further fragmentation of the country. The scale of the overall displacement is unprecedented in the modern history of the Middle East. There are now an estimated four million Iraqis who have been forced to flee their homes, and the numbers continue to rise, according to the UN refugee agency. Neighbouring Jordan and Syria, which have borne the brunt of the problem after receiving some two million refugees over the past few years, have now restricted access because they can no longer cope with the influx. The plight of those who have fled their homes but have not been able to leave the country is dire, says the UN refugee agency…

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Kurds Talk Contracts with Big Oil: ‘It’s Now or Never’
Ben Lando, UPI
The Kurdistan Regional Government is offering the global oil industry its first and, so far, only chance at entering the Iraqi crude sector. Despite anger in Baghdad, the KRG plans to sign even more controversial oil deals and is waving the “For Sale” sign proudly. “We have many opportunities to excite you,” KRG Natural Resources Minister Ashti Hawrami told United Press International when asked what the “sales pitch” is to international oil firms. “And if you don’t come forward now, you will lose.” The KRG, covering a three-province region in the north of the country, has pressed forward with its own oil agenda, claiming the national government refuses progress. Baghdad, however, says it’s the Kurds who are the roadblock….

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Iran, the Inflatable Bogey
Dr. Trita Parsi, Rootless Cosmopolitan
I’m delighted and honored to welcome Dr. Trita Parsi as a guest columnist at Rootless Cosmopolitan. Following the escalating tension between Iran and the West over the past two years, I’ve found Trita to be a singular voice of sanity in the proverbial world gone mad. As both a scholar and as president of the National Iranian-American Council, he has dedicated himself to promoting dialogue and peace, and he had a particularly important role in bringing to light the 2003 proposal sent from the leadership in Tehran to the Bush Administration, offering a grand bargain in which Iran would address all U.S. concerns — a proposal that was sharply rebuffed by the Bush Administration, under the sway of neocons determined to prevent any rapprochement between the U.S. and Iran. Trita’s new book Treacherous Alliance – the Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the United States, (Yale University Press, 2007) is an absolute must-read, precisely because it cuts so decisively through the rhetoric and obfuscation that fills media coverage of the issue, and makes clear that the relationship is managed on an unsentimental, national-interests basis by all sides….

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Turk PM may request N.Iraq incursion on Thursday
Thomas Grove, Reuters
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan may ask parliament on Thursday to authorise a military incursion into northern Iraq to fight Kurdish rebels using the region as a base. Erdogan is under pressure to act after rebel attacks that have killed 15 soldiers since Sunday, but political analysts say a major cross-border operation remains unlikely. “A request for approval for a cross-border operation could be sent to parliament tomorrow,” Erdogan said on Wednesday. “After the holiday (this weekend) we plan to gain authorisation for one year.” A large incursion would strain ties with the United States and the European Union, which Ankara hopes to join, and could undermine regional stability. Russia also urged restraint….

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US detains nearly 25,000 in Iraq
AFP
The US military is holding nearly 25,000 people in its prisons in Iraq, 860 of whom are under the age of 16, the general in charge of their detention said on Wednesday. Eighty-three percent of inmates are Sunnis and 16 percent are Shiite, General Douglas Stone told a press conference in Baghdad. Egyptians, Iranians, Saudis and Syrians number among 280 foreign nationals imprisoned by the US military in Iraq, he said….

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Private security contractors in Baghdad kill two Iraqi women
Kate Randall, WSWS
Two Iraqi women were killed Tuesday afternoon when their vehicle was fired on by a private security convoy in central Baghdad. The guards were from the Unity Resources Group, an Australian-owned company. Iraqi Gen. Abdul Karim Khalaf told CNN that the mercenaries fired 19 bullets, killing two passengers in the front of a white sedan. Numerous witnesses recounted a violent scene in which the driver panicked, shots rang out and the convoy sped away. The shootings came amid mounting anger over the operations of private security contractors in Iraq. A September 16 massacre in Baghdad by Blackwater Security USA killed 17 Iraqi civilians and wounded at least 22 others. An Iraqi government probe determined that the killings by the Blackwater mercenaries were unprovoked and that they had “committed a deliberate crime and should be punished by law.”….

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Has the US Ceded Southern Iraq?
Mark Kukis, Time
…Last weekend Sadr and the leader of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, announced a truce. In a statement aired with much publicity, the two leaders pledged to cease violence. Whether the pact holds remains to be seen, especially in Basra. Tensions between the two factions there have lately been especially high following the British pullout to the airport outside the city. Regardless, U.S. forces are unlikely to play a meaningful role in shaping the outcome. With no evident plans to reenter southern areas, the U.S.-led coalition leaves the fate of some of Iraq’s most important territory to others….

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Funeral for 2 slain in security shooting
QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, Associated Press Writer
Weeping mourners called for justice Wednesday at a funeral for two Armenian Christian women killed while driving in Baghdad — the second shooting of civilians involving a security firm linked to U.S. government-financed work in Iraq in less than a month. The funeral Mass for Marou Awanis and Geneva Jalal, who died in Tuesday’s shooting, was held at the Virgin Mary Church. Awanis’ three daughters cried and other female relatives wailed over the caskets, adorned only with a golden cross. Iraqi authorities blamed the deaths on guards working for Unity Resources Group, a security company owned by Australian partners but with headquarters in the United Arab Emirates….

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RIGHTS-US: High Court Won’t Hear Rendition, Torture Case
Jim Lobe, IPS
In a major rebuff to human rights and government accountability activists, the U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday declined to take up the case of a German citizen who was allegedly abducted, detained and tortured by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as part of the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition” programme. By declining to hear the appeal, the Court effectively let stand a decision by a federal court judge in 2006 to dismiss a civil lawsuit brought against former CIA director George Tenet, among others, by Khaled el-Masri, on the grounds that a trial risked exposing “state secrets”. “This is a sad day not only for Khaled El-Masri, but for all Americans who care about the rule of law and our nation’s reputation in the world,” said Ben Wizner, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) which brought the case on El-Masri’s behalf….

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DECISION TO BAN DESMOND TUTU REVERSED AT UNIVERSITY
Desert Peace
I just received word from my Sister Blogger Robin that the President of St. Thomas University just sent the following letter to the students, faculty and staff of the University. ONE SMALL STEP FOR MAN, ONE GIANT LEAP FOR MANKIND!…

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Wednesday: 2 GIs, 112 Iraqis Killed; 84 Iraqis Wounded
Margaret Griffis, Antiwar.com
At least 112 Iraqis were killed or found dead and 84 others were wounded during the latest violence. Attacks on political or security targets occurred in Mosul and Tikrit, and Baghdad saw several attacks staged by gunmen. Also, two U.S. servicemembers were killed in separate non-hostile events. An MND-B soldier died in an non-combat event in Baghdad today. In another non-combat incident, an MND-soldier was killed….

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War News for Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Iraq today
U.S. forces killed nine suspected insurgents and detained 21 others during operations targeting al Qaeda networks in Baghdad, Mahmudiya, Mosul, Baiji and Samarra on Monday and Tuesday, the U.S. military said. One person was killed and five wounded when gunmen attacked a small bus carrying civil servants in the Bayaa district of southwestern Baghdad, police said. One civilian was killed and six wounded by a roadside bomb targeting a U.S. patrol in Baghdad’s Karrada district, police said. A roadside bomb wounded two people in central Baghdad’s Karrada district, police said….

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Journalistic Weeds Blighting America’s Political Landscape
Walter C. Uhler
A few days ago I wrote an article about the intellectual wasteland inhabited by “certain Americans,” which facilitated the foisting of George W. Bush’s benighted presidency upon decent and thoughtful Americans, as well as upon the thousands of American soldiers and innocent Iraqi civilians, who now are dead as a consequence. Unfortunately, that unimproved wasteland also provides fertile soil for the sprouting of the many journalistic weeds now blighting America’s political landscape….

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Unplugged…
Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues
I remember an old joke, I heard sometime ago…It goes like this. “How many Californians does it take to change a light bulb ?” “10. One to change it and 9 to share the experience.” I guess this joke was invented, because Californians are known to be into sharing and caring experiences. You know, burn some incense, light a candle, and talk about your chakras…Candle meditation kind of gatherings. Deep, very deep. In Iraq, we have candle meditation gatherings too. It’s called NO electricity. A popular joke going around in Baghdad. “Child: Mother, mother! Daddy was electrocuted! “Mother: “We have power?” Radhee yells daily his favorite mantra, “For God sake unplug it.” Radhee in Adhamiya gets a total of 3 hours of electricity per day. 1 in the morning, 2 in the early evening. These are considered lucky days. In the morning, his wife unplugs the fridge so they can plug in the air cooler. And in the evening, she plugs in the fridge, before all the food thaws, and unplugs the air cooler…

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Israeli Terrorism
Above and Beyond
this is ali daqdouq .. ali is barely six years old .. a few days ago he was killed by an israeli cluster bomb in southern lebanon .. When Ali Daqdouq returned home after school, in his Southern village of Sultaniyyeh, he was so excited about the adventures of his first day of school this year that he could barely catch his breath while telling his mother about them. He threw his old school bag aside and took off his used school uniform. He had his lunch and went to his neighbor and friend, Amal, to play videogames, just as he used to do in the afternoons of the summer break. Little did the six-year-old Ali know that this would be his first and last day of school. Little did he know that he would not make it to the date with Amal. One of the couple of millions unexploded cluster bomblets, the ones Bush and Rice supplied to Israel and the IDF in turn salted the South with during the summer of 2006, took Ali’s life.

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Dividing Iraq
Old Sarge’s
In one of the greatest shocks in quite a while, the Iraqi President — a Kurd — backed the Senate plan to divide Iraq into three separate autonomous states (…) This issue of a Kurdish state being attacked by her neighbors — Turkey and Iran — is a very real possibility. Both Turkey and Iran still maintain large numbers of troops on the northern border of Iraq, and both nations regularly take limited military action within this northern region. In order to keep these hostile nations out of a Kurdish state, President Talabani had a second idea. Mr. Talabani also says the U.S. military should keep three bases in northern, central and southern Iraq to train Iraqi forces and prevent neighboring countries from interfering.” At this point Talabani’s statements come full circle. He backs the original Plan to partition Iraq into three separate entities, while advising weak central government and continued American military presence which would deter Turkey and Iran from attacking.
President Talabani’s statements are certain to fire up the intense debate as to whether Iraq should be divided. But, rest assured, partition is the plan….

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Charitable Hands…
Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues
I have received a few mails, asking to make contributions to Iraqis in need.
I thank you all for your thoughtfulness and generosity. I, personally, cannot take responsibility to receive any money transfers for several reasons.
First, this would require my divulging personal information. Something am unwilling to do. Seeing the current “security” situation in Iraq, I will not put any member of my family or myself at risk, especially that my blog is considered “fiery.” However, I know of someone, who has established a small pool of funds for internally displaced Iraqi families who are in dire need and he is currently supporting 6 families by sending a little money each month. This money goes a long way for them (…) So for those of you, who wish to help an Iraqi family, with whatever you can contribute, please contact me and I will forward his address to you. And please do remember, Iraqis were never into mendicity before their “Liberation”….

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A deaf world for deaf children
Alan Hart
A friend of mine has just received the following short report from the Atfulna School for Deaf Children in Gaza. In this “Enemy Entity” where we live under restrictions of a ridiculous embargo, I would not be surprised that the coming months will find us fighting over a pen or a sheet of paper. Other than food, medicine and fuel, anything that sells out in the shops is not replaced. Use your imagination: Only five months into the embargo, no more cement, no wood, no ink, no printing paper, no glue, no needles, no nylon sheeting, no nails, and the list goes on. You might be interested to know that the 300 children in the Atfaluna School for Deaf Children are doing without their hearing aids because we are unable to bring hearing aids or hearing aid batteries across the border into the Gaza Strip…

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Land of the free?
American debate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is being stifled by an insidious form of pre-emptive censorship.
Richard Silverstein, Guardian
I’ve noticed what may be a new phenomenon in the Israel-Palestine debate as it plays out in the US. I call it pre-emptive censorship. A number of non-Jewish organisations have denied supposedly controversial speakers or organisations the right to speak or perform due to the anticipated reaction of the local Jewish community (…) in the case of the postponed New York performance of My Name is Rachel Corrie, a cancelled Chicago appearance of Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, a cancelled concert by Marcel Khalife in San Diego, and a cancelled speech by Archbishop Desmond Tutu in Minneapolis, the hosts nixed the appearances before there was any protest. And they cancelled because of an anticipated response from the Jewish community which they had no reason to know might ever happen. This to me seems absolutely pernicious to open political debate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict…

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In Baghdad, elusive electricity is rare delight
Jay Price and Jenan Hussein | McClatchy Newspapers
It was October, but still too hot to sleep inside, so the eight members of the Faekh family climbed onto the roof of their house for another night of torment. It wasn’t just the nagging fear of a bomb on their road and the thumping passage of U.S. helicopters. It wasn’t just the clatter and exhaust from generators all over the neighborhood. It was impossible to sleep well when they had to keep constant watch on a light by the front gate, a light that wasn’t even on. Then, suddenly, it was. “God bless Prophet Muhammad,” said the mother, Akhbal. She and her teenage daughter, Abeer, leaped up. No matter that it was after 2 a.m. The power was on and so was the race to harness it. They had an hour to wash clothes and iron them so that Akhbal’s husband, Haidar, and the six children could be presentable at work and school. It was the second of two hours of electricity they get each day from the state-run power grid. Four and a half years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, it’s never certain when the power will arrive, just that one electrified hour will come in the morning, another at night. U.S. reconstruction officials say that on average, electricity is available 10 hours a day, but Akhbal, a small woman whose face is worn beyond her 48 years, doesn’t know anyone who gets close to that much…

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Army to annex 1130 Dunums of Palestinian land near Jerusalem
Najeeb Farraj – IMEMC News
Head of the Israeli Army Forces in the occupied West Bank, Gadi Sheemny, issued on Monday a military order annexing 1130 Dunams of Palestinian lands in Al Sawahra Al Sharqiyya and Abu Dees towns, near Jerusalem. Hasan Abed-Rabbo, head of the Palestinian Ministry of Local Government in Jerusalem area, stated that the army handed military orders and maps to several residents informing them of the sizes of the annexed lands. The residents were informed that they have 21 days to file appeals against these orders. This plan, Abed-Rabbo stated, will create a link between different settlements around Jerusalem, such as Ma’ale Adumim, Qidar, Mishor Adomim and several other settlements in the area which will block any geographical contiguity of the Palestinians areas and will isolate thousands of Palestinian lands which will be behind the Wall….

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Bush’s slogan: war on olive branch
Khalid Taha, Azzaman
Those interested in world literature must have read or heard about War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. Millions of copies of this great novel have been sold and demand for it is still high. But I am sure if Leo Tolstoy was alive he would have provided us with a more tragic picture of war in another novel with no less impact and literary excellence. Yes, there are massacres in Darfur; there are massacres in other areas in Africa. Yes, there were massacres in Bosnia. But our massacre is of the type history has never seen for the following reasons: 1. It has taken so long time, perhaps more than the duration of any other massacre in history. 2. In our country one party slaughters the other with devastating killings from almost everywhere. 3. In Iraq this massacre started with the 2003-U.S. invasion, it is going on at full speed now and only God knows when it will come to an end. The aggressive occupation army is the killer number one. It has dragged along to the killing arena it has created scores of the so-called security contractors and militia groups as well as al-Qaeda-linked terrorists and many others all pointing their guns at a peaceful and unarmed people, i.e. we the Iraqis. 4. While massacres in other parts of the world have been confined to a certain area, ours has no confines as it occurs across the country from Zakho in the north down Fao in the south. Here are some of the horrific traits of the massacre currently taking place in our country. Car bombs, raids by he! licopter gun ships, organized crimes by militias such as the Madhi Army of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, bodies bored with special machines, bodies hit in the back, bodies shot in the head, bodies thrown into the river, etc….

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Mishaal: Israel asked for talks with Hamas, we refused
Palestinian Information Center
Khaled Mishaal, the supreme leader of the Hamas Movement, has revealed that Israel had asked for talks with Hamas but his Movement categorically refused the offer. Mishaal was quoted by Saudi daily ‘Okaz’ published on Tuesday as saying that Hamas was preparing for a new round of resistance against the Israeli occupation, affirming that negotiations over Palestinian rights with the “Zionist entity” was not in Hamas’s program. “Resistance is our strategy to liberate Palestine,” he emphasized. The Hamas leader further disclosed that contacts with the West in general and Europeans in particular were ongoing, noting that some of those contacts were in public while others were in camera….

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Reviewing James Petras’ “Rulers and Ruled in the US Empire”
Stephen Lendman
James Petras is Binghamton University, New York Professor Emeritus of Sociology whose credentials and achievements are long and impressive. He’s a noted academic figure on the left, a well-respected Latin American expert, and a longtime chronicler of the region’s popular struggles as well as being an advisor to the landless workers (MST) in Brazil and unemployed workers in Argentina. Petras is also a prolific author. He’s written hundreds of articles and 63 books (and counting), published in 29 languages, including his latest one and subject of this review – “Rulers and Ruled in the US Empire.” The book is information rich on a core issue of our time. It discusses the US empire’s “systemic dimensions,” evolving changes in its ruling class, its corporatist system, myths about its coming collapse, contradictions in the current debate on immigration and market liberalization policies, the use of force and genocidal carnage, corruption as a market penetrating tool, the Israeli Lobby’s power and influence, Latin American relations and events in the region, social and armed resistance, and much more in four power-packed parts under 17 subject chapter headings…

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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Tuesday, 9 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 8:23pm Baghdad time Tuesday night, the Aswat al-’Iraq news agency, which was set up by Reuters and the U.N. Development Agency, reported that an Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded by a US Marine patrol in the Barwanah area near al-Hadithah, 270km northwest of Baghdad, on Tuesday morning. Aswat al-’Iraq reported a source in the puppet police in al-Hadithah as saying that the blast killed one American Marine and wounded two more of them. The source, who refused to be identified, said that the Americans evacuated the casualties to the nearby US base. They then surrounded the area and abducted 16 local residents whom they described as “suspects.”….

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Shiite Truce Was Designed In Teheran – Report
Cernig, The Newshoggers
Remember all those rightwing cheerleaders who were determined to call A-Sadr’s truce deal with his SIIC rivals as a capitulation for al-Sadr and a victory for Petraeus’ Surge. Well, they might want to reconsider after reading an analysis by StratFor, the Texas-based intelligence and policy analysis company, reprinted in the Kuwait Times (…) Sources in Iraq said in September that Al-Sadr had been in Iran, and it appears that this latest truce was signed in Tehran on Oct 3, when Al-Sadr was there to meet with al-Hakim. The Iranians have made clear to Al-Sadr that he must either cooperate and get his militia in line or face a massive purge led by Al-Hakim’s Badr group. Al-Sadr appears to have complied. (…) I’ve a slight difficulty believing that Iran had more to do with this deal than Grand Ayatollah Sistani did, but it’s certainly possible. Either way, the upshot is that the biggest winner from this truce is certainly Iran…

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Oil Laws – Colonising Iraq’s Economic Prize
Media Lens
We are led to believe that Western societies are free and open. In many respects this is true: freedom of speech and the right to protest still exist, albeit within ever-tighter constraints. At root, however, much of what we see and hear in the corporate media has been shaped by money, power and greed. What passes for vibrant public debate is often a sham. Some media professionals are aware of this, but they keep their heads down and stick to the narrow job requirements demanded of them. But many journalists cannot, or will not, grasp the notion that there are serious limits to news reporting and debate; limits that are set by powerful interests in society. The very possibility is viewed as an affront to journalistic pride and hard-bitten common sense. A few journalists, however, are very well aware of the boundaries. They consciously seek to exploit occasional gaps in the corporate news blanket smothering reality, and to point the public to facts and perspectives that discomfit the powerful. The issue of Iraq’s oil illustrates the standard problem: incessant repetition of a state-approved script, with tiny instances of solidly critical reporting. Discussion of any possible relationship between the invasion of Iraq and the US-UK thirst for oil – both as a hydrocarbon resource and as a strategic tool for dominance – is close to taboo. If raised, the topic is swiftly dismissed as ‘conspiracy’ talk….

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Doors closing on Iraqi displaced
BBC News
An increasing number of Iraqi provinces are refusing entry to refugees fleeing violence in other parts of the country, the UN refugee agency has warned. The head of the UNHCR Iraq Support Unit told the BBC up to 11 governors were restricting access because they lacked resources to look after the refugees. Andrew Harper warned that, with no imminent end to the displacement, Iraq was becoming a “pressure cooker”. The UNHCR recently said more than 2.2m Iraqis had become internally displaced…

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Pipe Dreams: War Profiteers Plow Under the Poor
Chris Floyd , Empire Burlesque
A.C. Grayling nails the stupendous – and literally murderous – folly of the Bush Regime’s decision to launch a war of economic destruction against the Afghan people: Opium of the People (Guardian). The Regime is pressing its satrap in Kabul to step up the eradication, at gunpoint, of the nation’s only cash crop – opium – with American-made herbicides. Thus both the land and the agrarian-based economy that most Afghans depend upon will be blighted, and multitudes will be plunged into further despair: ripe fruit for the Taliban and other extremists. Since the American invasion, Afghan’s world-leading poppy production has shot even higher through the roof. (It had been virtually eradicated under the Taliban…)

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Fatah Needs to Accept its Defeat & Change Arrogant Attitude to the Quality of Modesty & Maturity
Hiyam Noir, PalestineFreeVoice
In a press conference on Monday the spokesperson of Hamas,Sami Abu Zuhri commented on statements made by the Fatah leader and member of the PLO Executive Committee, Zakariyya Al-Agha,regarding criminal activities conducted by Fatah members in the Gaza Strip supposedly to be a retaliation for what Al-Agha call Hamas “ conduct”. Abu Zuhri explained, that Hamas is now in legal official power of law and order in the Gaza Strip, therefore obligated and will punish Fatah criminals and their supporters for their criminal activities.During the press briefing in Gaza City, SamiAbu Zuhri told the press, that – “ the leadership of Fatah encourages mercenaries to conduct criminal acts.”…

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DEPLETED URANIUM: PARISI, 255 ITALIAN SOLDIERS WITH CANCER, 37 DEAD
AGI
255 Italian soldiers who worked abroad – in the Balkans, in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon from 1996 to 2006 – have cancer. Of these, 37 are dead. 161 soldiers belong to the regular army, 47 to the navy, 26 to the air forces and 21 to the carabinieri. It was reported by the defence minister Arturo Parisi to the Senate commission on depleted uranium…

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GI Special 5J5: Chasing The Enemy In Circles [ October 7, 2007 ]
Thomas F. Barton
“I’m Getting Dizzy Chasing The Enemy In Circles,” He Said
“He Is Disillusioned With The Political Leaders Who Sent Them To Iraq”
“They Have Made Some Companies Into Fortune 500 Companies,” He Said
“But Otherwise, We Have Just Put A Lot Of Flags On Coffins For What Will Inevitably Be Nothing But A Giant Mess”

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IDF orders the expropriation of Arab land near East Jerusalem
Akiva Eldar, Haaretz Correspondent
The Israel Defense Forces recently issued an order expropriating over 1,100 dunams of land from four Arab villages located between East Jerusalem and the West Bank settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim. The land is slated to be used for a new Palestinian road that would connect East Jerusalem with Jericho. That in turn would “free up” the E-1 area between Jerusalem and Ma’aleh Adumim – through which the current Jerusalem-Jericho road runs – for a long-planned Jewish development consisting of 3,500 apartments and an industrial park. The Palestinians and the international community, including the United States, have long objected to the E-1 plan on the grounds that it would cut the West Bank in two and sever East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank. Israel claims that the new road will solve this latter problem….

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War News for Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Iraq today
MNF-Iraq is reporting the death of a Multi-National Force – West Marine from enemy action in Al Anbar Province on Monday, October 8th. The DoD has announced a new death, not previously reported by CENTCOM. Task Force Lightning soldier Specialist Vincent George Kamka, 23, of Everett, Washington, died in the vicinity of Bayji in Salah ad Din Province on Thursday, October 4th. His unit, the 1st Battalion of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment (82nd Airborne Division out of Fort Bragg, NC), was stationed at FOB Summerall in Bayji. The DoD did not indicate on the release whether Kamka’s death was from enemy action or not. A brief article that appears in the Idaho Falls (Idaho) Press-Tribune would seem to indicate that Kamka was actually from Idaho. According to that source, he graduated from high school in Idaho Falls in 2003. His mother had written a letter to the editor of that paper in 2006 in which she stated that Kamka’s three brothers had all served or were serving in the military, as had his father. The Ravenna (Ohio) Record-Courier is reporting the death of a U.S. Army Ranger on Saturday, October 6th: Benjamin Dillon, 22, of Edinburg, Ohio…

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