8/11/07

Bush: “If You Lived In Iraq–You’d Be Saying, God, I Love Freedom”
John Amato, Crooks and Liars
… Q: Thank you, Mr. President. My question is on Iraq. Mr. President, this morning you talked at length about Afghanistan, Iran, but not Iraq. And I wanted to ask both of you, is France reconciled with the United States, the United States is reconciled with France? So what about Iraq? Can France, for instance, help to get out of the Iraqi quagmire? And President Bush, where do you stand on Iraq and your domestic debate on Iraq? Do you have a timetable for withdrawing troops? BUSH: I don’t — you know, “quagmire” is an interesting word. If you lived in Iraq and had lived under a tyranny, you’d be saying, god, I love freedom — because that’s what’s happened. And there are killers and radicals and murderers who kill the innocent to stop the advance of freedom. But freedom is happening in Iraq. And we’re making progress….

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Lest we forget Iraq
Yasir Assam
…Iraq is often portrayed as a “mess” in the media, implying (by some) that though the cause was noble, the execution was flawed. In other words, we had the moral right to invade, it’s just that those guys (Bush et. al.) were incompetent. But this argument evades the central fact: the invaders knowingly invaded a defenceless nation, without the consent of its people, in order to take control of its resources, leaving death and destruction in their wake. It is the supreme war crime….

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U.S. Congress approves $155 million weapons package for Israel
Saed Bannoura – IMEMC
The U.S. Senate voted Wednesday to approve $155 million worth of weapons for Israel, in an addendum to a $460 billion military spending bill that was approved on October 1st in the U.S. Congress. The gift of more weapons to the U.S. ally comes at a moment when tensions are high and diplomacy is delicate between Israel and the Palestinians, and analysts point out that the gift of additional weapons to Israel at this particular moment could have an effect on the Summit planned for the end of November between Israel and the Palestinian Authority…

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Bush’s Favorite Lie
Robert Parry
… my personal favorite Bush lie is when he insists that the United States invaded Iraq to enforce a United Nations resolution and that Saddam Hussein “chose war” by barring U.N. weapons inspectors. Bush dusted off that old canard on Nov. 7 while standing next to French President Nicolas Sarkozy during a press conference at George Washington’s estate at Mount Vernon in Virginia. Responding to a question from a French journalist about Bush’s dispute with France over the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, the U.S. president said: “We had a difference of opinion with your great country over whether or not I should have used military force to enforce U.N. demands. … I just want to remind you that [U.N. Resolution] 1441 was supported by France and the United States, which clearly said to the dictator, you will disclose, disarm, or face serious consequences. Now, I’m the kind of person that when somebody says something, I take them for their word.” Bush has made this same false argument scores of times dating back to July 2003, several months after the invasion when it was becoming clear that Saddam Hussein had told the truth when his government reported to the U.N. in 2002 that Iraq’s WMD stockpiles had been eliminated….

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Going Home
Ilan Goldenberg
The Washington Post misses the boat today in writing about Iraqi refugees The drop in violence caused by the U.S. troop increase in Iraq has prompted refugees to begin returning to their homes, American and Iraqi officials said Wednesday. Tahsin al-Sheikhly, an Iraqi government spokesman, said 46,030 displaced Iraqis had returned last month from outside the country to their homes in the capital. He declined to comment on how the government determined those statistics. What the Post neglects to mention and the AP reported yesterday is that after having a relatively open border policy Syria and Jordan have completely clamped down in the last few months. Syria began demanding visas for Iraqis last month and Jordan has increasingly turned back Iraqis. Those who fled to the two neighboring countries before the new restrictions were put in place are now forced to leave when residency permits expire, unless they have been officially recognized by the United Nations as refugees — a process that can take months….

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If the Nazis could make it work, why not us?
Jonathan Schwarz:
This is an unusual rhetorical gambit from Alan Dershowitz: Marginal Democratic candidates certainly benefit from moving to the left on national security issues, but serious candidates–candidates who want to have any realistic chance of prevailing in the general election–must not allow themselves to be pushed, shoved or even nudged away from a strong commitment to national security. Consider, for example, the contentious and emotionally laden issue of the use of torture in securing preventive intelligence information about imminent acts of terrorism… There are some who claim that torture is a nonissue because it never works–it only produces false information. This is simply not true, as evidenced by the many decent members of the French Resistance who, under Nazi torture, disclosed the locations of their closest friends and relatives…

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Is the US Government Reading Your Email?
Z. BYRON WOLF, ABC News
It would be difficult to say whose e-mail, text messages or Internet phone calls the government is monitoring at any given time, but according to a former AT&T employee, the government has warrantless access to a great deal of Internet traffic should they care to take a peek. As information is traded between users it flows also into a locked, secret room on the sixth floor of AT&T’s San Francisco offices and other rooms around the country — where the U.S. government can sift through and find the information it wants, former AT&T employee Mark Klein alleged Wednesday at a press conference on Capitol Hill….

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Short on substance
Khaled Amayreh
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s latest visit to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories was rich in rhetoric but woefully short on substance. Rice, who arrived in Jerusalem Sunday, is engaged in final preparations for the upcoming peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland, due to be held in the last week of November. Due to a dearth of progress in Palestinian-Israeli talks aimed at formulating a common vision of a final status settlement between the two sides, Rice felt compelled to switch discourse from “brokering peace”, of which she has done very little anyway, to the role of preaching about the virtues of peace, which, too, is unlikely to yield fruit….

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The Gatekeepers lose another one! Indymedia UK rejects censorship demand
Peacepalestine
…Gilad Atzmon has been attacked, (and naturally, anyone who supports his ideas and believes that they are worthy of widespread dissemination is attacked just as much) by certain sectors of the “movement”. There have been calls by some in this extremely marginal group of people (both in number and in relevance) to have Gilad Atzmon banned, boycotted, picketed, harassed, and most frequently, CENSORED. Well, the demands of Tony Greenstein, acting for Moishe Machover, had been rejected by IndyMedia UK. Here is the letter from one of the moderators, explaining to Tony that not only was Tony’s diatribe going to be “hidden” (something that Tony had asked to be done to Gilad’s article, if they couldn’t out and out censor it), but that his proposition was rejected. I’ve stopped keeping count of the various humiliating defeats Tony and his cronies have had in trying to 1) tell Palestinians who is good for them and who is bad for them, 2) tell other activists that certain “elements” had to be silenced (yes, there have been even attempts to have me voted off a discussion forum! Not even a political party!!!) 3) determine priorities for the movement that are not essential to the Palestinian Rights Campaign, ie, the focus on Fighting Anti-Semitism as one of the major issues, if not the determining one, 4) convincing everyone that the tunnel vision to which he is a victim is the only correct approach to discussion of the Israel-Palestinian problem…

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An E-mail Sent to Riyadh Mansour at the UN
Tony Sayegh, Palestinian Pundit
Mr. Riyadh Mansour, Representative of the Palestinian judenrate at the United Nations. You and your bosses in the Green Zone in Ramallah have outdone yourselves this time. About three months ago, you worked hard with the US and Israeli representatives to block a resolution in the Security Council calling for lifting of the siege on Gaza, imposed by your Zionist masters, to alleviate the suffering of 1.5 million Palestinians. After the storm of protest against such a cowardly, mean and un-Palestinian act, your office tried to backpedal, obfuscate and to confuse what actually took place. Now, with your role as the second Israeli representative to the UN becoming clear, you secretly drafted a resolution to be submitted to the General Assembly, which in effect equates any Palestinian resistance to the occupation with terrorism….

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Iraqis prepare for fuel shortages ahead of a cold season
Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Aside from bombings, Iraqis have an extra concern every winter; stocking enough amounts of home heating oil in preparation for the four-month-long cold season, which usually ranges from chilly to frosty across Iraq’s cities. Even in the country with the third largest oil reserves in the world, poorer people have trouble finding sufficient energy resources to keep going especially as December approaches.’In the past years we have lived through incidents and events that could not cross people’s mind in a country that floats over crude oil,’ said 51-year-old Hassan Hady of the troubles Iraqis face during fuel shortages….

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Iraq-Iran pipeline construction starts
UPI
Iraq and Iran may be moving ahead on a cross-river oil pipeline, a move the Iraq ministry has talked about but was further down the road. Media reports are carrying the word of a source in Iraq’s South Oil Co. that the pipeline construction has started. The South Oil Co. is a state-owned entity producing and transporting oil from Basra and surrounding areas, where 80 percent of Iraq’s oil reserves are located. The Kuwait News Agency reports the construction of the pipeline between ports in Basra and the Abaadan port in Iran, crossing the Shatt al-Arab river…

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Weekly Report: On Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory No. 44/2007 ( 01 – 07 Nov. 2007 )
PCHR – Palestinian Centre for Human Rights
Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) Continue Systematic Attacks on Palestinian Civilians and Property in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT)
* 5 Palestinians, including a man and his child, were killed by IOF in the Gaza Strip.
* 18 Palestinians, including 3 children, were wounded by IOF.
* IOF conducted 24 incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank and 2 ones into the Gaza Strip.
* IOF arrested 68 Palestinian civilians, including 10 children and a woman, in the West Bank.
* IOF arrested Hatem Qafisha, Member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, in Hebron.
* IOF razed at least 80 donums of agricultural land and destroyed 9 houses in the Gaza Strip….

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Impeachment hearings!
Jennifer Van Bergen, thepeoplesvoice.org
Dear Congress-woman Pelosi: I am a journalist and book author. I have written not only many articles about this criminal administration and not only a book, but several law review articles (see below and see my website to view them www.jvbline.org). I am astonished to hear the rumor that you have threatened to remove Rep. Conyers from his chairmanship if he proceeds with impeachment hearings! You were put into power by an electorate that wants accountability, wants out of Iraq, and wants the criminality to STOP. Why are you betraying your constituents and the constituents of your Democratic colleagues?…

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Thursday: 2 US Soldiers, 47 Iraqis Killed; 33 Iraqis Wounded
Margaret Griffis, Antiwar.com
At least 47 Iraqis were killed or found dead and 33 more were wounded in the latest round of violence. An MND-Center soldier was also killed during a roadside bomb explosion south of Baghdad yesterday, and the DOD reported that another soldier was killed by a bomb in Baghdad. Meanwhile, a steep increase in cholera cases has been reported. In Baghdad, four unidentified bodies were found. A roadside bomb targeting a police convoy killed one policeman and injured two others in the Jisr Diyala area…

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How Blackwater Sniper Fire Felled 3 Iraqi Guards
Witnesses Call Shooting From Justice Ministry Unprovoked, But State Dept. Cleared Its Security Team After a Brief Probe
Steve Fainaru, Washington Post Foreign Service
– Last Feb. 7, a sniper employed by Blackwater USA, the private security company, opened fire from the roof of the Iraqi Justice Ministry. The bullet tore through the head of a 23-year-old guard for the state-funded Iraqi Media Network, who was standing on a balcony across an open traffic circle. Another guard rushed to his colleague’s side and was fatally shot in the neck. A third guard was found dead more than an hour later on the same balcony….

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Iraqi press warns of sectarian sedition
Voices of Iraq
Iraqi newspapers gave prominence in their Thursday issues to what they described as calls for inciting sectarian and ethnic sedition inside and outside Iraq. In an editorial entitled ‘Believers’ dialogue and sectarian violence,’ the editor-in-chief of the independent daily al-Sabah al-Jadid, Ismail al-Zair, wrote about anti-Wahhabist sentiments which he said have recently grown among some Iraqi groups. “These groups are the outcome of fatwas (religious edicts) issued by some Muslims who regard Shiite Islam as infidelity,” the author said. “These groups want us to engage in an ethnic and sectarian war against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”…

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US: Iran Attack Plans Ready if Needed
Robert Burns, AP Military Writer
U.S. defense officials have signaled that up-to-date attack plans are available if needed in the escalating crisis over Iran’s nuclear aims, although no strike appears imminent. The Army and Marine Corps are under enormous strain from years of heavy ground fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Still, the United States has ample air and naval power to strike Iran if President Bush decided to target nuclear sites or to retaliate for alleged Iranian meddling in neighboring Iraq (…)At the moment, there are few indications of U.S. military leaders either advising offensive action against Iran or taking new steps to prepare for that possibility. Gates has repeatedly emphasized that while military action cannot be ruled out, the focus is on diplomacy and tougher economic sanctions. Asked in late October whether war planning had been ramped up or was simply undergoing routine updates, Gates replied, “I would characterize it as routine.”…

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The Justice Department’s Culture of Torture
Scott Horton, Harper’s
On Friday, Nov. 2, ABC’s World News with Charles Gibson carried a story with a series of stunning accusations. Jan Crawford Greenburg provided a report that cleared up a long-standing mystery: why did Daniel Levin, the acting assistant attorney general in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel who authored the second in the Justice Department’s series of highly controversial “torture memoranda,” suddenly depart his post? The story that unfolded was grotesque, almost impossible to believe. I have been a critic of the Bush Justice Department for some time, but this story even I was reluctant to believe. So I waited, expecting that the Justice Department would denounce ABC’s report as some sort of hoax or falsehood. In the intervening four days, however, the Justice Department has maintained a steady silence on the story which can be explained only one way: the story is true….

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ACLU ‘shocked’ US defying UN torture committee’s recommendations
Nick Juliano, Raw Story
A civil liberties and human rights group says the US has failed to correct policies that violate international conventions on torture and cruel treatment, and it accuses the US of continuing to violate international treaties. “With the debate over waterboarding front and center, it is shocking to see the U.S. government continue to defend its shameful record of sanctioning secret and indefinite detention and its lack of accountability for torture and abuse,” said Jamil Dakwar, Advocacy Director of the ACLU Human Rights Program. “The torture committee attempted to give the U.S. government a chance to correct its wrongs, but unfortunately the Bush administration responded with nothing more than empty gestures and hollow words.”…

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US releases 450 Iraqi detainees
Aljazeera.net
US authorities in Iraq have freed 450 Iraqi prisoners in one of the largest such releases this year. The men were released following a ceremony at Camp Victory on the outskirts of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, attended by Nuri al-Maliki, Iraq’s prime minister. It is estimated that around 25,000 prisoners remain in US custody in Iraq, and more are brought in every week. Many have been held without trial for months. Thousands of other prisoners are also held in Iraqi jails….

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Who wants another Israel?
Ayman El-Amir, Al-Ahram Weekly
…Israel has a strategic interest in breaking up Iraq (…) Israel would build a political-military- economic alliance with a semi-independent Kurdistan Regional Government, with oil wealth that would be considerably enhanced by the prospect of taking over Arab Kirkuk and Mosul. This would allow Israel to break out of its isolation as a non- Arab pariah in the Middle East and join hands with another non-Arab entity in a mutually reinforcing alliance. The new Kurdish stronghold would benefit from Israel’s military power and technology, and Washington-backed policies, to build and strengthen other Kurdish minorities in Iran, Syria and Turkey for the ultimate objective of building the independent state of Kurdistan on territories sliced off these countries. Israel would benefit from extended Kurdish family alliances to destabilise its opponents, dominate the Middle East and reshape it in its own interests. That would be the new Middle East the US is hoping for, with Israel hovering over the oil and gas riches of the region….

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An Intervisit – Afternoon Tea (2)
Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues
…You mentioned that Iraq is finished as a country. Imagine you have a magic wand in your hands, what would it take to have an Iraq again? I am not Iraqi so from my point of view, as a person from a Western country, the only magical thing would be to bring the clock back to before the 1991 war of aggression against Iraq and before the genocidal embargo; before the long war of aggression, started in 1991, waged by the West against your country. For the rest, only Iraqis can decide what’s better for their own country; certainly it’s not for me to decide….

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Iraq: Hearts and Minds
Hussein Al-alak, The Iraq Solidarity Campaign
Once more the destructive nature of Iraq’s democracy, has exposed the damaged minds of those, whose hatred of the Iraqi people has allowed their own ambitions to be the building blocks of Iraq’s national suffering. The opportunism of those who ran to the British and Americans in 1991, were those who saw the systematic murder of 1.5 million children due to sanctions, as being the “price worth paying”, to insure that Saddam Hussain was unable to build their imaginary Weapons of Mass Destruction. For everyone who knows Iraq and remembers the suffering of the Iraqi people, they will remember the Harvard Study, which was conducted after the first Gulf War and they will remember that it exposed the “fourfold increase in child mortality and a high incidence of health problems among women, including psychosomatic conditions such as sleeplessness and mental disorders.” In the essay “Women: Honour and Shame”, Dr. Suha Omar described how after the Gulf War, there was an increase in domestic violence, with “war traumatised conscripts” returning to Iraq, who “would take out their distress and anger on wives, daughters, mothers and sisters.”…

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The new rationale for keeping American troops in Iraq indefinitely (with an update)
Arablinks
This morning (Thursday November 8) Al-Quds al-Arabi prints the first report in any major Arab newspaper about the secret political meetings that took place during three days from Saturday through Monday (Nov 3 through 5) at a resort hotel on the Dead Sea in Jordan (…) The language, whether you look at that crafted by Richard Murphy for the edification of the Iraqis, or that crafted by Colin Kahl for the edification of the Americans, is merely the cover for something else. In the Iraqi case, Murphy and his people have been able to dig up a few unnamed yes-men to make it appear the government and the resistance are in serious discussions, and this is being used to create a very positive status-quo atmosphere for the Green Zone people; and in the American case Kahl, and no doubt others who will soon be emerging from the woodwork, are using the same positive atmosphere to roll out a rationale for keeping American troops in Iraq for the foreseeable future even under a Democratic administration. Which will sound just as comfortable for the Washington people as for their counterparts in the Green Zone….

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Iran’s masterly gamble
Mustafa El-Labbad, Al-Ahram Weekly
The Iranian nuclear crisis, which tops the current international agenda, is the most salient aspect of Tehran’s showdown with the West over its ambition to assume a more influential regional role at this juncture. In this article, I would like to address the crucial question as to who holds the keys to decisions regarding the Iranian nuclear programme. The answer to this question requires a review of Iran’s negotiating experience with the West and an examination of the hierarchy of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) that has been in charge of Tehran’s management of the crisis since Iranian-EU negotiations in 2003. This should help us identify the different mechanisms and priorities that shaped Iran’s actions over three negotiating phases, presided over, successively, by Khatemi and Rohani, Ahmadinejad and Larijani, and Ahmadinejad and Jalili…

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Mahdi Army accused of killing spree in Iraq shrine city
AFP
Police on Thursday accused the Mahdi Army militia of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr of carrying out a four-year killing spree in Iraq’s central shrine city of Karbala which left hundreds dead. The killings and other gross human rights violations were carried out by the militiamen in their attempt to impose Sharia law on the people of Karbala, the police directorate of Karbala province said in a statement. “The Mahdi Army murdered and tortured and kidnapped people under Sharia law,” the statement said. “They are the cause of the deaths of hundreds of people. They also committed numerous violations of human rights in Karbala.”…

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Collusion Course: Dems Play Impeachment Farce as Republic Burns
Chris Floyd , Empire Burlesque
…As Silber notes, the Republicans proudly champion torture, Hitlerite aggressive war, and iron-fisted domestic tyranny; they think such things are good. The Democrats, in contrast, say they oppose all this, that such things are evil. Yet they do not and will not act to fight against these things. Given this undeniable fact, Silber poses the question: So which is worse? Those who support evil, but insist they believe it is good? Or those who support evil while claiming, at least some of the time, that they actually know it is evil?…

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Baath Party Statement
A statement to our struggling people concerning “Istanbul meeting” and the escalation of threats and amassing troops on the Iraqi Turkish border.
The Arab Baath Socialist Party
We did explain in our previous statements the backgrounds and the reasons behind the threats and the dangers which besiege our beloved homeland from every parts and from every ones due to the US occupiers’ plans and practices and their dual agents and Iran’s leading to divide Iraq into miserable racist and ethnic entities following the destruction of the Iraqi state, the disband of the heroic Iraqi army and the growing fears of Iraq ethnic and sectarian partition’ regional fallout….

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Gaza’s hard place between Israeli and Palestinian violence
Rami Almeghari, The Electronic Intifada
Since the Hamas-led government seized control of the Gaza Strip in mid-June, severe Israeli pressure has been imposed on the coastal region’s 1.4-million-strong population. This pressure has been enforced through strict border closures, continuous attacks and invasions and most recently a series of Israeli punitive after the Jewish state declared the region a “hostile entity” and began to cut off crucial power and fuel supplies. Gaza has been sustaining the effects of such pressure at the same time as it has been absorbing the impact of the seemingly unending inter-Palestinian violence, which has claimed the lives of at least 400 Palestinians and continues to disrupt everyday life inthe already impoverished society….

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Our Man in Islamabad
Stephen Lendman
…Nonetheless, Musharraf wants to retain power until 2012 and staged a bogus October 6 election to do it. It violated the law and was stage-managed by the military in a process neither free nor fair because the general’s allies dominate the Parliament from having rigged elections five years ago. As expected, Musharraf won easily getting all but five parliamentary votes (252 out of 257) cast and swept the Provincial Assembly balloting as well. Opposition MPs abstained or boycotted the proceeding calling it unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court said no winner could be declared until it rules if Musharraf could run in his joint COAS capacity. Pakistan has seen increased political upheaval for months. Musharraf wants to keep power by confronting it and intends to stay allied with the Bush administration in the process…

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Hamas: Abbas conspiring against the Palestinian people at the UN
Palestinian Information Center
Hamas strongly denounced Riyad Mansour, the PA representative to the UN, for his persistence in conspiring against the Palestinian people after he prepared a draft resolution calling for condemning Hamas, describing him as a second Israeli delegate to the UN. Mansour intends to table his reprehensible draft resolution with the UN General Assembly in New York, in order to pass a resolution condemning Hamas and classifying it as an outlaw militia. Hamas held PA chief Mahmoud Abbas fully responsible for the reckless anti-patriot actions of his delegate to the UN, confirming that Mansour had already aborted a draft resolution tabled by Qatar and Indonesia calling for lifting the siege on the Gaza Strip and alleviating the suffering of Gaza people….

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America, Ankara and the Kurds
Galal Nassar, Al-Ahram Weekly
It was the US administration that gave the main two Kurdish Parties — The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of Masoud Barzani, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of Jalal Talabani — permission to harbour members of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK). The latter established offices and training camps in northern Iraq in full view of the US occupation forces. Which raises these two questions: why did the US administration encourage dissident Kurds to spring to action? And why did it change its position when the Turkish government decided to go into Iraq?…

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Who Possess The Right of Negotiation
Al- Basaer/ Editorial – AMSI
Conflicts of attitudes and secret agreements that practiced by powers that are under the willing of occupation…… The principle aim of creating crises is to serve the projects of the occupation and to prepare the relevant background in case of future insistent draw back puts its weight onto the field of conflict. These powers agreed to obey the orders and to hold the projects of the occupation, but this time they found themselves in a hard challenge among themselves from one hand and the aspects imposed by these challenges from another hand, especially these powers are suspends its forces on the regional countries and what the occupation is supplied for them as forces they get to use it in a required time….

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Iraq’s Maliki ends effort to bring back Sunni bloc
Wisam Mohammed
Iraq’s Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has given up trying to bring the country’s largest Sunni Arab bloc back into his fractured government, officials said on Thursday. The Accordance Front withdrew its six ministers from the cabinet in early August after saying Maliki had failed to address the bloc’s demands for a greater say in government. The move underscored the deep sectarian divide in Iraq, which has hobbled decision making and slowed progress on key laws Washington wants passed to boost reconciliation between warring majority Shi’ites and minority Sunni Arabs….

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Teaching Israeli and Palestinian Children to “Get Along” at Best Only Buries the Real Problems
Meeting the Other in Israel and Palestine
KATHLEEN and BILL CHRISTISON
One hesitates to criticize these enterprises. They’re so well meaning, and it seems so curmudgeonly. But the myriad efforts around the world to bring the children of political conflicts, most notably the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, together in some kind of forced intimacy — schools or camps or the like — so that they can get to know each other and learn that each is human, can and often do actually perpetuate the conflict. These well intentioned efforts ultimately divert attention from real problems, real grievances, and lull people into thinking that all this sweetness and light is some kind of progress toward resolving the conflict….

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Ban on Tribal Sheiks travels
Roads to Iraq
The Interior Ministry of the occupation government issued a law this morning preventing tribal Sheiks from travel to Arab and foreign countries and hold seminars and conferences only after obtaining permission. Tribal Public Affairs Office in Basra said: This decision came because number of Iraqi tribe Sheiks from provinces went to other countries meeting with officials and receive support and assistance under the various designations. This situation is dangerous, especially that some countries and institutions hosts the tribe chiefs aimed to implement their political agendas….

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Naim warns: Half kidney dialysis machines in Gaza are out of order
Palestinian Information Center
Dr. Basem Naim, the acting health minister in the PA caretaker government, has warned that hundreds of kidney patients in the Gaza Strip were in danger of death after more than half the dialysis machines were out of order due to the Israeli occupation authority’s refusal to allow spare parts into the Strip. Naim in a press interview published on Thursday said that a big number of kidney patients were in need of regular dialysis until they could travel abroad and undergo a transplant. The patients must abide by the doctor’s treatment program or else they would suffer blood poisoning and thus are liable to die, the minister explained….

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ILLEGAL OCCUPIERS DEMOLISH ILLEGAL HOME IN PALESTINE
Desert Peace
OK…. just what is wrong with that headline? Who is the illegal party, that is the key question in this matter… Is it the family that built their home in THEIR COUNTRY or is it the occupier of that very country? In the meantime, while an answer to that question is thought of, a widow and five young children remain homeless at the onset of winter. Their suffering has nothing to do with the legality or illegality of their former home, the reality is they are being punished for being born Palestinian in occupied Palestine….

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US has worries about a preemptive strike of Israel to Iran
Turkish Weekly
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s announcement Wednesday that Iran had 3,000 working centrifuges raised fears in Washington that Israel would respond to the statement with a preemptive military strike, the Times reported Thursday.The British paper quoted military sources in the US capital as saying that the figure presented by Ahmadinejad could be the “tipping point” that touches off an IAF strike. Washington was reluctant to go forward with a strike against Iran, but Israel was a “different matter,” the officials said (…)
Israeli officials said they did not believe Ahmadinejad’s claims about the 3,000 centrifuges. Jerusalem believes the Iranian president is lying in an effort to create the impression that Teheran already has a nuclear bomb and has passed the point of no return. Teheran hopes that this will deter international resolve for tougher sanctions, according to this view…

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GI Special 5K4: Seventeen Candles [ November 6, 2007 ]
Thomas F. Barton
“I Volunteered To Fight In Iraq When I Was Seventeen Years Old”
“What They’ve Never Told Us Is That The Enemy Is Already Here, And They Never Came From Places Like Iraq, Or Vietnam, Or Iran”
“They Were Born And Raised Right Here In The United States, And They All Live About 800 Miles North Of Here, Right Across The Potomac River, In A Filthy, Rotten Cesspool Called Washington, D.C.”

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Palestinian doctor dies as a result of US-Israeli siege of Gaza
Palestinian Information Center
Nathmi Ashour, a physician and resident of Gaza City, died Wednesday afternoon as a result of being denied access to medical treatment outside of the Gaza Strip by the Israeli occupation authority. Dr. Muaweya Hasaneen, director of the emergency services department at the PA Ministry of health, said that Dr. Nathmi Ashour died because the Israeli occupation would not allow his transfer to a hospital inside the green line to be treated…

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