‘ Greetings for Eid’.
Felicity Arbuthnot
I rang a dear Iraqi friend :’ I just wanted to wish you all greetings for Eid’, to offer seasonal wishes, for the joyous three day celebration, marking the end of the fasting month of Ramadan, on the sighting of the new moon. One can no longer say ‘Eid Mubarak’ (Happiness for Eid) to an Iraqi family, only wish them all they wish for themselves, now usually just the survival of their families, somehow – and anywhere. The joy of the sharing of dishes, the visits, the childrens’ new clothes and shoes, the crisp new money given to children, the fun fairs and outings, are for most, a memory, for Iraqis, coralled in their walled enclaves, courtesy the liberators, as the Palestinians in theirs, courtesy ‘the only democratic country in the Middle East’. As for the Afghans, many living in irradiated craters, since homes have been bombed with radioactive weapons; blown to bits by NATO convoys should they venture out for traditional food and dates – should they, unusually, have the money for some small treat, forget it. Eid has died again, for the unquantifiable, at the hands of George W. Bush’s new Crusaders for oil, natural gas and regional strategic dominance.

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Emily Jacir’s “A Photo Essay of the Bethlehem Ghetto
umkahlil
In order to enter Bethlehem, we had to make a left and get off the Jerusalem-Hebron Road. Here we are stopped at the first checkpoint and we are looking ahead. Soldiers check our passports. Standing in front of the wall and looking to the right I saw the wall criss-crossing across the landscape and cutting Bethlehem off from her agricultural lands. I could not continue on the historical road which connects Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Hebron (bus number 23's route) because the wall chopped it off here….

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Video: Illegal in Israel – 04 Oct 07
Aljazeera
Several Bedouin families have been told they must leave their homes because the land they have been living on since the 60s is now part of Israel. Their community is cut-off by Israel’s separation wall. David Chater has the details from Tal A’dasah just north of Jerusalem.

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David Horowitz: A Nazi mind with a Jewish face
Khalid Amayreh
Many people around the world tend to forget that the holocaust didn’t start with Auschwitz- Birkenau and the use of Zyklon-B, or even with Kirstallnacht in November 1938, or the anti-Jewish Nuremberg laws three years earlier. In fact, the enormous mass murder during World War II couldn’t have happened had it not been for the solid infrastructure of hate that the Nazis created in the late 1920s and 1930s. For example, in his book, Mein Kampf, or My Struggle, Hitler uses the main thesis of “The Jewish peril”, which speaks of a Jewish conspiracy to control the world. This is exactly, what many Nazi-minded Zionists are doing these days, with their explicit goal being to defame, vilify, demonize and dehumanize the world’s estimated 1.5 million Muslims. There are numerous aspects to the Zionist-led and Zionist-financed Muslim-vilifying campaign. Today, anyone with access to the internet could observe the huge volume of anti-Muslim literature flooding the world-wide web. And, needless to say, the ultimate message of the hate literature is almost identical to that promoted by Hitler and his Nazi cohorts against Jews, namely that Muslims are “evil,” “fascist,” “racist anti-Semites,” and “hell-bent on destroying western civilization.”….

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Apartheid Masked as Peace
Exposing the next “generous offer” in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process
Neta Golan and Mohammed Khatib
Next month the US plans to host a regional meeting to discuss peace in the Middle East, or at least peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The maneuvering, deal making and negotiating about what will be on the table has been going on for some time. But the details of the agreement being discussed have been a well guarded secret but for the steady flow of leaks and trial balloons. Deciphering this information combined with facts on the ground, one can put together a clear outline of Israel’s “next generous offer.” Political maneuvers can be spun to sound good if the details are kept vague, but when held to scrutiny it becomes obvious that the upcoming Israeli offer is not so generous…

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GREEN REVOLUTIONS IN CUBA AND VENEZUELA
Malcom Lagauche
Currently, Cuba is entirely independent from the outside world for its food needs. Venezuela is moving toward a similar autonomy. There could be a monkey wrench in the future for Cuba’s astute program, however. Lately, with Fidel Castro recuperating from an operation, much speculation has been spoken about Cuba’s future. The U.S. government (Republicans and Democrats alike) are speaking about bringing “freedom” to the Cuban people.If such an unfortunate occurrence comes forth, we have Iraq to look at as an example of some of the “freedoms” brought about by U.S. interference. In Iraq, Paul Bremer, the U.S. viceroy who set up the regulations for a “free” Iraq, posted 100 edicts before he left his post: edicts that can not be broken by successive Iraqi governments. Edict #81 forbids Iraqi farmers from using seeds of their previous crops, a farming method had been in existence for 5,000 years in Iraq. Iraqi farmers now must purchase genetically-modified seeds from Monsanto for their crops. This is a rule that is tightly regulated. Inspectors frequently visit farmers in Iraq to ensure acquiescence. If a farmer uses his own seeds, he is heavily fined. How can this happen? It’s quite simple. Monsanto takes a seed of a crop, copies it and manufactures the seeds. Once the seed is copied, Monsanto then acquires a patent for the seed design. In other words, any natural seeds with the same patented design become illegal to use. If Cuba is “freed” by the U.S., there will be an immediate end to Cuban ! farmers using their own seeds. Then, Cubans will no longer be able to purchase readily-available organic foods at a low price….

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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Saturday, 13 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 3:22pm Baghdad time Saturday afternoon, the Aswat al-’Iraq news agency, which was set up by Reuters and the U.N. Development Agency, reported that ‘Ammar al-Hakim, the son and heir-apparent to ailing Shi’i sectarian chieftain, ‘Abd al-’Aziz al-Hakim, called on Saturday for the speedy implementation of “federalism” and the partition of Iraq according to US and Zionist blueprints; plans most recently reflected in the US Sentate’s vote on 26 September in favor of dividing Iraq into three states along sectarian and ethnic lines. Aswat al-’Iraq reported ‘Ammar al-Hakim as addressing a crowd of hundreds of supporters of the Shi’i sectarian “Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council” (SIIC) and urging them to “act to form regions and to march towards a federal regime.” In a sermon on Eid al-Fitr in Baghdad, ‘Ammar al-Hakim called for the speedy implementation of an Iraqi “federation” plan that amounts to the partition of Iraq into three “self-governing” regions – a goal set as far back as the 1980s by leading Zionist think tanks. Trying to conceal his desire to split Iraq and establish a Shi’i sectarian regime in the southern and eastern parts of the country, ‘Ammar al-Hakim declared paradoxically that the speedy establishment of a federation was the only way to preserve the formal “unity of Iraq” – a unity that would remain in name only. The federa! tion env isaged by al-Hakim and his patrons in the US and “Israel” would provide for the establishment of three separate administrations and leaderships in the three parts of the country – the Shi’i Arab south and east; the Sunni Arab west, and the Kurdish areas in the far north of the country….

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AMERICA’S GREATEST CRIME IS RADIOACTIVE GENOCIDE
Allen L Roland’s Radio Weblog
America’s greatest crime against humanity is radioactive genocide particularly against the children of Iraq who are the innocent victims of our illegal war, occupation and economic rape of Iraq ~ We have the blood of countless innocent children on our hands and it will take generations to remove the stain of our illegal and inhumane transgressions. Currently, more than 50 percent of Iraqi cancer patients are children under the age of 5, up from 13 percent. Children are especially vulnerable because they tend to play in areas that are heavily polluted by depleted uranium. …

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The Great Forgetting
Eunice Wong, Truthdig
The Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, located on the Mall in Washington, D.C., is a monument to historical amnesia. The blond limestone building, surrounded by indigenous crops of corn, tobacco and squash, invites visitors on a guilt-free, theme park tour of Native American history, where acknowledgment of the American genocide is in extremely bad taste (…) We are molded as much by the histories we stifle as by the myths we create to exalt ourselves. Those who ignore the truth about their past are condemned to replicate, over and over, their crimes. The devastation in Iraq is the legacy of lessons unlearned, from the genocide of Native Americans, to slavery, to the Mexican war, to the invasion of Cuba and the Philippines, to Vietnam. America’s brutal cycle of imperial invasion and occupation is as enduring as the cultivated illusion of its goodness. And the first step toward breaking this cycle and exposing this illusion is facing our history and ourselves. The National Museum of the American Indian feeds the mass amnesia that makes our national psychosis possible….

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War Without End, Amen: The Sanguinary Vision of Robert Gates
Chris Floyd , Empire Burlesque
…The day after his speech brought yet another example of how the war of the future will be fought: an American airstrike on a town north of Baghdad that killed nine children and six women, according to the Pentagon’s own admission. (This massacre must have been a most glaring one indeed, if Bush’s brass were willing to own up to such a death toll so quickly; usually, they simply deny that any civilians have been killed in their “precision airstrikes,” or obscure the reality behind bromides about the “fog of war,” despite the testimony of survivors and officials of the American-backed Iraqi government, and the dead bodies pulled from smoldering ruins.) The Pentagon claimed that the insurgents they were targeting had chosen “to surround themselves with civilians and then fire upon U.S. forces.” (Naturally it would have been more sporting of the miscreants to gather themselves out in the open desert and wait for the Americans who are occupying the civilian centers to come out and kill them; but we all know the Arab mind is low and devious.) Here again, we see the militarist mindset at work, the inability to process any reality that falls outside the presumption that America has the right to apply “all elements of national power” anytime and anywhere it so chooses. They cannot grasp this simple question; Why are there insurgents firing on U.S. soldiers in the civilian areas of Iraq? Because the U.S. military has invaded and occupied Iraq, filling its civ! ilian ar eas with more than 160,000 troops (and tens of thousands of mercenaries). If the U.S. soldiers were not there, then there would be no insurgents, and they would not be firing on U.S. soldiers…

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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Saturday, 13 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 3:22pm Baghdad time Saturday afternoon, the Aswat al-’Iraq news agency, which was set up by Reuters and the U.N. Development Agency, reported that ‘Ammar al-Hakim, the son and heir-apparent to ailing Shi’i sectarian chieftain, ‘Abd al-’Aziz al-Hakim, called on Saturday for the speedy implementation of “federalism” and the partition of Iraq according to US and Zionist blueprints; plans most recently reflected in the US Sentate’s vote on 26 September in favor of dividing Iraq into three states along sectarian and ethnic lines. Aswat al-’Iraq reported ‘Ammar al-Hakim as addressing a crowd of hundreds of supporters of the Shi’i sectarian “Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council” (SIIC) and urging them to “act to form regions and to march towards a federal regime.” In a sermon on Eid al-Fitr in Baghdad, ‘Ammar al-Hakim called for the speedy implementation of an Iraqi “federation” plan that amounts to the partition of Iraq into three “self-governing” regions – a goal set as far back as the 1980s by leading Zionist think tanks. Trying to conceal his desire to split Iraq and establish a Shi’i sectarian regime in the southern and eastern parts of the country, ‘Ammar al-Hakim declared paradoxically that the speedy establishment of a federation was the only way to preserve the formal “unity of Iraq” – a unity that would remain in name only. The federa! tion env isaged by al-Hakim and his patrons in the US and “Israel” would provide for the establishment of three separate administrations and leaderships in the three parts of the country – the Shi’i Arab south and east; the Sunni Arab west, and the Kurdish areas in the far north of the country….

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Two ways of reading the recent Iraq-Resistance statements
Arablinks
On October 2, Hamas Iraq issued a statement attacking the Islamic State of Iraq and its leader Abu Omar al-Baghdadi for their continued oppression and attacks against Hamas Iraq and other jihadi groups, detailing ISI atrocities against members of other groups, and refuting the ISI charges to the effect that Hamas Iraq is compromised by being involved in the Baghdad political process. But the nub and the essence of that Hamas Iraq had to say was the following: Brothers, this is the first time we have spoken clearly about what has happened between us and AlQaeda, and of what we have put up with from them by way of oppression and attacks, as have our brothers in other factions. We had thought words would damage the jihad, but now that we have a clear picture of the their destructive role in Iraq, that is clear to everyone, we have spoken…

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Saturday: 3 GIs, 58 Iraqis Killed; 22 Iraqis Wounded
Margaret Griffis, Antiwar.com
Thanks to the Eid al-Fitr holiday, news was scant for a second day in a row. Many newspapers in Iraq have temporarily ceased publication during the holiday. Overall, at least 58 Iraqis were killed, mostly gunmen, and 22 more were wounded in the latest round of violence. Also, three American soldiers were killed in separate events. Two 15th Sustainment Brigade Soldiers were killed and five others were wounded during shelling just outside Baghdad on Wednesday; this incident is unrelated to the Camp Victory rocket attack. The DOD also reported the death of a soldier in Baghdad on Thursday; he was killed during an IED attack….

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Torture: What’s in a Name?
Dr. Wilmer J. Leon III, t r u t h o u t
… For months, President Bush has tried to defend the extreme tactics being used by the CIA to interrogate individuals suspected of terrorist activities. This, in spite of recently released documents from the Justice Department indicating that in 2005, then Attorney General Alberto Gonzales issued a secret opinion authorizing physical abuse to extract information. According to The New York Times, “The new opinion … provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.”…

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Iraqi refugees shed sectarian bitterness
OMAR SINAN, Associated Press Writer
A dozen Iraqi men — Sunnis and Shiites alike — sat around a table in a Damascus restaurant, singing, drinking and sharing a camaraderie all but impossible in the sectarian killing fields back home. “We can certainly choose our religious beliefs. But we have to realize the inevitable — that eventually we have to share everything in order to live in peace,” said Salam Mohammed, a 34-year-old Sunni from Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit. More than 2 million Iraqis have fled their homeland to escape Sunni-Shiite reprisal killings….

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It’s As Ridiculous As If They’d Given Goebbels One in 1938
Al Gore’s Peace Prize
ALEXANDER COCKBURN, CounterPunch
Put this one up on the shelf of shame, right next to Henry Kissinger’s, or the peace prize they gave to Kofi Annan and the entire UN in 2001, sandwiched between the UN’s okay for the bombing of Serbia, the killing of untold numbers of Iraqis, many of them babies and children in the years of sanctions, and its greenlight for the bombing of Baghdad in 2003 (…) When Gore goes to get the prize he shares with the pr hucksters and falsifiers at the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Gore should be forced to march through a gauntlet of widows and orphans, Serbs, Iraqis, Palestinians, Colombians, and other victims of the Clinton era….

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Jihad and Change Front asks the new alliance for more details
Roads to Iraq
… We witnessed the birth of a new resistance alliance in Iraq formed by six factions, as a step in the right direction, and we call to take further steps to move towards new right steps. Also our Front “Jihad and Change” calls for all factions in the Iraqi arena to continue their strikes against the occupation. However, the Jihad and Change Front find themselves obliged to respond to reactions accompanied this announcement saying that all factions outside this alliance will be considered as terrorists. Brothers: Is this your opinion? Is this will be your future policy in dealing with others? we urge you to indicate your opinion on this matter, especially as there are many factions in Iraq fight against the occupation without participating in the new alliance…. Finally, we promise that we will continue the holy jihad against the occupiers….

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Shiite leader backs Iraqi regional plan
HAMZA HENDAWI, Associated Press Writer
The son and heir apparent of Iraq’s top Shiite politician came out strongly Saturday in favor of autonomy for Iraq’s religiously and ethnically divided regions, a potentially explosive issue on Iraq’s already highly polarized political landscape. Ammar al-Hakim, who is being groomed to take over the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, the country’s largest Shiite party, has been a firm supporter of federalism from the outset. But his unusually strident language appeared to signal growing impatience with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s inaction on key issues and his failure to bring fractured groups together…

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Lawmakers say State Department blocks Iraq info
Sue Pleming, Reuters
Four congressional committee chairmen on Friday accused the State Department of suppressing information about corruption inside Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s government. In a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the four senior Democrats said endemic corruption was fueling the Iraqi insurgency, endangering U.S. troops and undermining their chances of success. California Rep. Henry Waxman of the House of Representatives oversight committee; California Rep. Tom Lantos of the foreign affairs committee; Missouri Rep. Ike Skelton of the armed services committee and Wisconsin Rep. David Obey of the appropriations panel said the State Department was stonewalling their attempts to get at the truth…

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Reports: Abbas relinquish the right of return
Palestinian Information Center
The PA President Mahmoud Abbas has practically relinquished the Palestinian refugees’ right of return during meetings with Israeli leaders, according to a close associate of Abbas. The Israeli radio reported on Friday that a member of Palestinian negotiating team with the Israelis stated that the Palestinian side has accepted the Israeli offers that were made six years ago during the Taba conference and were rejected at the time by the them PA President Yaser Arafat. According to the Israeli radio, their source mentioned the issue of the return of refugees pointing out that the Israelis should allow the return of refugees to the lands of the state of Palestine when it is established and to allow a symbolic number of them return to their homes in 1948 occupied Palestine….

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Attack in Baghdad kills 2 US soldiers; injures five others
KUNA
Two U.S. marines were killed while five others were injured after they were attacked in the Iraqi capital, said the Multi-National Force (MNF) on Saturday.
According to the statement, the casualties occurred last Wednesday, adding that a mortar-shell caused the deaths and injuries. The five injured soldiers were sent to a military infirmary for treatment, said the statement, adding that the incident was under investigation. Information about the locations in which the attack occurred was not revealed by the MNF…

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