Flying Kites….
Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues
…Today’s children in Iraq are either too scarred or will not live to remember or… are already dead. Only two days ago, 11 little ones were severly wounded by a mortar attack. Yesterday, 9 little ones were killed in a so called counter-insurgency attack by your brave boys. Today, at least 2 little ones were blasted away when a bomb placed in a toy cart exploded in their curious little faces…on the day of the Eid. Our little ones are nothing but appetizers for you. Your anti-pasti, your hors d’oeuvres…The more, the merrier… In the name of Liberty. In the name of Democracy. In the name of Freedom. In the name of the o’ so civilized West that you are. For 13 years, our little ones suffered, our little martyrs…Over half a million died as a result of your o’ so civilized sanctions, while you were watching… Thirteen fucking years and you watched, in silence, tasting your hors d’oeuvres in front of your TV screens. Thirteen years of a deafening, utter silence. Silence from the so called left and anti-war clowns. Silence from the international community. Silence from the so-called Islamic Ummah. So silent, that the silence turned into a lullaby of agonies that you can still hear in the mass graves of our little ones. So silent, that they have slept, never to wake up again…A murderous lullaby. The little ones who survived, experienced their final liberation in 2003. God damn you. God damn you. That is all I can repeat for now (…) Come and see… The other day, I overheard a 6 years ol! d saying to her mother, “I want to die.” Just in case one of your bullets does not get to her, you have ensured that she will finish it off herself… Come and see them stutter, hear them shout at night during their sleep and see their wet beds… This is no lost innocence. This is a raped innocence, a murdered innocence… Raped and murdered by you..

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=37163

Tharthar Lake: Another U.S. Massacre of Innocents.
Felicity Arbuthnot
The region of Tharthar Lake, between Salah Ad Din and Ramadi Provinces – where three women, nine children and nineteen ‘Al Qaeda suspects’, were mown down from the air, in another act of homicide and exceptional cowardice – is sited in the center of one the the U.S Army’s favoured culling fields, Samarra being nearby a little to the north east and Falluja roughly equi-distant, to the south west.
Saddam Hussein, who built a palace and resort on the lake, with guest homes and facilities for visiting dignitaries and those of his circle, is believed to have had a special place in his heart for the beauty and tranquility of the lake, which the complex overlooked. Fishing on the lake was reported to be a pastime and relaxation he loved.

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=37153

Iraqi “government” approves of killing Sunni children
Shiite aide: A few Sunni civilian deaths are ‘unavoidable’
Associated Press
Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government said the killings of 15 women and children in a U.S. attack on a Sunni area were a “sorrowful matter,” but emphasized yesterday that civilian deaths are unavoidable in the fight against al Qaeda in Iraq. The comments by government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh appeared to be tacit approval of Thursday’s raid northwest of Baghdad. They suggested the Iraqi government holds the American military to a different standard when it comes to assaults against suspected Sunni insurgents….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=37158

How the US media changed the story of the suicide explosion in Al-Tuz
Roads to Iraq
Every news agency reported this “Iraq bomb in toy cart hits children in playground” except the people of Al-Tuz reported totally different story (image above of the suicide bomber who was injured and still alive). The story according Reuters and western media A bomb hidden in a cart of toy…..suicide bomber pushed the cart into a play area…two boys aged between 10 and 12 had died. The story according eyewitnesses from Al-Tuz A stranger was pushing cart carrying a bag of flour, entered the Mullah-Sifr neighborhood in Al-Tuz, two young men questioned him to check his identity, the bomb inside the flour bag killed the two young men, and injured children….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=37146

Dividing Baghdad As Well As Other Cities
Mohammed Kaush – Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq (AMSI)
The partition plan of US Senates does not stop in dividing only the Iraqi territory but there is another project which is partition of Baghdad too.
It is necessary for the Iraqis that they must know well enough that the occupiers are doing their best job to erect the partition wall in Iraq and in Baghdad. From first instant US Administration and the war gangs began to commit the partition plan, they gave complete autonomy to the Kurdish Region away from Baghdad government, following the separation of Kurdistan. The occupation has completed the second stage of the project. They assisted the sectarian parties in the South Iraq to form sectarian militias which dominated Southern of Iraq and imposed their control to the people there, seized and looted their wealth. They also controlled the power sources, shared the petroleum revenues and had completed its planned sectarian separation in Baghdad. They conducted a sort of sectarian cleansing in the Capital districts….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=37138

Video: DEMOLITION IN ISRAEL
Sabbah’s blog
18,000 Homes destroyed by Israel since 1967. These are figures for Palestinian homes. If approximately 120,000 Druze and Arabs were expelled from the Syria Golan Heights in 1967 and their villages (134 in number) were completely demolished, that makes about 20,000 additional demolished homes, assuming six people per family unit….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=37164

Former US commander calls Iraq ‘nightmare with no end’
AFP
A former top US military commander in Iraq said Friday that the current White House strategy in Iraq will not achieve victory in the four-and-a-half-year war, which he described as “a nightmare with no end in sight”. In the bluntest assessment of Iraq by a former senior Pentagon official yet, retired Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez also lambasted US political leaders as “incompetent,” “inept,” “derelict in the performance of their duty” and suggested they would have been court-martialed had they been members of the US military. “There is no question that America is living a nightmare with no end in sight,” said Sanchez, addressing a meeting of military correspondents and editors in Arlington, a Virginia suburb of Washington….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=37159

Blair trying to bribe PA with economic promises
From Khalid Amayreh in occupied Hebron
Tony Blair, the Quartet envoy to Palestine-Israel, has been holding meetings with Palestinian officials in the West Bank , ostensibly to discuss ways and means to revive the moribund Palestinian economy, decimated by an increasingly Nazi-like Israeli repression. The former British Prime Minister on Wednesday, 10 October, met with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah and reportedly discussed with him creating “economic incentives” that would be conducive to creating the right environment for advancing peace between the Palestinians and Israel . In Hebron , Blair met with the Governor of Hebron Hussein al Araj and town’s mayor Khalid al Oseili, both appointed by Abbas. Hebron is considered a Hamas stronghold….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=37157

Economy in Gaza Strip on brink of collapse
Ma’an News
Truckloads of basic commodities, badly needed by half a million people in the Gaza Strip are still stranded at the crossings into the Strip, manned by Israeli forces. Warehouses are empty and the economy of the Gaza Strip is on the brink of collapse. Maher At Tabba’, head of public relations in the Chamber of Commerce said that there are more than 5,000 factories in Gaza but because of the current situation about 95% are not functioning. He added that if the siege continues 750,000 workers will be unemployed within a month. Mahmoud Abu Aluf owns a paper-making factory in Gaza City. He said that now Gaza is considered a ‘hostile entity’ the economic situation has steadily deteriorated. This is in marked contrast to the first years of the Palestinian Authority when Gaza witnessed an economic boom….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=37151

Britain: Soldiers & Iraqi’s
Hussein Al-alak, The Iraq Solidarity Campaign
Since 2004, I have found that my intolerance to intolerance has increased dramatically and my patience is almost non-existent. On Monday, I was talking to a person I know, who having served two tours of duty in Iraq, has returned to “Great” Britain homeless and has been forced to sleep on her mothers couch in the living room. Having tried looking for a house or flat to rent but found the rents in Manchester (North of England) to high, this person has found it to be financially cheaper in the long term, to build a log cabin in the back garden of her mothers home….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=37149

A Nobel Peace Prize in the 2008 Circus for the White House?
Gabriele Zamparini, The Cat’s Dream
Bill Clinton’s former vice president Al Gore has won (together with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) the Nobel Peace Prize “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change” This Nobel Prize will hopefully help to focus time and resources into the battle against Climate Change. But there could be another side effect of this Prize in the short term. Will Al Gore run now for the White House in 2008? As vice president during the Clinton era, Al Gore did certainly share all the responsibility for the huge crimes against humanity his administration inflicted upon millions of people on this planet. Just let’s remember the genocidal UN embargo and the illegal bombing of the notorious No Fly Zones in Iraq; and then Sudan, Yugoslavia and many other places where Uncle Sam has always been terrifying millions of people with its ugly arrogance and deadly violence….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=37148

WHO asks Iraq to probe reports of Rift Valley Fever
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Friday it had asked Iraqi authorities to probe media reports of several cases of Rift Valley Fever in animals. The viral disease primarily affects animals but can infect humans through handling of blood or organs of infected animals, leading to high rates of disease and death, according to the United Nations health agency. Herders, farmers, slaughterhouse workers and veterinarians are deemed at higher risk through handling of animal tissue during slaughtering, assisting with animal births, conducting veterinary procedures or disposing of carcasses. “We are aware of media reports and have put in a formal request for verification to Iraq,” WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl said in Geneva….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=37154

Nonviolent resistance a means, not the end
Ben White, The Electronic Intifada
…The problem has never been a Palestinian failure to meet the demands set by the US or international community, a display of colonial arrogance that repeats itself in every successive “negotiation.” Popular struggle, like violent resistance, is not an end in and of itself; it is a method, a strategy. It is the end goal, decolonization and liberation from occupation and Zionist apartheid, that is ferociously opposed by the self-declared international guardians of the “peace process” and their friends in the Palestinian elite. The rest is just smoke and mirrors….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=37142

Unguarded Moment: Another Brake on Tyranny Stripped Away
Chris Floyd , Empire Burlesque
Who will guard the guardians? Why, the guardians, of course. CIA Director Michael Hayden has launched an investigation of the agency’s Inspector General — who, in our brave new authoritarian state, where Congress has long abandoned its oversight of a regime which brazenly disregards all legal restrictions on its arbitrary power, is one of the few remaining checks on the torture squads, rendition ops and assassination teams of the security apparat. Yes, we have sunk so low; like the subjects of the old Soviet Union, we can only cringe before the Chekists and hope wanly that some slightly more enlightened KGB officer will restrain the goons. But as we know – for we have seen it demonstrated daily for almost seven years now – the goons of the Bush Regime will not be restrained, not even by one of their own….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=37141

Israeli Army Deputy Chief: Gaza invasion “a matter of timing”
John Smit – International Middle East Media Center – IMEMC Editorial Group
The Deputy Chief of Staff of The Israeli Military, Moshe Kaplinsky, on Thursday spoke of the likelihood of an imminent invasion of the Gaza Strip by Israeli forces, adding that troops would “stay there for a few months.” Speaking in an interview with the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, Kaplinsky branded a future invasion “a matter of timing,” arguing that the Israeli army could not ignore a perceived military strengthening of the Hamas movement and the continued firing of home-made shells from the coastal region. “We won’t be able to keep ignoring Hamas’ strengthening in Gaza and the incessant rocket attacks for long…we need systematic treatment,” the official stated….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=37140

Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Friday, 12 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 8:53am Makkah time Friday morning, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that the US had announced its aircraft and ground troops had carried out attacks in the area of Lake ath-Tharthar, 120km north of Baghdad, on Thursday, killing 15 civilians, including six women and nine children. Mafkarat al-Islam reported a statement issued by the US military as claiming that the Americans had learned of a meeting of al-Qa’idah leaders taking place near Lake ath-Tharthar. The US sent aircraft to attack the area, the American statement asserted, and killed four of the alleged armed men. The American statement claimed that the participants in the meeting then moved to another location and clashed with US troops. The Americans then launched more air strikes on that position…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=37156

Pearls for coal
Khaled Amayreh
Palestinian and Israeli negotiators began a series of secret meetings on Monday in an effort to draft a joint document for the upcoming US-sponsored peace conference, scheduled to take place in Annapolis, Maryland, in November. The two sides continue to be deeply divided on the major issues at the heart of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. According to Palestinian officials close to the talks, the two negotiating teams are likely to spend more time on formulating and asserting their own respective opening positions than bridging the gaps between them. While the Palestinian Authority continues to seek a final-status settlement on the basis of UN resolutions 242 and 338 and within the framework of what is generally termed the “land-for-peace formula” Israel, which views the occupied territories as “disputed” rather than “occupied”, is adamant in its rejection of the right of return and determined to retain major Jewish settlement blocks on occupied Arab land…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=37139

[UPDATED] e-mail to Foreign Policy In Focus RE: Iraq Body Count’s counter
Gabriele Zamparini, The Cat’s Dream
….REPLY FROM John Feffer, co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus Dear Gabriele Zamparini: I came across your open letter to FPIF on the web .. The information in the letter is very useful. We’re always looking for ways to improve our coverage of the Iraq War. So when our staff person who focuses on Iraq work is back from vacation, we will certainly evaluate whether to replace the Iraq Body Count with a different estimate of civilian casualties….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=37143

After all these years, the news from Iraq keeps getting better
Swopa, Needlenose
The Associated Press reports this afternoon from Baghdad: A U.S. attack killed 19 insurgents and 15 civilians, including nine children, northwest of the capital Thursday — one of the heaviest civilian death tolls in an American operation in recent months. The military said it was targeting senior leaders of al-Qaida in Iraq (…) I’m dismayed at the lack of creativity in this statement. The American military officers should have explained that the casualties further demonstrated the al-Qaeda-wannabes’ ever-increasing desperation, since they were now forced to recruit women and children as “senior leaders.”…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=37145

Former defense minister CIA agent, says political analyst
Voices of Iraq
The political analyst of the NBC news, Rick Francona, spoke for the first time about his role in recruiting generals from the former Iraqi army to work for the CIA, the U.S. Radio Sawa reported on Friday. “For more than a year, Rick Francona, then an Air Force lieutenant colonel, was part of a secret CIA task force working to overthrow Saddam Hussein, the Bill Clinton administration’s failed attempt at regime change in Iraq,” the radio said in a report quoting the MSNBC news. Francona said that the U.S. should try to stop the hanging of former Iraqi Defense Minister Sultan Hashim Ahmed, one of the generals recruited in that effort….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=37147

War News for Friday, October 12, 2007
Iraq today
MNF-Iraq is reporting the death of a Multi-National Corps – Iraq soldier from enemy action in an eastern neighborhood of Baghdad on Wednesday, October 10th. A bomb in a parked car went off near a police patrol in Baghdad’s downtown shopping district Friday, killing four people including two policemen, the police said. The blast around noon wounded 15 people, mostly civilians, a police officer said on condition of anonymity as he was not allowed to release the information. Narby shops and cars were damaged in the explosion. The officer, citing eyewitnesses, said the suspected bomber had parked his car by some clothing stores in al-Rasheed Street in the heart of Baghdad and pretended to go shopping. The attacker fled the scene, the officer added….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=37160