A Genetic Disaster
Kate Mucci
…Depleted Uranium, which is in no way, shape or form depleted of its ability to kill and maim, was in the so-called “smart” bombs used during the invasion and is still used daily in the artillery and shells used during the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. The half-life of Uranium-238 is 4.5 billion years, the age of the earth. And, as Uranium-238 decays into daughter radioactive products, in four steps before turning into lead, it continues to release more radiation at each step. There is no way to turn it off, and there is no way to clean it up. It meets the US Government’s own definition of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Depleted Uranium is the by-product of nuclear weapon and energy creation, and there is so much of it, it is actually cheaper than ice cream, according to an expert on Dr. Null’s DVD…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=37289

The show goes on … and on
Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada
The “Middle East Peace Process” is like one of those big budget Broadway extravaganzas; they go on for years, but with each revival the cast changes. What may seem like a tired production to some nevertheless manages to remain fresh to the gullible throngs willing to hand over the price of admission. Unlike a few hours of theatrical escapism, however, the producers of the Middle East Peace Process hope that the audience will actually believe that what they are viewing on stage, whether performed in Madrid, Oslo, London, Washington or Sharm al-Sheikh is real-life and even has the potential to end the conflict caused by a century of western-supported Zionist colonization in Palestine….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=37294

Lack of funds may force group to return imperiled gay Iraqis to the streets
Julie Weisberg, Raw Story
…Since the US invasion of Iraq, gays and transgendered people have suffered intense persecution. This targeted violence has been documented and acknowledged in recent State Department and United Nations reports. Violence against gays has intensified sharply since late 2005, when Iraq’s leading Shiite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, issued a fatwa, or religious decree, which declared that gays and lesbians should be “killed in the worst, most severe way,” Hili said. Since then, LGBT people have been specifically targeted by the Madhi Army, the militia of fundamentalist Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, as well as other Shia militant death squads. The Badr Organization, the military arm of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and one of the leading political forces in Baghdad’s ruling coalition, has been particularly active. Several months ago, two lesbians working with Iraqi LGBT were assassinated in the safe house they were running in Najaf, along with a young boy the women had rescued from the local sex industry….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=37287

Palestinian refugees in Lebanon
Six decades of exile and suffering
Amnesty International
“Today, all 12 official refugee camps in [Lebanon] suffer from serious problems – no proper infrastructure, overcrowding, poverty and unemployment. [Lebanon] has the highest percentage of Palestine refugees who are living in abject poverty and who are registered with the Agency’s ‘special hardship’ programme.” UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), 2007
Several hundred thousand Palestinian refugees live in Lebanon, mostly in awful conditions, almost 60 years after they and their forebears were expelled or fled from their lands. Their appalling social and economic conditions demonstrate forcefully the failure of successive governments in Israel and Lebanon, and of the wider international community, to respect and protect their rights or find a sustainable and just solution to their plight during the past six decades. Palestinian refugees constitute one of the world’s most long-established refugee populations and they remain in limbo. They have virtually no prospect in the foreseeable future of being allowed to return to the lands and homes from which they fled in Mandate Palestine, even though they have a well established right to return under international law. For Palestinians in Lebanon, the pain associated with their expulsion and the decades of living in exile is being aggravated by systematic discrimination against them…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=37285

IRAQ: Hundreds forced to scavenge for food in garbage bins
IRIN News
Barira Mihran, a 36-year-old mother of three, scavenges every day in other people’s dustbins in Baghdad for leftovers on which to feed her children. Widowed and displaced by sectarian violence, the unemployed mother said she had no other way of providing for her children. “In the beginning it was very difficult. I never imagined that one day I was going to be forced by destiny to feed my children from the remains of other people’s food,” Barira said. “We always had good food on our table when my husband was alive but since he was killed in August 2005, my life has gone from bad to worse.” “My children are under age and so cannot work or beg in the streets,” she said. “Sometimes you have to fight for a dustbin. Many women know which houses have good leftovers and so they wait for hours near the houses until the leftovers are thrown in the bins outside. Then you can see at least 10 people, women and children, running to get it, and I will be in the middle of the crowd, for sure,” Barira added…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=37274

Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Wednesday, 17 October 2007
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice. www.freearabvoice.org
…In a dispatch posted on its Arabic website at 7:43pm Wednesday night Beijing time, the Xinhua News Agency reported that a clash had taken place between fighters for al-Qa’idah in Iraq and fighters for the Islamic Army Iraqi Resistance group in the area of Samarra’, 120km north of Baghdad at dawn Wednesday. Xinhua reported a source in the Provincial puppet police as saying that the two armed groups engaged each other in combat, as a result of which four fighters were killed. Fighting first erupted several months ago between al-Qa’idah fighters and Resistance men in other organizations when the latter refused to pledge fealty to al-Qa’idah and its so-called “Islamic State of Iraq.”…

The Islamic Army Resistance organization is a constituent member of the Jihad and Reform Front, the other members of which are the Army of the Mujahideen, the Ansar as-Sunnah Group – Shari’ah Board, and the Army of the Fatiheen. On 11 October it was announced that the Jihad and Reform Front had joined two offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood organization to form the Political Council for the Iraqi Resistance.

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=37295

The Impact of Oil Contracts for the Government of Iraqi Kurdistan
Walid Khadduri, Al-Hayat
In August, the Parliament of Iraqi Kurdistan approved an Oil and Gas Law for the province, whose government had approved eight production sharing contracts with foreign oil companies prior to the issuing of this legislation, or even before approval on a federal Oil Law, which remains under discussion by the Parliament in Baghdad. In October, the Kurdistan regional government signed three production agreements with Canada’s Heritage for the Miran block, whose petroleum reserve is estimated at 1 billion barrels of crude. This area is 30 kilometers away from the Taktak field of 20,000 barrels a day, based on a 50-50 sharing agreement with the regional government, on the condition a refinery is completed within two years from the date of the signing. The regional Kurdistan government granted France’s Perenco the concession to develop the Sandi-Amidi Block, adjacent to Turkey; it also granted an agreement for production sharing to America’s Hunt Oil (the first US company to obtain a contract of this type in the province). However, unlike the other agreements that have been announced so far, neither the regional government nor the concerned company published information about the given concession area…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=37291

Blackwater won’t allow arrests
Sharon Behn
A defiant Blackwater Chairman Erik Prince said yesterday he will not allow Iraqi authorities to arrest his contractors and try them in Iraq’s faulty justice system. “We will not let our people be taken by the Iraqis,” Mr. Prince told editors and reporters at The Washington Times. At least 17 of 20 Blackwater guards being investigated for their roles in a Sept. 16 shooting incident are still in a secure compound in Baghdad’s Green Zone and carrying out limited duties. Two or three others have been allowed by the State Department to leave the country as part of their scheduled rotation out of Iraq and are expected to return…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=37282

Id al-Fitr lost amid Gaza Strip closure
Amira Hass, Haaretz
UNRWA, the UN organization that helps Palestinian refugees, was unable to keep its promise to give students at its schools in the Gaza Strip NIS 100 each with which to buy clothes for the Id al-Fitr holiday. Why? Because Israel would not allow it to bring the cash into the strip. The hermetic closure of Gaza over the last four months has also left its mark on the currency still circulating: The notes are ragged and torn, a visible reminder of the severance of commercial ties between Gazan farmers and manufacturers and their external markets. Only basic necessities are allowed into the strip…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=37279

Turkish parliament authorises incursion into Iraq
Sibel Utku Bila, AFP
The Turkish parliament Wednesday voted to allow military strikes against Kurdish separatists in northern Iraq, despite stiff US opposition and appeals from Baghdad for time to purge the rebels. A government motion seeking a one-year authorisation for one or more incursions into Iraq was approved with the support of 507 lawmakers in the 550-seat house, with 19 voting against. The motion leaves it up to the government to determine the timing and scope of the operation and the number of troops to be sent. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has stressed that parliamentary approval would not mean immediate military action, signalling that there could be still room for diplomacy….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=37284

QB blocks IOF incursion east of Gaza, kills an IOF serviceman
Palestinian Information Center
Fighters of the armed wing of Hamas Movement, the Qassam Brigades (QB), have repelled Wednesday large numbers of IOF troops attempting to advance into the Faraheen area, east of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, killing one IOF soldier. The group, however, acknowledged that one of its fighters identified as Hazem Jamal Asfour, 21, was martyred and another was wounded while blocking the IOF incursion into the area. News from the battlefield confirmed that a number of Israeli soldiers were wounded with bullets of the Palestinian fighters, but IOF troops acknowledged the death of one of its servicemen in the armed clashes with the Palestinian fighters…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=37292

Kurdish warlords sign oil contracts outside Kurdistan borders
Kuwait secretly involved in destabilizing Iraq
Roads to Iraq
Reported on Kuwaiti newspaper alwatan Hundreds of thousands of dinars left Kuwait to Iraqi parties and individuals during Ramadan (in the form of donations), smuggled by truck drivers. These contributions went to the religious parties for the building and restoration of mosques and Husainyats (Shiites mosques), but the reality behind these contributions aimed to strengthen these parties, so its members continue to work in the political arena. Sources revealed that Iraqi police captured many of the truck drivers confessed on trying to deliver the money to certain persons but Iraqi parties and politicians intervened to collect the money and the release of the drivers…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=37280

Face-Off: Airbrushing Accountability in the Terror War
Chris Floyd , Empire Burlesque
…We’re seeing this kind of thing writ large in Iraq right now, as the Bush-connected Blackwater continues to deny — against all the evidence — that its mercenaries went beserk on a Baghdad street and gunned down 17 innocent people — again, as in London, without provocation. The mercenary firm’s warlord, Eric Prince, has defiantly declared that he “will not allow” his shooters to be face justice in Iraq. He blamed the “accusations” against his company on the “far left,” who went after Blackwater after being “unsuccessful in attacking Petraeus [Yes, he quite shamelessly omitted the Congressionally protected general’s title!] and defunding the war, forcing a pullback of U.S. troops.” As for those dead bodies in the street, those grieving families, those tsunamis of anger and cries for revenge ringing across the conquered land after the atrocity — Prince had nothing to say in his interview with the friendly folks at the cultic Washington Times. Why should he? Does the butcher mourn the meat he makes his money from?…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=37288

Sultan Hashim’s son: Iraqi government executed My father
Roads to Iraq
Ahmad, son of former Iraqi Defense Minister Sultan Hashim in a special statement to Jordanian newspaper alanbat and said that he had information indicating that the Iraqi government executed his father, pointing out that his family are making contacts with the government at this time…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=37283

Rip Van Winkle Wakes up in Toad Hall.
Smoking Mirrors
…It’s a curious thing. If the Zionists hadn’t actually non-stop practiced apartheid and genocide on the Palestinians -and weren’t presently starving them to death- we wouldn’t have all those photos and videos that so many people are watching. If they hadn’t used their unopposed power at every level of American life to shut down their critics from saying that they wielded enormous influence over American life it wouldn’t be so obvious as it now is that they wield enormous influence over American life. If every politician beside Ron Paul weren’t kissing their ass in the public square the American people wouldn’t know that they control the American political system. It’s all good… …except for the deaths and dismemberments, except for the agony and loss, except for the collateral damage and the side effects and all the blood and tears and greed and lies and theft and dozens of other things… except for that it’s all good…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=37290

At least 25 Palestinians abducted in the West Bank and Gaza Strip
Nisreen Qumsieh – IMEMC News
In a number of attacks in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army abducted 25 Palestinians in the early hours of Wednesday morning. At least three Palestinians were abducted from the northern West Bank city of Qalqilia. Security sources say that the army carried out a military operation in several parts of the city, claiming they were searching for wanted Palestinians. Troops searched homes under the supervision of Israeli intelligence and abducted, Qasem Al Sawy, Mahmoud Al Je’edi, Imad Hotary. Qalqilia has witnessed successive Israeli attacks and abductions over the last four days….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=37278

IN GOD’S HANDS
Malcom Lagauche
The Republican Party in the U.S. unleashed the powerful tool of religion in the 1990s and has obtained a fanatic base of voters ever since. After Bush’s appointment as president in 2000, the world had to put up with his religious statements, especially the one in which he said God told him to run for president. At first, the Democrats tried to downplay the role of religion in U.S. politics and criticized Bush for being so pious in public. That ploy did not last long. The leadership of the Democratic Party came up with a strategy that Democrats should challenge Republicans as to who is more religious. They even came up with standard terms for candidates. Environmentalist Democrats were told to use the term “God’s green Earth” in speaking about environmental issues. Instead of taking the religiosity of the Republican Party and trying to make it a liability, the Democrats decided to attack the Republicans right at their strongest point…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=37276

War News for Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Iraq today
MNF-Iraq is reporting the death of a Multi-National Division-Center Soldier from small-arms fire in a raid somewhere south of Baghdad on Sunday, October 14th.:About 6:30 a.m., a bomb exploded near a residential building in Zaafaraniyah, a predominantly Shiite neighborhood in southeastern Baghdad. At least two Iraqi civilians died in the blast and two others were wounded, according to police….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=37293

ANTI-JEWISH HATESITES ~~ MADE IN ISRAEL
Desert Peace
The ADL and its various bosom buddies have been overly active searching for and fabricating enemies of the Jewish people that they overlooked the very place that these people are coming from…. ISRAEL! The very land that boasts to be the Saviour of world Jewry is actually the very birthplace of much of the hatred aimed at them… read the following report from today’s HaAretz to see what I mean….. Jewish rightist: ‘Finish Hitler’s work, kill Ashkenazi Jews’…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=37272

Empire and Imperialism
James Petras on Rulers and the Ruled in US Empire
Kim Petersen
Sociology professor emeritus James Petras surely ranks as one of the most astute scholars and chroniclers of capitalism and imperialism, as well as being a realistic appraiser of progressivist movements in the world. His latest book — Rulers and the Ruled in the US Empire: Bankers, Zionists, Militants — is a valuable compendium of how power is distributed and wielded in society and among states. Petras begins with the simple division — that between the rarified stratum of haves and the masses of have-nots. He notes that wealth is super concentrated among the haves, leaving crumbs of wealth to be distributed among the masses: the richest two percent of adults possess more than half the world’s wealth, the richest 10 percent own 85 percent of the wealth. CEOs are earning 430 times the wages of an average worker….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=37273

CELEBRATING AMERICAN TEARS: Responding to Naomi Wolf’s Recent Missive
Carolyn Baker
Last month I reviewed Naomi Wolf’s recent best seller, The End Of America: Letter Of Warning To A Young Patriot in which I praised Wolf’s succinct and thorough analysis of the triumph of fascism in the United States. This past week, Wolf’s article “American Tears” has been posted on a variety of internet sites and forwarded to me several times. Whereas I was inspired to give The End Of America a glowing review that it more than deserves, I must take issue with the fundamental premise of “American Tears” which is in my opinion, the most inappropriate of all responses to the dire situation Wolf elucidates in The End Of America….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=37286